Rachel Alexander 02 - The Dog who knew too much

had been someone else, someone who had nothing more important to do than to wait, hoping for a glimpse of the person he so longed to see. Not Lisa. Lisa was gone. Now it was me he had waited to see, me looking out over the dark street or up at the white face of the moon. It was me, one night when the weather was mild and his patience long, who appeared not in the window, but on the front steps, leaving with my dog.
    Was I just giving him a walk? That would be easy enough to find out. At that hour, even in New York , there aren’t many people around. You could follow someone from Hudson and LeRoy to Tenth Street , staying far enough away to remain undetected yet still not risking the chance of losing them. Even when your unsuspecting prey turned the comer onto Tenth, there’d be no problem. Dashiell, like any intact male, was infinitely more conscientious about leaving his scent near home than far away. The closer he got to where we lived, the more urgent and time-consuming was his need to mark, and, lucky mutt, he had an owner who had an understanding of and a soft spot for hormone-driven canine necessities.
    I left the office, slipped off my shoes, and walked onto the studio floor in Lisa’s white cotton socks. Facing north, I did the form, keeping my concentration in the raging furnace beneath my navel. Something was chewing away at the edge of my consciousness, but I didn’t know what it was. When I finished, I walked over to the windows, opening the one someone had pushed Lisa out of, and once again looked straight down at the street, so far away.
    The first time I’d imagined Lisa doing this, I’d supposed she’d stood here alone and miserable. I’d pictured her climbing up on the sill, then pitching herself forward, into eternity.
    Now I was sure she’d had help.
    But not from her ex-lover.
    Before I closed the window I looked at the courtyard across the street, where Paul’s body had been found. Formerly the research facility of Bell Labs, Westbeth was now housing for artists. There was a security guard inside with closed-circuit TV watching the elevators, the hallways, the entrances and exits, the courtyard.
    Was the killer someone Paul knew, someone who could have rested an arm over his shoulders in friendship? Two men walking or standing that way wouldn’t alert a security guard, not in this neck of the woods.
    Or were they shielded from the camera’s eye by one of the trees planted in rows across from the entrance? Perhaps the guard was checking another monitor at the time of the murder. No one can watch everything at once. How long would it take to snap someone’s neck, slip the money out of his pocket, then disappear? Not long. A life, a complex being, a family, and a future, destroyed in an instant.
    I went back into Avi’s office and picked up the phone.
    “Can you meet me at the studio in half an hour? It’s important. Good. Lunch is on me.”
    I put on my shoes, grabbed my jacket, picked up Ch’an’s leash again, and headed for the door. Ch’an got up slowly, stretched, and followed me, looking elsewhere, as if it were merely a pleasant coincidence that we were both going out at the same time.
    On the way to pick up lunch, I thought about my companion, walking along untroubled at my side. If trouble came, would her demeanor change? Had it changed during the last moments of Lisa’s life, or had the dog remained asleep in the other room, oblivious to what was going on in the studio?
    Wouldn’t there have been loud voices, accusations, recriminations, something to rouse the sleeping dog and make her curious enough to pad out into the studio to see what all the fuss was about, something to make her understand her owner was in jeopardy?
    After all, Akitas are reputed not only to be loyal and courageous but to have astonishing powers of reasoning as well. In fact, those very characteristics, one owner had told the Times, had enabled his Akita to save his life. The dog had wisely neglected to alert him to a crime in progress the night thieves stole his Lincoln from his driveway. “He didn’t want to see me come running out of the house in my underwear and into a dangerous situation,” the proud owner said. “And, besides, I didn’t really like that car anyway.”
    Sometimes what seems like a clever ploy on the part of a dog is merely a case of an owner who loves his dog, as many of us do, beyond all reason, and the ability of the human half of the partnership to tell a good story,