Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 40, No. 6, June, 1995

Line of Duty by Stephen Wasylyk

Pressing down on the rolling hills, the humid heat caused man in general to sweat and curse but encouraged certain of the lowest forms in the ecological chain to multiply, spread, chew, and blight with primeval glee.

In the small apple orchard on the hill above the house, a masked, gloved, hatted, and freely perspiring Roback was attempting to curb their enthusiasm with his sprayer, hoping to save at least some of the season’s yield.

Overriding the hiss of the nozzle, the staccato barking of the dog echoed up the slope. He released the trigger on the wand, brushed sweat from his brow, and looked down the orchard row.

Because the two-lane macadam made a sharp turn at the corner of the fenced yard before rolling toward the horizon, he could clearly see the brown bitch at full alert at the end of the twenty foot chain anchored beside the front door of the white farmhouse, eyes fixed on two men slowly approaching along the blacktop through shimmering heat.

Giving the alarm. Her job. Too many incidents of strangers walking into a man’s house while it was unoccupied or his wife unprotected.

The dog would protect Shelley, all right. Definitely her dog, her scent alone enough to set the short tail wagging furiously.

The dog only tolerated Roback, which was fine with him. Never big on pets, he believed animals on a farm were there to earn their keep.

He pulled off the mask, unslung the heavy sprayer, and massaged his shoulder.

“Choice between us, I go,” he’d said to Shelley.

Shelley had laughed.

“Watch,” said Roback. He placed one hand on her shoulder and lifted the other. The dog was on her feet instantly, head lowered, growling.

“Now you threaten me,” he said.

Shelley raised her hand.

The dog’s ears lifted.

“Know what she’s saying?” asked Roback. “Go get him, babe. I’ll back you up.”

Shelley smiled and stroked the dog’s head, undiluted adoration in the bitch’s brown eyes at her touch.

He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, removed his hat, and drew the cloth across his balding head, wondering if the dog was so extra protective because she sensed Shelley’s disability.

Deepset eyes slitted against the sun, he watched as the men stopped at the gate, beyond the reach of the dog, feeling a touch of anger when his wife came out on the porch in her wheelchair. He’d told her countless times to stay inside, that there was no point in advertising for the benefit of those who might be looking for an edge. She’d patted the Ladysmith .38 Special he’d bought for her and grinned at him.

If he didn’t know better, he could almost believe she did it deliberately to irritate him. Stubborn woman, Shelley. Insisted on doing everything she’d done before the accident unless it was downright impossible. Wise woman, Shelley. Knew that if she allowed that disability to get the upper hand, they’d have no choice but to sell out and move on. Loved the place as much as he did. Almost as much as she loved that dog.

She rolled down the slight ramp, the dog an alert bodyguard at her side. After a short talk, the half-inch figures of the men continued along the road toward Roback, while Shelley propelled herself back into the house.

Roback slipped the slim transceiver from the holster on his belt, pressed the button, and said, “What was that all about?”

“The big one is my lover, but I told him he’d picked the wrong time because you were watching.”

“You should have told him to forget the whole thing because I’m always watching. Why are they walking in this heat?”

“They said their car broke down a half mile back and they wanted to use the phone. I told them they had my sympathy but, since they needed help, they’d be better off by walking another two miles to the service station at the crossroads.”

“More like three miles.”

“So they’ll curse the dumb broad and sweat a little more. The bugs are calling, Aphid Man. Get back to work.”

He grinned and reholstered the unit. Until he’d become smart enough to buy the transceivers, he’d run back to the house almost every hour to see if she was all right. A lot of heated arguments over that. Bless technology for bringing peace to the household.

She didn’t know it, but he planned to get her a computer, not only to ease her keeping of their financial records, but also to provide her with another link to the outside world. Farm wife in a wheelchair speeding down the information highway.

Taking a final swipe with the handkerchief and replacing his hat, he grunted as he swung the sprayer across his broad shoulders. Something made him pause before resuming spraying. He waited, watching the men come down the road toward him.

The green hills rolled away, brilliant under a cloudless sky. Far down the valley, the new medical center glistened on its hilltop perch.

No rain soon and he’d really take a licking on this year’s crop. The dog was quiet now, like the birds and insects; the only sound the slight roar from a jet leaving a contrail in the fifty-below cold at forty thousand feet.

Could use some of those ice crystals down here, thought Ro-back wryly.

The news that morning had mentioned a strike at the plant some fifty miles away. Fifteen an hour the men wanted. His lips twisted. Try dawn to dusk, seven days a week, for a buck and a half per.

The men stopped directly below him. One was average size, the other looming large in the bright sun. They seemed to argue before starting back toward the house.

Roback cursed and slipped out of the harness.

More than knee high, with a short head, deep chested, and brown in color, there was no telling what the dog’s bloodlines were, which mattered not at all. As a watchdog she was worth her weight in gold — but that chain confined her to the front of the house to give the alarm and act as a deterrent.

She could be circumvented, since the post and rail fence was merely decorative, cutting back on the far side to enclose the neglected garden, one of the few things Shelley could no longer manage; the near side ending in a small grove. Its length was broken by the gate opening and the entrance to the gravel driveway that led to the barn and other outbuildings in the rear.

Which was why Shelley had the Ladysmith, but there were times when a gun might not be enough.

Strides lengthened by the slope, he moved to intercept them, catching up where the road curved.

Brought up short by the chain, the dog hung suspended by her collar, standing on her rear legs, eyes bright with menace.

The man was bigger than Roback thought, a good three inches taller than his six feet, the body proportioned to go with the height, pectorals and biceps straining his white T-shirt, lower torso poured into jeans. The face was ruggedly handsome, curly hair sun-bleached, a look in the blue eyes as though they were regarding you from a distance. The face was vaguely familiar.

Congeniality and politeness had never been Roback’s strong points, and the heat, interruption, and rapid walk made him even more irritable. “What do you want?” he asked harshly.

Perspiration soaking his light shirt, the smaller man swept sweat from his forehead with a thin hand. Straight dark hair queued back; deepset, dark eyes shadowed by the sun but flitting and restless. Well dressed, compared to the big man. Knitted shirt with designer’s logo, slacks well tailored, expensive leather shoes.

“Take it easy, mister. Our car broke down back there over the rise. You know how they are these days. We’ll need a tow — just want to use your phone.”

Maybe, thought Roback. And maybe you saw a woman in a wheelchair and thought why not.

He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Village in walking distance with a service station.”

“So she said, but it’s a long walk in this heat—”

“Want to see Joanie,” said the big man.

Joanie?

“What’s he talking about?” demanded Roback.

“Aw, just something in his head. Your wife reminds him of a woman he used to know.” The small man tapped his forehead. “Sometimes he gets confused.”

Roback looked into the blue eyes and thought sometimes didn’t cover it.

The big man took a step toward the house. Voice as cold as the ice crystals in the contrail, Roback caught his arm and whirled him around. “I said keep walking.”

The big man’s nostrils flared. The small man stepped between them. “Take it easy, Con.”

Roback could swear — he glanced at the smaller man.

“Do I know him?”

The dark eyes flicked over Roback, the hills, and the house as though looking for an escape route.

“Naw. We’re not from around here. Just passing through. I told you. Our car—”

“I want to talk to Joanie,” said Con.

“In a minute, Con.”

“Not in a month of Sundays,” snapped Roback.

“Jesus, mister, have a heart. The guy’s harmless. Lost a little reality when he banged his head a while back. He’s been looking for this Joanie ever since. Medical expenses cleaned him out, so I’ve been taking care of him. All you got to do—”

The heat of anger driving the coldness from his voice, Roback said, “I got to do nothing. You do. Get moving.”

The dog still stood, held upright by the chain. Damned fool would choke herself. He knew she wouldn’t. Her throat and shoulder muscles were like iron.

The small man tugged at Con’s arm. “Come on, Con.”

“Joanie’s in the house, Fred,” said Con stubbornly. “You said so.”

You said so?

Roback felt a tingle of warning, felt menace now in the humid heat, like a small, seemingly innocent pile of dead leaves suddenly becoming the mottled coils of a rattlesnake. He’d made a mistake, intercepting them. A whiff of those chemicals must have addled his brain. He should have gone directly to the house, got the shotgun—

Con started toward the house. Barking, the dog threw herself against the chain to meet him. Roback stepped past Fred, wrapped a hand over Con’s shoulder, and pulled.

He never saw what Fred hit him with, something exploding behind his right ear; unconscious before his face hit the hot black macadam.

The frantic barking of the dog, as much as anything else, brought him around; deep massive pain threatening to split his head apart, eyes opening to stare into tall weeds inches from his face, long seconds before he realized he’d been rolled off the road into the deep watercourse, longer still before memory tiptoed back tentatively, feeling its way through the pain, and when it did, panic took over. He tried to scramble to his feet, pitched forward. Tried again and again, until he reached the fence and used it to pull himself erect.

The dog was barking and furiously trying to claw her way through the aluminum panel of the storm door.

They’re inside, thought Roback. Around the dog and through the rear. But Shelley would have heard the dog, known something was wrong, and been ready—

Using the fence for support, he reached the gate, reeled through, and released the dog, staggering after the bitch as she flashed around the house, dimly noting that the phone wire snaking down the side had been cut; made it to a stanchion supporting the patio roof in the rear where he sagged and clung with both hands, fighting nausea and gaping at the nightmare of a double-imaged, screaming, blood-covered Fred bursting through the door pursued by the dog; watching as the bloody, out-of-focus figure dived into the blurred shed where he kept some of his light tools just in time to slam the door in the face of an airborne, indistinct brown fury whose hurtling weight shook the shed with a dull boom.

He rubbed his eyes, trying to clear his vision, pushed away from the patio stanchion and through the door, the screen flapping where it had been cut to get at the inside latch.

Inside, Con was on the floor to the left, back propped against the base cabinet, T-shirt stained with blood.

On the other side of the kitchen, Shelley sprawled on the floor alongside her overturned wheelchair, the Ladysmith just beyond her hand, the cordless phone she always kept with her under one bent knee, her transceiver a few feet away.

Clinging to the cabinets for support, Roback made his way to her side, knelt, and tenderly fingered a massive bruise on her face, taking in the small pool of blood under her head.

She would have heard the dog, but not known what was going on because he and the men couldn’t be seen from inside the house; tried to call him on the radio. No answer, so she’d probably tried to dial for help on the phone, not aware they’d cut the wire. While she punched frantically at buttons, her confusion had given them enough time to get through the door. Still, she’d had time to shoot Con, but Fred must have reached her before she could shoot again. He’d hit her, knocking the wheelchair over and driving her head into the sharp corner of the base cabinet.

He’d been somewhere in the house when the dog found him.

Roback felt for a pulse, found none, wasn’t alert enough to tell if she was alive or dead, couldn’t make that decision. He had to get her to the medical center, let someone whose brains hadn’t been scrambled take that responsibility.

And Roback, normally a stoical man who took things as they came, showing neither overwhelming excitement at good news nor extreme sadness at bad, threw his head back and roared with an ancient fury... a battle cry of rage and hate that promised death to the enemy... but no time now to run to the toolshed and empty the gun into Fred...

He scooped up his wife. Head pounding, double vision back, room swimming, nausea churning his stomach, gelatinous knees threatening to give way with each step, he zigzagged out the door and toward his pickup, wondering if he could manage to keep it on the road. Staggering like a drunk who’d had three too many, eyes fixed on the distant, gleaming medical center where they had saved Shelley once and had to do so again, he sank lower and lower until he pitched forward on top of his wife, legs scraping uselessly at the gravel of the driveway until they quivered and stopped.

The dog was snarling again nearby. He opened his eyes and lifted his head to stare into the flat-eared, fangs-bared, bloody, foam-flecked face two feet from his.

An atavistic fear bubbled. No mistaking the menace there. The prey was down, but this was no food kill by a wild animal. This was revenge. As far as the dog was concerned, he was just as accountable as the other two for the still form pinned beneath him. And he was. The primary responsibility to protect her had been his. He’d failed. Denied vengeance on the man in the shed, she’d extract it from the next on her list.

“No!” he croaked, hoping the dog wasn’t beyond listening to him. She couldn’t know that at this point he was the only hope that Shelley had.

The haunches sank, the body a spring about to uncoil.

Shelley moaned softly, the sound magic; the lips lowered over the fangs, the body softened, the ears rose questioningly, and the tail moved in delighted anticipation. The dog settled with her nose an inch from Shelley’s face, tongue flicking out to lick her cheek.

Fighting the nausea, Roback rose to his hands and knees. His head pounded... a sweat that had nothing to do with the oppressive heat poured from him even though he felt cold... there was something very badly wrong with him. And getting worse... beyond any willpower to overcome. Couldn’t carry her, couldn’t drive. He knew that now. If he didn’t get help, they’d both die there under the brutal sun.

And then from deep inside his injured brain, something whispered phone, and he remembered the cellular unit he’d installed in the pickup so he could keep in touch with Shelley even on the road.

With the slow, hesitant, rocking instability of an infant, he crawled to the truck, pulled himself erect, fumbled the phone into his hand, pushed the button and fingered out a number. Blackness as deep as death descending again, all he could do was whisper, “Roback,” over and over until he passed out.

On the hillside from where he’d seen it all begin, wearing a white bandage like a headband, he sat and rested before resuming his unfinished spraying. No work for a week, they’d said, when they’d sent him home after opening his skull. A subdural hemorrhage is nothing to fool around with.

Neither were the aphids and fungi that were celebrating a ten day hiatus from his sprayer.

Chambers had stood beside his bed holding his broad-brimmed hat in both hands, a wisp of a man with ruddy skin pulled tight over a bony face, body lithe under the tailored tan uniform, gray hair cut to a half inch. In twenty years, no one had ever run against him for sheriff.

“The man who took the call didn’t know what the hell was going on,” he said. “To him it sounded like someone saying, ‘Go back, go back,’ which made no sense at all, but he also said, ‘Breaking up like one of them cellular phones.’ Bulb lighted in my head. I remembered us talking about how that cell phone would keep you in touch with Shelley wherever you were, so I put one and two together and slammed out of there.

“When I found you, I couldn’t tell what in the hell had happened. You were out cold. So was Shelley. The big guy was dead in the kitchen. Then I heard the one in the toolshed moaning. When I pulled him out, I figured he couldn’t last very long without help. In the few seconds she’d had at him, the dog turned him into some pretty raw meat, and he was losing blood fast. I’d already called for an ambulance so the guys slapped a couple of pressure bandages on him, but hell, you and Shelley were our first priority. I let him bleed until the second unit came. For my money, the techs did too good a job because he survived, but maybe that was a good thing because then he could tell us all about it.”

Chambers settled his rear end on the windowsill.

“I don’t have to tell you what would have happened to you both if it hadn’t been for that dog. Fred would have left no witnesses. He thought he’d killed you already when he sapped you with that blackjack. Haven’t seen one of those in a long time. Used it on Shelley, too, the son of a bitch. Real warped character, that man. He was using the big guy Con—”

“He looked familiar,” said Roback.

“You probably saw him on TV. What he was an actor in a cop show that bombed after a couple of episodes a few years back. Played a vice squad detective, they tell me. But you know some of these show biz personalities. Push clean living on the screen and go home and snort coke, like the rules don’t apply to them. He should have paid more attention to the part he was playing. Stoked himself up pretty good one night with some controlled substance and thought he was Superman. Tried to fly from a second floor balcony but naturally hit the courtyard below faster than a speeding bullet. Must have thought he was rescuing Lois Lane because he took an actress named Joanie with him. Anyone as lucky as her should have run out and bought a fistful of lottery tickets. She landed on his six three and two hundred pounds of padding. Then Fred came along, figured that he could use someone that size as an intimidator, so they roamed the lonely places of the country leaving blood and tears behind. Car broke down and could we use the phone, ma’am, was only one of their techniques. At last count, they’re wanted in three states for questioning, but those are only the early returns.”

Chambers leaned forward and picked up the water glass. “You’re going to drink this? No?” He drained the glass and refilled it for Roback from the pitcher. “Too bad Shelley didn’t shoot him instead of Con, but there are a lot of people out there who are going to applaud what the dog did to him, maybe even prefer it that way since the dog left him with a lot more scars than our justice system ever will. Anyway, thanks to the dog, modem communications, and medical science, you and Shelley’ll be fine. But if the dog had picked up and run, neither of you would have lived long enough to benefit from the modem communications and medical science. Message of some kind there, I think.”

He patted Roback on the shoulder. “The bad memories’ll fade. I know. Had a few myself I thought wouldn’t, but they did.”

Mine faster than Shelley’s, thought Roback.

The house below him was deserted. A few more days before Shelley would be released. Reconstructing that cheekbone took longer than patching up his head.

She’d like what he did, he knew.

“I had no choice,” Chambers had said. “You were unconscious, and the dog, well, she couldn’t know we were the good guys, could she? Allowed us to drag you away, but wouldn’t let us get close to Shelley. I mean, Shelley was lying there. I had no idea how bad she was and how much time we had — no time to fool around — shame. Good dog, that. Guess you could call it line of duty.”

Shelley didn’t know yet.

Good neighbors, the Burnses. When they’d heard, they’d brought over the bitch’s pup they’d taken last spring. Twin to the mother.

“For Shelley,” Bums had said.

The young dog sat beside Roback, ears up, eyes fixed on the house as though she sensed her inheritance. Roback knew that when Shelley came home, the dog would attach herself to her, retaining perhaps some dim puppy memory of a motherly charge.

He patted the brown head and said, “Stay,” slung the harness over his shoulders, and tested the sprayer for pressure. Too bad no one had invented a selective fungicide for use on the human slime that infested the world.

Down through the orchard row, he could see the top of the old oak looming over the house. Below those ancient limbs, where Shelley could see it from the kitchen door, the mound was still fresh.

Roback drew an arm across suddenly watery eyes and cleared his throat. Really ought to read those damned mixing directions more carefully.