Rachel Alexander 05 - The Wrong Dog

said.
    I started to get up but he put his hands on my shoulders, stopping me, crouching down so that I could see him without having to move. At least that’s what I thought, and that he was a really nice man, sensitive, bending down like that so that I wouldn’t have to crane my neck, but then he moved his hands and took my hands in his, standing and pulling me up, putting a hand on my back and leading me into Sophie’s bedroom, backing me up to the bed, gently, insistently, the way a lover might, me thinking, Great, now I’ll get blood on the bedspread, the way I’d gotten it on the couch, and while he pulled over the desk chair, so that he could sit in front of me, I began to wonder if we were here so that he could ask me how the screen had gotten tom. But he didn’t. At first, he didn’t say much at all and I wished he would, that he’d say something, anything that would take my mind off Mel lying dead on the rug in the next room.
    “How well did you know the gentleman in the next room?” Agoudian asked, looking right at me, not taking notes.
    “Not so well,” I told him, trembling so hard I thought I’d bite my tongue.
    “But he was here at four in the morning. Did you meet him at a party or a bar earlier in the evening?” He stood and reached behind me for a jacket, putting it over my shoulders.
    “It was nothing like that,” I said. “He was the dog walker. He walked Bianca, the smaller one.”
    He sat again. “And did he usually come to walk her at that hour?”
    “No. Of course not. I don’t know why he was here. What he said was that he’d tried to call me and got worried when I didn’t answer. He said he tried me at home, then here, that he’d been calling since last night.”
    When I turned to look at the torn screen, the room spun. I put my arms into the sleeves of Mel’s jacket, my hands into the pockets, finding his key ring and one other key, a smallish one that wasn’t on the ring.
    “It didn’t make sense. Not until we discovered that the phone wires had been cut. But right then, all I wanted was out of here, because someone had been able to watch her, Sophie, and listen to her, especially when she was out in the garden, and that whoever it was had killed her, and that now they were watching me, and Mel said he’d help me get the animals out, so I didn’t care about his story sounding fishy. Not then. Do you understand? Of course, before we got the chance to leave, he came, the man who called himself Joe, who said he was the super, but who wasn’t. The super’s name is Sergei.”
    I didn’t think I was making any sense, but Agoudian was nodding, encouraging me to continue, to tell him more.
    “You met Sergei. Well, I don’t know if it was you personally. He said the police had come and taken the Vacor he kept on hand to kill the rats. One was there,” I said, pointing toward the garden, toward the broken screen. “How’d that happen? Is that how Joe got in here?”
    “No. He has the keys. Dashiell did that. Joe was threatening me and the dogs were out in the garden because if the rat showed up, I didn’t want them to chase it in.”
    “You mean last night?”
    “No. He was here before. Twice before. He threatened me, told me to mind my own business. I didn’t listen to him and now—”
    “It’s not your fault,” he said. “You didn’t shoot Mr. Sugarman.”
    “I know, but—”
    “Listen to me, Rachel. You didn’t do this.”
    I tried to speak, but my mouth seemed so dry, I couldn’t form words.
    “He has no ID on him. You said his name was Mel Sugarman, is that correct?”
    “Yes.”
    Agoudian was waiting.
    “I mean, that’s what he told me. And you, well, someone from the Sixth spoke to him before. When Sophie, Ms. Gordon, died.”
    He nodded.
    “But maybe he didn’t have any ID then either. No one asked me for mine at that time. They just made a lot of cloning jokes.”
    He nodded again, his expression patient and kind, as if to say he would never have done anything so adolescent at a crime scene. Or anywhere else.
    “I don’t know where he lives, but there’s a dog there, at his apartment. Someone has to get the dog. She can’t be left there with no food and water, without someone to walk her.”
    Agoudian got up and left the room. I wondered if I should mention anything else about the dog, like the fact that Mel had referred to her by the wrong name shortly before he’d been shot. But when Agoudian returned, he had one of the