The Dog Who Saved Me

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  To my daughters, Elizabeth and Alison. You are still my best creations.

  Prologue

  When Lev Parker, Harmony Farms’ chief of police, called me the first time about the job as animal control officer, I was insulted—there was no way I was going to return to Harmony Farms, and certainly not to wear the uniform of a dog officer. I’d escaped from there long ago. The first in my family to go to college, I’d lived in an overcrowded and rowdy apartment, attending a community college with a tuition I could afford on my own with the help of a part-time job that filled every hour I wasn’t in class or studying. I majored in criminal justice. That path led to acceptance in the Police Academy and, finally, the fulfillment of a dream, a position on the Boston police force. I’d found my place, my niche, a purpose. I wore that blue uniform with pride. I had outgrown my past, my family history. On my rare trips back to Harmony Farms, I imagined that now people looked at me with a new respect.

  Three times Lev called with the offer, each time modifying it with pot sweetening—a little more money squeezed out of the finance committee, an almost new town vehicle, an assistant. I’d be a dynamic part of his team.

  Lev’s clumsy “I need a good man” bullshit made it sound like I was the only ex-cop who could possibly do justice to the job of animal control officer. I felt like I was a little kid getting picked last for the basketball team. Or, worse, that what he was offering to me was a handout—a pity play. I knew I wasn’t fit for duty, at least not for any real police duty; even though my own physical injuries had begun to heal, my psychic injuries had festered. Maybe that’s all I was good for, scraping up roadkill, getting cats out of trees. At least no one gets killed in a job like that; nobody expects you to be brave. I would have no emotional attachment to the animals I encountered. Even at six months, I wasn’t at a distant-enough remove to believe that I could ever attach myself to another dog. The idea of partnering again with a canine was out of the question. Is out of the question, I still tell myself.

  I know Lev didn’t look at it that way—that he was tossing me a bone—at least I don’t think he did. His point of view was that he had an opening and, clearly, I needed a job. I’d quit the force, tendering my resignation with relief. Maybe relief isn’t the right word; more like capitulation. I’d given in to the overwhelming consequences of my loss. I was incapable of climbing out of the pit of despair that I had been blown into on that night in January.

  * * *

  “Cooper, with your experience, you’d be a real asset to me.”

  “I was part of a K-9 unit, not a dogcatcher.”

  “But you know dogs.”

  “I knew one dog.” Argos. My German shepherd. No, the Boston PD’s shepherd. My partner. For months, I’d been mourning his loss, and my inability to put what had happened into its proper compartment and get on with my life had made me vulnerable to losing control of everything else in my life.

  The animal control job was a one-year contract. Temporary, a stopgap, Lev said, while I got better. Even so, I resisted the urge to hang up on the man who had once been a good friend, resenting both the suggestion that I might be interested in such a job and the barely disguised pity with which it was offered. “I know this is hard for you, Coop, but I really do need a good man in the position. The applicant pool around here is pretty shallow. The only other guy is a preppy grad student our first selectman is pushing on me. I thought of you because—”

  I cut him off. I didn’t want to hear his justifications. “You, of all people, know why I don’t want to come back.”

  “It’s history, man. Ancient history. There are so many new people around here, they don’t even know who Bull is.”

  “It’s not just Bull, and you know it. I’ve spent two decades on the other side of the law from my brother. We Harrisons don’t have a sterling reputation in this town.”

  “Harrison is pretty common name, and Jimmy’s not around anyway. Hasn’t been for years.” As well I knew. My older brother was incarcerated in the prison at Walpole—in the eleventh year of his twelve-year sentence for drug trafficking.

  Lev’s words might, once again, have fallen on my—literally—deaf ear, but they came just when my wife, Gayle, had had enough. It was when Gayle broke it to me that she wanted me out of the house—she couldn’t take what she called my “moods” anymore—that I finally listened to what my old basketball teammate had to say.

  * * *

  Gayle rested her fingers on the open mouth of the fifth of bourbon, which had become my drink of choice. “I’m going to the gym. Why don’t you come with me?” She picked up the cap and screwed it back on.

  I watched her slowly twist the cap, a casual motion. No recriminations, just a maternal “That’s enough for you,” acted out with a tightened bottle cap.

  “No thanks. I’m fine. You go ahead.”

  It’s a conversation we’d had over and over, and I could tell that she was growing impatient with me. No, impatient isn’t the word. Worried, concerned. Maybe even bored. Tired of me and my inconsolable grief. She’d held my hand; she’d held my head when I’d gone too far with the bourbon. She’d held her tongue.

  “Really, I’m just fine. Kind of tired. So you go.” I had my eye on that bottle, wondering if she’d notice if another inch was missing when she got home from the gym. She disappeared into the bedroom, then reappeared, kitted out in flattering Spandex. “Hey, Gayle,” I said.

  The hostility in her eyes was liquid. There is a sheen to the human eye when anger and frustration sheath it in dammed tears.

  “You look great.” It was my clumsy attempt at a mollifying compliment, but she wasn’t buying it.

  “How would you know? When was the last time?” She didn’t have to say anything more. Along with everything else I’d once held dear, our marital relations had suffered with my descent into the black hole of despair.

  She knew I was lying. Gayle didn’t look fine. She looked pinched and angry, and I knew it was my fault. But you can’t stop being sad just because some shrink says that you should be “moving on.”

  Midnight and I was still awake, the ringing in my ear singing to me in the quiet of a lonely man’s vigil. It sang of self-doubt, of regret. It sang of another night, deeply cold, stars so bright, they could make you believe in God.

  I stood on the balcony, which was the real estate company’s primary sales feature of the condo. Look, a view of the city, cheap at the price. Behind me was the closed sliding door that kept my wife from hearing the sound of the bottle repeatedly touching the rim of my glass. In the near distance, with my good ear, I could hear the barking of a dog. A throaty, “mean it,” kind of bark. A warning. I was dwelling on my loss, maybe even wallowing in it. The good news for me was that I knew that’s what I was doing. The bad news: It had become a comfortable place, but one that didn’t really allow for anyone else. Gayle just didn’t get my failure to get over Argos’s loss.
br />   I had Argos, my police dog, long before I knew Gayle. You don’t get many dogs like Argos. Full-on police dog when tracking down felons, total puppy when playing in the backyard. His bark was deep, his bite crushing, but his love for me was unmistakable. Gayle had claimed to love Argos, as much as she could love something that was as devoted to me as he was. Her love was simply a normal affection for an animal, and why not? She didn’t work with him, depend on him for professional success. He was the big dog taking up a lot of space in our condo. He wasn’t her first love. He was mine.

  It was a buddy of mine who got me interested in going for the K-9 unit. He’d been a dog handler in Afghanistan and couldn’t say enough about the rewards of having a canine partner. I’m not going to say that meeting Argos for the first time was like love at first sight, more like a bromance. Unlike human partners, we didn’t say good night at the end of a shift; we went home together. We spent holidays together. We played a lot of catch together. We had boundaries, like any good friends. He slept in his kennel at night. He didn’t beg at the table. Argos never questioned my authority and I never questioned his dedication to the job.

  When Gayle came into our lives, Argos accepted my sudden distraction with grace, placing her under his protection. Of course, he was not a pet. He was, for all intents and purposes, a tool. I was trained to use that tool. Affection and camaraderie were allowable, but not to the point of undermining the dog’s purpose. Argos wasn’t a therapy dog; he was a weapon. Tell that to the human heart. To me, he was the whole package.

  “I’m done.” That’s what she said. She’d come back from the gym and I was exactly where she’d left me—slouched on the couch, still in the same sweats I’d started out in the day before, the bottle of bourbon down another four inches. “I can’t take this drinking, this self-pity, this refusal to try.” And then she said the killing words: “You’re becoming just like your father.”

  * * *

  So when Lev had called earlier that evening, instead of saying no, I’d offered to think about it. “I’m not promising, you understand, but maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing to get away for a while.”

  Lev shot the last arrow in his quiver—I could rent the old hunting camp on Bartlett’s Pond. I knew what he was offering, even if he didn’t. Solitude. Time and place to lick the wounds that had been inflicted on me.

  “Come see me.”

  “Okay.” I stood in the middle of the kitchen, my phone still in my hand. I placed it facedown on the granite countertop. I told myself that I hadn’t said yes, but somehow it felt like I had made a decision. Gayle, holed up now in the bedroom, sleeping, or pretending to sleep, had made it abundantly clear that she didn’t want me around anymore. She’d had enough.

  So as dawn crept up over the horizon, I called Lev back and told him I’d take the job.

  Part One

  1

  My quarry is intelligent, experienced, elusive. I make a slow turn off the main road and head into a development, easing my government-issue vehicle over the numerous speed bumps designed to keep the rate of speed through the neighborhood down to fifteen miles per hour. I’m craning to see if my fugitive is skulking somewhere behind the cultivated shrubbery or hidden deep in the landscape architect–designed three-acre parcels of this, the most exclusive of all of Harmony Farms’ neighborhoods. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to collect this particular miscreant. He has a taste for the good life, a sense of entitlement that frequently brings him here to this covenant-restricted monument to suburban living.

  I throw the vehicle into park, sit for a moment, collecting myself, running a hand over my military-short brush of hair. This is the most likely place. It is also where I need to be on foot. It’s time to roll. I settle my cap on my head and gather up my equipment. I shut the driver’s door very carefully so as not to alert my fugitive. Unlike me, my quarry has extraordinary hearing. The element of surprise is the only weapon at my disposal and the only one that gives me any advantage. The good news is, it’s still early in the day, the better not to have interference in the proceedings. Once the neighborhood residents are up and about, my chances of capturing the escapee are pretty well shot. Nothing worse than a posse of vigilante home owners in pursuit of a trespasser.

  Despite the similarities of tracking down an enemy or a felon or a missing person and tracking down this miserable runaway, there is no sense of danger, of imperative in this situation. Which, given my nightmares and panic attacks at the thought of returning to my former profession, is a good thing.

  I shoulder the coil of rope and squat to examine a print in the dust, depending only on my eyes to tell me the whereabouts of my target. Back in the day, I would have depended less on my vision than upon my canine partner’s acute sense of smell to determine the direction of our quarry, his acute hearing to detect the slightest sound. This entire hunt would have been a snap with Argos by my side. I could have been blind and deaf and it wouldn’t have mattered. Now I’m just deaf.

  It’s a pretty morning. The rising sun breaks rosy above the lake that is this town’s chief attraction—the view of which is the Upper Lake Estates at Harmony Farms’ chief selling point. The bucolic name of Harmony Farms belies the discordant undertones that have developed in the three decades since urban flight brought an influx of newcomers to the village. It was once simply a farming community, carved out of New England soil, etched into hillsides with drystone walls, its pastures grappled from the stingy fists of old-growth timber, itself then committed to use as fence posts, firewood, and farmhouses. Lake Harmony is still its centerpiece, a ten-acre, pristine jewel in the crown, complemented by the half dozen spring-fed ponds that punctuate the terrain between gentle hills. Much of the shoreline is privately owned now, but the conservation people have carved out a nice public beach on the Lake Shore Drive side, the less pretty side, my side. It’s where we swam when I was a kid, and where ice fishermen would slide their ice shacks out to the middle of the lake back in the day when it froze solid.

  Old-timers like Deke Wilkins, whose family was one of the five original families given the charter for Harmony Farms back in the 1600s, have been pitted against the “new people,” who arrived back in the glory days of the 1980s. People like the first selectman, Cynthia Mann, who leads the charge for quality-of-life improvements to the roads, the school, and the gentrification of Main Street. Or her husband, Donald Boykin, who sits on the land-use committee and likes to write big checks as “lead gifts” for a variety of big-ticket charities here and elsewhere. Theirs are the names you see on the top of donor lists, the ones who know how to throw a party.

  But with influence come accommodations. A few of the niceties. In other words, bring all of the things we like best about city life to this hamlet where we fled to avoid the pitfalls of city life. And besides, twenty miles is too far to go to get a decent cup of coffee. Deke Wilkins likes the sludge that Elvin sells at the Country Market. He doesn’t need any high-priced beverage too highfalutin to call itself small, medium, or large. Grande. He hoots when he says the word. At Elvin’s, he can get a small coffee, and that’s just fine with him. “Gimme a petit, will ya?”

  I jog along a meticulously groomed driveway, following a scattering of prints pressed into the sprinkler-moist edge until I reach a gap in a determinedly trimmed hedge. On the other side, there’s a depression in the grass that might be a print; a little farther into the property, I find another. I spot the best indicator that my quarry has passed this way, a small pile of manure. And there he is, happily grazing upon the expansive flower beds of Harmony Farms’ wealthiest resident, Cutie-Pie, the miniature donkey, who has made a career out of escaping from his owners’ inadequately fenced-in yard.

  I pull a carrot out of my back pocket. Cutie-Pie eyes me with suspicion, gives me a wink, and goes back to eating the no doubt expensive and probably imported late-summer flowers. His little brushy tail twitches in derision. The thing with these miniature equines is that they don’t think like real equines. Th
ey are independent thinkers. A horse will allow itself to be led. A miniature donkey will plant four feet and become an immovable object. A statue of a donkey. I swear that it’s Eddie Murphy’s voice coming out of Cutie-Pie. Say what? Yours truly get in that truck? I don’t think so. You’re jokin’, right? Cutie-Pie is only the size of a large dog. Not even as tall as Argos was.

  Right now, my goal is to get a lead line attached to this animal. I hold out the carrot. Cutie-Pie, without moving his legs, stretches his neck to its full length, reaching with his prehensile lips for the carrot. I keep it just out of reach, making the donkey choose: Flowers? Carrot? Cutie-Pie finally takes a step, then another. As soon as the donkey is within reach, I snag his halter, snapping the lead line to it. At least I’ve finally convinced the Bollens to keep the halter on at all times, even if I haven’t convinced them to fix the freakin’ fence. Nice couple, one tick away from doddery. They treat this out-of-control equine like a baby. Mrs. Bollen was my third-grade teacher, so it’s pretty much impossible for me to threaten them with fines or confiscation. Besides, I really don’t want a donkey at the limited facility my part-time assistant, Jenny Bright, refers to as the “Bowwow Inn.” It’s barely adequate for the canine inmates. I mean, it’s better than it was when I arrived on the scene, but still pretty primitive.

  Before I got here, there was no shelter, just the pound, which was nothing more than a wire run attached to the outside of the town barn. At least now the impounds have a proper kennel, proper care. Even if this isn’t a job I want, I still have the integrity of purpose to make sure my animals are safe and rehomed. No animal on my watch will be put down unless critically injured or unequivocally dangerous, and I haven’t encountered either of those circumstances to date, a third of the way into my twelve-month contract. I do that in memory of Argos. Argos, who could interpret what I was thinking even before I thought it. A pure white shepherd, his eyes deep brown, he was big for his breed, and maybe too pretty, but his magnificent nose was what made him the best of the best. Acute and never wrong. Not once. I shake off the thought. My shrink wants me to develop a mechanism to switch off those thoughts, develop what he calls “coping” mechanisms; adopt something that will bring me out of the past and back into the moment.