Paws before dying

methodical than I am. While I’d been hollering and talking, he’d been tramping in slow, ever-widening circles around the station wagon, his head lowered. Then he stopped suddenly, dropped to the ground just beyond the range of the headlights, and said softly, “Holy shit.” He said it again before his emergency mode kicked in. “This is a serious head injury. Get an ambulance. Run to those houses over there. Break a door down if you have to. Get an ambulance.”
    “Leah?”
    “Jeff. Run, will you? Holly, run like hell.”
    I did. Impulse took me to the doors of the people I knew, first the heavy blond oak of the Donovans’ darkened Victorian, where I leaned on the bell, slammed an elaborate wrought-iron lion’s head knocker, and shouted, then the simpler aluminum combination screen door of the Brawleys’ Dutch Colonial, where the first-floor lights were on. I rang the bell, pounded on the aluminum door frame, and was about to head for the front Windows and probably break one when a belligerent-looking, red-faced guy with a head of black curls opened both the door and his mouth.
    I didn’t wait for him to ask what the hell was going on, but shouted to Marcia Brawley, who appeared behind him with a group of other people who looked as if they’d shared drinks before dinner, wine with it, and brandy ever since. “Marcia, get an ambulance.” My breath was coming hard. “Across the street. Right away. Hurry up! And find a doctor fast. Wake someone up.”
    I turned tail, sprang down the walk and back across the street, and, with the bizarre sense of calm that emergencies induce, got into the Bronco and moved it so the headlights shone on Steve and Jeff, who was stretched out on his back. Even from inside the car, I could see the blood, but that icy practicality stayed with me. A fact came to me: Head wounds bleed. All head wounds bleed a lot, even minor ones. I also remembered that in the far back of the Bronco was a torn and dirty blanket I kept spreading out in a futile effort to protect the interior from dog fur. I got out of the driver’s seat, moved to the rear of the car, pushed a curious, nuzzling Rowdy aside and off the grubby, hairy blanket, and shut the tailgate. As I moved toward Steve and Jeff, some pointless urge made me shake the blanket in the air and fold it roughly, as if neatness could improve Jeff's chances of survival. Or maybe it seemed indecent to offer him a filthy shroud.
    When I reached them, I handed Steve the blanket, then knelt on the ground by Jeff. His whole head was bloody, those thick, dark-gold curls saturated, his face stained red, one cheek bruised purple. He looked about twelve years old, a gory, beaten angel. “Is he...?”
    “Alive,” Steve said quietly, spreading the blanket over Jeff. “They’re calling an ambulance, and I’ve got them looking for any doctors around here. It’s Newton. There’ve got to be ten doctors on the block. Is there anything...?”
    “Not a thing,” Steve said.
    “Then I’m looking for Leah.”
    “Not on your life,” he ordered me.
    “I have to. I’ll take Rowdy. We’ll start with the field. The tennis courts.” I hated to hear myself say the words.
    “Oh, Christ,” he said. “A cruiser’ll get here before the ambulance, and then I’ll...”
    I didn’t hear the rest. I retrieved a flashlight from the glove compartment of the Bronco, got Rowdy out of the back, snapped on his leash, and started searching and calling. A rapid, easy survey of the tennis courts and the field showed no sign of Leah or Kimi. I cursed myself for never training Rowdy to track. Like every other dog, he could pick up and follow a scent, but I had no way to tell him which scent mattered, which to seek, which to follow. For all my obedience-titled partner knew, I’d dropped my car keys or was after someone’s lost cat. The flat, open, grassy field was empty, I was sure, but Leah and Kimi, my beautiful cousin and my beautiful dog, could be lying in any of those clumps of shrubby vegetation surrounding it.
    Rowdy was no tracker. Even so, as I quickly traced the perimeter of the field, shining the flashlight’s beam into the blackness of the weeds, I gave him the full six feet of lead instead of calling him to heel. He didn’t understand that I was searching for our own pack, of course, but I trusted him to recognize the slightest sound or scent of his own. His big, wedge-shaped ears were erect but relaxed. Or was he perking them up? Furrowing his