River Bodies (Northampton County #1)(68)

Sheba, her six-month-old puppy, had gotten out earlier that day, and Becca hadn’t seen her since. She’d searched the woods and fields around her house all morning, calling for her, fearing the worst. There were hawks that circled the cornfields looking for small prey. And Sheba was small, a mutt of unknown breeds. Becca’s mother had picked her up at the SPCA for Becca’s birthday that spring. Her father had been angry.

“I don’t want that mutt shitting in my yard,” he’d hollered. He spent the weekends, the ones he wasn’t working, riding his John Deere lawn mower, fertilizing, mowing, tending to their yard with a passion that baffled Becca. To her, it was just grass.

“I’ll clean it up,” her mother had said. “You won’t even notice the dog’s here.” She had turned, mumbled under her breath, “Just like you don’t notice anyone else in this family.”

The dog yelped again. The sound was definitely coming from inside the barn. Becca got off her bike and pushed it off the road, laying it down in the yard. She looked over her shoulder. She didn’t see any motorcycles in the driveway. The house looked dark and empty. She prayed Russell wasn’t home.

“Sheba,” she said in a quiet voice. There was another bark, but this one sounded like it came from a much bigger, meaner dog. Panic crept further up Becca’s throat as she inched closer to the building. The barn doors were flung open. She stood off to the side and peeked in.

In the far corner by the piles of hay, a Doberman pinscher bared its teeth. White foam dripped from its jowls. Becca glimpsed the plump black belly of a smaller animal, recognizing the spot of white fur on its paw. Becca’s chin trembled. She fought back tears.

She noticed John sitting on an old wooden stool. His head was down. His shoulders slumped. On the ground at his feet was a pile of clothes, dirty jeans and a red-stained blue hooded sweatshirt. The Doberman growled. It didn’t seem as though John was aware of the dogs or the attack that was taking place around him.

Becca summoned all the courage she could, which wasn’t much, and squeaked out her puppy’s name again. “Sheba.”

It was loud enough for John to look up. He saw her standing outside the barn door, but she didn’t think he really saw her. His eyes were empty, as though he were somewhere else. His face was pale. More of that peach fuzz covered his chin. He was a man now. And he looked scared, more frightened than Becca herself.

The Doberman continued growling, snapping, trying to reach Sheba. The puppy managed to crawl in between two hay bales, just out of reach of the mean dog’s bite.

John stood and looked down at his hand, where a bloody knife dangled from his fingers. It wasn’t a hunting knife. It didn’t have the gut hook at the tip. Becca knew this because her father was a hunter. Most of the men in the small town were hunters, and some of the women were too. She lived in a community where the school closed its doors the first two days of hunting season every year after Thanksgiving. Otherwise, they’d have to mark more than half of the boys and even some of the girls absent. Becca’s father made her wear bright-colored clothes whenever she wandered into the woods during this time. “You have to make sure the hunters can see you so you don’t get shot,” he’d said.

And hunting season hadn’t started yet. It wouldn’t start for another month, and Becca was wearing jeans and an old gray sweatshirt, not the bright-orange jacket that was too big for her small frame and hung to her knees.

John’s movements were slow yet jerky. He moved like someone who was “on the drugs,” as Becca’s father would say. Her father had not only warned her about hunters in the woods but also about drugs and alcohol and the dangers of all three separately and combined. He’d seen it all as chief of police. And John was acting like how her father had described—slow, erratic, confused. Dangerous. Someone on the drugs.

The Doberman lunged. Sheba yelped and scurried farther back inside the hay bales. Becca inhaled sharply, swallowing the scream that had worked its way from her chest to her mouth, gulping it back down her throat. John whipped around and stared at the dogs for the first time, registering the commotion in the corner of the barn.

“Rubes,” he called and yanked on the Doberman’s spiked collar, pulling the dog away from the puppy, commanding the dog to stay. To Becca’s amazement the dog obeyed. John scooped Becca’s puppy from between the hay bales, cradled her in his arm.

“Is this your dog?” he asked, more alert but somehow still off.

“Yes.” She stepped on wobbly legs into the barn, glanced at the bloody knife still in his hand, the red-stained sweatshirt in a heap on the ground, the snarling Doberman.

“Did your mom get her for you?”

“Yes,” Becca said, taking another step closer. “She got her for me for my birthday when the barn cat died. You remember giving me the barn cat?”

He nodded. “I bet your dad isn’t happy about a dog.”

“No, he isn’t,” she said, inching closer still, until she was an arm’s reach away. “He likes the puppy even less than he liked the cat.” Carefully, she took the knife from his hand and her puppy from his arm. He seemed not to notice nor care.

“Good thing she had that collar on.” He pointed to the pink collar around Sheba’s neck. “Or I might’ve let old Rubes here have her for lunch.”

Rubes glared at Becca and the puppy, waiting for the attack command that wasn’t coming.