There is nothing better than being greeted by a dog that loves you. They wriggle from shoulder to tail and back again, as if their joy, their adoration for you can’t be contained, as if the uncontrollable motion keeps them from bursting apart in a flurry of fur and pure, trusting devotion.
Vanessa Sheridan buried her face in Merlin’s fur, not caring about the doggy smell or the slight oiliness in his soft fur. Her whole world shrank down to this touch, this moment. He stilled a little, as if realizing she needed to hide her tear-stained face in him, and leaned his solid body gently against her crouched form.
“You heard?”
Brooke’s voice held the nasally muffle of someone who’d been crying.
Vanessa sighed, letting a tiny bit of the tension of out of her shoulders, then stood and closed the door of the small bottom-floor apartment she shared with her sister, a year and half younger than her. Closed it against the sheeting rain that had made her midnight-drive home from the newspaper a white-knuckled one, closed it against the evils of the world as best she could.
“I did,” she said.
Brooke had turned on every lamp in the room probably for the same reason. The brightness was almost too much, adding to the headache vibrating out of Vanessa’s tight neck muscles. It drove away the shadows but didn’t hide the flaws.
The clumps of dog fur at the corners of the scuffed hardwood floors, persistent no matter how often Vanessa vacuumed. The barely better than college furniture, mismatched but comfortable: a dark blue oversized easy chair; a blue, burgundy, and green sofa in a pattern best described as “dated”; an antique oak coffee table that Vanessa had refinished in high school, which had taught her she hated refinishing furniture and would never do it again.
The rolling walker with the small black seat, crouched next to one end of the sofa like a four-legged metal spider.
Vanessa sat next to Brooke on the sofa, and Merlin jumped up and laid down on the other side, resting his head on Brooke’s skinny thigh. He wasn’t an official service dog—the MS hadn’t progressed so far that Brooke needed constant care—but he’d had some training, and he was smart and devoted.
“It’s all over Twitter, and it was on the eleven o’clock news,” Brooke said, grabbing Vanessa’s hand. Brooke’s skin was cold, dry.
Vanessa had known for several hours—working at a newspaper meant you heard news as fast as it hit social media.
The latest victim in a string of rapes up and down the Southern California coast had been identified as their friend Camila Hernandez.
Camila had been their classmate at Ventura College—same year as Vanessa, both of them two years ahead of Brooke—and had gone on to study veterinary science. She was Merlin’s vet, in fact. Vanessa clenched her fists again, an action she’d been doing the whole drive home, wishing she could have somehow been there, somehow have helped.
“We’ll call tomorrow and see if she’s up for visitors,” Vanessa said. “I’ll have time before work.” As the copy editor, she worked the late shift at the local paper, 2 to 10 p.m.—or later, like tonight, when there was last-minute news to include in the morning edition.
“Sounds good.” Brooke managed a trembly smile.
Brooke didn’t need this kind of stress. Vanessa gathered her into a hug. She’d promised her parents she’d take care of her sister. Promised herself. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t protect Brooke from this.
When Vanessa got up from the sofa a few moments later, Merlin raised his head, tail thumping expectantly.
“Yes, it’s time for your walk,” Vanessa said. She was exhausted emotionally and mentally, and her warm, dry bed sang a seductive siren call, a counterpoint to the constant waterfall of rain. But when you had a dog, you had to walk it. The rare rain made it more of a burden than its normal pleasure.
They’d had to find an affordable apartment that was on the ground floor and handicapped accessible, not on a hill (which was along one side of Ventura, California) for Brooke’s needs, not too close to the beach (on the other side) because those were too expensive, and with a yard for Merlin. One too many requirements; something had to give, and that was the yard. They had a tiny cement patio ringed with an edging of small rocks and a few scattered succulents, and at worst, Merlin could pee there in an emergency.
“He had a playdate today, so he shouldn’t need much more than a potty break,” Brooke said.
“Small blessings,” Vanessa said. She dug an umbrella out of the tiny front closet, grabbed Merlin’s leash from the hook by the door. Once more unto the breach.
“Be safe,” Brooke called as Vanessa went out.
The rain was cold, and the air had a strange cast to it—when you lived in the desert by the ocean, anything more humid than arid was unusual. Streetlights wavered, pressing against the darkness, obscured by the sheets of rain.
Still, Vanessa didn’t feel afraid. She had Merlin, for one thing. For another, in each of the eleven cases, the rapist—or maybe a group of guys trading off—was the one with the dog. Every victim had spoken, at some point in the preceding days, to a man walking a dog.
The problem: each victim described a different man, and each victim remembered a different kind of dog.
Witnesses rarely got all their facts straight. Everyone knew that. Ask ten people who just saw a car accident what what kind of car and what color, and you were going to get answers ranging from a two-door to a sedan to an SUV, and from red to blue to black.
The victims agreed that the man was of slender-to-medium build, and average height. They disagreed on hair color and style, eye color, and facial hair. They agreed that the dogs were on the larger side and friendly. They disagreed on breed (although several had said “mutt” or indefinable), color, and fur.
Now, like a typical dog, Merlin trotted over to a fire hydrant and relieved himself, unconcerned with the rain. She’d have to dry him off when they got back, before he got the chance to shake himself.
It felt better to think about mundane things: drying off the dog, grabbing a quick shower, making a quick shopping list for the Farmer’s Market tomorrow. Better than thoughts of work, and men who attacked women, and Camila.
He’s walking on the beach, mid-afternoon. He’s calling himself John this time. A bland, common name: easy to remember, easy to forget. The sand is damp and dark and packed from the rain, which finally eased up a couple of hours ago. Everything smells of brine and fish because of the random clumps of slimy strands that have washed up. Clouds still scud across the sky, but there are patches where the sun can get through, golden light streaking down to kiss the ocean beyond the pier.
When the clouds move across the sun, they glow, as if God is watching.
He lets the dog off the leash. It runs at the low waves, barking, then races back. John finds a stick and hurls it, and the dog, true to its breed, chases, grabs the stick in its jaws, returns.
He throws the stick again, this time in a direction such that the dog’s run will intersect the path of a female jogger. Distracted, the dog abandons the stick to greet a new potential friend. The woman stops and ruffles the dog’s fur. The dog dances around her slender runner’s legs.
John moves while she’s distracted, making it look as though he’s just walking down the beach, which brings him in range of her, casually.
She looks up. Her caramel-streaked hair is in a ponytail, but wisps have escaped, fluttering in the ocean breeze. Her cheeks are pink and her eyes are bright from her run.
“Hi,” she says with a breathless smile, both from the exercise and, he can tell, from petting the dog. “Is he yours?”
“He is,” he says. “I call him Chowder.”
It’s not the dog’s name; he’s forgotten the dog’s name, actually. No matter. Chowder is adorable, especially for a dog on or in a seaside park. They all say so.
“What an adorable name,” the woman says.
He has a list of equally adorable names that he swaps out regularly.
“Thanks,” he says. He keeps his hands in his windbreaker pockets, his shoulders relaxed. Casual. Unthreatening. Today his wig is dark blond, in a rumpled, could-be-a-surfer style, and his contacts are blue, and he’s let just enough five-o’clock shadow show.
“Hey, are you a dog person?” he asks. “I’m new to the area and looking for a good vet.”
This one is a dog person; she has two Papillions at home. She tells him about her vet, and he asks all the right questions that draw out of her the area she lives in (by asking housing questions, since he’s still looking), and where she works (she goes to Ventura College during the day and tends bar at Cassidy’s on Santa Clara downtown most evenings—he should drop by during happy hour; they have half-priced well drinks and appetizers).
She doesn’t realize how much she reveals in a few short moments of conversation. He’s a dog person, trustworthy.
And she had approached him. She had said hello first. She had shown interest. That was the important thing: she approached him.
“Well, I’ve gotta go,” she says. “Bye, Chowder. Bye, Chowder’s dad.”
She takes off down the beach. He’s careful not to watch her. He throws the stick for the dog again. He really is a dog person; that’s how he found out how much women loved dogs, how women found men with dogs approachable.
He is startled, thrown off, when he hear her voice close by. They never turn around, not at this point.
It excites him in a way he’d never felt before.
“Hi, sorry,” she says breathlessly. “I think my ring fell off when I was petting Chowder. Do you see it anywhere?”
Chowder unhelpfully runs around their feet as they look until the man tells him to sit, which he obediently does, mouth open and smiling, panting up at them as they kick through the sand.
“Well, damn,” she says finally. “It was my class ring. That’s what I get for wearing it when I’m working out. Thanks for trying.”
She takes off again.
John sees it as an amazing sign. She approached him twice. Surely she won’t reject him later.
Not like the others, inexplicably, did.
“Something’s wrong with Merlin,” Brooke said when Vanessa got home from her dentist appointment.
“I wondered,” Vanessa said. “He was kind of listless on his walk this morning.”
“He threw up—and it didn’t look like he’d been eating grass,” Brooke said. She looked as though she was struggling not to cry.
Vanessa knew the last few days had been hard on her. Visiting Camila had been draining: their friend had tried to smile, tried to welcome them into her parents’ home where she was staying for awhile, but every time Vanessa and Brooke stopped talking, Camila…faded away. Lost herself in the bad memories.
Plus Brooke’s MS symptoms were flaring up thanks to the heat. The rain was gone, and even though Ventura normally stayed twenty degrees cooler than the Valley and LA, the Santa Anas were now blowing, the scorching, arid winds that came over the desert to the east, sucking the moisture out of everything, making you feel as if you were being mummified from the inside out.
Brooke didn’t need added stress.
They took Merlin to the local emergency vet, where Merlin even managed a few wags of his tail at the white-coated tech who took him back to be x-rayed.
“Good news,” the vet said a little while later, shoving the processed x-rays into the clip at the top of the display lamp. He was a small, bald man, although he looked strong enough to heave a Newfoundland onto the examining table if he needed to. Behind his wire-rimmed glasses, his blue eyes were kind.
“See this here?” he asked, pointing with a ballpoint pen bearing the clinic’s logo. “Looks like ol’ Merlin swallowed a magic ring. It’s small enough to pass through him normally; he’ll be back to himself in about two days. He might throw up again once or twice—that’s normal—but if he’s in any greater distress, bring him back in.”
The emergency vet visit wasn’t cheap, but thankfully it didn’t break the bank, either. Brooke did accounting for a number of different nonprofits in town (allowing her to work at home) and Vanessa’s editing job was solid. They’d be fine.
And right on schedule, Merlin passed the ring.
“Yippie,” Vanessa muttered as she wrapped her hand in a doggie disposal bag and picked the glinting silver out of the soft poop, breathing through her mouth so she didn’t have to smell it. She shoved the plastic wrapped ring in the pocket of her jean shorts and picked up the rest of the poop to toss.
Merlin sat and grinned at her, tongue hanging out, tail thumping against the grass.
“Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better,” she told him. She flung the tennis ball she’d brought along, and he bounded after it.
They were at one of the seaside parks, a big grassy area ringed by a concrete jogging/bike path. Little kids with helmets firmly buckled on their heads pedaled their tricycles with grim concentration. On the other side of the path, past the sandy volleyball area, ice-plant covered dunes rose toward the clear blue sky. They blocked the view of the ocean, but not the smell of wet and salt.
Over by the covered picnic tables, a trim blond personal trainer was putting three students through their workout, having them step up on the concrete benches, do a squat, step down, do a squat, and then do it all over again. Vanessa’s quads burned in sympathy.
Keeping one eye on Merlin, Vanessa turned on a tap outside the stone bathrooms. It was low down, designed to let people wash the sand off their feet before they headed to their cars, but she always found it useful for filling Merlin’s travel bowl. Now, though, she stuck the poop-covered ring under the stream until the piece of jewelry was no longer poop-covered, then she wiped it approximately eight million times with paper towels.
She’d assumed it would be one of hers or Brooke’s. She was wrong.
It was a class ring from Santa Clarita High Schools. When Vanessa saw the inscription, she felt a wash of cold run through her, and despite the heat, she shivered. Bile washed up into her throat.
The name had been released to the media last night.
Jessamyn Dupree. Twenty-two. College student, bartender.
Latest rape victim.
John is astounded and furious. Why had Jessamyn rejected him? She’d approached him twice. Twice. That showed clear interest in him. An obvious desire for him.
But in the end she’d turned out to be just another cocktease, another fake. He’d waited for her after her shift at the bar, offered—like a gentleman—to walk her home, but then she’d tried to surreptitiously dial 911 on her phone.
Normally he leaves town after his ordeals. Rents another dog, tries again. But he’s been rattled by this one. He’s angry—no, he’s furious. He doesn’t want to wait this time.
He wants to try again to find the woman who will accept him, who won’t turn away from him.
Officer Ortiz led them in to a small room, with just benches on either side. The gunmetal grey doorway was narrow, and it took a moment for Brooke to maneuver her walker through. He looked uncomfortable, as if he were making a mental note that the problem needed to be fixed.
Vanessa made sure Brooke was settled on the wooden bench before she sat next to her. It was hard and uncomfortable, and the room smelled of cheap air freshener and the body odor the spray was supposed to have covered up. Officer Ortiz sat across from them. His uniform looked a little too big, as if he’d lost weight recently, although he looked fine for his lanky, tall frame. His dark mustache was trim, his hair buzzed.
He held Jessamyn Dupree’s ring in a clear plastic evidence bag.
“Where do you think your dog was when he ate the ring?” he asked.
“I walk him twice a day,” Vanessa said, “but I keep a close eye on him, so I think think it happened near our apartment.”
“But he’s also signed up for Rent-a-Pup,” Brooke said.
Officer Ortiz raised his eyebrows.
“It’s an online service that basically rents dogs to other people,” Brooke explained. She was looking a little better, a little stronger in the air conditioned station. “Because golden retrievers need to get out and run, and it’s hard for us to give Merlin that, we signed up for it. We pay an annual fee, and people who want to rent dogs do, too.”
Ortiz shook his head. “I’m not sure I get it.”
“There are people who love dogs but can’t have one for some reason,” Vanessa said. “Maybe they’re in an apartment that doesn’t allow pets, or someone in the house is allergic, or they work really long hours. It’s their chance to spend time with a dog.”
Ortiz might not have been up on the latest sharing economy schemes, but he wasn’t stupid, either. “So you think the person who rented your dog raped Jessamyn Dupree?”
“His name is John Flynn,” Brooke said, fishing a printout from her purse and handing it to him. “Here’s the application he filled out. When he came to pick up and drop off Merlin, he had blond, shaggy hair like a surfer, and blue eyes. I don’t remember anything else specific about him, though.” She hunched her shoulders. “He seemed nice,” she added, her voice thin.
Officer Ortiz took the paper. “If he paid with a credit card, we may be able to trace it.” He stood, held out his hand. “Thank you, ladies. Because of you, we may just be able to nail this sonuvabitch. I’ll call you if we have any follow-up questions.”
It was Vanessa who called the police station again the very next morning, asking for Officer Ortiz. Doing everything she could to keep her voice from shaking, she told him that through the Rent-a-Pup website, they’d received another request from John Flynn to rent Merlin again that day.
John knows something is wrong as he approaches the apartment. Something is off, something is tense. Too quiet, somehow.
The anger grows inside him like the rising tide at the full moon. What has the skinny girl with the walker done? Has she rejected him, too? He didn’t want her, not in that way, but still…
He likes her dog. He didn’t think someone with such a nice dog could be such a betraying bitch.
He knows he should turn, walk away, but it may be too late. Then he’ll have to spend so much time explaining why, explaining how it’s their fault, how he’s only punishing them for accepting and then rejecting him, for leading him along.
And his rage for the skinny walker girl is a red wash across his vision, like when you lie on a hot beach with your eyes closed and the sun tries to pierce your lids.
He practices his easy smile. Drops his shoulders. Tucks his hands casually in his jeans pocket.
Wraps his fingers around the knife.
Vanessa understood what Merlin must have felt after he’d eaten the ring. She wanted nothing more than to throw up, then curl into a little ball with Merlin, just like she’d done when she was a kid and was sad and so she snuggled with their beagle, Sparky.
There had been no time to set up an undercover officer, no time to figure anything else out. If they delayed in telling John he could rent Merlin, they ran the risk of losing him.
So she stood in the living room with the mismatched furniture and dog fur in the corners of the wooden floor and waited for the doorbell to ring.
When she answered it, the police would arrest him.
Brooke was around the corner, in an unmarked car, with Officer Ortiz. Safe. That was all Vanessa cared about. That and stopping the rapist from ever hurting another woman again.
The bell rang, and she nearly screamed, and understood the concept of nearly jumping out of one’s skin. She could smell her own acrid sweat, knew her shirt was damp under her arms. Merlin sat on the sofa where she’d told him to stay.
Her hand was shaking so hard, she almost couldn’t flip the deadbolt or twist the knob.
He moved inside so quickly that she couldn’t react other than to step back, step away from his closeness. He was, as reported, of average build, and she wasn’t a small woman, but his presence was overpowering.
The blank look in his eyes. Which were brown. His natural color? Or contacts? It was a stupid thing to wonder, and anyway, her world was focusing down to the knife in his hand.
“Where’s the skinny bitch?” he asked, eyes flicking past her. “The one with the walker?”
Vanessa opened her mouth to answer but didn’t know what to say. Dimly she heard someone shout “Police! Freeze!” and the man—John—the rapist grabbed her arm and pulled her hard against him, and then Merlin made a noise she’d never heard before.
She knew the growl he made when he saw a ground squirrel or gopher.
This growl was nothing like that. This was terrifying—and yet somehow comforting.
Merlin launched himself from the sofa and over the coffee table in a leap she’d never imagined he could do. John shouted and held out the knife, but Merlin landed and sank his teeth into the man’s leg. John yelled in pain and let go of Vanessa, and as she fell to the side, she saw the knife come down, and then she heard a very, very loud bang that reverberated and rang in her ears even after it was over.
John loves dogs, and he doesn’t understand why the dog attacked him. John had only been trying to protect himself.
Unlike women, dogs never reject him.
Until now.
His leg throbs in time with his heart.
Vanessa pressed her face into Merlin’s soft, stinky fur. The man hadn’t stabbed Merlin, not in the end. He’d dropped the knife as the police shot, as near as anyone could tell.
Nobody else had been hurt. Everyone was safe.
Brooke was safe.
She was shaking again, this time from the aftermath of adrenaline and fear and shock. But holding on to Merlin kept her from bursting apart.