“Is he alive?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Good. Now help me.”
I got up next to her, and saw that she was holding my dog.
“He’s still got a pulse,” she explained.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
I gathered up Buster in my arms, and carried him down the street. He was out cold, his breathing faint. Burrell made a call on her cell, and a police cruiser appeared. I loaded Buster into the backseat.
“Where do you want me to take him?” the driver asked.
As a cop, I’d taken injured animals to different clinics around the county, and one clinic had stood out above the others for the care it had shown.
“Hollywood Animal Clinic on Hollywood Boulevard,” I said.
“Will do,” the driver said.
I watched the cruiser drive away. I’d always ridiculed people who were overly attached to their pets, but now that I was close to losing mine, I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. Burrell edged up beside me.
“I won’t be offended if you leave,” she said.
I loved Buster, but I also had a job to do, and it wasn’t finished.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.
Bowing my head to the rain, I followed Burrell back to Jed’s hideout.
We took our time, and searched the hideout thoroughly. Every piece of furniture and accessory felt like something a nineteen-year-old boy would own. Nothing we found indicated that Heather or Sampson had recently been there. Nor was there any evidence of Jed having killed anyone. Serial killers were notorious for keeping trophies of their victims, and we didn’t find a single item that looked suspicious.
“Jack, look at this,” Burrell said.
I stopped what I was doing. Burrell sat on the couch with an old book in her lap.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Take a look.”
She handed me the book. It was falling apart, and I carefully opened it. It was a Bible, and on the first page I saw the names of every member of the Grimes family who had owned it over the past hundred years. At the bottom of the page was Jed’s name.
“Not the kind of thing you expect to find in a serial killer’s hideout, is it?” I said.
“No, it isn’t,” Burrell said.
I noticed something stuck in the Bible’s pages, and pulled it out. It was a photograph of Jed standing next to a priest with a turned collar. The priest was bowed over from age, with wisps of silver hair that danced on his head. The priest had his hand on Jed’s shoulder, and they were both smiling.
I flipped the photo over. There was a date written on the back. It had been taken a year ago. I showed it to Burrell.
“Jed’s priest,” I said.
Burrell studied the photograph, and shook her head. “Have you ever heard of a serial killer having a priest?”
“No,” I said.
“Whitley needs to see this, and the Bible.”
“Yes, he does.”
Burrell’s cell phone rang. She answered it, then looked at me.
“Buster’s going to live,” she said.
I pulled out my keys. My job was done here.
“Let me know how it goes,” I said.
I drove to the Hollywood Animal Clinic in the pouring rain. A receptionist with silver thunderbolts painted on her fingernails greeted me from behind a Plexiglas panel.
“Can I help you?” the receptionist asked.
“I own a dog that was brought in earlier,” I said.
“The Australian Shepherd that was involved in the manhunt?”
“That’s right.”
She led me to an examination room, and told me the vet would be in shortly. While I waited, I looked at the horse photographs hanging on the walls. They showed a pretty woman with short spiked hair sitting on a chestnut stallion with ribbons hanging around its neck. The horse’s name was Charley Horse, which brought a smile to my face.
The vet came in wearing a white lab coat. It was the same woman from the photos. Her name tag said Dr. Chris Owens.
“The police tell me your dog’s a hero,” Dr. Owens said.
No one had ever called Buster that before, much less anything nice.
“How’s he doing?” I asked.
“He regained consciousness a short while ago, but is still groggy,” Dr. Owens said. “He seems to be all right, but I’m concerned about his skull. I don’t think it’s cracked, but I won’t know for certain until I run a series of X- rays.”
I’d been to enough emergency clinics to know how they operated.
“How much are we talking about?” I asked.
Dr. Owens worked up the cost on a pocket calculator, and showed me the figure. Three hundred and twenty bucks for a lousy pound mutt.
“Run the X-rays,” I said.
“I’ll need you to sign a form agreeing to the procedure,” Dr. Owens said.
I removed the money from my wallet, and stuffed it into her hand.
“Right now,” I said.
“He’s a special dog, isn’t he?” she asked.
No one had ever called Buster that before, either.
Dr. Owens returned to the examination room holding a handful of X-rays, which she held up to the overhead light for me to see. “Your dog has suffered a mild concussion. It could have been worse, but he’s got a thick skull.”
“Can I take him home?” I asked.
“I don’t see why not.”
I followed her down the hall to the X-ray room, where Buster lay on a table. His eyes were at half-mast, and I saw his tiny tail wag.
“You need to keep him quiet for a few days,” Dr. Owens said. “I know that’s hard with an Aussie, but you don’t want him running around. I’m giving you some pain pills. Give him two every four hours until they run out.”
I carried out Buster with his cold nose pressed against my neck. The waiting area was filled with people with ailing pets, and a woman stroking a Siamese cat spoke to me.
“Is it true what the receptionist said about your dog?” the woman asked.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“That he helped the police catch that horrible serial killer Jed Grimes?”
I hadn’t mentioned Jed’s name to the receptionist, and I wondered how the woman had made the connection. Then I spied a TV in the corner of the room. Whitley was on, and was wearing fresh clothes, and had slicked back his hair. He was holding a press conference for the local media, and talking about Jed’s apprehension.
