Dogs Don't Lie Read Online Free PDF Page A

Four
    I’d had the rest of the afternoon to think things over. I’m no bleeding heart, but Lily was more than a paycheck to me, and there were still too many loose ends to let any of them go. When I’d walked in Wednesday morning, Lily had been barking like mad and running free. Right away, even before I’d seen Charles, I’d known something was wrong. For starters, Lily should have been in her crate. That’s where she goes each night. Where she spends the greater part of the day, and that’s where she should have been that morning, waiting for our weekly session.
    Don’t get on me. I said crate, not cage. It might look small to you, but to her it looks like security. We’re talking a hard-luck bitch here. A girl who’s seen too much of open space in the form of cold dirt yards. Too much of “freedom” in the sense of fend for yourself when the scraps are thrown. And if those scars around her neck and ears were any indication, she’d valued the privacy, too. Nice to be able to sleep without worrying who might be coming for you.
    So someone had let her out, and it wasn’t just for morning walkies. I might’ve been thrown by the sight of Charles, what was left of him, throat torn open. But at some level, I’d registered what was going on and now, going back over it, I was sure. There had been no leash in sight. Not by the body, not on the floor. Charles knew the rules. He’d not open the crate without the leash in hand. Routine, that was key. He was a programmer. He knew about rules.
    So someone else had been in the house. Someone had seen the muscular white dog in her crate and popped the latch, maybe hoping she’d do the job for him. Hey, it wasn’t that much of a leap. You see that jaw, you hear the stories.
    Poor little bitch. Despite the reputation her breed has, something happened with her. The blood hadn’t run true. Lily wouldn’t fight. Couldn’t, in some primal way, maybe, and that meant she wasn’t even a good “bait dog” to train the others. It was no wonder that her prior owner wanted to get rid of her. The miracle was how she survived at all.
    It wasn’t that she was useless. Far from it. Lily should have been a farm dog, living some place where she could run around till she was wiped. Do some work. Build up whatever shreds of self esteem she had left in that thick canine skull. Did you know pit bulls were farm dogs once? Yeah, strong and tireless. Traits the so-called sportsmen recognized and put to their own uses, decades before the gangstas and their ilk. Lily could’ve been a throwback. A dog to follow you out to the herds, help you with the cattle. Earn a decent living and a good night’s sleep.
    Not that she’d have changed places, not in a minute. Lily was smitten. Charles wanted a house dog, she was there, lapping it up. There’s no accounting for taste, and the computer geek wasn’t half bad. Until yesterday, I’d thought he’d come from the city, like so many of them, and seen only the big old houses. The mountains in the distance. The quiet nights. Knowing that he’d grown up around here—Raynbourne was only about a half hour away—made me respect him more. He knew what this area was like, and he’d come back anyway. And not to one of those new developments, either. Maybe they were too close to his old home. Maybe they couldn’t offer what this place did, with its wraparound porch and a view down to the river. Still, he’d put in the effort.
    I had no idea what the house had looked like before, though I bet it hadn’t been good. Nobody who has stayed here has the money to fix anything up. He must have gutted it—the room where I’d found him was open clear through from the front porch to the big picture window in back. That was his workplace. His play space, too. He’d had the money to wire the place up to his specifications, make it the headquarters of GeekBrain West, or whatever he called himself. He’d hired locally, I’d heard. And he’d been good to