Rachel Alexander 02 - The Dog who knew too much

shouldn’t go and see him. I thought perhaps he needed some time.
    But then I found myself thinking about the way his skin smelled, about the long, smooth muscles of his back, about the warmth and softness of his hands, about the way he’d said my name, over and over again, like a mantra. Then I knew I better not go see him, because the sixth law of investigation work is, Don’t get caught with your pants down, and I didn’t want to break it again. I cared much too much for this man, considering all I didn’t yet know, and I didn’t want to break my heart either.
    I could hear the phone ringing when I was still in the garden, but by the time I got the door unlocked, it had stopped. It was probably just someone asking me if I wanted to switch back to AT&T. They call at all hours. There ought to be a law.
    I went upstairs to run a bath, and while the tub was filling with water too hot to dunk anything in other than a lobster on its way to becoming bisque, I checked my answering machine and found that an unusual number of calls had come in since I’d left home that morning. Eleven. But when I rewound the tape, I discovered they were all hang-ups. As if someone were trying to find out whether or not I was home.
    I was tempted to dig my revolver out from the shoe box on the top shelf of my closet where it had been for over a year, but I told myself that that was too paranoid, even for me.
    I turned off the phone and turned down the volume on the answering machine. Soaking in the steamy hot water, without the agitating noise of the telephone, I quickly fell fast asleep and stayed that way for over an hour, until the water had cooled off enough to wake me.
    It was nearly eight o’clock when I got out of the tub, turned the phone back on, and, still feeling exhausted, plodded downstairs to feed Dashiell. When the phone rang again, I grabbed it on the first ring. This time the person on the other end didn’t hang up.
    “Rachel?”
    “Marty?”
    I looked out the small kitchen window into the garden, a tangle of dark shadows at this hour. “What’s up?” I asked.
    “I need to see you, kid. Can you come over for a minute?”
    “Now?”
    “It won’t take long.” Sounding like a cop.
    “Sure,” I said, looking at the kitchen clock. Eight twenty now. What was Marty even doing there at this hour? He worked days. “Is anything wrong? You okay? Are the dogs okay?”
    “I’ll wait for you at the front desk,” was all he said. And then I heard the click. He had hung up.
    Had he made all those other calls? Had he been waiting, for some reason, for me to get home and pick up?
    I pulled on one of Lisa’s black sweaters and some leggings, stepped into a pair of clogs, combed back my wet hair, and poured some dry dog food for Dashiell. In less than five minutes I was out the door.
    Marty was standing near the front desk, and when he saw me, he took my arm and led me to a desk in back where there was no one else within earshot.
    “There’s been a murder, Rachel. In the neighborhood. Close by.” I felt my heart start to race. Who was I, for the Sixth Precinct to suddenly be filling me in on their most up-to-date bad news? “The victim was found on Bank Street , in that outdoor area at Westbeth .” He paused, as if the location of the body would be so pregnant with significance I’d burst out with the name of the killer.
    “And?” I said.
    He was watching my face. I watched his, not blinking, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
    “Across from the school,” he added, “where your clients’ daughter used to work.”
    “Yes. But what’s—”
    “He had your name on a card in his shirt pocket, Rachel.”
    “You mean my card? Maybe it was someone who needed help, you know, a work contact.”
    “It wasn’t your card, Rachel. It was actually his card. He’d written your name on the back of it. And there was something else written there, too.”
    “Something else? What else?”
    “Something in Chinese.”
    Suddenly I got a strange rush to my head, as if I were breathing pure oxygen, and the air tasted metallic, the way it does when you take antibiotics.
    “Xiao yue ?” I asked.
    But he didn’t reply. Instead he took my arm and backed me into a molded plastic chair next to the empty desk. He pulled the desk chair around so that he could sit in front of me, so close our knees were touching.
    “Paul Wilcox is dead, Marty?”
    He nodded.
    I looked back toward the desk, at the uniforms milling around, at