Rachel Alexander 05 - The Wrong Dog

paramedics with him, so I let that part go while the kid pulled down my lower eyelid, then put his moist, warm fingers on my wrist. When he’d finished, he gave Agoudian a look pregnant with meaning, only I didn’t know what the meaning was.
    “I’m fine,” I told Agoudian. “Really. Just tired.” Then I turned to the paramedic, a young kid, short and wide, his dark hair slicked down with something that made it look wet. Or maybe he was sweating. Maybe this was his first dead body, his first injured dog, his first babbling private eye. “The dog, Blanche, is she okay?” I asked him. “Can I see her?”
    They looked at each other again.
    “How old is she?” the kid asked.
    “Nearly twelve,” I told him.
    He didn’t look much more than twelve himself. ,
    “That’s old for a dog, isn’t it?” He was looking at his shoes, brown Mephistos, not back at where Blanche was and not at me. My stomach tilted portside.
    “Is she dead?” I asked him.
    “Not yet.”
    I didn’t remember when I’d eaten last, nor what I’d had, but whatever it was, it was suddenly in my throat.
    “Can I take her to her vet?” I asked Agoudian. “If she has a chance ...”
    Agoudian didn’t answer me. He turned to the kid instead. “Can you start a line on her?”
    The kid nodded.
    Agoudian nodded. “Do it.”
    The kid disappeared, but Agoudian didn’t.
    It was hours before he let me call Chip and allowed us to take the animals out of Sophie’s apartment But before that he did let me go outside and see Blanche as soon as she was getting fluids. When I walked out into the garden, die three detectives went in, huddling near the kitchen with Agoudian, deep in conversation. Or maybe they were telling cloning jokes. It’s hard to say.
    The kid crouched near Blanche and so did I. For a moment we didn’t speak. I heard some woman yelling at her kid, telling him he was late, he’d miss the bus. A dog was barking in another yard. And some kid was practicing the piano, making a lot of mistakes, starting and stopping, going back over what had just been played. The young paramedic asked if I’d stay with Blanche while he went to get an ice pack, and while he did, while I was alone in the garden with her, I turned my back to the apartment and pulled out my cell phone. When I started dialing, a phone rang somewhere near the garden, the sound echoing off the building so that I couldn’t tell where it was coming from and the music stopped. Maybe they were coming from the same place.
    I waited for my machine to pick up; I said I was off the case, that Bianca had alerted a seizure so I no longer had any need to locate Side by Side, and besides, I said, it had gotten too damn dangerous. I waited. Then I said, no, I wasn’t disappointed. I was happy to turn the case over to the cops. That’s their job, I told the tape. Why should I bust my ass doing their work for them when I’m not even on the payroll anymore, hoping as I spoke that Agoudian wasn’t listening.
    Me, too, I said, flipping the phone closed and putting it back in my pocket just as the kid showed up with the ice pack, handing it to me.
    Blanche opened one eye when I put the ice pack against the side of her head where Joe had slammed her with his gun. She sighed and in a moment she was out again.
    “That’s a good sign, isn’t it?” I asked the kid.
    But he didn’t answer me. He probably didn’t know. Then all I could hear was that piano again, and Blanche breathing, the hollow noise you get when you press a seashell tight to your ear. Sitting back on his heels, one hand on Blanche’s side, the kid just watched her stomach inflate and deflate, her rib cage move up and down, maybe hoping she’d make it, that he wouldn’t be seeing his second dead body so soon after the first.
    Agoudian was standing in the doorway. I took the kid’s hand, moved it to the ice pack, and went back inside.

Chapter 26
    I Took a Big Breath and Let It Out

    “Will she be all right?” I asked.
    Sandra Cohen was still holding the stethoscope against Blanche’s side and didn’t answer my question.
    After what seemed to be a very long time, she took the instrument away from Blanche and out of her own ears, carefully laying it down on the counter behind her.
    “There’s just so much heartache an animal can handle,” she said.
    “You mean she’s going to die?”
    “I can’t say for sure. But there’s not much we can do for her. If you like, I’ll keep her here. I can continue