Chapter 7: Clancy's Tale

Two German shepherds, wearing helmets and black K-9 bands strapped to their legs, escorted Clancy from the back of the squad car to the dog house behind the police station. A mist of rain from the nighttime sky barely made an impression on the black, muddy puddles that reflected the bright klieg lights and sagging barbed wire surrounding the precinct, which was the only place alive in the middle of the night for several miles around. The dog house shielded him from the cold wintry mix that had just hit the region, and they took him through a back entrance just to avoid the flashing cameras of the newshounds who barked uncontrollably on the precinct steps. The hallway leading to the interrogation room was menacing at best – all of these German shepherd K-9s staring him down as though he were some mutt who just skipped parole. But he knew himself to be an innocent dog. His black fur was slicked wet with rainwater, and his limp body shivered all over. They wouldn’t even let him shake the wetness off his fur.

The interrogation room smelled like dog shit and stale pet chow. They led Clancy to a table and a hard chair and left him there alone for a while. He could hear both the whimpering and the barking of the other dogs they had dragged into the kennels that night, probably for petty crimes, like urinating on a fire hydrant or noise complaints for barking too loudly. Clancy sat at the table facing a large mirror, and the pale green walls of the rest of the room, both pockmarked and peeling, showed a previous layer of white paint that had been clawed through by the paws of the other criminals who had the terrible misfortune of sitting in the same spot. But he wasn’t a criminal, he said to himself. Black Labrador Retrievers like him were hardly ever brought in. He was of good stock, a pure breed, and the K-9s would see that. Sure they envied dogs like him – always so obedient and pampered, always living on the sunny side of town, always the first choice of good-looking owners with well-manicured lawns, places to play in the backyard, and large shopping malls nearby that were stocked with only the finest gourmet dog food. But he was registered, and he was hardly a stray, and he had been to obedience school, and he earned his certificate. Clancy hoped they saw through to his innocence, even though these K-9s had been trained from birth to sniff out the guilty. But he had done nothing wrong, and maybe they just wanted to ask him a few questions.

It wasn’t long before the doors swung open and a large Doberman Pincher flanked by two German shepherds walked calmly into the room. The Doberman was a handsome dog who kept his fur cropped close to his skin, and the narrowness of his snout suggested that they brought him in from the city to handle the delicate cases that were politically sensitive. He must have driven the bitches wild, this Doberman. Clancy could have sworn he had seen him before, perhaps on one of the news channels late at night when they busted up that ring of Mexican canines importing heroin in their bellies across the border. The German shepherds left the Doberman in the room with him, and for a short time the Doberman just circled the table, sniffing him down as he passed, the claws on his paws long, sharp, and strong, and his perfectly tapered mouth hiding teeth that could have easily ripped out his throat. The Doberman also seemed sophisticated enough to recognize his innocence, but maybe they would stick him in the kennel just because they wanted to, or because they needed a patsy or a fall guy out of all of this, or because Clancy unwittingly got involved in some sort of canine conspiracy he couldn’t for the life of him figure out. Clancy’s nerves flared just thinking about these possibilities when the Doberman finally took a seat across from him. He also pulled out a brown lunch bag from under the table.

“Milkbone?” asked the Doberman, as he slid over a doggie treat.

Clancy was hardly in the mood to eat, but he took a couple of biscuits anyway. They certainly didn’t taste like anything special, and they certainly didn’t make him any happier like they would have made a Scooby-Doo, but they at least calmed his nerves for the time being.

“Do you know why you’re here?” asked the Doberman in a highly inflected voice. His accent sounded almost European.

“I’ve done nothing wrong,” said Clancy, chewing on the biscuit. “I’m an innocent dog, and you have no right to keep me here.”

“Then why did we find you running out on the road in the middle of the night? Were you in a hurry to get somewhere?”

“I was just taking a walk and doing my business.”

“At one in the morning?”

“That’s when my owner lets me out, yes.”

“Your owner,” said the Doberman, “is dead. He came dead-on-arrival at St. Anthony’s Hospital just a couple of hours ago.”

“What? That can’t be.”

“Yes, I’m afraid it’s true.”

“Dead? Oh, God. I had no idea.”

Clancy wanted to whimper out loud, but he kept this urge to himself. A puddle of haphazard tears slowly gathered between his paws on the table. The news of his master’s death came all too suddenly, but somehow he already knew that Jack had suffered a terrible fate.

“Can you tell me a little more about your owner?” asked the Doberman. “Where, for instance, did you first meet him?”

“He’s not my real owner,” said Clancy, gazing into the pale green of the wall. “He was never my real owner. My real owner was his girlfriend, Melissa.”

“Ah, yes. Now we’re getting somewhere. How did you come to know this man? How did you come to be his pet and not hers?”

“It’s a long story,” said Clancy.

“Start from the beginning. We have plenty of time.”

“We used to be so happy,” he said.

“Who used to be so happy?”

“The three of us – Melissa, Jack, and myself.”

“I see. So the three of you were a family, I take it?”

“Yes, and I was never the happier. Melissa, you see, adopted me when I was just a pup. She took me out of that horrible place, like a prison it was. Just being close to these kennels again gives me the shivers. She took me home, and I stayed with her in a beautiful house overlooking the lake. On sunny afternoons we would walk along the water’s edge – the other dogs were so jealous of us, really they were – and when she pet me and brushed me, and even when she washed me, there was no other feeling like it on earth.”

“So you loved her?”

“Yes, I loved her very much. I ate nothing but the finest dog chow – none of this stale, nutrition crap – but as close as any dog gets to real human food. And the Alpo wasn’t too bad either. She also let me swim in the lake every now and then, and the poodles watching me were always so impressed at the way I paddled in deep water. Melissa always dried me off with a towel, and she even bought a bed for me to sleep on in the living room.”

“Sounds like you had it good for a time,” said the Doberman. “But what happened?”

“We were living just fine, she and I, when one night she had a party over at her place. It was a real drunk-fest with hours d’oeuvres and as many doggie treats as I wanted. The guests must have pet me and played with me a thousand times over, and they even poured wine into my bowl and kept on blowing smoke from their marijuana joints in my face. That’s when Melissa met Jack, on that very night. It was a magical night for all of us, and when I got up the next morning, I found Jack and Melissa sleeping together in her bed. I jumped on the mattress and snuggled my body between theirs, and from that point on, I knew that I had finally found a family. I had such high hopes, you see.”

“So all three of you lived together?”

“Yes. Those were the happiest days of my life. Jack used to get up early in the morning, and he took me for jogs around the lake. He was a good runner, an ex-athlete. I remember we used to run around that lake rain or shine, even in the winter when the ice on the lake looked like patchwork on a quilt. He sometimes brought an old tennis ball with him and threw the ball a mile-high in the air for me to catch. Of course all during this time I ate like a king. They even got me a big white bone that I chewed and chewed on in the backyard, all by myself. There were other dogs in the area too, but I never got lonely. Melissa petted me plenty, and Jack always played with me. It was perfect.”

“So how does Jack wind up dead in a three-story walk-up and you running for your dear life along a dark country road in the middle of the night?” asked the Doberman.

“It just all fell apart,” said Clancy.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific than that.”

“Something changed in him.”

“Who? You mean in Jack?”

“After a while he wasn’t the same man anymore.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Well, you better try,” said the Doberman. “You’re facing three counts of abandoning your owner, obstruction of canine justice, and roaming without a leash, so you better stop reminiscing and start remembering, because right now you’re also a suspect in a murder case!”

“Hey, wait a minute. I never killed anybody. I never murdered Jack.”

“Then start talking. What happened to Jack after he moved in with Melissa?”