The Drifter (Peter Ash #1)(11)

He opened the cargo-box door carefully, in case the dog had gotten loose. It shied away from him, but at least it wasn’t growling. Peter stepped up and checked the rope holding the stick in its jaws. The rope was fine, but the dog had chewed the shit out of the stick. White oak, one of the hardest woods out there. Almost two inches thick yesterday, there was a lot less of it today where those teeth had done their work.

It was hard to tie the leash to a tree while the hundred-fifty-pound animal was trying like hell to get away from him.

He was going to have to do something about the dog, and soon.

But first, coffee.

He pulled out the backpacking stove, set it on the parking strip with his camp chair, and fired up the old tin percolator. With real cream from his cooler, it tasted pretty good. Real cream was a luxury he didn’t have in the mountains, where he’d stirred instant cocoa into instant Folgers, although he’d learned to love the sugary rush. Anything would be better than battlefield coffee, made by pouring a single-serve packet of instant in your mouth dry, then chasing it with plastic-tasting water from a sun-heated bottle. He wasn’t ever going to drink that again.

He wasn’t going to eat another MRE, either. Only real food.

After cooking up eggs scrambled with sausage and sliced jalape?os and leftover rice in his battered frypan, he set aside half the food to cool and wrapped the rest in a tortilla. Then sat and ate and watched Dinah’s house and thought about the four hundred thousand dollars and pale pliable rectangles found in a suitcase.

It wasn’t modeling clay. It was plastic explosive. Peter could tell by the chemical smell. His platoon had used it for everything from breaching doors to blowing up enemy ordnance. Four bricks wasn’t a huge amount. But he was hard-pressed to think of a good reason for having it in Milwaukee. When it got dark, he’d hide it under the frame of the truck.

When the coffee was gone, he cleaned up his temporary kitchen, then cornered the dog with the pan of cooled eggs and sausage. He’d picked out the jalape?os. The animal calmed down when Peter started pushing the food past the stick and those outrageous teeth into the side of the dog’s mouth with his finger. The dog worked its tongue to swallow, not really resisting, and not growling at all.

Hard to growl while you’re eating, Peter figured.

Then he took the dog for a walk, trying not to feel too silly as the dog pulled him down the sidewalk, sniffing at every tree and bush. He was a little worried that someone would confront him and complain about the stick in the dog’s mouth, but everyone they approached crossed the street to avoid them. The dog hadn’t gotten any better looking overnight. It hadn’t gotten any smaller, either. And it still stank.

Maybe Dinah had a hose.

Maybe later. It was seven thirty and time for work.

—

The wood posts went in quickly on the concrete footings he’d poured the day before. Charlie and Miles left for school, waving cautiously but giving the dog a wide berth. Dinah went out the side door toward the garage on the back alley, avoiding conversation. She waved, then lifted her wrist to tap her watch, reminding him of their afternoon appointment.

By late morning the new beam and floor joists were in and the frame was pleasingly square and straight and true. Peter stopped to reheat the coffee. He was sitting on a sawhorse with the cup warming his hands when a black SUV drove past. It was a Ford, one of the big ones, and fairly new.

A few minutes later it drove past again, this time more slowly, the driver peering out the window. He paused a few houses down, then backed up and stopped in front of the house. The window rolled down. A wide-shouldered black guy peered out at Peter, the porch, and the dog, tied again to the tree in the yard.

Peter waited.

The driver got out, left his door open and the SUV still running, and sauntered over. He wore a gleaming hip-length black leather coat and a black Kangol cap backward on his bald head. In his late thirties or early forties, he was a big guy and he thought that meant something, walking with a distinct strut. A starburst of scars marked the right side of his face, and his right earlobe was missing.

He stopped on the sidewalk, well away from the dog, which was suddenly growling again. “What’s with that crazy-looking dog, mouth all tied up?”

Dinah had thought her house was being watched. She hadn’t said it, but she was scared.

“You must be from the pound,” said Peter, “come for the dog. It was living under the old porch. Hang on a minute and let me get that rope.”

“Naw, man, that’s not me,” said the scarred man, taking a step back. “I’m just a friend of the lady lives here.”

Peter kept talking as he stood and walked to the tree. “I’ll tell you, that dog’s been nothing but trouble. I’ll be glad when it’s gone.” The dog still shied away from him but no longer ran to the end of its leash. “Creeps me out,” said Peter, “that animal staring at me all day.” He untied the rope and held it out to the man. “You wouldn’t believe what I had to do to get that stick in there.” The dog stood behind the protection of Peter’s legs, peering out at the man and growling louder.

It hadn’t growled at young Charlie or his brother when they left for school.

It hadn’t growled when Peter took it for a walk.

All morning, it had watched people walking down the street, and it hadn’t growled at any of them.

The scarred man took another step back, unbuttoning his leather coat, saying, “I told you, that’s not my fuckin’ dog.” The scars flushed pink on his face as he pulled his coat open and put his hand on the butt of the shiny chrome automatic pistol tucked into the front of his pants. “Now tie that ugly motherfucker up again before I got to do something.”