All Shots

“straight from the horse’s mouth,” as he phrased it. I felt insulted. I bear a certain resemblance to the golden retrievers who raised me, but I am not in the least bit horsey. Still, I capitulated, mainly because I felt sorry for Kevin. His efforts to intervene on Jennifer’s behalf had failed; the leaders of the social-skills training course had declared themselves unable to rehabilitate her. Kevin almost choked on the word. Jennifer’s career was in jeopardy. Furthermore, Kevin confessed that his preoccupation with Jennifer’s difficulties had had a deleterious effect on his ability to concentrate on his work. Worst of all, as Kevin did not say outright, whereas he considered law enforcement in the city of Cambridge to be his birthright, the case had been taken over by the DEA, the attorney general’s office, and various other agencies that were apparently cooperating with one another more happily than they were with Kevin. So, out of sympathy, I told Kevin exactly what had happened. He didn’t interrupt. When I’d finished, I said, “And I know you have questions, but they’re going to have to wait. I have a lot of questions, too. There’s quite a bit that I still don’t understand. But I’m exhausted, and I need to get Mellie to my house and settled in, and I need to get the dogs home.”
    In spite of everyone’s good intentions, it was one in the morning when I pulled Steve’s van into the driveway. The ride home had been chilly. In liberating himself to come to the rescue, Rowdy had used the back window that I’d left partway open. He had not, as I’d first assumed, simply gone through the glass. Rather, he’d taken out the entire window frame. As I’ve mentioned, everything in the rattletrap rattled: the engine parts, the frame, the heater, the radio, the doors, and that back window that Steve had had installed when he’d bought the van and had it customized. Kevin had helped me sweep up the glass in Mellie’s driveway, and he’d assigned two cruisers the job of escorting us home. The van sounded about the same as usual, and it was actually a good thing that the window frame had been in bad shape. Otherwise, Rowdy could’ve injured himself in barging through it. He seemed fine.
    Sammy, I suspect, felt more than fine. What had he been doing after he’d vanished to the back of Mellie’s house? Well, as it turns out—no surprise—he’d discovered the two bags of groceries that Holly Winter had bought for Zachary Ho and had left on Mellie’s counter when she was waiting for Mellie to get Dr. Ho’s house key. Fortunately, Sammy’s booty had been harmless. Indeed, what I’d belatedly realized was Holly’s infatuation with Zach Ho had motivated her to buy the best that Loaves and Fishes had to offer: whole-grain bread, organic milk, eggs from free-range hens, Vermont butter, Virginia ham, an array of French cheeses, and other nutritious foods, including, I might mention, sushi and sashimi. On the topic, let me mention something about Dr. Zachary Ho that strikes me as oddly inconsistent, namely, his devotion to the inhabitants of his aquariums and his fondness for sushi. I mean, what is sushi? It’s dead fish. I’m crazy about dogs, so you won’t catch me... Well, enough said. Anyway, even the raw eggs didn’t bother Sammy, and his expression clearly said that he felt more than healthy: he felt joyfully triumphant.
    As promised, Mellie slept in our guestroom with Rowdy and Kimi for comfort and company. Sammy slept on my bed. Before I fell into an exhaustion-induced coma, I removed the Smith & Wesson from my nightstand, unloaded it, put the ammo in a dresser drawer, replaced the revolver in its case, and shoved the case to the back of the high shelf in the closet. As I fell asleep, I thought of Grant and Calvin. I wondered whether or not they’d make it through the night.
     

CHAPTER 35
     
    Kevin called in the morning to tell me that Graham Grant had died. I hated to think that Rowdy had contributed to anyone’s demise, even Grant’s, but Kevin informed me that when Holly Winter—you know which one—beat Grant up with a two-by-four, she inflicted such massive injuries that he’d have survived only if he’d obeyed the instructions of his doctors and taken good care of himself, as he had not. In particular, he should have stayed off his motorcycle instead of riding it all the way from Down East Maine to Cambridge as soon as he was released from the hospital after having