“Nothing left,” Lawrence said, rubbing his hands together. “Not a scrap, not a single bone, and no mikes. I’ll get my toys set up and we’ll see if this is going to work.”
“You know, this is crazy,” I said. “But I’m just a tiny bit hungry. Did we even have dinner?”
30
I KEPT MY SPOT by the fence while Lawrence ran back to the cabin for the tools of his trade. He was back in under ten minutes with his two cases. From the larger one he pulled out the laptop, which he made sure, when he opened it, wasn’t facing the house. Didn’t want them seeing a tiny square of blue light off in the distance. In the same case he had two sets of headphones and some other gear. He handed me one set of phones, which I slipped around my neck, and he did the same with his. He got his shotgun microphone from the other case and gave it to me.
“Point that at the house, holding it steady as you can. I’m not quite ready yet, but it’ll help me do other stuff if you can do that.”
“Sure,” I said, holding the gun with both hands. “This is about my skill level right here.”
Lawrence began tapping away at the laptop, moving the cursor around, opening boxes. I didn’t have the foggiest idea what he was doing. “Do I need to have any of this explained to me?” I asked.
Lawrence didn’t even look at me. “No.” He slipped on his headphones, as if doing a test, then took them back off. “The first thing we’re going to want to know is whether the dogs scarfed down those bugs without destroying them.”
I watched the farmhouse. Soft sounds emanating from within, a shadow passing by a window. The dogs appeared out of the darkness, bounding up the porch steps and scratching at the front door, bumping into one another. Someone, I couldn’t tell who, opened the screen enough to let them slip inside. “Hey, boys!”
“They’re back in,” I said.
“I think we’ve only got one,” Lawrence said, pulling one side of the headphones away from his ear. “I’m picking up one mike, but not the other. It must have got chewed right through.”
“Can I listen?”
Lawrence told me to slip my phones on. This is what I heard: “Pa-thump, pa-thump, pa-thump, pa-thump.”
“What the hell is that?” I whispered. There was another background sound, too, harder to pin down, but regular, almost a whistle.
“That would be DOS,” Lawrence said. “Dog Operating System. Heartbeat, breathing. I’m gonna see what I can do to filter some of that out.”
I listened some more. “Pa-thump, pa-thump, pa-thump and that’s all pa-thump, pa-thump homework pa-thump dishes, beer over here pa-thump, pa-thump.”
“This is crazy,” I said. “You can’t hear a damn thing for the heartbeat. And it sounds like whichever dog swallowed the mike is roaming from room to room.”
“Zack, just chill,” Lawrence said, fiddling some more with his computer. “Okay, I’ve got your shotgun mike working now, so just focus it on the house. I’ll start coordinating the mikes, aim for the same thing from different directions. The dogs have had a good runaround. At some point, they should collapse and snooze. If one does, the other probably will.”
“They do share a brain,” I said.
On the headphones: “Hey, boy, howya doing. Fuck, what did you get into?”
Slightly muffled, but an actual entire sentence. Timmy, I figured, or one of Charlene’s sons. Commenting, no doubt, on the dog’s breath. After a meal of fish guts, you really needed a mint.
“There’s a blanket on the floor in the kitchen,” I whispered. “They curl up there.”
Lawrence stayed focused on his screen, which looked like a graph with different bars sliding up and down depending on what sounds came through the headphones. He made some adjustments with the cursor. The heartbeats, while still there, receded faintly into the background.
With the headphones on, my hands wrapped tightly around the shotgun mike, and watching the house so intently, I jumped when Lawrence tapped my knee. “Shit!” I said. “You just gave me a fucking heart attack.”
“Aim the mike more toward the back of the house. I think that’s where the kitchen is.”
“That’s right,” I said, recalling the layout from the dinner. I adjusted my aim ever so slightly. Lawrence held up his hand, indicating I should stop.
“Jeffrey!” Timmy, no doubt about it. Some shuffling, footsteps.
“Yeah?”
“…what…you…doing out of your room?”
“…get some water…”
“You’re grounded, buster…want out, you’ll hand over those figures.”
Lawrence shook his head. “Aww man, I never meant to get the kid in trouble,” he said softly. “Couldn’t he have just hid them from the get-go? Shit…”
Jeffrey again. “But I really like them.”
“Yeah, well, no water, no dessert, no nothing for you till you hand them over to me.”
“Jeez, Dad.” A different voice, not so deep, softer. This had to be May, unless Charlene liked to call her husband “Dad,” which seemed unlikely. I whispered to Lawrence, “The daughter, Jeffrey’s mom.”