Sherlock Dog Page 6
cut out.
Mommy reached the second-to-top step of the ladder. A small grey object darted from behind a stack of boxes towards Mommy's face. Mommy squeaked.
The barrel of the handgun was pointed right at Mommy's face. The gun was being held by a scruffy, smelly man of about Mommy's age, who was standing between the stack of boxes and the wall. Mommy had never seen the man before.
A scared-looking 20-year-old boy slowly stood up beside the strange man.
"Bill! What the hell?" said Mommy.(e)
Scruffy shoved the stack of boxes off the ledge and advanced on Mommy.
"Back down the ladder," he said. "Keep your hands in front of you on the ladder."
But Mommy's Sherlock quote had unlocked her inner brat.
"Seriously, do you think I have a tiny gun in my tiny pockets?"
"I think you do have a cellphone. Back just a few feet off the ladder then stop. Leave us just enough room to get down."
"You sound like you're reading a script. Did you spend all night practicing that? Your delivery is horrible: you're no Benedict Cumberbatch."
"What?"
"Right, you're a redneck. You know who Vin Diesel is."
Scruffy slapped Mommy. "Shut up, bitch."
(Scruffy owes his life to the health department and their regulations about big dogs in stores)
Mommy lowered her head and started to back down the ladder. She was very scared now: no one had ever struck her before and the effect had been very unnerving. Her hands were shaking. She was more afraid of falling off the ladder than she was afraid of the gun; but she was more afraid of being hit again than she was of falling off the ladder.
Mommy made it unharmed down the ladder followed by Scruffy and the gun and Bill and a box. Bill took a fold-out cart from a shelf, unfolded it, and slid the box into it.
"Hope you're going to pay for that later," muttered Mommy; and then she ducked a little, just in case.
"All right," said Scruffy. "I know you have cameras above the receiving doors, and that security might be watching right now. We're going to run as fast as we can through the receiving area, through the middle of the store which is not covered by cameras and then through the doors which are. Are you ready to run?"
"Ready when you are."(')
"Stay in front of us: if we think you can't keep in front of us we're going leave you in the ditch. Go, go, go!"
Mommy went. Scruffy and the gun and Bill and the box followed. They sped in a three-human-plus-gun-and-box-shaped blur under the receiving area cameras. They sprinted through the middle of the store. Mommy pushed the heavy outer doors open with super-Mommy strength. The three humans ran out into the cold winter air.
I freaked out. Bark after bark after bark after bark exploded from me. I hurled my barrel chest against the car window. The police dispatch received the call about the gun in the drugstore at about the same time as the nuisance complaint about the serially barking dog at approximately Fourth and Main. Three patrol cars hurtled into the parking lot, sirens screaming. My bark became a piercing howl.
Six police officers catapulted out of their vehicles, guns drawn.
"Which way, Dog, which way?" said one officer, breathlessly. He opened my door. I hit the ground running. The officers ran back to their cars. One car raced ahead of me to attempt to cut the runners off, one hurtled around a corner to try to hem them in, and one stayed behind me.
I was through the parking lot in a few huge bounds. The trail left the main road almost immediately; I followed it across the corner of a yard and down a dark street between dark rows of houses. I followed it as it turned into another street; a few breaths later it turned again; a few breaths later the trail turned again.
It was very dark; and I am very black; and police cars can't smell. The car behind me lost me; I was alone on the trail. The trail kept turning. I kept turning with it.
The trail ran on before me, always before me. With each breath I knew where Mommy had been—oh, such a short while before—but she was always ahead of me; I could only catch up to where she had been; I was always behind where she was.
The trail kept turning. I wished it wouldn't keep turning. If I knew where Mommy was going, I could run flat out, I could catch them up, I could use up all of my breath running flat out and catching them up. I began to whimper with each turn of the trail.
The trail turned left.
""NO, THIS WAY!" Benedict Cumberbatch's voice screamed in my head.
I didn't turn left. I sprinted straight ahead, startled by the sudden revelation. I knew what to do. After days and days and days of hearing about the Best Chase Scene Ever, I knew what to do.
I had been using my nose but not my brain. Now, in one instant, I recognized the path I'd been taking. It was the same route we had taken when we were allowed to walk behind the store. I needed to figure out where the trail would get to in the future, and I needed to get to somewhere it would be at the moment that it got there.
My body and my brain were now running flat out. I was no longer tied to a scent trail; I could use up all my breath running, and thinking.
I ran, and I tried to think. I ran straight ahead, and I thought in circles. I got far, and I got lost.
I was no longer connected to a scent trail. I was no longer on a route I had ever taken before. I suddenly realised: I am a dog, not Real Sherlock; I can't do geography in my head, I can't visualize the future.
Still I ran straight ahead, never slackening my speed, still trying to think. I knew the trail would ultimately end at the duck pond.
My heart told me I couldn't let them get to the duck pond.
I ran on. I wished I weren't so fat. I wished I could breathe better. I wished I could see maps in my head and chart out the future like a human.
My chest hurt; I could not get enough air; there was thunder in my ears, clouds over my eyes and a stabbing pain in one of my knees. I ran on, straight ahead, at full speed.
I don't have Sherlock's brain, but Sherlock doesn't have my heart. What else told me to turn left? And then what else carried me around one last corner as the world was turning black before my eyes?
I hurled myself into Scruffy's chest and sank my teeth into the hand carrying the gun.
Scruffy screamed. I wrestled him down to the ground. Bill ran off with the box. I stood on Scruffy's chest and bayed at the moon around which the Earth doesn't go. I bayed at the invisible sun 'round which it does.(s) I heard the police sirens and began to howl.
A police officer ran towards me. I flopped off of Scruffy as the officer took my place, and passed out.
A few days later, Ubu, Mommy and I were sitting on the couch, Mommy stroking my head as she explained everything to Ubu.
"Bill was our Head Cashier. He worked every weekday morning, and he stocked the cigarettes each time they came in. He would always keep a large trash bag by his side for the empty cartons.
"But this is the thing: Bill was stocking only nine packs from each carton. The tenth pack was going into the trash bag, still inside the almost-but-not-quite-empty carton.
"I thought Bill was a really conscientious and efficient employee. He would always finish stocking the cigarettes before asking to go on break. Then he would take the trash to the back before his break.
"Only he wouldn't immediately put the trash into the trash compactor. Instead, he would climb onto the highest shelf above the compactor. The stockroom has deep shelves which go all the way up to a few feet below the ceiling. Bill had a box hidden on the high shelf above the compactor, behind a huge box of repacked summer clothing."
"Ah!" said Ubu. "He knew nobody would disturb the front box during the winter."
"Exactly," said Mommy. "He would spend his break packing the cigarette packs into the box. Then he would throw the trash away and then resume his shift at the front register."
"And you never noticed that he was not actually taking a break, ever?" said Ubu.
"Now, Bill's shifts end at 4:00 p.m. At ten to four last Wednesday, two of Bill's friends walked into the store. One friend took Bill's car keys from him and drove Bill's car away. He did this so it wouldn't sit suspiciously in the parking lot all night.
"Then at the end of Bill's shift, Bill and his other friend snuck—or is it sneaked, remind me to look it up, Sherlock would know(s)—into the stockroom, climbed above the compactor, and settled in beside their precious box of cigarettes to wait out the night.
"They wanted to wait until the absolute 'deadest' hour of the early morning: 3:00 a.m., they figured. Remember, the drugstore doors face oncoming traffic on Main St. They wanted the smallest chance possible that a motorist, passing through the intersection, would wonder why two men were exiting the drugstore, with a box, in the middle of the night.
"But then when Scruffy's cigarette cravings started to drive them both mad, at about 1:00, Bill told him to just go steal a pack of gum already. Scruffy bypassed the receiving door sensors by walking along the tops of the bays, tunneling between stacks of boxes and the wall.
"After stealing the gum, Scruffy made a little detour: to throw his gum wrapper at Kobe's face on the tabloid rack; the tabloid rack which hangs from the cigarette counter."
"The gum wrapper triggered the alarm," said Ubu.
"Exactly. He didn't know he'd