Rachel Alexander 03 - A Hell of a Dog

So unless they sweat it out of me, I’ll see you at breakfast.”
    “Okay.”
    But I wasn’t thinking about breakfast. I was thinking about what he’d said a minute ago, that I was convinced it was a man. I began wondering if the cops would be thinking the same way.
    I turned my back to the approaching detective. “Say we were together all night,” I whispered.
    “We were,” he said. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking over my shoulder.
    I could hear her heels clicking on the pavement. I turned around. She had great legs, for a cop.
    “Ms. Alexander, Mr. Pressman, I didn’t expect to be seeing either of you again so soon.”
    There was a bit of early-morning frost in her voice.
    Too much, if you ask me.
    And now it was too late to tell Chip to leave out the part about us both falling asleep. If he included that little detail, I couldn’t be his alibi.
    Nor, should it be necessary, would he be able to be mine.



WHAT'S WITH YOU PEOPLE? HE ASKED

    I sat in the back of the auditorium, slouched down in my seat, my ankles resting on Dashiell’s back, listening to Sam introducing Chip. Even from this far back, I could see that her hands were trembling, and I could hear the strain in her voice, but she was a trouper at heart, and the threat of bankruptcy aside, she knew that for all our sakes, the show must go on.
    When she finished talking about Chip, and while the audience were putting their hands together to give him the warm welcome she’d suggested he so richly deserved, she left the stage and took a seat in the front row, off to the side. Right next to Woody Wright. I wanted to talk to her alone, so I sent Dashiell to get her.
    Chip had gotten up, and so had Betty. When he walked up to the mike, she did, too. Only a couple of people had noticed. I could hear them laughing, and when Chip did, he looked down at her standing at his side and shrugged.
    “Shepherds are more prone to allelomimetic behavior than most other dog breeds,” he said, “and this is as good a place as any to begin this morning.” His posture was relaxed, and so was Betty’s. When he looked around the room, making eye contact with one person in the audience and then another, Betty did too. Monkey see, monkey do. Which was the principle of allelomimetic behavior.
    Dashiell was making his way down the aisle to where Sam was sitting, walking slowly, wagging his tail as he walked, the note I’d written her rolled up and stuck under his collar, sticking up over his head like a feather.
    ‘This means that the dog views herself, in this case, as a member of a group, and acts the way the other group members behave, especially the highest-ranked member of the group. In Betty’s case, that’s me, and this morning we are going to talk about why that’s appropriate, but also about how that can sometimes be the cause of the aggression we are trying to stop.
    “It’s mostly the attitude of alpha that is aped, which of course means that if you are alert, worried, angry, relaxed, frightened, or happy, your dog will tend to be, too. In Betty’s case, well, she also tends to mimic postures and activities. Which is sometimes humorous. But it is the mimicking of attitudes and feelings that is the real issue for us today.”
    I watched Sam pull the note out of Dash’s collar, read it, and then turn around to look for me. She whispered something to Woody, then got up and followed Dashiell back to where I was sitting.
    “I need to check the phone records. Can you get them for me?”
    “Rachel, what on earth is happening here?”
    “What did the police say?”
    “Not much. They’re asking questions, not answering them. Did they talk to you?”
    I nodded. “They did. But I’m still on the loose.”
    “We all are. But I’m starting to wonder if we all should be.“
    “Me, too. That’s why I need the—”
    “I’ll be right back.”
    I looked around the auditorium for our dwindling group. I spotted everyone but Cathy, but I could pretty well guess where she was and what she was doing.
    After Sam handed me the phone bills and went back to her seat in the front of the auditorium, I slipped out the back and headed for the elevator. After walking all the way up to the roof, I didn’t want to see the stairs again for a while.
    Jimmy tucked himself against the wall and pulled the gate closed.
    ‘Three,” I said.
    “I know. I know.” He was looking forward, not at me and Dashiell. “What’s with you people?” he asked.