Dog Gone, Back Soon by Nick Trout

Author:Nick Trout [Trout, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Humour, Mystery, Adult, Contemporary, Fiction / Romance / Contemporary, Fiction / Medical, Pets / Essays & Narratives
ISBN: 9781628991789
Google: QQNOAgAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1401310893
Barnesnoble: 1401310893
Goodreads: 18453174
Publisher: Hyperion
Published: 2014-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

THE WORD chill in windchill feels like a cruel joke. I think the local meteorologists meant “windkill” and it came out wrong. Though the drifting snow sparkles in the truck’s high beams like fairy dust, there’s nothing magical about it. Round these parts the word chill is about as useful as the word warm in the Sahara Desert.

As I drive, the left, logical side of my brain comes back to my conversation with Harry. Harry said he’d only just met this Marco character. This might suggest someone who’s not been in Amy’s life for very long, but the phone call at the bar, the one Amy insisted she take, seemed like a conversation with an old friend, and she alluded to the fact that he was someone important from her past. Assuming the caller to be one Marco Tellucci, why did the Italian merit only the briefest of meetings with Amy’s favorite relative? Has she been as secretive with Harry as she has been with me? “Seemed nice enough,” said Harry. Nice enough for what?

A bend in the road catches me by surprise, sharper than I imagined, and suddenly I’m dazzled by the flash of brilliant blue and red light filling the cab and spilling across the right side of the highway up ahead. Instinctively my foot comes off the gas and I hit the brakes, the back end of the Silverado fishtailing but not enough to lose control. There’s time to recognize Chief Matt Devito’s police truck parked behind a vehicle that’s nose-in down a trail between the trees. Probably drunk, I think, looking for telltale skid marks. But I don’t see any, and that’s when I recognize the vehicle—the windowless double back doors of a dishwater gray minivan—the gaunt man with his faithful labradoodle.

I pull over farther up the road, wishing I had a reverse gear in this stupid truck because now I’ve got to jog back though the knee-deep snow.

“Doc!” Chief Matt sees me coming, blinding me with his Maglite, the flashlight held at the side of his head, Hollywood-cop style. He’s opted for a Cossack hat with earflaps over his standard-issue patrol cap. Less heat loss through his fashionably bald chrome-dome. “I was about to give you a call. Need your skill set to access the victim.”

Skill set? Victim?

“What happened? Are they hurt?”

I keep pumping my legs, desperate for traction, trying to get past him, trying to get to the van.

“Doc, stop,” says Devito, reaching out to grab me by the arm. “It’s too late. The dog’s alive, but the guy’s gone.”

Breathlessness takes me, and for a few seconds I slump, hands on hips, letting the shock and the sadness settle.

“You okay?” asks the chief.

I nod that I am.

“Yeah, it’s just… I know this guy. Well, I met him. He came in earlier… with his dog.”

“So who is he?”

The flashlight beam is back in my face.

“I don’t know. He wouldn’t give a name. I know the dog is Stash.”

What I know feels too complicated for right now.

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