so easily set aside. Needlelike, it jabbed at my nobler intentions, became a small injury that would not heal.
Before we went to bed that evening, I picked up the picture of Diana and handed it to him. “You’d better put this back in its hiding place,” I said, avoiding his eyes when I said it.
Avoidance. What a great deal of effort it soon requires.
8
THAT’S THE FINEST DOG I ever did see,” Gus Matthews said, squeezing the boy’s shoulders. “I tell you, Brian, this boy of yours knows dogs.”
Frank’s father made a noncommittal grunting sound, trying to get his partner to drop the subject. His boy, if encouraged, would bring home every stray within a ten-mile radius.
“I think she’s part Lab and part retriever,” Frank said.
“Is that so? Let me see her walk with you,” Gus said.
Frank pulled gently on the dog’s makeshift leash — a length of his mother’s clothesline, cut for the purpose. He’d thought to ask permission to use the clothesline after the fact, just before his younger sister finked on him. But his mother had seen his excitement over the dog and merely said, “If your father lets you keep this dog, the first walk will be to the shopping center. You’ll take your allowance and buy a real leash. And a new clothesline.”
The dog, who had followed him all the way home from the baseball field without a leash, needed no encouragement to do his bidding with one. Seeming to know that she was facing some sort of test, she walked perfectly beside him.
“Oh, sure,” Gus said. “You really do know dogs, Frank. That is definitely a Lab/retriever. Definitely. Have you named her yet?”
The boy turned red, then looked over to his father, a touch of defiance in his voice when he said, “Dad named her.”
“Well, Brian?” Gus asked.
“Trouble,” Harriman answered. “The dog’s name is Trouble.”
Gus’s effort to hold back his laughter was doomed. Brian watched his son stand there with the dog while the other man guffawed. The boy’s back and shoulders were straight; his eyes never left his father’s. One hand stroked the dog’s head.
The kid was lonely.
The thought struck Brian so suddenly, he almost said it aloud. The Harrimans had lost their older daughter a few months back. Brian had been miserable with it, and so had Bea, his wife. Cassie, the youngest child, had clung to Frank. Frank had been quiet. Frank was always quiet.
“It’s a gift, I tell you,” Gus was saying. “Frank, you ought to think about working the K-9 unit. Would that interest you?”
“I want to work homicide,” Frank answered.
Both men looked startled. “Twelve years old and you want to work homicide?” Gus asked.
He nodded. “I know I can’t start there. But I’m going to be a detective.”
“Get a load of that, Harriman. You’re raising a suit. Well, Frank, you know what? You’d make a hell of a detective. If they were all like you, we wouldn’t have any unsolved crimes in Bakersfield, would we?”
Frank shrugged.
“You can keep the dog,” Brian said, and paused as his very quiet son let out a loud whoop of elation. “C’mon, Gus. We’re taking Frank and his dog to the pet store. When he makes detective, I don’t want you tellin’ everybody at work that he used to drag strays around on a clothesline.”
9
THERE IS A PLACE ALONG the stair steps leading to utter exhaustion that is something like being not quite drunk enough. On the night Frank was taken by Hocus, I had reached that point by the time I pulled into the driveway. I automatically left room for Frank’s car. Cassidy’s car pulled up instead, snapping me out of my musings about Hocus and Frank’s sister and back to the present. I had driven home on autopilot and at some point forgotten Cassidy was following me.
I was muzzy-headed, emotionally drained. My thoughts began to trip over one another. Cassidy. Thomas Cassidy. Right. And he was walking up to the car door, probably because I was just sitting there. Maybe I was putting off going back into the house. An empty driveway is one thing, an empty bed another.
He waited for me to step out, closed the car door for me. We walked in silence to the front door. When I opened it, I saw that Jack and Deke and Dunk were waiting for me in the hall.
“Rachel went home to Pete,” Jack said, then to Cassidy, “Your partner is asleep in the guest room.”
Cassidy went off to rouse Freeman. I rubbed the dogs’ ears, accepted their hovering attention. I told Jack what had happened at the paper.
“Anything I can do?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Rachel angry with me?”
He smiled a little. “No, I think she’s quite proud of you.”
“That’s a relief.” I put a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve been great, Jack, but you’re probably almost as tired as I am. Why don’t you go home and get some sleep?”
“You’ll call me if…” He hesitated, looking as though he’d decided against finishing the question.
“If anything changes. Yes, of course.” I thanked him again and watched him try to recover his let’s-be-brave
