“You are a pretty one, aren’t you?”
Under the damp mud clinging to her sides, her fur looked smooth, and her eyes were clear and friendly. A length of leash trailed behind her, the end ragged and torn, and when I gently petted her head, she gazed up at me with adoration.
“Let’s see who you belong to, okay? I’m just going to look at your tags.”
Her head was almost as big as mine, so I moved carefully. There was no aggression in her, though. Her tongue gently swiped across my hand as I reached for her collar and turned it so I could read the personalized buckle.
Her name was Molly, and she belonged to my boss, Spencer Charles. Coincidence? Not in my weird little world.
“Well, Molly”—she shimmied in ecstasy when she heard her name— “Let’s see if we can get you back to where you belong. Your owner has some explaining to do.”
Technically, I wasn’t the one who deserved to hear why Spencer had missed another closing on Friday that would have to be rescheduled—that honor went to the family who wouldn’t be waking up in their new house tomorrow. But I did want to know why he’d gone MIA and still wasn’t answering his phone.
I sacrificed a towel to the cause of getting the big dog presentable enough to be allowed in my car and drove old Sally Forth—the name I’d given the ’79 Buick I’d unwittingly purchased along with the house—out to the address listed on her collar. Spencer lived in the only section of what could loosely be called tract housing in town.
A three-acre plot carved out of what had once been a potato field held a pair of vertical-sided, stone-faced, modern homes with vast expanses of slanted roof that looked out of place in a modest, northeastern town. Exactly, I thought as soon as I laid eyes on the place, where I would have pictured Spencer living if I’d ever taken the notion to think about it.
For the quarter-mile before we turned down his road, Molly had been alternately whining and making the doggy equivalent of a grumbling noise—half growl, half short bark. Her agitation unsettled me.
While the two houses on the lot were mirror images of each other, the resemblance ended at the design of the structures themselves. The one Spencer lived in, according to the number on Molly’s collar, lacked a single detail to make it look like a home.
In contrast, the second yard bloomed with flowering shrubs behind a lovely rustic fence. A swing set and a trampoline took up one side of the lawn, a small garden plot the other.
Molly seemed more interested in staring back the way we had come than in being home, and when I opened the back door, she made a run for the end of the driveway before I had a chance to grab the trailing end of her leash.
When I tried to follow on foot, she took off down the road, leaving me no choice but to get back in the car and drive after her. At the spot where she’d begun whining, she looked back at me, banked left, and trotted down the entrance road to the town transfer station and recycling center.
I slowed to a stop, and she ran back toward me, barked twice, and then headed back the way she had come. The hint wasn’t especially subtle—she wanted me to follow her, and so I did. Right up to the locked gate. Being the third Saturday of the month, the landfill was closed, and wouldn’t open until the next day to give those who only had Sundays free a chance to drop off their trash.
Eerily silent other than the occasional yips from Molly, the place was utterly deserted, which, I figured, was the reason for the sudden sense of dread clawing at my throat. But I pushed open the fence and followed the dog toward the three-sided recycling shed.
Only half of the roll-down metal grates were closed, which wasn’t normal since the center should have been locked up tight.
Head down now, Molly slowed her pace as she passed through the opening, skirted a bucket loader, and made for the rear of the building. I was still ten feet behind her when she reached the ledge overlooking a six-foot dropped-down section where the industrial paper shredder emptied out. Someone must have run it recently because the pile of paper rose high over the top of the abutment.
Leg muscles bunching, the dog readied herself for the leap down.
I shouted, “Molly! Stop!” But I was too late. At least she landed on the pile of paper and not unforgiving concrete. Ignoring the posted warnings, I stepped into the danger zone designated by orange stripes painted on the concrete and looked down.
My instincts shrieked something was wrong. Very, very wrong.
Molly pawed at the ribbons of paper, then sat on her haunches and let out an unearthly, keening howl. I didn’t want to go closer, but I searched for a way down and found a set of stairs partially hidden behind the controls shed to my left. As I came closer, Molly whined and began to dig in earnest.
Paper flew. I reached down to help and saw the hand sticking out from under the pile.
