House of Reckoning

  Sarah gazed at him, thinking she knew what he meant but hoping she was wrong. “What are you talking about? What do you mean, you saw—”

  “I heard a dog howling. I mean, really screaming. And then I saw it, too. This huge, yellowish dog, coming right at me and—”

  “When?” Sarah broke in. Again she was certain she knew and tried to cast around for something else.

  Something other than the truth.

  “You mean last night?” she went on.

  Nick shook his head, as she knew he would. “Just now,” he said, his voice low. “My last period—math class. I had this horrible hallucination. At least I thought it was a hallucination. But—” He hesitated, trying to find some other explanation, but found nothing. “It was like I was seeing and hearing what you were drawing. While you were drawing it!”

  Sarah stopped walking, his words hanging between them. “I—I don’t understand,” she said quietly.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say anything there was a screeching of tires, and then a car slammed to a stop in the street next to them.

  Conner West was behind the wheel, and Elliot Nash and Bobby Fendler rode with him. The way Conner was leering at them told Nick he was stoned.

  Or drunk.

  Or both.

  He was just reaching out to take Sarah’s hand, to lead her away, when Conner slid out of the driver’s door, slammed it, and came around the front of the car and on to the sidewalk, to stand facing them. Conner’s shoulders were slouched, his hands on his hips. “What are you two doing here by my house?” he demanded.

  At the sound of Conner’s voice, a big German shepherd came bounding around from behind the house Conner was pointing at, barking wildly, then ran back and forth along the cyclone fence between the house’s front yard and the sidewalk.

  With the dog’s first loud bark, the voices in Nick’s head came alive, chattering as insanely as the dog was barking, but he couldn’t understand a word they were saying.

  There were too many of them, and they were too loud, and the dog was howling now and—

  Elliot Nash and Bobby Fendler got out of the car too, and Sarah shrank back as they started toward her, their eyes glazed, their lips twisted into dangerous smirks.

  Nick struggled against the chaos rising in his head, but before he could formulate a word, Sarah took him by the arm. “C’mon,” she whispered. “Let’s just go.”

  His hand in Sarah’s, he took a step forward, but Conner moved to block him.

  “Just leave us alone,” Sarah said to Conner.

  “Why should we?” Conner snarled back. “I’m asking you again. Who said you could be here, next to my house?”

  The dog was still racing along the cyclone fence, barking furiously.

  Sarah hesitated, but as she gazed at the three boys, she suddenly decided she’d had enough. “Do you own the sidewalk?” she asked.

  “We all own the sidewalk,” Elliot Nash shot back. “And there’s more of us than there are of you, and we don’t want you on our sidewalk. Get it?”

  Nick’s voices began to howl as he heard Elliot’s words.

  “And if you don’t get it, my dog will teach you all about it,” Conner said. “He’s a police dog.”

  “You wouldn’t—” Sarah began, but Conner West was already calling out to the dog.

  “C’mon, King! C’mon boy—sic ’em!”

  The dog lunged against the cyclone fence, then dropped back and abruptly stopped barking. He crouched low to the ground, his lips curling back to expose long, sharp fangs.

  A dangerous growl emerged from the animal’s throat, and Elliot Nash backed off a step. “C’mon, Conner,” he said, sounding nowhere near as confident as he’d been a moment ago. “Maybe—”

  As the snarling dog tensed, backing up to hurl itself over the fence, Nick squeezed Sarah’s hand so tightly she thought her bones would break. “The barking,” he whispered. “The howling. It’s all happening again.” The voices were screaming in his head now, but one of them was rising above the cacophony of the others.

  “Kill it!” the voice screamed. “Kill it now!”

  Then Conner West was screaming, too: “Get ’em, King! Sic ’em!”

  As the chaos in Nick’s head began to blend with reality, his life went into slow motion.

  The snarling dog took a great leap and cleared the fence, launching itself at Sarah, teeth bared in a snarl.

  She froze as she recalled her drawing. The dog she’d drawn—was it a German shepherd?—had its mouth agape exactly as did the beast that was hurtling toward her!

  But this animal wasn’t dying—it was attacking, its fangs dripping with saliva, its eyes glittering with fury. Yet it was the same dog.

  She knew it was the same dog.

  And there was nothing she could do to stop it. In another second its jaws would close on her neck, its fangs slash through her skin to tear at her flesh, its—

  Nick’s eyes, too, were fastened on the huge shepherd cresting the fence and plunging toward Sarah, but its snarl was overwhelmed by the voice rising in his head, with more fury even than that of the dog.

  “Kill it—kill it—kill it now!”

  Nick’s right hand rose, but it wasn’t just his hand he saw reaching to protect Sarah, to fend off the attacking dog. Now there was a knife in it, a great, glittering blade, curving upward and ending in a dagger point.

  As the dog dropped toward Sarah, Nick held the knife out, and a second later he jerked it upward, twisting it as it slashed into the dog’s belly, then ripped upward into its chest. A howl of pure rage rose from Nick’s throat, and he jerked on the knife once more.

  As the dog’s torn body dropped to the ground only inches from Sarah’s feet, and blood began gushing from the great gaping wound that had torn its entire torso open, Nick’s eyes fixed on the knife in his hand.

  But there was no knife.

  His hand was empty.

  And the voices in his head were now gone.

  Conner West was staring at the dog he had only a moment ago commanded to attack Nick and Sarah. Now, so fast he could barely believe it, the animal was sprawled on the sidewalk, its intestines spilling out onto the cement, its feet flailing, faint snarls emanating from its throat. “What did you do?” he screamed, dropping to his knees next to the dying dog. As he reached out to touch his pet, the dog’s eyes suddenly fixed on him, and then it lashed out, sinking his fangs into his master’s forearm.

  Conner’s scream of rage dissolved into agony as he tore his arm loose from his dog’s jaws.

  A moment later the dog lay dead in the fading afternoon sunlight.

  “You killed him,” Conner said, holding his bleeding arm and gasping for breath. “You killed my dog!”

  Bobby and Elliot were backing away as Conner rose up from the dog’s carcass and moved toward Nick.

  Elliot Nash grabbed the sleeve of Conner’s jacket. “Don’t, man—let’s just get out of here.” He tried to pull Conner back, but Conner wouldn’t move as he glared at Nick.

  “You killed him, you little fu—” he began, but before he could finish, the front door of the house next door opened and a woman stepped out on the porch, a telephone pressed to her ear. “It’s Conner and those friends of his, and Nick Dunnigan,” she said, raising her voice so none of the teenagers on the sidewalk could mistake what she was saying. “I don’t know who the girl is … The dog looks like it’s dead … I don’t know how they did it … I’ll be here.” Now she came down the steps of her porch and started toward them. “And so will they. None of them are going anywhere.”

  As the woman approached, Sarah barely even saw her, let alone heard what she was saying.

  She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.

  That dog had bitten Conner exactly like the one she’d drawn in class had bitten its tormentor.

  Except in the drawing, the man held a scalpel.

  But Nick Dunnigan’s hand had been empty.

  He’d held it
up to protect her, but he had no weapon.

  He’d had nothing at all.

  But now the dog lay dead, its belly laid open clear up to its throat.

  It wasn’t possible.

  And yet, it had happened …

  Chapter Thirteen

  Angie Garvey drove the four short blocks to Dan West’s house, her hands gripping the steering wheel so hard her knuckles were white. The last thing she needed on a busy Monday was a call from the sheriff, asking her to come and pick up Sarah Crane.

  No, not asking her to. Telling her to. Maybe taking in a foster child had been a mistake.

  She pulled to a stop in front of the house next door to the Wests’ just as Lily Dunnigan was getting out of her car and crossing the street, where a knot of people—and Angie could see both Sarah and Nick Dunnigan among them—were gathered in front of the Wests’ house. And there was something on the sidewalk, covered with what looked to Angie like a bloody towel.

  “Thanks for coming, Ange,” Dan West said. “We’ve had …” He paused for a second, as if searching for the right word. “… an incident here, and I’d like your permission to search Sarah and her backpack.” He turned to Lily Dunnigan. “And Nick and his book bag, too.”

  Angie’s lips compressed into a tight line. What could Sarah have done? Unless, of course, it was Nick Dunnigan who was responsible for whatever led Dan West to call her. Well, this was the last time Sarah would be having anything to do with Nick—everyone in town knew they never should have let him out of the mental hospital. “Search anything you want,” Angie said. “But I still want to know what …” Her voice trailed off as she saw the four canine feet sticking out from under the blood-soaked towel. “Did someone run over a dog?”

  “My dog,” Dan said. “And nobody ran over him—his belly’s slit open.”

  Angie’s eyes shifted to Sarah, but it seemed that Sarah hadn’t even noticed she was there. She was just standing like an idiot, staring at the ground.

  “I don’t believe it,” Lily Dunnigan said, moving to slip her arm around her son’s shoulder. “Nick would never do anything like that.”

  Nick tried to shrug his mother’s arm off. “Conner sicced him on us. He jumped over the fence like he was going after Sarah, then started bleeding. Then he just sort of fell onto the sidewalk and …” Now it was Nick’s voice that trailed off as he couldn’t bring himself to repeat what he’d seen.

  Lily looked over at the cyclone fence that surrounded the Wests’ property, taking in the sharp ends of twisted wire that ran the entire length of its top. “He must have cut himself on the fence.”

  Dan West shook his head. “There’s no fur or blood on the fence. And the wound looks more like a cut than a tear, but we’ll leave that for the vet to determine.”

  “I went to nursing school,” Angie said. “Let’s just take a look.” She lifted the towel, then quickly dropped it again as her gorge rose. “Oh, my sweet Lord.”

  “He’s the one who did it,” Bobby Fendler said, jabbing a finger in Nick’s direction.

  “Okay, just cool it,” Dan West said, putting a hand on Bobby’s shoulder and squeezing it hard enough to give the boy a warning that was a lot stronger than his words. “We’ve all heard what you think.” He turned to Lily and Angie. “The thing is, there’s no blood on anybody except Conner, and he says the dog bit him while he was trying to help it. Must have been so far gone, the dog didn’t even know him. But nobody could do this without getting some blood on them.”

  “Where is Conner?” Lily asked.

  “My wife took him to the hospital.”

  “So what are you looking for?” Angie asked.

  “Don’t know,” Dan West admitted. “But I figured I should get permission from you and Lily before I went through their stuff. I mean, since it’s my dog and my son involved, I didn’t want anyone saying I planted anything on any of these kids.”

  Angie snatched Sarah’s backpack from her and thrust it at Dan. “Search whatever you want,” she said. “If Sarah had anything to do with this, I want to know about it, too.”

  “I should start with Nick,” Dan said, shifting his attention to Lily Dunnigan. “I mean, since Elliot and Bobby say they think he—”

  “Elliot and Bobby would say anything if it kept them out of trouble,” Lily cut in. “And they’d blame Nick, too, if they thought they could get away with it. So take a look—whatever you’re hoping to find, Nick won’t have it.”

  Nick stepped over to the sheriff.

  “Spread your legs and put your arms out straight,” Dan said. “Do you have any weapons on your person or in your backpack?”

  “No,” Nick answered.

  Dan felt each of his pockets, patted him down, then opened Nick’s backpack and emptied the contents onto the sidewalk. Except for his books, a notebook, some pens, and a half-empty water bottle, there was nothing.

  Satisfied that Nick held nothing incriminating, Dan West turned his attention to Sarah’s backpack, and a few seconds later was unfolding the picture Sarah had drawn less than an hour ago.

  Angie took one look at the image and knew instantly that whatever had happened to the sheriff’s dog, Sarah Crane—the child of a convicted murderer—had something to do with it.

  The girl was a bad seed—Angie knew it!

  Dan’s face paled as he took in the carnage depicted on the paper—carnage matched by the remains of the dog on the sidewalk. Then he turned to Sarah. “Did you draw this?”

  Sarah nodded. “In art class,” she whispered.

  “In Bettina Philips’s art class,” Angie added, her voice trembling with fury.

  Right away, Sarah knew that Angie would somehow try to blame her teacher for what had happened. “But she’s never even seen it. I didn’t turn it in—she didn’t have anything to do with that drawing, and I didn’t have anything to do with—”

  “It’s devil worship,” Angie said, pointing to the drawing Dan West was still holding in his hands. “Animal sacrifice—that’s what they do! They sacrifice innocent animals so—”

  “Let’s just take it easy, Angie,” Dan said. “Instead of making wild accusations, why don’t you let me get to the bottom of this?”

  “You won’t find a bottom,” Angie said, her voice hard, her eyes fixed on Sarah. “Evil is bottomless. Inexhaustible.”

  Dan took a deep breath and finished searching Sarah’s backpack, finding no more than the same collection of books and pens that he’d found in Nick’s.

  No knives, no bloody rags they might have used to clean blood off themselves, nothing.

  “Okay,” he said, his eyes moving among the four kids, looking for something—anything—that might give him a hint as to what had happened here. But as with the backpacks and Conner’s car, there was nothing. “You can all go home, but you all need to understand that this investigation is not over. It’s just beginning, and you can be certain that I will find out what happened to our dog.”

  Elliot and Bobby began to walk away.

  “What about them?” Lily Dunnigan demanded. “Why didn’t you call their parents? Why didn’t you search their backpacks?”

  “Because nobody accused them of anything,” Dan West replied, making no effort to keep the impatience out of his voice. “And you can believe I searched Conner’s car and everything that’s in it. Even Nick and Sarah said Elliot and Bobby didn’t do anything, but Conner and Bobby both say that Nick did it, and Elliot said Sarah was close enough to the dog to have done it, too.”

  As Lily Dunnigan led Nick to her car, and Dan West opened the trunk of his cruiser, took out a tarp, and began to wrap up the dog, Sarah put her things back into her backpack. Angie watched, her blood pressure rising, and when Sarah was finally ready, Angie wordlessly marched back to her car, starting it before Sarah even got in beside her.

  Her silence lasted no longer than it took her to pull away from the curb. “Where did you go last night when you stormed out of the house like a spoiled brat?”

  ??
?I just went out walking,” Sarah said.

  “Walking,” Angie repeated, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “With that leg and hip, you went out walking for hours when it was freezing.”

  Sarah looked up and met her gaze squarely. “I haven’t done anything wrong,” she said with infuriating calm.

  Angie’s blood pressure spiked, shooting into the red zone, and her temper along with it. “So far you’ve lied and been disobedient and disrespectful, and now you’re dallying with the devil.” She paused to take a deep breath. “I know what that picture means,” she went on. Then she turned to look straight at Sarah, her eyes as cold as the air outside. “God will judge you, young lady,” she said. “But before He does, Mitch will. And so will I.”

  Sarah didn’t know which was worse—listening to Angie Garvey’s tirade about the “evil” she was “carrying inside her like the seed of the devil,” or the ominous silence that fell over the house as she sat at the dining room table waiting for Mitch Garvey to come home. When he finally came through the back door at five minutes before six, the first thing he did was pull a beer out of the refrigerator, crack it open, and start through the dining room on the way to the living room, where his couch and TV were waiting.

  “What’s your problem?” he growled as he glanced at Sarah. “How come you’re not settin’ the table or workin’ on dinner?”

  “Family meeting,” Angie announced before Sarah could say a word. Then she yelled up the stairs for Tiffany and Zach to come down.

  Mitch, looking annoyed even before Angie told him what had happened that afternoon, sat at his usual place at the table, his eyes fixed balefully on Sarah. “What’d you do to piss your mother off this time?” he demanded.

  Sarah bit back the first words that rose to her tongue. What good would it do to remind Mitch that Angie wasn’t her mother at all, that her mother was dead? That would only make him madder. Deciding a noncommittal shrug was her best option, she said nothing, and a moment later Zach and Tiffany came pounding down the stairs. One look at the tableau in the dining room told them Sarah was in trouble, and they slid eagerly into their chairs.

  “Dan West called me this afternoon,” Angie said, her eyes boring into Sarah. “Someone slashed his dog. Slashed him to death. And Conner’s at the hospital.”