Something for Nothing (37 page)

Martin took the clip out of the handle, or the butt, or whatever it was called, and saw that it was loaded (and again he felt anger at Hal Weaver for leaving a loaded gun lying around his house—talk about irresponsible). Then, moving carefully, he reinserted the clip and lowered the gun to his side. It was almost like a derringer, and he felt a little foolish. But it was the only gun he had, and overall, he felt all right—less nervous than he would have thought. It was just a dog, right? And an asshole dog at that. If you had to pick a dog to kill, this would be the one, at least in Martin's opinion.

He slipped through the gate, trying to be quiet even though he knew it didn't matter. The dog was barking, regardless.
Woof, woof, woof.
It had gotten to the point where Martin hardly even heard it. He walked straight to the kennel. He didn't look to his right as he passed the entryway to the kitchen, and in fact he willed himself not to think about the fact that Angela was lying dead inside the house. He also willed himself not to think about how, if the police showed up at this very instant, they'd peg him for the killer. He might eventually be able to prove his innocence—different guns and so on—but it would be the beginning of the end for him. At the very least, they'd get him for breaking and entering (into the Weavers' house), and it wasn't all that unlikely that they'd be able to connect him to Val's drug operation (though he wasn't sure how, exactly).

As he walked up to the kennel, Rex exploded into the chain-link fence, barking and snarling. Spit was flying everywhere. You killed my master, his bark said. I'll tear your fucking face off. Martin wanted to explain that he wasn't the one who'd killed Val, that it had been someone else. Derek Hano, the cocky asshole from Southern California, the one with the bullshit story about his dad and Pearl Harbor (yeah, Martin thought, and my dad helped launch
Apollo 11
to the moon).

Martin took a deep breath. He gripped the gun with both hands, raised it in front of him, and aimed it at the dog. He squeezed his eyes shut and pulled the trigger. The gun went off with a bang (not a boom, but his hands did jerk upward with the recoil). It had more kick than he'd expected.

He opened his eyes to the sound of continued barking—a furious torrent of dog words. I hate you. I'll kill you. I'll rip your throat out. Stuff like that. Because he wasn't dead. Not because he was impervious to the gun's small bullets (Martin's initial fear). No, it was because Martin had missed him, even though he was standing about four feet away from him.

Jesus Christ, Martin said under his breath. He was shaking. But he took another deep breath, raised the gun—and then lowered it. He knew that even though Val's house was isolated, it wasn't unlikely that someone on the hill would hear the sound of gunfire, even the pop-gun sound of the .22. This had to be the last shot, and after the dog was dead he needed to find the money and take off. Time was passing.

Martin took one long stride forward, until he was practically nose-to-nose with the dog. Rex lunged at the fence, smashing his nose into it, trying to get his teeth through the mesh and into Martin. Dog spit flew onto his shoes, and he took an involuntary step backward. He was worried that the dog might burst through the fencing, but as he watched him struggle he felt slightly reassured. This wasn't a sliding glass door, and he wasn't the landscaper guy who'd had his arm ripped up like a leg of lamb (“like a leg of lamb”). He really wasn't in danger.

He put the barrel of the gun through the actual mesh of the fence
and was about to squeeze the trigger, but he saw that Rex had pivoted to the left and that he was going to miss again. Fuck, he said. He stepped to the right, trying to aim directly at the dog through the fence. But it didn't work, because Rex leapt up at him, right at his face, and Martin was so startled that he dropped the gun. For a panicked second he thought it had fallen into the kennel, and that he was going to have to try to retrieve it from there (or not—in which case the police would find it, and eventually trace his fingerprints).

God
damn
it! he said—shouted. He leaned down and fumbled for the gun. Instantly, the dog was low down with him, biting at the bottom of the fencing, trying, it seemed, to get his teeth onto the gun. Maybe he knew what was going on—though if that were the case, his strategy of all-out aggression was probably less effective than hiding in the shed would have been. That would have forced Martin to go in after him, something he wouldn't have done even for a million dollars.

Martin was having a hard time picking up the gun. It kept eluding his hand, as if it had decided suddenly that it didn't want to be involved in the slaughter of a helpless animal, however much of an asshole it might be. Yes, it was happy to be out of the trunk, but enough was enough. And so finally Martin just dropped down to his knees and grabbed the gun. He put both hands on it, pinning it down for a second, and then raised it and pointed into Rex's chest. He was only about eight or ten inches away, the spit and (now) the foul odor of his breath shooting out onto Martin's face. Martin scooted back a little bit, trying to get room to aim. He lifted the gun and pointed—and then dropped his hands into his lap.

He couldn't do it.

Yes, he'd already fired a shot at Rex; had narrowly missed, in fact. But it occurred to him that he'd actually missed on purpose. Not consciously, of course. Consciously he'd wanted the dog dead. Out of the way. He still did. But unconsciously . . . ? Martin wasn't so sure. He was suddenly exhausted.

I can't do this, he thought.

He looked down at his hands lying in his lap, clutching the gun.
Pick up the gun and shoot the dog, he said to them. But they didn't respond, and for some reason he wasn't quite able—or willing—to send the executive order down to his hands to get to fucking work, rise up, pull the trigger, kill the dog. Worse, the gun seemed to be in on the mutiny. It seemed to be telling his hands to rebel, to ignore Martin and do the right thing—which in this case, at least according to them (and according to the gun), was to let the dog live.

Shit, he thought.

The dog was unmoved by Martin's change of heart. It was as desperate as ever to tear into him. In fact, he thought, it seemed to have sensed his weakness. It was lunging at him, then backing up and lunging again. If ever a dog deserved to die, Martin thought, this is the dog. He's a wild animal.

Martin stood up slowly. He felt like the big-game hunter who'd finally gotten his trophy animal in his sights—the lion or the bear or whatever—only to chicken out at the last second. He'd hiked for days into the wilderness, and though he hadn't really been scared, when push had came to shove he'd looked the animal in the eye . . . and blinked. Here, Martin knew, the big-game-hunter analogy only went so far: the dog was in a cage and couldn't get at him. In fact, it was more like shooting ducks in a barrel than hunting a lion or a bear. But whatever analogy you came up with, Martin had failed. Worse, Rex seemed to know it, and he was taunting Martin now, daring him to put a bullet into him.

Woof, woof, woof.
Martin sighed, and looked down at his little .22 revolver. Would it have stopped him, anyway? Maybe not, he thought.

He stood there, staring, fantasizing about ways to get past the dog and into the kennel. Dig a tunnel (too time consuming). Get some tranquilizers (maybe Angela had some in her bathroom), hide them in some hamburger from Val's fridge, and wait for the dog to pass out (not realistic, not right now). He shook his head. I'm really fucking this up, he thought.

But then something occurred to him. The shed door was closed.
Not the exterior, chain-link-fencing gate that opened into the kennel area. No, the door to the shed itself. And, he noticed, there wasn't the kind of doggie door thing he'd assumed would be there, inserted into the door. Maybe they didn't make them that big. Martin had one at his house for Arrow—it opened out into the backyard, and he'd go in and out all day long.
Flap, flap, flap.

Okay, Martin thought, so the door is closed. He could picture it. Hano comes to the house—just a friendly visit—and so Val puts the dog in the kennel area. But he forgets to make sure the door is open so that the dog can get in and out. And his food and water are outside, in their huge dishes, and so it's not a big deal, really, not the sort of thing Val would think about if he was in a hurry, dealing with a surprise visit from Hano. But the thing is, now the dog can't get into the shed, where the money is. Or that's how it seems. But—and this was the key question, the one that came racing forward in Martin's mind—wasn't there at least one window on the other side of the shed? Hadn't Martin noticed this once, when he and Val were talking about all the little outbuildings scattered around the sprawling property? Hadn't he noticed that the window had made the shed look like a cute little house—a servant's quarters or something like that?

The possibility of a rear entrance to the shed sent a bolt of excitement surging through Martin. He half walked, half ran around to the rear of the shed. And sure enough, there it was: a little plate-glass window right in the center of the rear wall. Four little panes, with the caulking now gray and peeling and weak-looking. Huh. How about that? All he had to do was bust out the glass and climb through the window. Jesus, he thought. Why slay the dragon when you can go in through the back door? He listened now to Rex's frantic barking with a new attitude. Maybe, he thought, the dog had known about this all along, and had been trying to distract him with his ferocious, nonstop barking.

He had to get up on his tiptoes to look in through the window. It was really dirty—caked with dust and grime—and so he had to spit on his hand and then swirl it around on the window in order to look
inside. And when he did peer in, there wasn't much to see. It was dark, and he mostly only saw shapes. But the question was simple: was the door fully shut, fully secured? He wasn't positive, but it looked safe. Or pretty safe, anyway. Safe enough to give it a shot.

His calves were starting to tighten up, so he lowered himself and backed away from the window. He looked around for something he could use to break it. He had his gun, but it was too small—he was pretty sure he'd cut his hand if he used it. No sense in leaving his blood for the police to find. One of his shoes? Maybe, but again, that would be too close to his hand and arm. How about the nozzle of that garden hose? No—again, too small, too close to his hand.

He walked back around to the front of the shed. Rex threw himself against the fencing again, but Martin found it easier to ignore him now.

“Fuck you,” Martin said. His voice was drowned out by the continued barking, but he didn't care. He felt victorious already.

Then he saw a decent-size branch lying on the ground, not far from the kennel gate. It looked like it had fallen from one of the eucalyptus trees that towered overhead.

Perfect.

He walked back to the rear of the shed. He looked at the window for a second, took a big breath, and whacked it with the branch. It smashed easily. He took a minute to poke at the remaining shards of glass with the branch, then took off his shirt, folded it a couple times, and laid it across the window sill to protect himself from any leftover glass. He wondered where he might have gotten this idea. A movie, a TV show? He didn't know. He felt pretty clever about it, though.

He took one last look inside the shed. The dog had stopped barking, suddenly, and the quiet took him by surprise. It was a little eerie, in fact. He listened, poised just outside the window, but he didn't hear anything—no cars, voices, or anything like that.

He hoisted himself up into the broken-out space of the window. He tried to keep his hands underneath him to keep his stomach from
scraping against the bottom of the windowsill. His body felt heavy and awkward as he struggled through the smallish space. But then, suddenly, he was sliding downward, about to fall onto his face. He threw his hands out toward the floor and caught himself before smashing his face, and then tumbled awkwardly to the ground. As he did, he knocked over a metal garbage can. It was empty, and the loud clang scared him for a second.

The dog went berserk. He was just outside the door.
Scratch-scratch-scratch, snuffle, snuffle.
Martin hopped up and checked the door handle. It was secure, but not locked, and so he locked it. Rex had figured out what had happened, and he was enraged. Martin heard his huge paws scratching frantically at the door, and from inside it sounded as if he was a boxer throwing a flurry of hard, fast punches at the door.

Holy shit, Martin thought. Was it actually possible that the dog might break down the door? It was one of those flimsy, hollow things, and Rex was that big and that furious.

The shed was dark inside and smelled of dog. It really was like entering the lair of a wild animal (or a dragon). He felt around along the side of the doorway, found a light switch, and flicked it. A little bare bulb overhead came on. Aside from the big mattress pad that Val had put down for Rex, there was a lawn mower and a bunch of hand tools. Rakes, shovels, brooms—the kind of crap Martin had yet to accumulate, and hoped he wouldn't, at least as long as he could afford a gardener. Martin thought about the fact that Val wasn't going to be using those tools anymore and wondered how long they'd sit around, unused.

He picked up his shirt from the windowsill, shook it out, and put it back on. Then he looked around, trying to ignore the dog's insistent pounding. There were some big plastic bags of soil (the forty-pound kind), but they were unopened, so he didn't bother tearing them open and looking inside, just moved them out of the way. He looked inside the other metal trash can, but it was empty. He dumped out a plastic five-gallon container that was filled with the dog's kibble (just a lot of food). He didn't see any money, or any containers that looked like they had money in them. A gas can? Probably not.