Sixteen
Wednesday
The dead guy lived in a part of Boise called the Bench, because it sits on a plateau north of downtown. The Bench is being
family. After parking a few houses down, I slouched behind the wheel to stuff my hair under a beanie. Next I pulled on thin
gloves to avoid leaving prints. I was on a three-pronged mission:
Nab any packages so they wouldn’t blare to the neighbors that Connor had gone missing.
Break into his house.
Find further clues (or better yet, proof!) as to who killed him and why.
Bonus points if I could find evidence re: a plan to attack the capitol.
I carefully avoided patches of black ice on the sidewalk. The last thing I needed was to have an ambulance on record rescuing
me from Connor Johnson’s doorstep.
Connor’s house was so small it seemed impossible he’d have a roommate, but his sidewalk had been shoveled—hopefully a Good
Samaritan neighbor had done it. His mailbox was a drop-through slot, but a couple UPS boxes sat stacked at the door. If anyone
asked, I’d say I lived three streets over and my packages had been delivered here by accident.
As I scooped up the parcels, a dog’s panicked barking erupted. Someone was inside! With a dog! A 1990s John Travolta might as well have slammed a syringe full of adrenaline into my heart. I was bolting toward my car, stumbling on black ice, when a lightning bolt of understanding struck.
If Connor was dead—
And had no roommates—
Maybe the dog inside belonged to Connor. If so, it’d been alone for three days. I couldn’t in good conscience leave a hungry,
thirsty, abandoned animal trapped all alone.
And maybe I could search the place after all. I dumped the packages in my trunk and headed back to the house.
To be safe, I knocked on the front door. The dog barked desperately but no one answered.
Despite the piled-up snow, a hard shove opened the back gate. After a couple of short yaps, the dog started whining pitifully.
I couldn’t find a key under the mat or the snow-filled ceramic pot. But when I turned the knob, the back door swung right
open. A sleek gray pit bull, barely out of puppyhood and smelling of potting soil, jumped on me.
“Hey there, buddy,” I said, squatting down to pet him. “What happened to your ear?”
His torn ear had been neatly stitched together. Something rumbled—a neighbor rolling a garbage can to the street. Hurriedly,
I yanked the blinds closed.
“Hello?” I ventured.
Nothing.
Scooping up the water bowl, I filled it at the sink. The dog danced and whined at my feet as if to say: I have plenty of toilet water, you beautiful idiot. I need food!
As soon as I poured dog food into his plastic bowl, the ravenous pit bull started scarfing.
My Mom Instincts forced me to sweep the drying piles of dog doo into a dust pan and fling them into the backyard.
Next I dropped tea towels on the pee puddles to soak them up.
Only then did I begin to scan the house for clues.
The fridge hosted a bottle of ketchup and some moldy leftovers from Panda Express. My hopes the box of Tillamook ice cream
sandwiches in the freezer would be full of cash, illicit drugs, or bars of gold were dashed. But the sandwiches were salted
caramel, my favorite.
I peeled off a glove, unwrapped a sandwich, and nibbled as I walked the house. A couch and giant flat-screen dominated the
living room. A poster for the movie Face/Off hung from a shiplap wall alongside a life-sized cutout of comedian-turned-podcaster Joe Rogan. Go figure.
Soap and a disposable razor sat on the bathroom counter. A cracked leather belt dangled from the shower rod. The cabinet drawers
housed tweezers, aspirin, Q-tips, and not much else.
In the bedroom, an open laptop with a sticky-looking screen made me willing to bet the whole thing was radioactive with porn.
I didn’t have the slightest idea how to open it without a passcode.
In the lone framed photo on the desk, Connor stood with his arm around a smiling woman with bleached hair. Was this Baylee?
A little boy, maybe four years old, stood beside her. Connor wore a happy smile. The woman smiled too, but her eyes were melancholy.
The little boy looked worried. Anxiety sank its talons into my guts. I suddenly remembered Connor saying he went to Huckleberry’s
to stop thinking about “the one who got away. And her kid.”
This must be them. I set the ice cream sandwich on the desk and used my phone to snap a photo of the framed picture.
The dog trotted into the room, looking at me with big wet eyes.
“Don’t try to make me love you,” I said.
Bam! Bam! Bam! A fist pounded the front door. The dog raced toward it, barking wildly.
Dropping to the hardwood, I army-crawled to the window and lifted the corner of the blinds.
A muscular man with a crooked nose stood on the front stoop.
His thin T-shirt defied the breath-clouding cold.
Squinting, I could make out the smiling face of a golden retriever and the plain black outline of a dachshund inked on his arms. Part of me wanted to throw open the front door and ask if he wanted to take this puppy home with him.
But then, to my horror, the front door actually clicked opened.
“Aw, hey there, sweet boy.” The intruder’s voice reached me from the living room. What did the dead guy have against locking
his doors?
Looking around in a panic from my vantage on the floor, I saw my fatal mistake: the uneaten half of the ice cream sandwich
lay in plain view on the desk. The bedroom door was open—the intruder would see me if I made a grab for my pilfered snack.
I had only one option. Using a floorwork pole dancing move called the cobra wiggle, I shimmied through the quarter-inch thick
dust under the bed until I was entirely hidden from view.
“Connor! You home?” the intruder called. “Looks like your ear’s healing up nice,” he said to the dog. “Now tell me, buddy—where
is that shit-heel owner of yours?”
As he headed to the kitchen, I prayed he wouldn’t glance out into the backyard and see my lone set of footprints. Next, I
heard him rustling through the bathroom cabinet. The dust was making my brain tickle. I pinched my nose to fight back a sneeze
as the footsteps headed my way. Any second now he’d come into the bedroom, spot what was left of my ice cream sandwich, and
realize he wasn’t alone.
Dog nails clicked into the bedroom. Paws hit the desk and I heard a happy gobble as the dog wolfed down my ice cream.
A blink later, the interloper strode into the bedroom. I didn’t dare breathe. As desk drawers opened and closed, the dog trotted
over and sniffed at my feet. I desperately tried to telegraph to the pup that, despite having just saved me, it now needed
to stay the hell away.
“What are you doing over there?” the man asked. The dog continued to sniff at my ankles. I sweated it out in the dust as a
pen scratched paper. “You’ll tell Connor I’m looking for him, won’t you, boy?”
Blessedly, dog nails clacked after the intruder as he tromped from the room. The front door opened and closed; I let out the longest breath of my life. Only when the truck motor faded did I dare wriggle out of my hiding place.
The dog galloped back into the bedroom and licked my face.
“Thank you,” I said, giving him a grateful pat. I’d climbed to my feet and was trying to brush dust off my clothes when I
spotted a handwritten note laying where my ice cream sandwich had been.
Connor,
Give me back the meds you stole. I’m serious, bruv.
—Harlan
Maybe the Ambien that’d rolled out of Connor’s pocket belonged to this Harlan guy. If so, I didn’t blame him for being pissed.
I’d had two bad night’s sleep in a row and already I felt borderline psychotic. Harlan’s note slid into my back pocket.
After taking one last look around, I scooped up the mail from under the mail slot and grabbed a leash from a nail in the kitchen.
The dog wiggled so much it was hard to hook the leash to its collar. It looked up at me with warm, shining eyes.
“Technically I owe you,” I said. “But I cannot handle a dog right now. You understand. I’m sure someone will adopt you from
the shelter very soon. All I know for sure is: You are not coming home with me.”