Widowmaker (Mike Bowditch #7)(15)

I backed slowly away from the front door and looked at the windows. Sure enough, one of the blinds was lifted, and I saw the Goth’s tubercular face peering out.

I made sure to be loud. “Open the door, please.”

Carrie Michaud appeared in the next window. “Fuck you!”

So much for negotiation.

I retreated back to my truck and turned the key in the ignition. Once hot air was finally blowing through the vents, and my face was feeling less like a death mask, I picked up my phone and dialed a friend.

“Kathy? It’s Mike.”

“Grasshopper! Long time, no speak.”

Kathy Frost had been my field training officer and sergeant when I joined the Warden Service. For years she had headed all of the Warden Service’s K-9 teams, until she was forced to take early retirement due to injuries she’d sustained from a gunshot. She still helped us out during search-and-rescue operations, directing the efforts of dog teams to cover the most ground in the fastest amount of time. No one I’d ever met knew more about dogs than Kathy.

“How’s retirement?” I asked.

“I’m thinking of buying a metal detector. What does that tell you?”

“That bad?”

“Worse.”

“Listen. What can you tell me about wolf dogs?”

“They’re illegal to possess without a permit.”

“I’m wondering how I can identify one.”

“You can’t,” she said. “Not by sight. I mean, you can look for certain features—long legs, slanted eyes, small ears—but you still might be looking at an animal that’s one part Siberian husky, one part Malinois. Breeders have gotten good at making fakes, since people will pay top dollar for an honest-to-Jesus timber wolf.”

“What’s top dollar?”

“Two grand for a high-content animal. Generally speaking, the more wolf DNA it has, the more expensive it is. Why do you want to know?”

“I’ve got a situation with some tweakers. I think they’re keeping a wolf dog, and I am going to have to confiscate it. I was hoping there was a way I could tell if it was the real thing or not.”

“The only way to know for certain is to do a lab test.”

“I know it’s been chasing deer,” I said. “It killed a yearling this morning.”

“That doesn’t prove anything. But it gives you cause to take it to a shelter. They can test it for you.”

“What happens if the results come back positive—that it’s a high-content wolf dog?”

“Usually, the department would try to find someone to adopt it. But if yours killed a deer, it’ll probably be put down.”

“Anything else I should know?”

“Are you going to try wrangling the animal yourself?”

“I don’t have a carrier or catch pole with me today, so I’ll probably be calling an animal control agent.”

“Be careful,” Kathy said. “There’s a reason why wolf dogs are illegal. Most of them are unpredictable and pretty near untrainable. They are superintelligent. I read somewhere that training a dog is like training a toddler. Training a wolf dog is like trying to train a thirty-five-year-old man.”

“Thanks, I’ll let you know how it goes. When are you going to get a new puppy, by the way?”

“I just haven’t met the right dog yet.”

Kathy had once owned a coonhound named Pluto, whose nose was the stuff of legend, but he had died the night she herself was shot, and she hadn’t yet adopted another young dog to train. I had thought her grief for Pluto would abate over time, but as her period of mourning had stretched on and on, I began to worry about her.

“Let me know how it goes,” she said.

“Ten-four.”

I glanced back at the house, certain that they had been watching me the whole time, worried about what I might be doing. That was good: I wanted them to be spooked. For my plan to work, they needed to panic.

I put the transmission into gear and started forward. I drove a hundred yards, until I was well out of sight of Carrie Michaud’s house. The snowplows had carved out a wide spot in the road where they could reverse direction. It was the perfect place to hide my truck. I wasn’t sure how much time I had, but I didn’t want to miss my chance. I reached into the backseat and rummaged around until I found the white poncho I used as wintertime camouflage. I pulled the hood over my head and got out.

Moving from shadow to shadow, I made my way back along the frozen road, expecting to see one of the pickup trucks come roaring in reverse out of the driveway at any moment. When I reached the tall snowbank at the end of Carrie’s drive, I threw myself against it, then squirmed into position so I could peer over the top.

I didn’t have long to wait. Within a matter of minutes, Spike emerged from the house, pulling a magnificent black animal behind him on a leash. Each dark hair in its coat seemed to shimmer as it padded along. Long legs, slanted eyes, small, sharp ears—I understood Kathy’s caution about jumping to conclusions, but there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that this creature was, in any meaningful sense, a wolf.

And yet when Spike opened the passenger door of his truck, the animal leaped obediently inside, as eager as the family dog going for a ride.

“Good boy, Shadow,” I heard the Goth say.