sixteen
HENRY
We were so busy arguing, we hadn’t realized that agent Armstrong had already given Dan in the Down Vest another item for Tonka to sniff—this one not belonging to Grant. They were changing the focus of their search from Grant to Yuri.
We didn’t find this out until later. All we knew now was that Tonka was running, howling up the dark path to the Grays’ house, and Dad was muttering all the time, “I knew it. I knew you were hiding him.”
“Grant’s not there,” Sammy tried to tell us. “This is something else.”
The FBI and the sheriff were running as well, and they were outpacing us. A couple of them asked us to stay behind them.
When he got to the base of the bluff, Tonka broke off from the main trail and picked his way up a rarely used path through the blackberries. This path emerged in the Grays’ backyard. The FBI and Sheriff Lundquist followed close behind.
There was no space for Dad, Mere, Sammy, and me, so we took the regular trail that led to their front yard.
We were halfway up the drive when I heard the shot.
Oh no . . . Pixie!
I sprinted faster.
I was the first in the front door.
“What’s happened?” I said. “Is Pixie all right?”
Pix was sitting on the sofa, with Mrs. Gray draped around her. “We’ve had a shock, Henry.”
Dad came in, out of breath. “Where’s Grant?”
Mrs. Gray looked confused, as though there were only so much she could process, and right now it was all about her youngest, her only girl.
“I don’t think this is about Grant, Dad,” I said, although I still wasn’t quite sure myself.
Pixie’s giant brothers were standing shell-shocked around the living room.
Dean finally said, “It was your guard. He was in Pixie’s room. He had a gun. The police took him down. It was so fast . . . Jesus, it was fast.”
Mere was standing next to me, and her shoulders began to heave. She seemed to understand what had happened before the rest of us did. “Yuri’s been shot? But he didn’t deserve it! He wasn’t a threat. He was just a sad, old guy.”
Her cries became torrential. Sammy put an arm around her shoulder. He did it gingerly, as though he were breaking a taboo. “You don’t need to be here for this, Mere. Mr. Shepherd, why don’t I take her home?”
Dad nodded, looking vacant. “I thought they’d found my son.”
Mrs. Gray, with her arm still around Pixie’s shoulder, said, “I’m sorry, Rupe. I’ll make us some coffee. It’s going to be another long night.”
She ran a hand through her daughter’s hair, gave her a soft look that Pix didn’t catch, then got up and went to the kitchen.
I’d never seen Mrs. Gray look so grateful. It occurred to me that she might, just might, have a favorite child.
Or maybe she’d be this relieved if any of them had survived being held at gunpoint.
Dad didn’t stay long, but I did—mostly hanging back, hoping nobody would kick me out before I heard Pix explain what had happened with Yuri. I owed Yuri that much.
Agent Armstrong sat on the love seat in the living room and drank cup after cup of coffee as he asked Pixie questions.
His face was a thunderclap. Yuri had been shot too soon—before there was any chance for him to be interrogated. And now the investigation had been bungled. He was trying not to show his disappointment to Pixie, but I guessed that later someone was going to get his ass handed to him.
“He said he didn’t know where Grant was,” Pixie was saying. “He said that somebody had hidden him and that it was for the best.”
“Can you remember anything else he said? Anything at all?”
“Yes. I don’t think he took Grant or killed Lyudmila. He called me silly. He said he had been ‘outspied.’”
“Outspied?”
“Yes. That was his word.”
As they wheeled Yuri’s body out on a stretcher, Mrs. Gray handed out peach cobbler to anyone who wanted it.
“Can you think of any reason why Mr. Bulgakov would come to you for help?” he said.
“Yes,” Pix said, shivering beneath her blanket. “He helped me train my dog.”
“The bloodhound? The one that was killed with his weapon?”
“That’s the one. We spent a lot of time together training Patience. She needed a lot of work. The guy who was originally supposed to train her half-assed the job. Yuri helped me fix her.”
There seemed to be something going on with Pixie’s eyes, because she wouldn’t look at agent Armstrong straight on. She kept looking at the floor. Maybe she was just tired.
“So you think maybe Mr. Bulgakov came to explain why he killed your dog?”
“I think he came to explain that he didn’t kill Patience, and he wanted to tell me who did. I don’t think he killed Mrs. Shepherd, either. I think he wanted to set me straight on that. But he didn’t have the chance.”