Chapter Eighteen
Gabriel
Tuesday
Gabriel stepped out into a day thick with humidity.
It was too early to call it hot yet, but that was the trajectory.
Washington, D.C. was a swamp, and summers were muggy.
As Whiskey sat at Gabriel’s feet while he locked the door, Gabriel braced as he waited for Whiskey to decide where she wanted to go for her walk.
She trotted down the steps and turned right.
Gabriel exhaled. They were heading in the opposite direction of the graveyard, and Gabriel was relieved. Did he believe that Whiskey was being used as a ventriloquist doll by his dead brother?
It was unnerving even to fathom. But it had been going on for months now.
Not every day. Not even the same time of day—sometimes morning, sometimes night. Full moons. New moons. Gibbous moons. Sunshine or rain.
It was random. But constant.
Walks toward the east and Whiskey would be singing. Walks to the north and she’d be sniffing the fire hydrant, checking on the neighbors.
This was not a walk for exercise. Gabriel just needed Whiskey to piss.
Reaper Hamilton would be swinging by the Hoover Building to pick Whiskey up so she could spend the day doing dog-to-dog mentorship with a new bloodhound they’d begun training. It would put Whiskey on the trail and in her zone.
Gabriel had a lot on his plate. But between Loquisha—the teenager next door with aspirations of becoming a vet one day and thrilled to be Whiskey’s on-call petsitter—and the time Whiskey spent hanging out with Cerberus, Gabriel thought Whiskey was getting the attention and stimulation she needed to be happy.
Gabriel looked down at Whiskey. “You’re doing good work over at Iniquus. I’m proud of you, Beautiful.”
As Gabriel passed by Loquisha’s house, the wind picked up, blowing from the east. Whiskey stuck his nose in the air and turned.
Gabriel could tell she was jazzed by whatever was in the wind because Whiskey was at the full length of her lead and leaning in.
Could he turn her around?
Probably.
Was morbid curiosity at the helm?
Certainly.
He hated to think it, but part of him really liked the idea that Daniel was hanging out.
Gabriel would have discounted the idea altogether because the idea wasn’t anywhere in his paradigms, but then Reaper had told him on the siblings search on Sweet Gum last March: dogs don’t memorize songs and randomly start singing.
And it wasn’t one song.
It was many.
Yesterday, Gabriel had been at Whiskey’s graveyard concert in the pre-dawn morning when she started to sing a new song, one Gabriel hadn’t heard before.
Gabriel remembered Reaper saying that howling was a group sport, a way of communicating. He’d wondered if Whiskey might be hearing something that had her joining in.
Organ music up at the church made the most sense to him.
They hadn’t had organ music at his brother’s funeral. Daniel hated the organ, but Gabriel remembered singing along to one as a child.
If that was why Whiskey made her way to the church, there might be a car in the parking lot that he could see to make sense of things. Gabriel reasoned that the organist was there at odd hours, practicing for church, perhaps even an upcoming funeral.
So the length of the field between the church and road might have made it something Whiskey could hear while he, with his pitiful human ears, could not.
But as he’d arrived at the stop sign where Whiskey liked to sit and sing, Gabriel could plainly see that the parking lot was empty and the lights were off in the church.
Whiskey plopped her butt to the ground and offered a couple of stale-sounding notes as if she regretted not having time to warm up before her concert.
Her chin tipped up, her chest expanded, and to Gabriel's surprise, it was a different song. Clearly different. Gabe took out his phone to record the sound. He would have asked Cathy about it to see if this song was also on Daniel’s hospice playlist, but she was a little too excited by the idea that Daniel was haunting Gabriel via Whiskey.
Cathy needed to let go. Gabriel couldn’t see how fully believing in a possessed dog was healthy.
If he couldn’t offer a quick explanation, like the musician at the keyboard, then he’d keep his mouth shut.
And while he felt like he was protecting his sister, Gabriel had to admit that it felt like there was something otherworldly at play. As if this did have meaning; Gabe just needed a way to define it. “Daniel, man, if this is you as soon as I die, I’m going to kill you.”
And as he said it, Whiskey stopped howling and turned her attention to him.
“Whiskey, that’s just how Daniel and I talk to each other. No malice intended.”
He expected her to tip back and sing again, but instead she moseyed over to the stop sign, took a good sniff, then left her own scent for the neighborhood dogs to enjoy.
Gabriel had decided to walk up to the church, then the nostalgic scent of roses drew him across the street instead.
His movements set off the motion-detector lights, and he didn’t want the owner to look out and find him staring. So he turned and left.
Now, as Whiskey leaned into her leash, aiming for the graveyard, Gabriel stopped.
He didn’t have the time or the emotional bandwidth to deal with howling this morning.
He just didn’t.
“Hey, Whiskey, how about you pee on this tree here?” Gabriel stepped toward the copse of trees. “I’ll tell you what, if you just pee and get it over with, when I get to work, I’ll walk you by the food carts and let you smell the meat cooking.”
***
In Gabriel’s office, Whiskey had her own little bed in a corner that he kept ready for her.
It was under the air vent, and Gabriel had no control of the frigid air they pumped into his office, so he had a cozy blanket to tuck around her and a couple of her favorite chew toys to keep her from getting bored.
Gabriel hoped that because his office was nestled in the middle of the building, none of the emergency vehicle sirens on the street would set Whiskey’s howling off.
Just because he couldn’t hear sirens didn’t mean that Whiskey didn’t.
So far, that hadn’t been a problem.
And, surprisingly, no one had gotten on Gabriel for bringing a dog to the office.
In fact, it seemed to lower stress levels when people saw her and got to coo and pet her, unlike the service dogs who supported other people in the building, which everyone had to ignore lest they distract the dogs from their jobs.
Maybe Whiskey got the pass because she was a celebrity doggo who had found the children on Sweet Gum. Either way, Gabriel was thankful, because bringing her made for an easy spot for a handoff to the Cerberus operative who came to collect her.
The knock at his door told Gabriel that the special agent with an emergency case had reached his office door.
“Come in,” Gabriel called out.
“Hi, I have a long shot for you.” Candace Martins leaned against his door jamb.
“How long are we talking here?”
“I have a video that includes a window showing a tree. I have a prioritized autopsy going under the knife, and I’m waiting impatiently for legal to push a warrant under the judge's nose. I can either pace, wring my hands waiting, or I can bother you.”
“Alright. I’ll do what I can. A window with a tree isn’t going to get me far unless it’s some endangered species.”
“Maple, I think. Still. I’d like to hear what you have to say.” Candace Martin positioned her laptop on Gabriel’s desk in such a way that they could both angle their chairs and see the screen.
“We have a nurse that works at the public hospital who is a paid FBI informant. She looks for things that might pass under the radar—overheard conversations mostly. She draws the line at most anything HIPAA-related. In this case, she’s willing to breach that ethic.”
The cold prickle of fear raced across Gabriel’s head, and he must be shooting a good amount of adrenaline through his system because Whiskey lifted her nose in the air and was chuffing hard.
“Lay down, Whiskey, everything’s fine,” he said. But he didn’t mean a word of it.
It was Candace’s tone that set him off, and Gabriel braced for what she had for him.
Right away, Gabriel saw the hospital setting, a woman’s arms. From the height and angle, Gabriel would say that she’d put her phone in a breast pocket.
“Your nurse shot this?”
“A couple of hours ago.” Candace sat on the edge of the guest chair, her hands clasped between her knees.
“My informant got the willies from this guy. She said she had her hand on her emergency sedation syringe the entire time. In this video, you’ll hear their conversation while she’s trying to gather information about the situation.
At this point, she’d already called for a psych eval.
We trained the nurse. I think she did a pretty good job. ”
“Do you know the difference between a girl and a bird?” the man asked.
“A bird has wings,” Nurse said.
“A girl wants wings to fly away, and the right girl can shapeshift to do just that.”
“Tell me about that.”
“You have to have an eye for it.” The man tapped where a third eye might be. “And you can’t tell at first, so you test them.”
“How do you do that?” Nurse asked.
“You put them in the cage and wait for them to want it enough. Sometimes even birds don’t know they’re birds. But I know. You know?”
“Do you have a girl that is a bird?” Nurse asked.
Perfect, Gabriel thought. Keep going.
“Do you have a picture that I can see, so I understand what you’re explaining to me?”
“Hand me my phone. I’ll show you a picture of my new bird.”
Gabriel’s breathing became shallow. He had no idea what horror he was about to see.
The man opened his phone, and the nurse reached for it.
There on the screen was a picture of a room with a window. In the window there was sky and the bark of a maple tree.
There on the bed lay a young girl. She was emaciated. Her stick-thin limbs stuck out in odd angles as she draped over the bed. Greasy hair fell over her face.
“Can you tell if a girl is a bird or not?” he asked. “I can. But I like to study birds.”
“Did you buy your little bird?” she asked, handing the phone back.