This was exactly what I’d said the first two times, but I repeated it patiently: strangers who turn up at meth houses have to answer questions, no matter how many Chicago police officers vouch for them.
“This answering machine belong to anyone?”
“I’ll find that out and get back to you,” I promised.
“You’ve traveled a long way for someone you don’t know to find someone you say you never saw in your life.” Kossel studied me closely; I tried to make my face look open, trustworthy, naive. “But I’ve got your name and address and they match what the Internet is saying, so you drive on back to the big city. I’ll call you if I need you. You see crows circling around any more cornfields, just keep driving, hear?”
I took that as a dismissal and got to my feet. “You can bet your pension on that, Sheriff.”
Tension and dehydration had left me light-headed. I refilled my water jug at the station’s drinking fountain, poured water over my head in their women’s washroom, and took myself and my orphan dog back to Chicago.
Palfry Township was a hundred miles south of the city. What with rescuing the dog, finding the body, talking to the sheriff, I hit the Dan Ryan Expressway at the height of the evening rush, but I didn’t care. It felt good to be surrounded by thousands of cars and millions of people. Even the polluted air felt clean after the terrible stench of the country.
I drove straight to the emergency veterinary clinic on the North Side. The Rottweiler had lain so quietly throughout the drive that I was afraid she might have died on me, but when I lifted her out of the car at the clinic, I could feel her heart thumping erratically. She was so weak when I set her on the sidewalk that I had to carry her inside, but when I set her on the counter, she stuck out a dry tongue and licked me once.
I told the intake staff how I’d found her, said I had no idea of her age or temperament or whether she’d been spayed but yes, I would pay bills within reason. After half an hour or so, a young woman in scrubs came into the examining room to talk to me.
“Right now her main problem, at least on the surface, is starvation, but she’s been beaten badly and there may be internal injuries,” the vet said. “Also, a dog in a drug house was probably trained to attack, so once she’s regained her strength she may prove too violent to keep. We’ll do a thorough workup when she’s had enough IV fluids and food to handle the exam. If she is salvageable, she’ll have to be spayed.”
“Yes, of course.”
The vet added, “You may have found her downstate, but we get them all the time in here, dogs beaten to a pulp for not fighting hard enough, or for losing, or just beaten for the hell of it. We’ll do our best for your girl here. I just want you to know that not every rescued dog can be saved.”
I bent to kiss the dog’s muzzle, but as I turned to leave, the vet added that I should shower and shampoo my hair and wash all my clothes without putting them into a hamper first because of the number of ticks and fleas on my charge.
No one who knows me has ever accused me of being germ-phobic, but ticks and fleas turn even a sloppy housekeeper into a compulsive Lady Macbeth. I stopped at a car wash, where I threw out all the towels and T-shirts in the car while they cleaned the interior. At home, I ran my clothes through the laundry with bleach and scrubbed myself until my sunburned arms begged for mercy.
Lotty had called several times while I was driving home. I called from the car wash to say I’d stop by as soon as I could. She was waiting for me when I got off the elevator. Even though her face was set in hard worry lines, she insisted that I eat a bowl of lentil soup to restore my strength before I did any talking.
As soon as I’d put the soup bowl down, Lotty said, “Rhonda Coltrain told me why she called you in, but of course we didn’t talk until after I finished my surgery roster.”
Rhonda Coltrain is Lotty’s clinic manager. When she arrived at seven-thirty to prepare the clinic for the day, she heard a frantic message from someone who only identified herself as “Judy” on the machine. That was how my day started: Ms. Coltrain woke me, begging me to come to the clinic. Lotty was in the middle of an intricate repair to a prolapsed uterus that couldn’t be interrupted.
In Lotty’s storefront clinic on Damen Avenue, I replayed the terrified outburst several times until I could make out the gabbled speech. “Dr. Lotty, it’s me, it’s Judy, they’re after me, they want to kill me, you have to help me! Oh, where are you, where are you?”