Rottweiler Rescue (7 page)

The carpet was still the same nondescript tweedy combination of shades of beige that John had picked out without consulting me more than a dozen years earlier. You’d think the day after he left for good, I’d have replaced anything that caused a fight of the magnitude that carpet had caused, but it was still there, a bit worn in places, but still there.

The kitchen was my very own, redecorated only the year before. The failing harvest gold appliances had left on the same truck that delivered cream-colored replacements that made the light oak cabinets, kitchen table and chairs look almost as good as new. Almost.

The tile pattern on the linoleum would only fool someone very nearsighted who didn’t have glasses handy, but I’d put up wallpaper with cheery red, pink, and yellow flowers on a cream-colored background that matched the appliances, and all in all it was a cozy room in the winter and at this time of year light and airy.

If I wasn’t totally in love with my house, I was with my home. That’s how I thought of the entire place, the house, the five acres it sat on, and the barn at the back of the property. The original owners had cleverly positioned the house so that it seemed to nestle into sloping land and a covey of Ponderosa pines.

Then they landscaped the hill in front of the house with drought resistant ground covers and plants that bloomed all spring and summer and managed to give a hint of color well into the fall. The pale gray house with its dark blue trim and hillside of front gardens looked like an enchanted cottage at all times of the year.

The gardens were not high maintenance. An automatic drip system gave them their small ration of water with no help from me, but after lunch I headed outside to continue my never-ending battle with the weeds. By the time the sun began setting over the mountains, filling the western sky with a glory of deep orange behind peaks purple in the fading light, I was physically tired and restored in spirit.

I stood under the shower deciding whether to make a trip to town that night to replenish my empty larder or put it off and have soup for dinner. Two things tipped the scales towards a nighttime shopping trip — Bella had finished the last can of cat food that morning and wasn’t going to be happy with just dry food, and if I shopped in the cool of the night, the dogs could come along. At least Sophie and Robo could. Sophie was fairly tolerant about another female dog in her house, but squeezing her into the back of my Toyota Matrix with both Robo and Millie was asking too much.

Stepping out of the shower, I almost tripped over Sophie, who had a sixth sense for when a shower meant imminent departure. She stuck to my side like a velcro dog, barely giving me enough room to pull on jeans and a T-shirt, hoping the power of her presence would convince me to let her come along.

Why dogs love going in the car when it means long boring waits while their human shops and runs errands, I don’t know, but there’s no mistaking the fact that they do love car rides.

As soon as Sophie realized her quest had been successful, she left my side and stood intently at the door leading from the kitchen to the garage. Robo followed us out to the car without showing any enthusiasm, but he didn’t leave room for any doors to shut in his face either.

I parked in the out of the way spot I always use at my favorite King Sooper’s on Lincoln Avenue. Long ago, after a particularly aggravating and embarrassing search for my car in a crowded parking lot, I’d come to the conclusion it was better to walk a little further to the store and always know where my car was.

The night was clear and pleasant with just the barest hint of a breeze. The dogs would be comfortable in the car with every window lowered enough to let in cool evening air but not enough for more than a nose to fit out.

Half an hour later I rolled my grocery cart full of plastic sacks through the well-lit parking lot toward my distant car, lost in speculation about the new client I was meeting the next day. As I walked into the shadows cast by a van and SUV parked side by side, a dark figure jerked me between the vehicles with a muscular arm around my throat. An involuntary yelp of pain and fright escaped from me.

“Shut up,” he hissed in my ear.

One black-clad arm was tight around my neck, dragging me backwards, the other was free to use the knife he pressed into the side of my throat, almost under my chin, forcing my head back into his chest. A thin warm line of wetness ran down my neck and soaked into my shirt.

Each breath I took was a small violation of his command for silence. He said nothing else. Maybe he never heard the little sounds that seemed so loud to me. Maybe they were drowned out by the thunderous non-stop barking echoing through the lot from my car.

 Sophie had heard my first cry. Her barks were so furious they were blending together into a roar. The man kept dragging me backwards, and I instinctively knew he had a vehicle close by, and once inside it, I was dead.

A loud crack exploded in the night. A gunshot? The barking stopped.
No! Oh, no!
But immediately there was a shout, “What the hell... look out for those dogs!”

I couldn’t look, couldn’t turn my head, but the man behind me inhaled sharply. His left arm tightened around my neck, and he thrust the knife forward into the air as if he could ward off the charging dogs.

Then the black forms appeared out of the shadows. Their eyes reflected red in the night, and their teeth gleamed white. My captor gasped again, froze for a split second, and threw me toward the dogs.

I skidded on my hands and knees and fell into Robo, clutching him around the neck with all my strength. The distinctive slide then slam of a van door sounded nearby, then the roar of an engine.

Fear gave me the strength to lift and turn my head. Sophie was running after a dark van like a vengeful fury. At first she was clearly visible under the parking lot lights. When she turned onto the sidewalk dividing the parking lot from Lincoln Avenue, following the van west, only the headlights of cars speeding by at dog-killing speed illuminated her dark form.

“Sophie, Sophie, come!” My attempt at a scream came out of my bruised throat as a painful, hoarse croak. Would she recognize the voice as mine? Could she hear me at all?

She kept running, didn’t seem to slow. Holding Robo, who wanted to go after Sophie, trying to struggle to my feet to go after her myself, I fell again and settled for calling Sophie’s name again and again as loudly as I could. She didn’t do the trained obedience dog’s instant, skidding halt. She slowed reluctantly, and finally stopped without turning, the urge to go on clear in every line of her body.

Looking tiny in the distance, her silhouette appeared then disappeared in the flashes of the headlights, yet the intensity of the way she stared after the van radiated through the night. When I called again, sobbing with relief that she had listened at all, she turned and started back to me at a trot.

A babble of voices sounded around me.

“Lady, are you all right?”

“My God, that dog attacked her.”

“She’s bleeding. Somebody get the cops.”

“I called 911 on my cell. They said I was the third one that called.”

“We’ve got to do something about the dogs. Has anybody got any rope or anything?”

That last made me take my eyes off Sophie long enough to straighten out the people around me.

“The dog didn’t bite me. There was a man with a knife. He escaped in that van. Don’t even think about hurting my dogs!”

My voice, which had been so hoarse when I had been calling to Sophie, now started out squeaky and rose to half-hysterical. As Sophie trotted up, the circle around me parted, making a wide path for her. I grabbed her collar and sat there, holding both dogs, unsure what to do next.

One brave soul finally broke out of the circle of concerned shoppers surrounding me. “Okay, lady, okay. Are you all right?”

“No. Yes! My car is over there. I want to put my dogs in it. I want to go home.”

“Can you stand up?”

“I-I’m not sure.”

“Those dogs going to be all right if I touch you?”

“Yes! They’re good dogs. They were in the car. Something happened. There was a gunshot. They chased him.” In truth I wasn’t so sure of Sophie’s mood right then, but I wasn’t admitting it to any of these people. With the Good Samaritan’s help, and using the dogs’ sturdy bodies, I managed to get to my feet.

My sensible savior was a thick-bodied, middle-aged man with a kind face. He gave me his belt to use as a leash and talked another shopper into doing the same. Sophie stayed pressed so close to me I could feel the heat of her through my clothes. It was the only thing I could feel that was pleasant. I hurt all over. My throat was crushed and bruised, and my knees were on fire where raw flesh was exposed to night air through the gaping holes torn in my jeans. The palms of my hands were only slightly better off than my knees. The cut on my neck was starting to throb.

Seeing that it was safe to approach, more people crowded around me. Helping hands pressed a wad of tissues into mine. When I began to wipe my neck, the amount of blood shocked me. Gingerly I explored and realized in addition to the original cut on my neck there was a long shallow slash that extended around under my ear then into my hair. Since I was standing and breathing and feeling stronger than a few minutes ago, I decided the wound couldn’t be serious.

Dennis Conrady introduced himself and his wife, Karen, who was equally concerned about me but unwilling to get close to the dogs. He let me keep hold of the belts and the dogs, but steadied me by the arm and helped me toward my car.

We all stopped as we got close enough to really see it. A back window lay in two pieces on the ground. Slowly it dawned on me that the loud crack I’d taken for a gunshot was the sound of the window exploding outward from the car. There had been stories of Rottweilers taking out car windows on my email lists, but could a dog Sophie’s size slamming every one of her eighty-five pounds into the window do that? If Robo had caught her excitement and somehow hit the window simultaneously? An explanation for their saving presence hadn’t really occurred to me, and now faced with one, I could barely credit it.

The dogs jumped willingly enough into the back, and this time I used their own leashes to fasten each one loosely to a seat belt anchor. Dennis took his belt back and gave the other to its owner, who disappeared into the night. Both Dennis and Karen relaxed visibly with the dogs away from them and restrained.

I left the back door open and sat on the floor of the back of the car. Sophie leaned against me, her solid body a comfort. “Thank you,” I whispered. “I’m sorry the dogs scared you. They really wouldn’t hurt you.”

“When we first saw them they were charging across here like the hounds of hell,” Dennis said. “Small wonder that son of a bitch let you go and ran.”

Karen rescued my groceries from where they sat abandoned and unloaded them into the passenger’s side of the front seat for me.

“At least he didn’t get your purse,” she said, putting it on the driver’s seat.

In spite of my assurances that I was all right and they didn’t have to stay, the Conradys waited with me and stayed even when the paramedics arrived, closely followed by two police cars.

The paramedics were gentle and sympathetic until they realized my insistence that I was fine and wasn’t going to a hospital was for real. At that point the slim young Hispanic who had been cleaning the wound on my neck disappeared.

His older Anglo partner continued to argue with me until I mentioned just using some Super Glue on my neck myself when I got home. At that point he stomped into the back of the ambulance, came out with a tube of medical glue, and used it to close the cuts with a marked ungentleness.

“Our report’s going to say you refused treatment,” he said.

He ignored my thanks and joined his partner in the cab of the vehicle. They roared off in a cloud of disapproving exhaust.

Their departure left a few members of Parker’s finest as the only barrier between me and home. The Town of Parker has its own police department, but most of the area known as Parker, including my own address, is not in the town limits and is served by the sheriff’s department. One of the small blessings of the evening’s events was that the grocery store
was
in the town limits, so the officers I faced were strangers, and not Lieutenant Forrester, or, worse, Deputy Carraher.

One of the officers talked to Dennis and Karen Conrady and a few of the other shoppers. When the instinctive human desire not to be involved melted the rest of the watching crowd away, he dragged the pieces of my car window out of sight behind the store.

I gave the officer questioning me a straightforward account of exactly what had happened without mentioning my previous encounter with a man in black and refused to speculate on motive. After promising to sign a sworn statement at the station the next day, I was ready to force my stiffening body to move, when the officer spoke again.

“You need to be careful with those dogs, you know. It could get nasty if they took off after some innocent citizen.”

“Sophie is seven years old,” I said icily, “and she’s never ‘taken off’ after anyone until she met a criminal the police obviously haven’t caught and locked up.”

The only answer to that was another car door slamming as the officer joined his partner in the cruiser and they left the parking lot.

“Well, it looks to me as if you’ve got enough starch left to get yourself home safely,” Dennis Conrady said with a chuckle.

He and Karen watched me move slowly and stiffly into the driver’s seat and insisted I lock the doors on my car in spite of the gaping hole where the driver’s side back window used to be. They waved off my sincere thanks and watched me drive away.

Dennis was right. I made it home, got the perishable groceries put away, fed Bella and the dogs, checked the lock on every window and door twice, and swallowed several Advil. Then I crashed.

Early the next morning, as
I soaked away some of my stiffness in bath water aromatic with lavender essential oil and frothy with bubbles, I decided that no matter how much pain killer it took, I was keeping my late morning appointment with the new client. Canceling would invite him to shop around for tech help.