The Girls He Adored

83

After popping down to the basement to switch the power to the perimeter fence back on, Maxwell hurried upstairs to deliver the sewing basket with its precious cargo of human hair. Miss Miller's bedroom door was closed; he tapped lightly.

“Woman of the house!” John Wayne to Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man, one of their favorites.

“ Man of the house, Miss Miller was supposed to respond. Instead, silence. He opened the door and saw she wasn't there, that the bed was barely rumpled. Max crossed the hall to his bedroom, slipped on a pair of shorts and a fresh hula shirt, and went to look for her.

But Miss Miller wasn't up by the chicken coop. Maybe the kennel-she might have gone for her minimum daily requirement of hugs. Her lovies, as she called them-how Miss Miller loved to get her lovies from her doggies. And they loved her too. Somehow they knew to be patient and gentle with her-they never roughhoused the way they did with him, but absorbed her endless caresses with wiggly-assed delight.

Max knew Miss Miller wasn't there long before he reached the kennel next to the sally port. Something was seriously amiss. None of the dogs came rushing to the fence to meet him, not even Lizzie with her waggling tail. He opened the kennel gate, saw three dogs whimpering in the shed, crossed the kennel yard, stepped into the sally port through the side door, and stared dumbfounded at a dismal sight.

His three senior dogs, Jack, Lizzie, and Dr. Cream, lay in pools of blood on the blacktop, the backs of their heads gone, blown off, exploded from the inside out. He stooped next to Lizzie's body, stroked her short, greasy coat. His hand came away covered with blood and white flecks of bone and brain matter. He wiped his palm on her tail, which would never waggle again, then lifted what was left of her head and saw that she'd been shot through the underside of her muzzle. The top of her skull had been carried away, practically atomized by the exit wound of what must have been a hollow-point round fired from extremely close range.

But what sort of monster would do such a thing, slaughter three dogs in cold blood? Although Maxwell knew that law enforcement often carried hollow-point man-stopper rounds, Black Talons, Gold Dots, that sort of thing, it didn't occur to him that this was the work of cops. Cops didn't pick a man's lock, sneak onto his property, shoot his dogs, and carry off his teacher.

For the first time since the lights of Deputy Terry Jervis's patrol car began revolving in his rearview mirror, Maxwell experienced pure, mind-numbing panic. Crowd noise, confusion.

“Everybody shut up!” His cry filled the sally port; the crowd noise stilled. “I'll take care of this.”

Time to play detective. Max examined the lock on the outer gate: open but undamaged. He-it had to be a man: no woman would do that to a dog-had picked it, slipped inside. The dogs had ambushed him as they'd been trained to do, knocked him down and held him. He'd shot three, then blown off the other lock to get through the sally port and enter the property.

It had to have happened when Max had been down in the drying shed, which had been soundproofed, not to keep noise out but to keep it in. Freaking goddamn irony.

Anyway, Miss Miller must have surprised the intruder somehow….

But that's where Max's scenario stopped making sense. If Miss Miller had surprised a burglar, where was she? Burglars didn't carry off old women. Rapists, maybe, but not even the most desperate rapist would consider Miss Miller a likely victim. Perhaps he'd killed her and hidden the body. Or Out of the corner of his eye, Max saw a flutter of white. He turned his head, focused in on the piece of paper caught in the dense ivy growing up the fence. It was a MasterCard receipt from- he squinted in the dim light under the sally port-the Shell station just outside Umpqua City. And the name of the purchaser was E. L. Pender.

Pender. Thick-skull motherfucker. God double fucking damn the man again. Now time was really of the essence: Max had to know whether Pender had snatched Miss M and gone for help, or whether they were still on the property. But he couldn't just leave the sally port open and unguarded, so he found a twenty-foot length of dog chain in the kennel, wound it around and around the outer gate, secured it to the gatepost, and locked it with a rusty old padlock, to which the key had long since disappeared. He then hurried back into the kennel, dragged out the three remaining dogs, and closed them into the sally port.

If Pender were still on the property, Max reasoned, this would be his only way out. And if the FBI man shot the remaining dogs to get through, at least Max would hear him, and could sneak up on him from behind while he struggled to unwind the chain. And then may God have mercy on his soul, because Max would have none.

And if Pender wasn't still on the property? Grab the cash and haul ass.

But Max was always one to look for a silver lining. And there was one, he told himself, locking the inner gate of the sally port behind him with the lock from the outer gate and trotting back up the blacktop toward the house with the Glock in his hand. Much as he'd miss only the third home he'd ever known, much as he'd miss Miss Miller, he could almost convince himself that in a way, this might be the best thing that could have happened.

Because without Miss Miller to pander to-and pander for-the system known collectively as Ulysses Maxwell would no longer be restricted to picking up only strawberry blonds, or forced to keep them happy while hauling them halfway across the country back to Scorned Ridge. And no more having to fuck terrorized, halfstarved skeletons, either. The system would be free to-how had Jules put it in Pulp Fiction? — to walk the earth. To choose any girl who caught its fancy, and do with her what it wished, when it wished.

Didn't sound half bad. But first, Max had to find out whether Pender was still on the property, and he had to find out fast. How, though? Scorned Ridge was big, with dozens of places to hide. Then it came to him. He veered off the blacktop and raced through the trees, then cut across the meadow to the drying shed.