Rottweiler Rescue (19 page)

“I’m so sorry you’re going to be late because of me,” I said to her. “I hope you aren’t going to miss a restaurant reservation.”

“Oh, no,” she said, all smiles and openness. “We’re just going to drop off a present for a friend’s daughter for her birthday. Myron is probably happy we’re delayed. Tracey’s only seven, and if her birthday party is over and her friends and their parents have all left by the time we get there, he won’t mind at all.”

Myron finished and threw the flat tire and tools back in my car. I followed them to Kenny’s garage, half of me determined to accept that flat tires just happen now and then, and half of me arguing that a flat just happening here and now with an almost new tire was too much to believe.

What if, while I sat drinking coffee with Ginny, Sophie and Robo hadn’t been barking furiously at a deer, but at Myron sneaking through the trees. What if my tire was flat because Myron had somehow tampered with it?

Kenny Piesecki’s garage was a
dark barn by the side of the road with grease that might date from horse and buggy days sunk deep in every surface. Kenny himself might not have worked on buggies, but he probably had been under the hood of a new Edsel in its day.

He found the problem with my tire in minutes.

“Not good,” he said. “See this? You’ve got a nail right through the sidewall. I can’t fix that.”

The only reason my spirits didn’t fall at his words was that they were already on the floor.

“How could that happen?” I asked him. “If I ran over a nail it wouldn’t be in the sidewall, would it?”

“Happens sometimes,” he said, shrugging. “What we have to figure is how to get you going again. I don’t have this exact tire in stock, and you don’t want to run this car with tires that don’t match for long.”

He looked at me, questioning.

All I cared about was getting back on the road fast. If Myron had driven the nail into my tire, he had to make nice with the birthday girl’s family, then drive Ginny home and find an excuse to go out again before he could come after me. Maybe my flat was just one of those things. Even so, getting back on the road and putting as many miles between me and Myron as fast as possible was the only plan I could come up with.

“Put anything you can find that will fit on it,” I said. “I’ll worry about one that matches tomorrow.”

Kenny worked quickly. In half the time my garage back home would take to mount a tire, figure the bill, and run my credit card, he was finished and opening the overhead door, waving me into the dusk of early evening.

He was happy to be done with this favor for the Feltzers, I realized. Eager to get home to his own family and dinner. No more eager than I. At the first stop sign I took the time to pull Ginny’s too tight coat off. After that, I trusted to luck that there were no citation-hungry cops hidden along my route and pushed the car as fast as I dared.

Once on the Jarre Canyon Road heading home, I relaxed a little. The pickup ahead set a good pace, and the two cars behind mine made me feel protected. Traveling all the way in the little caravan would have been fine with me, but soon the pickup turned off and one after another the cars behind roared around me, disappearing into the night at a speed I was unwilling to match.

Alone on the road, I tried to take my mind off my nerves by thinking of how I’d fill in the columns after Myron’s name on my chart. No alibi. Physically he could be the killer, although he was bulkier than my remembered image. He had lied about Maida if nothing else. His wife had heard the exaggerated version of my story at the specialty show. And he was the first possible suspect other than Carl Warmstead who might have reacted to the dogs the way the killer had.

Myron had dogs of his own and maybe even worked with them, but he didn’t work with dogs of all kinds and temperaments day in and day out like the Standers or Harry Jameson. He wouldn’t have the experience with Rottweilers that Erich Kohler would have gotten working with them in Germany. The one thing I could not come up with for Myron was a motive.

Then again, maybe I wasn’t that keen to find the perfect motive for Myron. He and I would never be friends, but like Tawana Mullin, Ginny seemed to be someone I’d like to get to know better.

I sure didn’t want to believe Myron had driven a nail into my tire so that I’d be on the road this late and really, really didn’t want to believe he was behind me now, following me with murder on his mind.

My nerves were steadying. I stopped expecting every car coming toward me to cross the center line and come straight at me, although cars coming from behind still had me gripping the steering wheel so tight my hands ached.

He didn’t smash into the back of the car. He started to pass in a perfectly normal fashion. The SUV was almost past and I was starting to relax when the big vehicle cut back into my lane right through the front end of my small car.

The impact jerked me in my seat. The airbag exploded. Blinded by the airbag, darkness and terror, I felt the car plunge over the side of the road and leave the ground. The seatbelt and airbag caught my body as I was flung one way then another, the car crashing through trees, caroming off rocks, and rolling... and rolling.

When the car came to rest, I was surprised to find myself not only alive but conscious. The car had stopped on its side with the passenger’s side up. The air bag and gravity pinned me to the driver’s side door.

Movement in the back made me gather my shaken wits. The dogs had also survived the battering fall. Every time they moved the car rocked slightly. The car wasn’t on solid ground but hung up on something. Sophie whined.

I shut my eyes for a moment, trying to clear my head, then had to fight the urge to leave them closed and sink into oblivion. Sophie whined again, and I opened my eyes and faced the mess we were in.

“We’re going to be all right,” I told the dogs in as calm a voice as I could manage. “Just give me a minute, and we’ll get out of here. I’ll call for help. We’re going to be fine.”

The headlights on my poor car were still shining downhill into the night. I could see rocks, bushes and ground below. Whatever the car was hung up on couldn’t be too high off the ground.

As I oriented myself, fear returned at such strength the metallic taste filled my mouth. Myron Feltzer or someone else, whoever had run me off the road was out there in the darkness, and the Toyota’s headlights were twin beacons, telling him where his wounded prey was. I turned off the lights.

Talking to the dogs about calling for help reminded me of the cell phone. Groping everywhere within reach, I felt leather under the seat on the passenger’s side, but my purse was stuck in the narrow space. As I yanked and pulled the purse free, the car moved again. Getting out and getting away had to be worth whatever extra pain falling out of the car would bring.

Undoing the seatbelt was easy. In the end, to get free from the airbag I yanked the door handle beneath me. The door opened partway with a groan as crushed metal gave way. Pushing and struggling, I forced the door open wide enough to slither through and drop out onto the stony ground. Calling the dogs as I crawled, I scuttled out from under the car in what felt like slow motion.

Seconds later the dogs were there with me, and I crooned senseless words of reassurance to them and to myself, trying to hold their warm bodies close against the cold of the night. I’d forgotten Ginny’s coat and wasn’t going back to the car after it.

When Sophie started growling, the sound was unlike any she’d ever made before, reverberating from so deep in her belly it wasn’t a growl as I knew it. She pulled away from me and then was gone, and Robo after her.

“Sophie! Robo!” They didn’t return, of course. By the time I stopped my futile shouting, the dogs were far enough away there was no sound of their headlong run through the brush. I was alone.

The night was quiet until a car hummed past high on the road above, the driver and any passengers with him secure in their mobile cocoon. The sound had almost faded away when the sharp crack of a gunshot cut through it. A dog screaming almost drowned out the sound of another shot. I struggled halfway to my feet, fell to my hands and knees and vomited, weeping as shot after shot shattered the night. He was emptying a gun at my dogs. The echoes had barely stopped when I heard the distant sound of a slamming car door, followed by the roar of an engine and squeal of tires as the killer took off.

He had to know I might be alive if the dogs were. Once again he was running from the dogs. Did that mean they were still alive? I never made it to my feet. I found the cell phone and dialed 911. The connection was so bad only garbled sounds sputtered out. Desperately hoping that the outbound transmission was better, I repeated my location as best I knew it several times, then started crawling up the slope toward the road.

Sheriff’s deputies arrived in time
to stop me from going back over the side of the road at the place where the killer’s tires had left rubber when he fled. Sophie and Robo had to be down there somewhere. The deputies treated me as if my injuries were all to the head and refused to listen about the dogs.

When the ambulance arrived, the paramedics took over, peppering me with questions about my injuries and ignoring my fear for my dogs. There was little doubt that if I tried to walk away, they would physically restrain me.

My first savior was a lean man wearing a ball cap and plaid flannel shirt who pulled his pickup off the road to see what was going on. He asked one of the deputies if he could help.

“No, sir,” the deputy said brusquely. “You need to drive on and go about your business.”

Involved in an intense effort to keep myself calm enough to persuade someone to look for Sophie and Robo or to let me do it, I was only half aware of the man as he got back in his truck and started to drive off. When he stopped again, and went over the side with a flashlight, one of the deputies left me and ran up the road.

“Hey, you,” he yelled. “Get back here. You can’t do that!”

But he did. He came back up with Sophie in his arms, Robo and an angry deputy trailing behind. He laid Sophie gently on the gurney the paramedics had prepared for me, tipped his hat, walked back to his truck and drove off.

Sophie was unconscious but alive. Seeing her there, with her blood pooling on the cover of the gurney forced the officers to accept I wasn’t crazy from head injuries. Even so, Sophie would have died while they debated what to do had it not been for my second savior, who arrived in another cruiser with lights flashing.

She assessed the situation at a glance and started giving orders. “Get the bleeding stopped,” said Deputy Carraher to the paramedics. “There’s a vet a little way back up the canyon with his office in his house. He takes emergencies. We’ll take her there.”

“We can’t work on a dog,” said one of the paramedics. “I don’t know anything about dogs.”

“Do what you’d do with a person,” said Deputy Carraher. “Dogs bleed the same way.”

The second paramedic was ignoring his partner’s objections and working on Sophie, applying pressure bandages. “She needs blood,” he said. “She’s lost a lot. Do they do transfusions on dogs?”

“Yes, they do,” said Deputy Carraher. “Vets do. Let’s get her in the ambulance.”

“Look, we can’t do that,” said the first paramedic. “I’m sorry, but I’m not losing my job over it, and we can’t transport a dog.”

He had his hands on his hips and was looking belligerent. Carraher didn’t waste time on him. “Okay, then I’ll take her.”

She and the second paramedic carried Sophie to her car and eased her onto the back seat. I climbed in, pulled Sophie’s head into my lap and held her. The paramedic ran to the ambulance and came back with a blanket that he tucked around my shoulders. His care started tears slipping down my face.

The officer who had been giving the orders at the scene before Carraher arrived had followed us to the car, objecting. “She has to stay. We need a report, and she needs medical treatment.”

“Ms. Brennan isn’t going to cooperate a damn with you until we take care of the dogs,” Deputy Carraher said. “Believe me, I’ve seen her in action. I’ll get a report from her at the vet’s and be back here as soon as I can.” She got into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

“Robo,” I managed to croak.

The deputy got out again, disappeared in the lights, and returned leading Robo by the collar. She put him in the front seat beside her, and we took off, lights flashing. As she drove, she talked to the crackly voice on the radio, asking them to call ahead to the vet.

“Thank you,” I said. “I thought you didn’t like us — me or the dogs.”

“I was having a bad day,” she said. “And I never liked these big macho type dogs. I have cats.”

“I have a cat too,” I said.

“Yeah, well, I have to admit I changed some of my ideas about Rottweilers that day when I saw how that dog behaved at the vet’s. Either one of my cats would have left scars on anyone that did that much poking and prodding. How’s she doing?”

“She’s still breathing, but it’s so shallow it’s hard to tell.”

“We’re almost there.”

She turned off the highway and flew along a narrow access road with no perceptible reduction in speed, then turned again and was forced to slow down by the washboard surface of the dirt road.

Sophie’s body bounced on the seat, and I held her harder to keep her in place. Mercifully, Deputy Carraher slowed again and this time turned into a driveway as steep as the Feltzers’. The house we approached was set into the side of a hill the same way, but the first floor was the vet clinic and ablaze with light.

Between us, Deputy Carraher and I carried Sophie to the door. A thin, elderly man with a shock of white hair and skin pale in the artificial light held the door open for us.

He led the way through the waiting room back to an operating room, where we laid Sophie on a stainless steel table. An equally aged woman dressed in green scrubs was already laying out surgical equipment.

“I’m Dr. Rolland Hunsaker,” he said, his stethoscope moving over Sophie. “This is my wife, Hettie. She’s been serving as my anesthetist and assistant at surgeries like this for years.”