Rachel Alexander 03 - A Hell of a Dog

seemed so far above the cold, hard sidewalk below it.
    “Yes and no. Rick and Martyn were killed—”
    “None of this is what it appears to be?”
    “None of this and probably not much about us—I don’t mean us,” I said, “I mean the other speakers. Rick and Martyn were killed after they spoke, but Alan was killed prior to his lecture. On the other hand, Alan’s shtick is so blatant, why would anyone have to wait to hear him speak to want to kill him? Everyone already knew what he did and hated him for it. Well, almost everyone.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “He had company his last night on earth.”
    “Who?”
    “I don’t know. Sam tried to make me think it was she, but I don’t believe her.”
    “Rachel, why did you think I was in danger last night? No one knows much of anything about me. I haven’t done a book, like Alan. I haven’t done TV, like Bucky. And I haven’t spoken yet.”
    “But you have. After the tracking demo.”
    “But that was—”
    “Precisely.Only for the speakers.”
    “What about Boris? He spoke. Shit, he’s irritated the hell out of everyone, repeatedly. How come he’s still among the living?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe because of Sasha. None of the men who were killed were here with a protection-trained dog.”
    “Still, Rachel, he’s not with Sasha all the time. He wasn’t with him last night. Everyone knew where he was, where we all were.”
    “Maybe he’s the doer,” I said.
    But what had Boris done that would make me suspect him— pretend he was a “wegetarian”, that he was the world’s greatest animal lover and didn’t eat them the way the rest of us do?
    Of course he had a temper. But everyone does, when you think about it. Maybe his boiling point was on the low side, but whoever did the killings seemed to me to be pretty cool, not a hothead like Boris. You couldn’t be so neat, so clever, if you were working in the heat of passion. Or could you?
    “What are you saying, that he could have gotten up and left after we did, then gone back to your room afterward and gone back to sleep? Or pretended to? But if he could have, then Woody could have. Or Bucky.”
    “I don’t know what to think. I mean, yeah, it’s possible it was Boris. I suppose anything’s possible. But what would the motive be? If it’s competition, shit, Martyn wasn’t taking dog jobs away from Boris. He was in England half the year. The other half he spent teaching seminars. He didn’t take private clients in this country at all. He didn’t have a book—and if he did, it would have nothing to do with Boris’s book. Boris, God bless him, is in a class by himself, and no matter what you think of his methods, he sells, year in, year out. The more things change, the more they seem to stay the same.”
    “What about the other two?”
    “Bucky and Woody?”
    “Right.”
    “Why? What’s the motive?”
    He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
    “Me neither. That’s the problem. If I knewa^y, I mean really knew why, not all this guessing, I’d know who.”
    “So now what?”
    “Well, first the cops grill us under hot lights while we squeal and writhe, claiming we have a right to call our lawyers.” I watched the dark blue circle form around Martyn, listening to the sound of an ambulance approaching.
    “And then?”
    “Then we get breakfast,” I said, unable to take my eyes off the spectacle on the sidewalk and hoping like hell I’d figure out who was doing this before the next sad, gruesome scene.
    “And after that?”
    “You deliver your talk on aggression. And while you do, I see if I can get my hands on the phone records.”
    “How? The hotel won’t just give them to you, will they?“
    „No. But they have to give them to Sam. She’s the one who has to pay the bill.”
    Sam and Woody were standing near the body in a sea of uniforms.
    “She’s not going to be happy if they want to stop the symposium,” I whispered.
    “She may not have a choice now.”
    “She’s pretty persuasive. Look at the group she assembled here.”
    Sam and Woody were talking to Detective DeAndrea now. Woody seemed to be doing most of the talking, but I had the feeling he was speaking with Sam’s agenda in mind.
    “I’ll be back in the auditorium before the end of your talk.“
    „”And?”
    “I don’t know yet, but I think we need to stick together.“
    “Good idea,” he said. “But we shouldn’t walk out at the same time.”
    “Why not?”
    He shrugged. “That’s what