command, I had no scent source. Al could pick up the smell of a rabbit and I could wind up in the woods for the rest of my life. What the hell, I wasn’t going to sleep and I didn’t have to get up for work tomorrow.
Al circled, paused, looked up, put his nose back to the ground, and moved forward. Al had a scent and he was after it. He took me down to the road ahead of the Eldorado and stopped. He looked up, looked left and right, put his nose down, looked back up, and wrinkled his brow. Then, the nose went back down and he moved forward slowly and deliberately with his tail straight out, which I think meant he was on to something. He moved ahead steadily, if not quickly, but stayed in a straight line along the road.
A mile and half ahead there was a crossroads, and without hesitation Al made a left. He moved on, never lifting his nose from the ground, and he kept going. There was a light mist falling, and little by little I had gotten soaked all the way through my T-shirt and jeans. My watch told me it was a quarter to two in the morning and Al had been on this trail for two hours. I couldn’t have stopped him at this point if I wanted.
Forty-five minutes later, Al stopped and took a crap. Then, he resumed for ten more feet, stopped, sniffed, looked up, looked down, looked left and right, and put his nose back down. There were tire tracks in the mud in the side of the road. In fact, there were what appeared to be two sets of circular tracks that headed back in the direction we came, like someone met at this spot and then turned around together. I was still looking at them when I felt Al tug me in the exact direction we came from. Retracing the same path, we were back on the scent.
At three fifteen, we were at the crossroads and Al got confused. He started to take the left, hesitated, and went in the direction we originally came from but started looking back and walking with his nose up. Before long his nose left the ground and it was clear he was off whatever he set out after. If there were two cars maybe one made the turn and one didn’t, or maybe they got out on foot, or maybe there was a rabbit that ran around and doubled back. Shit, maybe a pizza-delivery guy spent the night looking for a house, turned around, and then got back on track by making a left at the crossroads.
It was after four when I got back to the Eldorado. Al was moving pretty slow and it had been a long night. The spotlights were still shining and I headed up the brushy knoll for another look at the scene. The cops weren’t milling around, and I figured they had finally got permission to call it a night. That seemed weird to me, but I didn’t get a chance to think it through because Al had given me a wicked tug. He pulled me hard for about twenty feet through the wet, high grass, sniffing like crazy.
Al stopped and I saw what was making him crazy.
The cop we were talking to earlier was lying in the grass with half of his face blown off.
32
A while back I had seen some dead people. Kelley shot a guy in the back of the head as the scumbag was about to rape a little girl. The term “blown his head off” is so overused that it’s meaningless until you’re standing in front of someone when it happens. There was blood all over, and the image of what was a breathing human being now was right there for you to contemplate, shattered and oozing life. For whatever reason, I remember the smell.
There was a smell of gunfire and there was the almost metallic smell of blood, and there was something else-what I perceived was the smell of death.
I was going in and out of the present while I looked down at the dead cop and the video of the other death I saw played in my head. The corner of the top of his head and the eye on that side of his face was gone while the other eye remained closed. A wave of the smell reached me and I puked without having a chance to bend over.
The yakking brought me back into the present as only barfing can do, but I knew I was going to be battling nightmares and what I called “daymares” all over again. I didn’t feel real and I had no idea how much time had elapsed. Al was sitting at my feet, at attention, sensing something untoward and important was happening. His nostrils never stopped moving even while the rest of him remained still.
I started to breathe heavily and I could hear my heart beating when a voice shook me back to the moment.
“Help me… help…” The voice came from the field, and it was close.
Al ran twenty feet ahead and stopped, his tail straight out.
I followed and came across another uniformed cop bleeding hard from the chest. He was a light-skinned black guy with a weightlifter’s build, and his uniform was soaked with blood. A deep scarlet hole to the left side of his chest seeped blood like a sump pump.
“Oh God…,” I heard myself say. I didn’t have any idea what to do, so I ripped off my T-shirt and placed it over the wound. The cop sucked in a few painful breaths, but otherwise he was barely breathing.
“Call… call…” He pointed to his radio.
I pushed the yellow button on the side and said “hello” several times until some sort of dispatcher responded. I don’t know what I said, but he said something about ambulances and not to go any place.
I kept my T-shirt in place and my head drifted away. I think I threw up a few more times and I know I was shivering, but everything that was happening was blurry. Then there was some activity and I remembered seeing Kelley’s face and the look on it. Then a detached voice said, “They’re all dead.”
The next morning I came to in the spare bedroom in Rudy’s house. Al was sleeping next to me and I awoke feeling half drunk. Rudy poked his head in the doorway; he was wearing a ratty robe that probably used to be white. He was sipping coffee.
“Valium, kid. Trust me, you needed it,” he said.
I tried to talk and it didn’t make much sense to me, but Rudy handed me a cup of coffee. Al sat up and just looked at me. He didn’t fuss or bark, which was weird enough on its own.
“You remember much from last night?” Rudy asked.
“I remember dead cops… one still alive, lots of blood. What the hell happened?” I said.
“They were ambushed. All four are dead. You blacked out and went into shock when the cop you were helping died.”
“How’d I get here?”
“Kelley brought you around eight.”
“What time is it now?”
“Four.”
“Who did it?”
“They have no idea.”
The coffee was helping and so was the conversation. I didn’t feel like things were real.
“What’s it mean to go into shock?” I asked.
“Your body shuts off when it’s had too much either physical or psychological shit happen too fast. It can be dangerous but you’re fine… physically, anyway.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Kid, take it easy for a while. Read some books, rent some Elvis movies, walk the dog…”
“Uh-huh.”
“Yeah, I know. Like there’s a chance in hell of that happening,” Rudy said.
By nine that night the Valium was out of my system, so I decided to add some Schlitz to it. I didn’t feel like sitting around the Blue by myself getting weirder by the minute. I headed to AJ’s, and Elvis and “One Broken Heart for Sale” on the way helped-Elvis always helped.
I was heading in the front door when I heard Billy’s voice.
“Sir!” he said, wheeling his bike out from behind the side of the cookie factory. I could see the spokes of the bike but I couldn’t see Billy.
“Billy?”
“Here, sir.” He pulled his ninja mask down to show his face. I thought to myself that life couldn’t get much weirder.
“What’s going on?”
“Are you okay, sir?”
