what happened to wife number one?”
He shrugged. “She got tired of flirting. I got tired of fighting. We both moved on to bigger and better things.”
I pushed the bell again. We waited.
Miles said, “Maybe he’s not here.”
I nodded toward the parking lot. “That has to be his car.”
He looked at me meaningfully. “Maybe the police got here before us.”
I frowned and punched the bell again. We waited.
Miles said, “You don’t think he did it, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“The dog, right?’
“Right. He knows how valuable she is. He trained her from a pup. He wouldn’t just let her run loose like that.” I could see skepticism in his eyes, so I added, “You have to know dog people.”
Miles knocked loudly on the door. “There aren’t too many lawyers who could win with the you-have-to-know-dog-people defense, so I hope this guy has an alibi. And I hope you have a backup plan, because it doesn’t look like he’s home.”
He started to turn away, but I held up a hand. “Wait. I think I hear someone inside.” I knocked again. “Neil?” I called. “Neil, are you there? I want to talk to you about Bryte and Flame.”
A chain rattled on the inside, there was some fumbling with the doorknob, and the door swung open. Neil leaned against the doorframe, blinking at us slowly in the gentle morning light, his pupils the size of dimes. His hair was crumpled and his complexion pasty, and his right hand was wrapped in a heavy gauze bandage. I barely noticed any of this, though. I was too busy staring at the blood spatters on his tee shirt.
~*~
FOURTEEN
Three hours, forty-six minutes before the shooting
Neil said, “Who the hell are you?” His voice was thick and somewhat slurred, and he swayed a little on his feet. I noticed for the first time that he was propped up by a crutch and the right leg of his jeans was neatly split from thigh to ankle, revealing a heavy white cast at the knee.
I said, completely disoriented, “Um… maybe we’ve come at a bad time…”
“I’m Miles Young and this is my friend Raine Stockton,” Miles said, speaking over me. “We met yesterday at the dog trial, but you probably don’t remember. We’ll just come in for a minute. Here, let me give you a hand there. Looks like you had a rough night.”
Miles urged me forward with a firm hand on my back, and I couldn’t help staring at him as I stepped over the threshold. Sometimes the guy can really surprise me.
All Miles murmured in response was, “We came this far. You weren’t really planning to leave, were you?” Then he turned to Neil, assisting him with the crutch. “These things can be tricky. There you go.”
We entered a living room that was dark and sparsely furnished: a couch, a flat screen, a bean bag chair, and a small plastic, outdoor-type table that held a laptop, a stack of Clean Run magazines, and some empty beer cans. It smelled, as most bachelor apartments do, of dirty laundry and stale pizza. Neil, with Miles’s help, collapsed on the brown-striped sofa, and I glanced around until I located the kitchen. I rinsed out a glass from the pile of dishes in the sink, and filled it with water. I heard Neil saying, “Who are you again? Damn painkillers.”
I brought him the water and sat gingerly on the far end of the couch, leaning forward to remain in his line of sight. Miles sat on the arm of the sofa beside me. “What happened to you?” I asked, and my concern was genuine. “Are you going to be okay?”
He focused on me with the effort of a swimmer pushing his way to the surface. “I know you,” he said at last. “You’re the one who caught Bryte yesterday. I didn’t thank you. I’m sorry. Yesterday… was a hell of a day.”
“That’s okay,” I assured him. “Is this…”—I gestured to his knee—“because of the fall you took yesterday?”
He looked at me for a moment, slow to comprehend, and then gave a short bark of laughter. “In a way.” He took a thirsty gulp of the water. “Look, I just spent twelve hours in the emergency room. I already told the police everything I know. You said something about my dogs. Are they okay?” A sudden alarm brought cognizance to his eyes, and he pushed himself forward, wincing at the pain. “He didn’t try to hurt them, did he? She didn’t let him get to