No, Sal must have loaded them into his truck or SUV and driven them here, and waited until I let Edwina out for the night, and then set them on me. Or on her, to trick me into coming outside. I wondered whether he was planning to stand in the shadows—because he had to be back there somewhere—watching as they mauled both of us to death, or whether he planned to interfere at some point.
“Show yourself, you bastard!” I shrieked, as I whapped the second dog with the broom to keep it at a distance. “Hiding in the trees like a coward?—”
It figured that an accusation of cowardice was what would do it. The next second, a figure had emerged from the trees. Tall, broad-shouldered, limping slightly.
I opened my mouth to scream at him, but before I could?—
“This is the police!” a voice boomed from somewhere off to my left. “You are surrounded. Call off the dogs and raise your hands!”
The porch light suddenly seemed too bright, or maybe those were the floodlights that suddenly lit up the lawn. The ground tilted beneath my feet. I saw Sal’s face—shocked, angry, afraid—and I saw the dogs turning toward him, uncertain.
“Police!” the voice bellowed again. “Show me your hands!”
And then everything went black, and I had the distant sensation of falling before I felt nothing at all.
Epilogue
“It was Sal,” I said the next morning.
I was lying in a bed in a room at Centennial Hospital, where I had been taken by Lieutenant Copeland after all the hoopla of the previous night. I was going over the events of the night with Zachary and Rachel, who had heard the news and had come to check up on me, or possibly to pick me up and take me home.
Rachel eyed me narrowly. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine. I needed a few stitches. One of the dogs got its teeth through my jeans and into my calf.”
“That must have hurt,” Rachel said.
I nodded, because it had, once I’d noticed it. “It isn’t too bad. The jeans helped. And I didn’t really feel it until afterwards. Too busy trying to fend them off.”
“Adrenaline rush,” Zachary said knowledgably. He looked around. “Where’s Edwina?”
“Mendoza took her to the vet last night. They bit her, too.”
An expression of concern crossed Zachary’s freckled face. “How is she?”
“I haven’t heard from him yet this morning. But I’m sure she’s all right. He would have called otherwise.”
And she’d been mostly OK when I’d seen her. Or as OK as could be expected after a run-in with two much larger, brutal animals. She’d been bloody but unbowed. Delighted to see Mendoza, as always. She’d been licking his hand between licking her own wounds, until he bundled her up in a towel and announced he was taking her to the emergency vet. It was abundantly clear which one of us he was more concerned about. He had left me to Lieutenant Copeland’s questioning without a backwards glance (although he had handed me a towel, as well.)
“So it was Sal,” Rachel said.
I nodded. “It was Sal. Last night was definitely Sal. And I imagine Nick’s murder must have been Sal, too, or he wouldn’t have attacked me.”
“He did catch you snooping at his place,” Zachary pointed out, and I nodded.
“But unless he had something to hide, surely that wouldn’t have been enough to try to silence me.”
“I should have stayed with you last night,” Rachel said regretfully, and I shook my head.
“I appreciate the thought, but it wouldn’t have made any difference. Once the Shepherds attacked Edwina, I would have gone after her whether you were there or not. And honestly, I don’t think it took very long before the police interfered. It felt like a long time, but it probably wasn’t more than a minute, if that.”
“Long enough for you to get hurt,” Zach said disapprovingly.
“We had to wait for Sal to show himself,” a voice added from the doorway. We all turned as Mendoza stepped through, Edwina cradled in his arms. My beautiful, brave, slightly idiotic Boston Terrier had bandages wrapped around her back leg and her shoulder, and—the worst indignity of all—she was wearing a cone so she wouldn’t try to lick her wounds.
Zachary cooed, and Mendoza put the dog on the bed next to me before adding, “I wish we could have interfered before either of you got hurt, but we had to get him in our sights first.”
I waved it off. “I’m sure you did what you could, Detective. What’s happening now?”
