Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 38, No. 13, Mid-December 1993

Late September Dogs by Gene KoKayKo

Standing in the waves, Rube figured everything he had had gone south already — his hair and his chest and the arches in his feet. So why should he, Barney Rubekowski, follow them? His friends had gone south, too, most to Florida, and Rube had wanted to start over somewhere new, somewhere warmer than the East Coast but not quite so far south... so retired. Somehow southern California still seemed too south and too much a copout, so Rube had settled for the central coast of California, west but right in between. This way he could see the big O, the Pacific, not that dribble the Atlantic, or some Gulf of Something, but the big P, the real ocean.

And so what if he couldn’t swim? And so what if he no longer looked quite so good in a bathing suit? He could wade, couldn’t he? He could wade and splash a little way into the great surf. He had his pension and his new apartment and his number fifteen sunblock; and the sun was bright and not too hot and the world belonged to him and the big old dog who was the only other creature on the beach this early in the morning. He had beaten the odds, made it out of the rat race, found home — in spite of what old what’s-his-name had said you couldn’t do again — and by damn he was going to—

What did that dog have in his mouth?

Rube felt a flush of curiosity, then a flash of apprehension as he saw the human hand. The dog was big, a yellowish Labrador, and even from where Rube stood in the waves, he could tell the dog was careworn. His tail was ringed with scabs, as if some greater animal had taken small chunks along the way, had chewed the tail when the Lab wasn’t looking. It gave the tail a diseased look, like some aging raccoon that was losing its fur. The dog stood on the shore, but Rube could still clearly see the human hand. The big Lab had it between his teeth as if worrying a snack, and he was trying to pull the hand from a huge clump of greenish seaweed. Rube could tell the dog was a he, too, the dog all spraddle-legged like that, and Rube shook his head at the observation, wondering why, at times of stress, he always noticed things like that. It was a character flaw, he felt. One he’d always had. If there was a terrible accident in the street, he would not only see the accident but all the attendant sights and sounds on the periphery. He’d see the car make, the color, the license plate number. He’d remember later the kind of day: cloudy or bright, approximate air temperature, number of clouds. Everyone else would be screaming, “Oh my God, the blood!” and good old Rube would be checking out the details. Inside, Rube thought, where no one could see. There was something wrong with him. He had no real compassion, perhaps, for humanity and its tragedy.

Rube splashed toward the dog. As he did, his focus frayed again and he saw: almost deserted beach, one flock of gulls a hundred yards down picking over some trash; a sky misty with alto cumulus; a sun melting through the clouds, still rising toward zenith; and a breeze softly tossing more trash along... the breeze plucked at the sweat on his forehead.

The dog saw Rube coming. He growled around the hand, then started to back, with the hand still in his mouth. The clump of seaweed shifted slightly.

“Easy now,” Rube said, splashing up on the sand, “easy boy,” as though he were trying to settle a big horse that was about to buck. Hell, the dog was big as a horse. But that wasn’t the real reason — that wasn’t the real fear. Rube was trying to settle himself because he didn’t want to see what the dog had — not really. From a distance this was all very interesting, but from up close there was a chance it would get gruesome. Worse, it might interfere with Rube’s new life. If what was attached to that human hand was a human body, then he’d be involved. And he hadn’t come to the coast of California to get involved. He’d come here to retire.

The big dog lowered his head, as if to hide the contents of his mouth.

“Don’t you swallow that!” Rube shouted.

The dog’s eyes were big and white and they seemed to turn in the great head and accuse him.

“Drop it, now!”

But the dog didn’t. He pulled instead, a muscle-wrenching heave of a pull that suddenly exposed a white arm. The rest of the body was tangled up in the big clump of green seaweed, and Rube told himself he couldn’t really see. Couldn’t really see the white, bare shoulder, and exposed breast, and the big gaping hole.

Rube turned away and put his hands on his shaky knees. “Ah, Jesus Holy Jehoshaphat.”

His arms shook, and the sweat spilled down his forehead. Salty, it burned its way down his face like a track of guilty tears.

He could hear the dog worrying the hand, a small whimper through his large white teeth. Rube realized he’d bitten his own lower lip so hard the blood ran down his chin. He ran the tip of his tongue over the spot, licking it back like a wounded animal. He felt wounded.

But alive. And breathing.

The body tangled in the seaweed was not. The body tangled in the kelp was way past any thought or consideration for such mundane physical needs.

How to get the dog away?

Rube straightened and wiped the smear from his chin. He stomped toward the dog, big splashing steps in the sand. Pebbles flew, but the dog stayed. Whimpering.

“You gotta let go of that,” Rube begged.

The dog growled around the fingers of the hand.

Rube backed off and picked through the sand until he had a neat handful of sharp stones. He started pegging them at the yellow Lab. The first fell short. Rube grimaced and bore down and fired the next, hard, at the dog’s flank. The dog yelped, hitching sideways, but he held onto the hand. The dog seemed to grin around the shredded flesh like some demon from hell. Rube started throwing rocks as fast as he could: one, two, three, striking the dog along the body; and finally, the dog romped sideways, dropping the shredded hand. He stood with his big head hanging, looking back as if mournful over his loss.

“Just stay now — just stay.” Rube waggled his finger at the dog, and the dog dropped to his haunches. Still whimpering. Still looking mournfully at the body.

Rube didn’t want to look down, but he’d earned the right. On top of the kelp now, he could see more. Her hair was long and darkened by the sea, but her eyes were open and light, the color of green he remembered from old Coke bottles in his youth. They stared up but past him with a look of accusation and shock, a “how dare you look at me like this” look that made him glance toward the dog. The dog started to whine.

Rube started to whine, unknowingly, a soft whimper that sounded angry with the gentler sounds of the sea. He’d seen death before, but all of it in hospitals, where the smell and sights were antiseptic. Everything controlled, everything nasty beneath sheets. Her body lay tangled in the kelp, but it was bloated, the flesh too pale to be real and alive, the look from her eyes changing in the twinkling morning light, a look that filled him with sorrow, then shock as he saw the gaping hole between her breasts. Rube heard it then, the sound he made, a sound he remembered until the last: piteous and sorrowful and low and moaning — a sound like a worshipper at the wailing wall, a sound almost prehuman, a whimper of such mixed emotions that he felt lust and hate and fear all wrapped up into one. Rube shut his mouth and the sound died.

The dog whined again.

Rube opened his mouth to shush the dog but once again heard the moan start from his own mouth. He clamped his teeth together, reopening the cut on his lip. “I shoulda gone to Florida,” he said to the dog.

The dog hung his head but stopped whimpering.

Her dress was in tatters, little left... no blood though, just the ugly gaping wound. Rube felt the strangest compulsion to reach out and touch—

Those peripheral senses again, intruding. Rube heard the crunch of big tires on sand, and he smelled something not of the sea, or of death, but of machinery. He jerked his head up.

The Jeep was almost touching him, a big chrome bumper near his face. Rube could smell the hot radiator and see the specks of rust on the front fenders.

He heard the door shut. Heard the crunch of sand beneath hard soles.

“Don’t move, mister.”

Somewhere close there was a crackling sound of voices, and Rube realized it was from a radio transmitter. But he couldn’t focus on what the voices said. He was too busy looking down the barrel of the gun.

Waves crashed behind him. The air smelled of salt and... bloat? No. The body didn’t have an odor. The kelp did. It smelled of decay, as if the ocean were dying.

Rube found his voice while he stared down the bore of the gun. “We found her in the surf. Well... he did, actually.”

“Figures,” said the man holding the gun. “Old Buddy’s always into something he shouldn’t be.”

Rube shook and sweated in the warming sun. “You have to point that thing at me?”

The sheriff’s face creased, almost a grin. “I guess not.”

The sheriff knelt down beside Rube.

“Jesus,” he said, looking at the wound. “Woulda killed two her size.”

The sheriff’s office was a corner of an already small building on Main Street, and it smelled bad. Rube was tired by now; they’d stood around for an hour waiting for the forensics team before the sheriff would leave the scene.

“Have a seat,” the sheriff said as they entered the room. Rube saw that the paint was new, some neutral pastel between beige and cream in color. A painting of an old windmill hung crookedly behind the steel desk and leather executive chair. A wooden-backed straight chair stood in front of the desk. There was no carpeting, just a hard-textured floor, as if thinly veiled, wood-covered concrete.

Rube sat. The paint stank and Rube’s legs ached. Jesus Jehoshaphat, what a mess. He wanted to slip off his shoes. He’d put them back on at the beach, but they were wet inside. They squished slightly when he wiggled his toes.

“Damned painters,” the sheriff muttered. He filled the leather chair arm to arm. He sniffed. “Makes my nose run.” His face was wide and almost chinless, the lines smoothed out with flesh, but there was a hint of hollowness beneath the deep-set brown eyes. The plaque on his desk said SHERIFF JOHN BOGGERT. Nothing more.

“You wanna go over it one more time, Mr...?”

“Rubekowski,” Rube said. “And no, I don’t. I told you how I found her twice, and that’s all there is. My story won’t change with a third telling.”

Sheriff Boggert muttered something about tourists, how they were more trouble than—

“I live here,” Rube said. “I’m not a damned tourist. And I’ve told you all I know. Book me or let me go.”

Sheriff John glared at Rube with his haunted eyes. “Oh now, don’t get excited and swallow your gum. This is just procedure until I get the coroner’s report.”

Rube stood. “Which is it to be?”

“You live here, huh? Funny, I don’t remember seeing you around town.”

“Just moved,” Rube said. “A week ago.”

“Current address?”

“Three fifty East Main, that old house back by the creek.”

The sheriff scribbled on a pad. “Yeah, the old Huffinton place. You renting or buying?”

“Renting. For now. Why?”

“Just curious.”

They stared at each other after that, in the ensuing silence. Finally the sheriff sighed, then stood. Rube held his stare.

“Go on home. But I’ll be in touch.”

Rube nodded and stood himself. He backed out the door.

And that’s that, he thought. He threaded his way through the tourists with a sense of anger. He’d only done his civic duty. Why was Boggert so nasty?

But then Rube thought of the woman in the kelp, the big dog gnawing possessively on her hand. God, she was so cold. She radiated cold. Colder than the sea had been when his bare feet hit it early that morning.

The thought cooled some of Rube’s anger, but the images playing in the minefields of his brain made him wobble a bit and he strayed into a fat lady with a big sack and almost tipped her over. He caught himself and bowed and made apologies — though she glared at him in anger, beady little tourist eyes like two stones fitted in a bowl of fat — and Rube wobbled on over to a bench in the plaza off the street and let his head down on his arms.

He wondered, as he buried his head, where the big old dog, Buddy, had gone?

Rube would have been all right if it weren’t for the other memory. He shook off most of the day’s effects, made a light supper of tuna on French bread, with a nice salad; he cleaned the apartment — it was a house, not an apartment, but he couldn’t shake his East Coast mentality. The place had one bedroom and a living room-kitchenette, with the inevitable sliding doors that led to the little deck looking out upon nothing. Actually there was a view back there, a wispy tree that loomed high over the garden plot and cut the afternoon sunlight to a drizzle. Beyond there was a hill that towered and cut the morning sunlight, but that was okay. Rube could live with a few shadows.

But then he’d lain down to rest and he’d almost dozed off when that old memory kicked in to reveal a scene he thought lost forever.

His only other visit to an ocean marched like a slideshow past his inner eyes. Only this was the Atlantic, a long time ago. He’d just received his first promotion from Mercer Chemical, a boost up from common chemist to research supervisor, and the boss had taken a group of them out on his fishing boat. The day was blustery and bright, the ocean a cruel, hard-edged blue with waves that frothed and leaped against the boat. The other supervisors were old hands, playing with their fishing tackle, but Rube just held to the rail and stared out at the sea. In front of the bow something long and sleek and beautiful leaped and swam, and Rube was hypnotized by the sight. He turned to ask his boss about this beautiful thing, but his boss was leaning next to the rail, an ugly harpoon in his big hands, yelling at the mate, “Close on it! Starboard now, quickly!” and his big arm moved and the harpoon flew and the blue-grey skin of the dolphin erupted with a flash bright as a red flower. Bright as the red carnations Eleshia had grown in their garden before the cancer took her. The harpoon ripped the dolphin’s flesh as the cancer had ripped Eleshia’s. Only there was something more terrible about the harpoon wound. Something more insidious and needless because it was wielded by a man who didn’t need to kill. The cancer had been mindless...

Rube sat up in a sweat and tried to shake off the mix of images. Two dreams in one, both horrible memories, both repressed; but that’s what was bothering him. He’d seen a wound like that before, and it was definitely made by a harpoon.

Outside the late afternoon sun filtered weakly through the leaves of the big tree above his tiny deck. Someone had harpooned that girl, Rube was certain of it now.

He put his shoes and socks back on and plucked a lightweight nylon jacket from the back of the chair and shut the house door behind him. Rube had never said a word to his boss about the slaying of the dolphin, had just stood open-mouthed and dumbfounded and shocked. He was afraid to spill out his anger, was afraid of losing his precious job and his new promotion. In some small way he’d hated his lack of courage for years now. But he’d have to talk to Sheriff Boggert again. He had to tell the man what he knew.

The tourists had thinned out, and the going was clear. To the west, over the Pacific, the sky was turning pink from the refraction of dust in the clouds. Rube cursed his scientist’s mind as he thought it. Why ruin a pretty image like that, with the petty small knowledge of why it happened? But it was part and parcel of the animal he was, the mind he lived in, and he’d grown more accepting with age.

The pink in the clouds was quickly turning red, and Rube kept seeing the rent in the girl’s chest. She’d probably been pretty, and she was obviously young. And now she’s dead, a part of his mind screamed. Or was it some horrible accident? Was it some terrible mishap that no one wanted to report? Maybe by now someone had reported it.

Sheriff Boggert would know.

Much as Rube hated seeing the man again.

He almost missed the tiny office as he walked by with his head down, but the caustic smell of new paint made him follow his nose back.

No light inside.

Door shut and locked; he jiggled it to make sure. Hours listed said ten A M. to five P.M. It was only a few minutes past five. Rube started to walk off, then thought better of it. He stepped back to the door and took out his notepad and pen, scribbled on it, and slipped the note beneath the door. No sense irritating the authorities any more than he had to. Sheriff Boggert looked like a man who was anxious to jail someone — like a man hard put by the demands of a one-man job. Rube didn’t want to be his victim. Being new to a small town was a lot like a kid’s first day at school. The bullies and the big guys had a tendency to pick on you.

Go home, he told himself. Go back to your little place and turn on the TV and shut the front door and let it all pass.

And he started to, had turned on the sidewalk and was heading back for the east side of town, when the horn beeped and made him turn his head. Boggert’s big dog face stared at him from his big black and blue sheriff’s Jeep.

“You’re blocking traffic like that,” Rube said, still walking as the Jeep followed him down Main Street.

“Don’t matter,” Boggert called through the window. “They can go around.”

They moved on like that, a pair of old dogs sizing each other up. And in the city where Rube grew up, the people would have gone around. Here, though, in this tiny beach town, people just stayed behind the sheriff’s Jeep, forming a line of cars back to the last street.

“I left you a note,” Rube called, still walking.

“I ain’t got time to go get it.” The Jeep lurched ahead and pulled over, half blocking the sidewalk. The door popped open. “Get in, Rubekowski.”

Rube stared at the open door as though it were the open mouth of a shark.

But Rube got in. He pulled the big door shut after him, but he left his seatbelt undone in protest.

The sheriff turned a corner, still cruising, his eyes moving left and right over the shops and people. “What the note say?”

“I know how she died,” Rube said.

Boggert leaned his head back and chuckled, the sound as deep and vibrant as breakers against the sand.

“Something put a big damned hole in her, Rubekowski. That’s how she died.”

Rube shook his head in irritation. “Somebody harpooned her.”

Boggert looked angry. He glared at Rube like he might at a precocious child. “The hell you say.”

Rube stayed with the big sheriff’s eyes: they locked like lovers in an ugly embrace.

“It’s not a wound I’d forget,” Rube said. “I saw it once before.”

“You saw someone harpooned before?”

Rube hesitated. “Not exactly a person, no, but—”

“Yeah, sure,” Boggert said. He shook his big dog head. “You know, Rubekowski, we got coroner’s reports for this, and that’s what we’re waiting for.”

Rube looked away, through the big windshield. The sun was lower now, dark plucking at the buildings, and the wind had picked up. A Dixie cup splattered against the glass and Rube twitched an inch in his seat.

“Won’t the trail get cold, sheriff?”

Boggert’s eyes stabbed at Rube from across the seat. “We don’t even know, to begin with, how long she was in the water. Coulda been a couple of days. The trail is already cold.” The sheriff let it go with a tiny shake of his head, as though castigating himself for talking to this man at all.

“Besides, what do you care, Rubekowski? What’s your interest in all this?”

Rube continued to stare through the windshield. It was a Friday evening, and the tourists were starting to pack the sidewalks again. As though L.A. and San Francisco had emptied their streets, had set the wanderers loose to rape and pillage... the way Rube felt Mercer Chemical had raped and pillaged, with methods too insidious to bring to trial. Subtle hurts upon the public. Subtle acts against nature. And what was his interest in the case? What answer could he give this bulldog of a man who worked for the public good?

“It’s the indecency of it.” Rube moved his hands in the air as though he could draw a picture the sheriff could understand. “The way someone just punctured her body with a harpoon, as if she were a fish — something less than human.”

For the first time, Boggert smiled. It wasn’t a smile that Rube would have liked over a friendly lunch, was more of a contemptuous sneer. “You think death is pretty, all wrapped in neat motives and easy death? Some sigh where the actress turns her head left and quietly passes away?” The big man snorted and burst into a quick but nasty laugh of derision.

Maybe Rube did. Maybe that’s what he expected. Something from a TV tube or big screen where the blood was makeup and the actress opened her eyes and walked away. But this lady wasn’t walking, had lain bloated and violated, and no one even knew her name. Rube remembered her tattered green dress, a sheath that was torn too badly even to serve as a shroud.

“Do you know yet... who she is?”

Boggert snapped his gaze back to Rube’s. “Was, you mean?”

Rube met his eyes with shock that quickly wore to a sad kind of moisture, as though he’d picked up a small piece of dirt in the corner of his eye. At least he explained it to his inner self that way.

“Yeah, was,” Rube said. “Who was she?”

The sheriff’s face went stone hard and cold. “Somebody’s little girl. Somebody’s loved one.” His voice, gruff now and husky, skipped a beat. “Somebody’s... hate. I’m not gonna to tell you who she was; there’s no reason for you to know.”

The sheriff coughed to cover his emotion, as if feeling were a mistake he wouldn’t make again. Not soon.

Rube could only nod and blink his wet eyes as the twilight sun closed in on the tiny tourist town and its evening shoppers.

But Boggert softened then, and a small, friendly smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “I’ll let you know as soon as I find out more. Meantime, you go home. Get some sleep. Rearrange your furniture or tinker in your garden. But stay outa mine. Okay?”

Rube stayed silent. He felt grim and patronized.

“Sure, sheriff,” he said, stepping out after Boggert stopped the Jeep.

Rube walked away without looking back.

The trouble was... Rube couldn’t sleep.

At first he thought it was his new place, the strange way the night wind blew the tree against the railing on the back deck. The rustling was like a yearning, a soft silky sound, like cloth against flesh. Green dress, tattered dress, rent with the hate of someone’s child. The thoughts were night thoughts, and they chased the real night sounds across the pictures in his mind with a frightening clarity.

He remembered the wound so clearly because it had shocked his middle-class values. Rube had never been to war or done battle in a squared off circle as some men had, and his lifetime of toil had come not in a sweatshop or a factory but a modem day laboratory where he played with chemical combinations that sometimes healed and sometimes — he feared — killed. But that had been his life and he’d cherished those values, and when his boss had shown him the array of harpoons, each designed a bit differently, each with a more vicious type of head to gouge or bite into the flesh of the fish, Rube felt a bit squeamish. He should have shaken it off, would have, eventually, would have accepted the killing as part of everyday living, except the fish wasn’t a fish but a mammal — an intelligent creature. The dolphin had been off the starboard bow, playing, teasing the waves and the sun when his boss blasted him from the water like so much detritus — so much cheap trash.

Rube rolled over. Emotional old man, he chided. In the night his voice sounded cold and lonely and a little creaky.

Someone had tom a hole through that young girl.

Emotional old man?

Rube had no children. And his wife was long dead. And now he had no work. At sixty-two he could see it all stretch out before him, too many good years left and not enough to do. “Good an excuse as any,” he mumbled. He sat up and rubbed his face and strained through the darkness with eyes accustomed to more light. He couldn’t see the tree that sounded so much like cloth against flesh, but he could smell the night, the salty core of it blowing from the ocean. All that life below the waves. Struggling to survive. One big mouth closing over a smaller tail. Eat and thrash and survive because the world made you that way?

But who made a world that harpooned young girls?

“Jesus Jehoshaphat, next I’ll be crying in my beer and going to revival meetings and...” But he couldn’t shake off the image of her body lying in the surf with that big hole through her chest, as though someone had performed an Aztec ritual and ripped her heart loose the hard way.

“Do something else,” Boggert had warned. “Rearrange your furniture or tinker in your garden, but stay out of mine.”

But he couldn’t. He stood by the bed and wobbled for a moment as the feeling returned to his legs, then he reached for his clothes draped over the chair back.

Except for the Salty Dog, the village looked deserted. As Rube walked toward it, the breeze washed his face with a tangy fog as heavy as cigarette smoke. Rube could hear the twang of a steel guitar and the high tinkle of glasses followed by garish laughter. Light, soft and gold and warm looking, seeped through the open door. Rube padded down the sidewalk in his brown chinos and black nylon jacket, rubbing at his stubbled face. He should have shaved, but he’d been too restless and shaky not to cut himself.

Inside, the bar looked like mahogany, running full length from rear to front. Bright red leather sparkled with chrome trim, though only half the seats were full. Rube took a stool near the end and winced as the bartender stuck his big ugly face across the distance between them. His breath was bad — onions and bourbon and cigarettes, with a touch of garlic.

“What’ll it be?”

“Just a draft beer.”

Rube sipped and glanced around. The tiny dance floor was empty except for a pair of young people in cowboy hats. They nuzzled each other’s necks as they danced close, their bodies wiggling like upright snakes in some intricate mating dance. Beyond them, in the back, old men sat hunched together in one of the booths. Their clothes were rough-hewn, and their faces were bearded. They talked in low tones, like conspirators, but their whispers carried.

“It’s that po-lution, from the big chemical plants — you know there’s a power plant right next to the Morro Bay Fishery?”

“Well, whatever, the fish ain’t running. It’s take tourists out or starve. On bad days I begin to think I’d rather starve...”

Their accents were flat and hard, no accents at all.

Rube sipped his beer. The music played again. The same couples danced.

Maybe coming out had been a mistake. What was he doing? Looking for clues? Maybe the sheriff was right. Tend your own garden and stay out of his.

Something big and furry and yellow caught his eye.

Rube turned on the bar stool. In the golden light from the bar, the dog’s eyes looked feral and ancient and judging. He sat like a huge, fur-covered lump just outside the door — sat way back on his haunches — but his eyes seemed to search the smoky room.

Rube remembered the way the big dog had worried the girl’s hand. As though he could bring her back to life if he could just pull her from the clump of seaweed.

The boogie brass rumbled through the bar’s stereo system, a sound so loud Rube thought he saw the smoke quiver with the vibrations.

The dog whimpered.

“You wanna ’nother brew?” Smell of garlic laced with rum.

“No, thanks,” Rube said, turning to the barkeep. “You know that dog?”

“Personally?”

Rube wasn’t in the mood. It was nearly midnight and he was suddenly more keyed up than ever. He needed to do something that would at least allow him to go home and sleep. Just one little fact would do it. Such as — why the dog sat there.

The bartender started to turn away, then changed his mind. Almost wistfully, Rube thought, the big man with the garlic breath looked at the yellow dog. “That’s... that used to be Betty and Jesse’s mutt.”

As though that was enough in the way of explanation.

“I don’t understand ‘used to be,’ ” Rube said softly.

The barkeep played with his bar rag, mopping at a damp spot. When he looked up, his eyes were redder than before, as though something painful had kicked him from the inside of his skull.

“That girl you found this morning... her name was Betty Sturgis. She was engaged to a guy named Jesse, a local fisherman. Buddy was their dog.” His eyes had gone deeper now, seeking out whatever hurt inside. “The dog used to wait for them out there — just like he is now.”

Rube stared stupidly at what was left of his brew. Then he asked what seemed the logical question. “Why doesn’t Jesse take him home?”

The bartender gulped at something invisible in his throat. “You don’t know why?”

Rube shook his head. “I wouldn’t ask if I did.”

The dog whimpered.

The bartender seemed to make a decision, and his face turned angry and red. “Damned tourist. Drink your beer and go on back to L.A. or wherever you came from.”

“I’m not a tourist,” Rube said softly.

But the bartender was beyond reasoning. “Then you should know, dammit.”

Rube sat stiffly.

“Jesse’s dead,” he said. “Been dead a week now.”

Rube felt like someone had clubbed him. “I’m sorry,” he finally managed, but the bartender had already turned and gone.

Rube stood and stared past the bar, then walked out into the night.

The dog stumbled up to all fours, tongue lolling.

“So we meet again,” Rube said in a whisper.

The dog whimpered, then shut his mouth and followed Rube down the sidewalk.

Every time Rube stopped, the dog stopped behind him. Rube finally turned and pointed back down the street. “Go home, Buddy. Do you hear me?”

Rube realized the stupidity of his words. The dog no longer had a home. His owners were dead.

The knowledge haunted Rube as he walked toward his house. The street forked here, the left tongue of the fork slanting off at a steep angle that rose to Saint Anne’s Cemetery. Up there, above the town, was a small wooden chapel painted white, its stark crucifix like some Celtic dagger that hung askew above the double doors. A big spotlight lit the front of the chapel. Like a used car lot, Rube thought painfully.

Rube was staying to the right, trying to shake off the night’s bad feelings, when the dog growled behind him. The growl was sinister, and Rube tensed, thinking perhaps the dog was going to run up his heels and take away some hide. Instead, the dog blew past Rube so fast his pants cuffs rose in the breeze. Rube watched as the snarling Labrador streaked up the hill.

On top of the hill the shadow of a man danced down the road, the shadow thrown long and sticklike from the large spotlight. Buddy was almost invisible in the night, blending with the yellow bushes on the side of the road, but his shadow too was finally caught and projected, until both shadows came together.

Then the shadows broke, the man’s shorter as he turned and ran off. Down the other side? Rube found his feet turning to the left fork, starting up the hill of their own accord.

Buddy had paused at the crest, dropping his haunches to the asphalt. His leonine head went back, and he wailed.

The man’s stick-figure came back, the shadow growing from nowhere, and the dog rose on his haunches, head lowered, the growl almost a hiss.

Rube tried to hurry, but the hill was steep and his legs wobbled.

Shadows crashed together, then disappeared over the crest of the hill.

Rube’s heart pounded. The big spotlight caught him, and he stopped and shaded his eyes and stared up at the crucifix. Shadows played there, a halo formed from insects buzzing the light. “Give me strength,” he muttered. He stopped for just a moment to rest his palms on his thighs, fighting for air. Past the light he could see the edge of a steel fence. There was a gap there, where someone had slid back a gate. Beyond, in the dim slice of moon, he could make out tombstones. Like huge teeth they curved away and down. The air felt colder suddenly, as if a door had opened on some Nordic hell. Rube shivered and rubbed himself. What was he looking for — besides the dog and the sticklike shadow of a man? Then he saw the dog. Buddy lay sprawled across the length of a grave. The earth was freshly turned, and there was no headstone yet. But there were stones on either side.

Rube moved gingerly, muttering to Buddy as he went. “Easy, boy. It’s okay.”

The words echoed.

Buddy sniffed and shuffled to his feet. He moved off the grave, just a few paces, and sniffed at the ground.

Darker here, the spotlight pointing the other way, down the long hill.

Rube fumbled in his jacket pocket for a book of matches.

The wind blew out the first.

“Damn.” His voice sounded hollow and old.

He cupped the next and held it to the nearest tombstone.

Before he could read what it said, he noticed a fresh bouquet of flowers by the head of the mound. Buddy had half crushed them, and now the wind threatened to blow them away.

Rube stared at the tombstone next to the fresh mound. “In Loving Memory of Maria, Mother of Jesse, Husband of Walter. May all your seas be fair.”

He died a week ago. The bartender’s words, still fresh in Rube’s memory. They were engaged.

The dog whined.

The few facts Rube knew gnawed at his mind. What were the odds, he wondered, of such a coincidence? Dying within a week of each other? And how had Jesse died?

The match almost burned his fingers then, and he lost his concentration. He closed his eyes tightly for a time, balancing himself with one hand on the tombstone of Jesse’s mother. When he opened his eyes again, he could see better. With age, he’d noticed, everything took longer, even his night vision. Now, as he looked around on the ground, he noticed the new grave was scuffed and tom, as though a pitched battle had taken place.

“Buddy? Are you all right?”

He slowly moved toward the dog, who put his head between his paws and looked mournful.

Rube felt the big dog’s head. Wet! His first thought was blood, and he lifted his hand to his face, expecting the worst. But it was just water with a slight floral scent. He knelt down and searched around the head of the new grave. A shard of pottery caught the moonlight. A larger shard lay a few feet away. And another.

“He hit you with the vase, didn’t he?”

Buddy sniffed.

Rube picked up the bouquet of flowers now loosely strewn across the mounded earth. Pretty little things with pointy petals. Early poinsettias, he realized. From someone’s garden. And something else. At first he thought it was another flower, a stray, very dark red petal. But then he felt it between his fingers. It didn’t shred like the flesh of a plant. Cloth. And the red was blood. He was sure of it even before he brought it to his nose and sniffed. Fresh blood. Just a hint of metal there — copper or iron. Blood had a smell. He had worked in enough labs to know that.

“You got a piece of him, huh, boy?”

Buddy whined, then lifted his head. Rube dangled the piece of cloth in front of the dog’s nose. The dog rose unsteadily, back legs wobbling. He leaned forward, though, and sniffed the cloth. Then he let out a yowl that made Rube jump.

“Easy, you’ll wake the—”

Then Rube remembered where he was.

Go home and go to bed, he told himself. In the morning he would take the cloth down and give it to Boggert, a gift from the town’s newest resident. Hell, it wasn’t his job.

And he almost had himself convinced. He made it to the bottom of the hill with Buddy trailing him. A little dazed, but the dog was starting to get his legs beneath him again. At the bottom, Rube started to turn left, toward home, but Buddy’s growl stopped him.

Worse, his old habit of noticing details kicked in. Like a bad habit.

Rube turned to see the dog sniffing at spots on the walkway. Could be anything, Rube told himself. Some kid dripped his milk nickel in the heat of the day. Some tourist had a leaky beach bucket. But he knew better, even before the dog started to seriously sniff and follow the spots. Whoever had hit Buddy on the head had gotten past him in the dark. Wouldn’t be hard to do. And Buddy had gotten a piece of him before whoever it was conked the old dog on the head. Now Buddy smelled his blood on the sidewalk.

Buddy started to trot, an ungainly thing seen from Rube’s perspective. But the big dog ate the distance like a racehorse, even trotting.

“Buddy!”

No use.

Go home and go to bed.

But he couldn’t.

Wait and tell Boggert tomorrow.

But he couldn’t. He felt responsible somehow.

Rube turned and started after the dog, running a little.

The saloon was almost empty as Rube trotted by. He craned his neck and saw the big bartender leaning over to jaw with a lady holding a pool stick. Even the old fishermen in back had left.

Call me a tourist, huh?

At the end of the street the sheriff’s office sat dark and closed. The Jeep was missing from the lot. Rube knew too little about the town or sheriff. His landlord had said the sheriff was new, that they shared him with Morro Bay and another tiny town along the coast. This wasn’t New York, he reminded himself.

He slowed to a walk, blowing hard.

The marine layer found Rube before he found the turnoff to the harbor. First the slice of moon disappeared, as though a hungry gray sky had devoured it. Then the street lights started to blink out, nothing left but a fuzz of light through the heavy mist.

Rube shivered as he walked, fingering the bloody patch of cloth. The fog was too thick; he couldn’t see. He turned to go home.

Buddy howled — only this time there was anger in the howl, the sound of a predator.

Rube moved through the fog toward the sound.

A hull creaked against a dock, water slapped — but he couldn’t see a foot in front of him. Stumble around like a foolish tourist and fall in the water and get washed out to sea and drown yourself. My God, Rubekowski, what would old Sheriff Boggert and the bartender say to that? Think of the laugh they’d have at your funeral, you old—

And then he heard something he’d hear again and again, many nights, in his worst dreams. A thwock of wood on bone, a heartrending, terrible sound. Only to be surpassed by a worse sound, an awful whiny little dog sound, like a puppy lost and alone.

Rube tried to part the fog as Moses must have the Red Sea. If sheer will had been enough, the night would have cleared. But as it was, Rube just stumbled forward, his hands waving helplessly in front of his body, like a man batting at a smokescreen. His foot stumbled on something, something that was solid and rose at an angle from the ground. He walked up the gangplank, realizing as he did so that he was almost blind. The thought hadn’t cleared his mind when he stumbled over the edge of something and went flailing forward to land on all fours. Pain shot from a knee up through his hip, but he clenched his teeth and kept the whimper to himself. He’d just caught his balance when the boat lurched and he lost it again. What fool would move a boat in this fog, he wondered, grabbing for the deck. He hugged the deck and tried to breathe deep while listening once again for the dog’s whimper. Instead he heard a bell. A buoy marker, he realized. He’d heard them earlier when he was wading. Beneath his body there was a thrumming now, a deep engine sound as the boat moved toward the marker.

This is crazy. He can’t see. He’ll crash and—

As they moved, someone shuffled through the fog. Rube could see a disturbance in the misty textures, like a ghost passing.

Buddy whimpered. A soft, hurt kind of sound. But then it grew and he started to howl.

“I’ll shut ya up.” That awful thwock again.

Silence.

Rube stood. His balance was bad, but he was determined to stay up. He moved toward the last sounds he heard.

The late September onshore breeze picked up and plucked at the fog, thinning it, and light streamed from an open cabin. Rube could see a figure hunched over something. The man’s hand was raised.

A belaying pin, Rube realized, as thick as a man’s forearm and shorter than a Louisville Slugger. The man was waving it above Buddy’s head. Buddy lay on his side, one paw up, as if to defend himself.

“Ya had to have a chunk of me, huh? Again? You’re worse than the little bitch that owned ye. She had to have it all, too. Killing my boy wasn’t enough. She wanted the captain’s boat. My home. My home since Maria died.”

The voice was a slow rave.

“I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t, you see? I had to—”

Rube stepped on something loose on the deck, a corner of a tarp. The sound wasn’t much, but the old man spun.

Rube thought of at least three things to say but couldn’t get them out his mouth.

“What are you doing on my boat?”

“I heard the dog whimper,” Rube said. It sounded lame, and he knew it. Then again, it was the truth. Or most of it.

Rube stared at Buddy. The dog’s head leaked blood.

“He’s a bad dog,” the captain said.

“I don’t understand,” Rube said.

“He attacked me at my son’s grave,” the captain continued. The way the old man went on, Rube almost felt he was talking to himself. “The dog’s old, and he’s gone quite mad, I’m afraid.”

The boat still moved toward the buoy marker, out to sea, and Rube wondered how he steered. An automatic pilot setting, maybe? The mist was just that now, no longer heavy enough to call fog, and Rube could clearly see the old captain’s face, the potato nose and the reddened, wrinkled skin. The chin was hidden in a thatch of heavy beard. But the blue eyes held Rube’s, and they accused.

“Look,” Rube said, “he’s an old dog. I’m an old man, too. I understand the madness of retirement. Let me take the dog.”

The captain glared at him — the way they all did at tourists.

“I’ve got room at my place, and a yard.” And a garden I haven’t started, he almost added, thinking he’d start one, thinking of the sheriff and how much he wished Boggert were here. Wish you were here, to protect the tourist? Like a joke message on a bad postcard. But Rube meant it. There was something lethal in the captain’s eyes and stance. The man wouldn’t let him go, and Rube knew it.

The captain moved from his position over the half-conscious dog. “You followed me, didn’t you?”

Rube backed up clumsily. “No. I followed the dog.”

“You’re clever, no?”

“No,” Rube said.

The captain’s eyes changed for just a second. He seemed unsteadier than the deck should make him. Fatigue or drink or grief?

“She thought she was clever, too,” the captain said.

Rube tried to look stupid. Hell, he felt stupid enough, swaying on the deck of a fishing boat next to a sad old dog half unconscious on the deck. Trouble was, he knew what the captain was talking about. Kind of. She had to be the girl Rube had found in the seaweed. And it must have shown on his face.

“It’s too bad,” the old captain said.

The light from the pilot’s house seemed to surround him as he thwocked the club heavily into one hand. “She thought she could steal Jesse from the sea, from me and his rightful heritage. She thought she could steal an old man’s life.”

Rube backpedaled clumsily toward the center of the deck. But sea legs must take time or special practice because he stumbled and fell backwards over a row of crates. His head banged hard, and the night darkened for a second. When his head cleared, the captain stood above him.

“She had no right to any of it,” the captain said.

“Of course not,” Rube agreed.

Rube felt like he was floating on the deck; he was dizzy even lying down, and he reached out for something to grab, something solid. His hand wrapped around a pole as round as a broomstick, in a rack. He grabbed the stick and pulled himself up, at least halfway, before the stick pulled loose and Rube clattered back to the deck. He still held the stick, though. The end gleamed in the light from the cabin, like a spear.

Later, there would be thought. Too much thought. But for now, as the captain stepped forward, drawing back the big club for the kill, Rube didn’t think. He sat up and launched the big harpoon like a man born to it. He’d once played softball, once thrown a javelin, and this was not much different. Except this dug its way into the captain’s stomach, right below the ribcage. The big steel end made a deep sound, like an animal sucking at meat. The shank quivered from the captain like an exclamation point as Rube scrambled to his feet. He stood there watching the captain grab at the wooden shank. The captain’s face beaded with sweat. Muscles spasmed, and then blood spurted form the captain’s mouth.

“She wanted it all. By damn, no!” and he crumpled onto the deck.

“Jesus Jehoshaphat.”

And Rube still didn’t really know what the captain had done. But he knelt beside him, shaking him with horror and revulsion.

The captain curled around the shank, as though it gave him comfort.

“Did you kill her?” Rube realized he was screaming.

No answer. Maybe a slight grin at the corner of the old man’s mouth? The captain died curled tightly around the shank of the harpoon.

Rube stood and tottered toward the pilothouse. There was some kind of automatic pilot, and Rube didn’t want to mess with it. He found the radio and got that working easily enough. A shoreside operator mumbled from the receiver.

“Get me Sheriff Boggert,” Rube said. “It’s an emergency. Wake him up if you have to. And I need to know how to drive this boat.”

They sat in the stinky, newly painted room. Alone finally. There had been many people buzzing about and many questions. But not enough answers, Rube thought. Though what he had would have to do.

Boggert looked as fierce as a bulldog who’d lost his last fight. “If you’d a just waited,” Boggert said, “I was gettin’ on out to talk to the man. But I didn’t have the damned report yet.”

“If I’d waited, the dog would be dead.”

Boggert just stared. “Oh for Christ’s sake.” He paused. “Then again, you can’t be sure of even that.”

Rube was too tired to hear it. But he knew he would.

“Maybe if you hadn’t let that dog up to the cemetery, well — maybe he’d a gone on home. Or to someone’s home. Or...”

Rube stood up. “Are you through with me?”

Boggert scratched at his leg. “Just about, yeah. Come sign this affidavit.”

The sun was up, hard and bright, as Boggert drove Rube home. “You get some sleep, Rube. It’s been a hard day and night.”

“For a tourist?” Rube said.

“For anyone,” Boggert said.

They drove up Main, trying not to hit the new day’s tourists.

“It was self-defense, Rube. We matched the harpoon wound with one from the rack.”

Rube was horrified for just a moment. “Not the one I killed the captain with?”

“No,” Boggert said. “A different one. The captain was from a long line of oldtime whalers. Guess he kept them as — memories.”

“Memories,” Rube muttered, knowing he now had too many.

“Well, the old man was bonkers. No doubt about that. Betty had broken up with Jesse — some big fight over money — and Jesse, he just couldn’t handle it. The old man found him hanging in a cheap hotel room.”

“Memories,” Rube muttered.

“And then she must have braced the old man for money. Probably said Jesse had promised her half the business. It fits, Rube.”

“I guess,” Rube said.

They stopped at a crosswalk, the closest thing in town to a real stoplight.

“And he was gonna kill the dog and you and drop you over the side.”

“Dropping me over the side would have been enough,” Rube said. “I can’t swim.”

Boggert shook his head. “Maybe you are a tourist, after all.”

They pulled up in front of Rube’s driveway, a winding stretch of asphalt that led to the house in back.

Rube got out. Opened the car’s back door and called.

“Come on, Buddy.”

The big old dog had a bandage on his head, but he stuck out a giant tongue and licked at Rube’s hand, then jumped down from the back of the Jeep and started to follow Rube to the house.

Rube had a garden to start, things to plant. Maybe something good and green would grow. Maybe something green and alive.