Animal Appetite

bag rustled lightly. Paranoia! With sudden, irrational terror, I listened for the slosh of liquid. An apparently benign surprise? Cappuccino? A thermos of latte? A milky, sweet surprise. The special of the day: half Vienna roast, half espresso, with just the merest colorless, odorless, flavorless soupgon of sodium fluoroacetate. Randall Carey, who held a Harvard Ph.D. in history, had earned his doctorate eighteen years ago, the year Jack Andrews died. Jack was from Haverhill, the city of Hannah Duston. As a boy, Jack had written a report about the local heroine. As a man, a student in Professor Foley’s own department, Randall Carey had written a dissertation. His topic had been Hannah Duston. Later, he’d written a book about murder in Massachusetts, a book with a chapter about the killing of Jack Andrews. And like Claudia, like Oscar Fisch—like Gareth?—Randall Carey didn’t like dogs. My right hand squeezed the ax handle. Until a few minutes ago, I’d been splitting wood. Now, in my panic, I was struggling to reassemble a pile of ragged, splintery pieces that fit together only here and there. The whole, however, eluded me. I couldn’t begin to see its shape.
    Squinting, I watched Randall turn. When he spoke, the depth of his voice jarred and frightened me. “You can look now,” he said.
    Opening my eyes, I must simultaneously have opened my mouth in a giant O. The limp book bag lay on the bench. Positioned directly in front of me, about a yard away, Randall proffered the last two objects I expected to see: a collar and a leash. I must have gasped. Perhaps he assumed that I was pleased with his gift. The matched pair were of heavy leather. The collar was a flat band about a half-inch thick and a good two inches wide. How could anyone imagine that I would want or need such a thing? The correct collar for an Alaskan malamute is the kind that Randall had seen on my dogs, a rolled-leather collar that won’t flatten the coat around the neck. The leash was equally inappropriate. A good leather training lead is strong but not bulky; it’s narrow and thin enough to let you fold or crumple it in the palm of your hand. This leash was as thick and wide as the collar. Randall Carey had been in my kitchen, where he’d seen the leads that hung on the inside of the back door: show leads, retractable leads, leather leashes in four-foot and six-foot lengths, nylon leashes in bright colors, and not one that looked even remotely like this.
    “I’ve been a very bad boy,” Randall said meekly. His voice was odd: soft, husky, and childish.
    I didn’t catch on. Tactfully ignoring what seemed to me his peculiarly ill-chosen presents, I clutched for meaning. A very bad boy? His dissertation on Hannah Duston? He really should have told me about it.
    “You certainly have,” I informed him.
    In my own defense, let me say outright what must be obvious: that the world of purebred dogs and dog training is a remarkably wholesome place and that Holly Winter is one of its most wholesome denizens.
    To my amazement, Randall Carey dropped to his knees before me. In remarkably doglike fashion, he was actually panting. Extending the heavy leather objects upward in his hands, he caught his breath and growled softly. “Dominate me!” he pleaded. “Dominate me just the way you do those big, bad dogs!”
    Raising my eyes in what I suppose would’ve been a plea to that giant blue Siberian eye overhead, I caught sight of Cecily, who happened to be glancing out the window. My perfect tenant! I should never have filled the deep pits that Kimi had dug in the yard. In her wisdom, Kimi had tried to provide me with a choice of holes to crawl into.
    “Randall, for God’s sake,” I ordered in my best alpha-leader voice, “get the hell up!”
    Mistake!
    Falsely encouraged, Randall moaned, “I love it! I love it! I love your boots, I love your ax, I love your—”
    “Stop!” I commanded.
    His head wobbling, his mouth hanging open, his breath coming faster and faster, he groaned, “You are Hannah! I prostrate myself at your feet! I am your first victim. It is dark midnight. We are in the wigwam. The fire burns low. I lie helpless. Asleep. Above me, you raise your hatchet! I—”
    Words came to me from the Bible, words about Jael and Sisera: At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down. With the little dignity I could muster, I said in what I hoped were sexless tones, “Dr. Carey, you are suffering from a profound