I saw Patience. Alive. Not when I was looking at her directly, but out of the corner of my eye. She was sitting calmly beside the house under my bedroom window, in a patch of ivy. When I looked at her straight on, she wasn’t there. But when I looked at something else, anything else, there she was again, lounging, completely dry in the downpour.
“You go on down to the Shepherds’, Dean,” I said. “I need a moment alone.”
Dean nodded. “I understand. Don’t take too long. Even without Patience, we’re all still looking to you. You’re still the finder.”
I tried to tell him this wasn’t true, that I’d lost everything when I’d lost Patience, but he was Dean, and Dean didn’t lie.
Still, I needed time to investigate something I couldn’t explain to him. So as soon as he was out of sight, I tried looking at the ghost of my dead dog again. I trained my eyes in the distance away from the house, and there she was, under my bedroom window, calmly sitting, but when I looked at her full on, she disappeared, like an optical illusion.
What was going on?
I walked in the direction I’d seen Patience. There was nothing on the ground where I’d seen her. A small depression in the ivy, but nothing large enough to indicate 150 pounds of dog had just been there. My bedroom window was wide open. The screen had been peeled back, and inside it was too dark to see. One thing was for sure: My bedroom was getting flooded, and I couldn’t shut the window from outside. I didn’t know what kind of critter could’ve done such damage. Maybe Sammy was playing a prank on me? But Sammy was walking the lagoon.
So I went around the house and through the garage, dumped my muddy boots and my parka, then made my way to the bedroom.
The cold was the first thing I noticed, not the man with a semiautomatic rifle.
“I did not kill her.”
“Jesus Christ! Yuri?”
I flipped on the overhead light to get a better look.
He was drenched and muddy and sitting on my bed, tightly gripping his Kalashnikov with both hands. He looked as though he hadn’t slept in a week, and his eyes kept darting around me to the hallway.
“Off, please,” he said.
I switched off the light, but I could see his outline in the dark, and more later as my eyes grew accustomed to the dimness.
“You will also please keep your voice down and close the door behind you. I need to explain some things.”
“Fine. Fine. Just put the gun down. Did you shoot my dog?”
That was the least of the crimes he’d committed if he’d committed them, but it seemed important. After all, he helped me train her.
“Are you not listening? I did not shoot anybody. I did not shoot Patience. Patience was good dog.”
“Then where did you find your gun? I hid it in the Scotch broom last night.”
“You are a very silly girl. Do you not know you were being watched? We were all being watched. All the time.”
He pointed to his eye with one hand and kept a tight grip on his Kalashnikov with the other. “Me, I thought it was different. I thought that I was doing the watching. But I have been outspied. For many years.”
“What do you mean? Who outspied you?”
The door burst open. Dean was at my shoulder. I was trying to be quiet and do everything Yuri said, but I should’ve known that one of my brothers would be coming to check on me after I just buried my dog. Lawford, Sammy, and Frank were probably on their way, too.
“Yuri, buddy. Put the gun down,” Dean said.
“Jesus Christ, Dean, get out of here. I’ve got it under control.”
There was baying in the distance. I knew it wasn’t from a ghost dog. My dog would not hunt this man no matter what shape she was in. No, whatever dog was coming our way was alive.
Time. We needed time. I wanted to hear what he had to say.
“You do not belong here, little boy,” Yuri said. “This is a private conversation between Marilyn and myself. I need to tell her something important before I die.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Nobody else has to die here today,” I said. “Believe me. I tried it last night. It isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.”
“Where’s Grant?” Dean said.
“I do not know where Grant is. Somebody has hidden him. I think it’s for the best. Marilyn, there are many things at stake now, yes?”
“Yes, Yuri. Many things. Put down the gun, and we’ll talk about them.”
“Do you not understand? I will try to explain . . .” He waved the gun toward my closet. There was a snip sound, and I was facedown on the carpet with a heavy weight on top of me.
Then a lot of voices. One deep one saying, “Who took the shot?” over and over again. “I wanna know who took that shot!”
The weight let up. I heard someone else say, “Stay down,” and another person say, “Clear.”
I didn’t understand what was going on. I didn’t understand that my eyes had been shut tight until I opened them and saw Yuri sprawled on my bed, a neat hole in the middle of his head, leaking blood and other matter I would discover later on my comforter and sheets and mattress.
“Frank! Someone call Frank!” I said.
Even as I said it, I knew there was nothing Frank could do.
Yuri was dead. It had all happened so quickly and so neatly. I hoped the tattered woman with the staff would find him and release his light into the world.
It was too late for anyone else to help.