“Please stay on the line, Mr. Chase. Help will be there in a few minutes.”
“All right. Tell them there’s no need for sirens. No use waking everybody in town.” He stood in the kitchen with the phone to his ear for a moment until the dogs came in and sat on their haunches staring at him.
He cradled the phone on his shoulder while he opened the cookie jar and took out two dog treats and let their big jaws take them. He pulled out two more and bestowed those too, so the dogs would know that he appreciated them. All dogs wanted to do a good job.
Through the window he saw the flash of red and blue lights on the trees beside the house. Chase prepared himself for the next part. There would be a lot of talk. Then he and his dogs would go.
2
The police were about the way he’d expected them to be in this situation. A man who had owned a home in town for nineteen years, paid taxes, and lived without afflicting his neighbors was awakened by his dogs when an armed man broke into his house tonight. The armed man fired a round at the home owner, who shot him through the heart. The cops took the victim’s statement, dusted the house for fingerprints, took photographs, and bagged the obvious stuff—both weapons, the ejected brass casings, and the bullet the attacker fired into the woodwork. Before the body was removed, they expressed the opinion that what had happened was unfortunate, but not very far out of the ordinary as home robberies went.
The only part that Chase regretted a little was not removing the silencer from the shooter’s pistol. Having a silencer seemed unburglar-like to him, and sure as hell would make some cop scratch his head. The saving fact was that although silencers were illegal in Vermont, the house was half a mile from New Hampshire, where anybody who wanted a silencer could pay two hundred bucks for the federal transfer tax and have one.
The police had been sympathetic, and they hadn’t even told him not to leave town. They would probably think of that in a day or two, but they wouldn’t call him before midday tomorrow because he was a local man who’d had a shock and lost half a night’s sleep. They would not be too far wrong, but right now the crime victim was driving at seventy-five miles an hour southbound down Interstate 89.
He took out the first of the prepaid cell phones and dialed his daughter Emily’s number.
“Hello?” Her voice was raspy. She must be in bed stretching to reach the phone.
“Hi, kid. It’s me. I’m really sorry to call at this hour. But it’s finally happened. One of them found me at the house, so I’m on the road.”
“Are you bringing the dogs to me?”
“Maybe eventually. Right now, no. Dave and Carol have been through a lot tonight. I think they need time with me before I do anything like that. Come to think of it, so do I.”
“Jesus, Dad.”
“I know, honey. I only called so you wouldn’t think they got me or something. I can’t help what’s already happened. You’ll be all right. There’s nothing in the house that links me to you. No papers, no pictures, and to the extent I can accomplish it no prints of yours or DNA. I always clean the place after you leave. I’m going to be able to hold on to this phone a few more days, but no more than a week. If you need me, call it. Here’s the number.”
“I can see it on my screen.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“I hate this,” she said. “I hate it, and it never had to happen.”
“We’re not sure yet if anything did happen.”
“You just said it happened. I assume there’s a dead man in your house?”
“They moved him pretty quickly. This happened in Vermont, honey. It was a slow night.”
“Right. But it happened,” she said.
“I’m sorry. But you’re out of this mess and free from it. I’m glad.”
“What bullshit. Nobody who loves anybody is ever free from anything.”
“I meant you to be.”
“I know you did. So now I have more money than a princess, only I’m still afraid to spend it, and my father is on a cell phone on a highway bullshitting me because he thinks he might not get to talk to me again.”
“It probably won’t be that bad.”
“I hope not. But don’t take any chances. If you have to, you can rent a motel room and leave the dogs in it, and I’ll be there to pick them up as soon as a human being can take a plane there. If you’re with them, I’ll take all three of you.”
“I’ve never doubted it,” he said. He drove in silence for a few seconds.
“You’re awfully quiet,” she said.
“I’m really sorry.”
“I get that,” she said. “I’ve always gotten that.”
“It doesn’t hurt to repeat it.”
“Yes it does. It all hurts.”
“I guess you’ve got to get ready for work, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I love you.”
“Obviously. And I love you. Call when you can.”
He slipped the phone into his pocket and kept driving. As he drove, he listened to the deep, nasal snores of Dave and Carol, who were asleep together on the backseat.
3