“What should we talk about?”
“Is there anything else we should know about your situation?”
“You’re going to need an animal control agent, too. Make sure he brings the biggest carrier he’s got.”
“Is there a vicious dog on the property?”
Even from a distance, I could see his luminous eyes. They looked possessed of an intelligence I had never seen before in a domestic dog. “Not exactly.”
Above my head, the dead leaves of the oak made a sound like whispers whenever the breeze touched them.
The wolf dog kept watching me intently.
*
I lost count of the units that responded to my 10-74 call. That is what happens when a report goes out that an officer is down; every available cop—sometimes even those off-duty—rush to the scene.
The first to arrive was a Cumberland County Sheriff’s deputy. He drove up with lights blazing and sirens wailing and emerged from his salt-splashed cruiser with his weapon already drawn. I think he was a little disappointed to find me alert and upright, albeit leaning against an oak tree, with only a bleeding forearm.
The deputy’s name was Moody. He was about my age, black-haired, brown-eyed, with a smirky way of talking out of one side of his mouth. “You’re sure you weren’t stabbed in the back?”
“See for yourself.”
He examined the holes in my clothing. “Man, all I can say is you got lucky. You owe your guardian angel a big tip.”
He fetched a pressure bandage from his cruiser while we waited for EMTs to arrive. I pressed it tightly to the wound.
“This isn’t my first visit to Casa Michaud,” Moody said.
“When was the last time?”
“Halloween. Carrie had a party. One of the girls who showed up had too good a time, if you know what I mean.”
“Overdose?”
“Heroin cut with fentanyl, according to the coroner.”
I’d been trying to understand why she’d stabbed me over a wolf dog. You only had to look into her eyes to see that the wires had short-circuited a long time ago. Where there are drugs, there are almost always guns. If Carrie Michaud had come at me with a pistol instead of a knife, I would have been seriously screwed.
“I shouldn’t have let her sneak up on me,” I said.
He shrugged. “Looks can be deceiving.”
Carrie Michaud had been unconscious for such a long time, I had begun to fear she might be dead, the way boxers sometimes die from single punches in boxing movies. But she chose that moment to wake up. She began flopping around, trying to get to her feet, shouting obscenities the whole time.
“You’re not going to bleed to death while I go get her?” Moody asked.
“I think I’ll survive.”
Moody pulled Carrie Michaud, kicking and screaming, to the back of his car.
Meanwhile, Spike continued to lie compliantly on the cold ground, never making so much as an effort to move.
The ambulance arrived next. The EMTs made me sit in the back while they applied a serious bandage to my arm. I would need to go to the hospital and have a doctor look at the wound, they said. From the way the cotton was drinking up the blood, I would certainly need stitches. The doctor would also want to take a sample in case the blade had been contaminated with some pathogen.
More and more cruisers were arriving. The flashing lights—blue and red—gave the scene a disco vibe. All the attention made me uncomfortable. No one had ever thrown me a surprise party, but I imagined it would have felt slightly less embarrassing. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, I could smell my own sour perspiration. I was going to have to file a detailed incident report about the assault, and the information I included would determine whether Carrie Michaud was charged with aggravated attempted murder.
I saw a state trooper escort Spike out to the road.
“Do I have to keep sitting here?” I asked one of the EMTs.
“It would be better if you did.”
“I feel perfectly fine.”
“But you lost some blood. If you stand up, you might faint.”
“I’m willing to take the risk,” I said with a smile that was not returned.
I climbed down out of the ambulance and went searching among the cruisers for the one with Spike in the backseat.
“Do you mind if I talk to him?” I asked the trooper standing outside the vehicle.
We’d met once before, but I didn’t remember his name. He was one of the new recruits in the state police and still had the stalwart look of a rookie who had yet to see the disconnect between the job he’d applied for and the job he’d ended up doing every day. He shrugged and opened the door for me.
I leaned against the cold blue chassis, looking down at the absurd Goth. The front of his clothes were all wet from lying on the icy asphalt.
“Tell me about the wolf dog,” I said.
He kept his bleached head bowed. “His name is Shadow.”
That was certainly original. “Where did you get him?”
“We traded for him.”