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Darwin grinned. “That’s what I was thinking, yeah. And I like the crocuses because they bloom so early. My gram called ‘em ‘promise flowers,’ since they break through the snow and promise that spring’s coming. I got red tulips on order, too.”
Zaxx smiled. Whenever somebody talked about grandparents, he wondered what it would have been like to have one. Considering that his parents had both been disowned for making him when they were sixteen, and nobody had ever made a move to bridge that break, it was unlikely those people would have made decent grandparents. They were obviously assholes.
“You comin’ to see Doof?” Darwin asked.
“Yeah, if that’s okay. Today’s the anniversary of the day I adopted him.”
Darwin’s face fell. “Ah, hell, man. I’m sorry. That’s rough.”
“Yeah. I’m gonna go on back.”
Darwin sent him off with a nod and a wave and went back to his gardening. Zaxx went around the side of the cabin, to the edge of a small stand of trees beside a puddle-size pond. Before the trees was a smallish lilac bush that would pop deep-pink flowers in the spring. Here in the fall, it was a bush full of lushly dense leaves beginning to lose their vibrant green. But it was still pretty.
Zaxx sat on the ground before two stone markers, like miniature tombstones, which was precisely what they were. They were identical except what was etched on their faces: Heidi, read the older of the two. My Good Girl. Her dates showed a long, full life that ended a few months before Doof’s. A little spray of silk flowers in fall colors was sunk into the ground beside the marker; Darwin changed those out regularly.
Doof’s marker read Doofus, The Best Boi. Zaxx had elected not to use his official name, which had meant ‘vet’ to him. His dates were much shorter than Heidi’s. Too fucking short.
“Hey, buddy,” Zaxx said and pulled a large Milk-Bone from his kutte. He set it on the ground before the stone. “Today’s your gotcha day. I miss the fuck out of you, Doof.”
He’d been in Springfield, headed into the Target for something, and the PetSmart in the same shopping center had been having an adoption event in front of the store. Convinced that his life wasn’t dog-friendly (too many late nights), but a big fan of dogs, he’d gone over only to look.
Doofus—Maury—was a puppy, alone in his enclosure, tucked at the back of the fence, as far from all the strangers as he could get. He’d sat back there shaking, looking sad and scared, and Zaxx’s heart cracked open.
A volunteer at the event had told him Maury was the last of a litter of puppies (all named for talk-show hosts). All the others had been adopted on that day. He’d been fine with his brothers and sisters, but now that he was alone, he was scared. He kept peeing on anyone who picked him up, so nobody wanted him.
He’d peed on Zaxx, too. But he’d also settled immediately into the crook of his arm and tucked his little nose between his arm and his chest. His shaking stopped, and he fell asleep.
Zaxx spent more than five hundred dollars on puppy supplies that day. He never did go into Target and couldn’t remember what it was he’d needed all the way out there. But he went home with a best friend.
And then, only a few years later, Zaxx had gotten him killed.
Often, when he was alone at night, his mind tortured him by playing out possible scenarios for how that day had gone down. Had Doof tried to protect his home from intruders? Or had he tried to make a new friend? It could have gone either way; with Doof, sometimes the German Shepherd led the charge, and he barked and growled at strangers, defending his territory; sometimes the Husky ran the show, and there were no strangers, only friends he hadn’t yet met.
Zaxx hoped with all he had that the former was the truth. Nothing about losing Doof was easy, but it was fractionally more bearable to imagine him fighting against the bastards who’d done so much damage to Zaxx’s family and slit his dog’s throat. To imagine those fuckheads killing Doof while he was trying to love on them? He couldn’t deal with that.
As for the fuckheads themselves, they were rotting at the bottom of a quarry lake near Rolla. Official word was the two old friends had gone off together and disappeared. Dom had picked up some internal PD chatter that suggested the two troubled and troublesome cops, one former, one walking the edge between current and former, might well have disappeared intentionally.
Hopefully, that was the end of it. The Horde was proceeding as if that were the case. In fact, Badger had ordered a total shut down of the topic; nothing about Danvers or Donahue could be mentioned by any Horde, ever, outside the Keep, under penalty of a thousand-dollar fine, and probably a beatdown as well.
The gag order was in effect throughout Signal Bend. Badger couldn’t fine the townspeople, but there was plenty he could do to make things hard for anyone who stepped out of line. Everybody who knew anything true about what happened that day knew to keep their damn mouths shut. It was not easy to kink up the firehose of gossip in a small town, but the Horde could do it.
Danvers and Donahue were a done deal, a closed book. The club was back to its usual state.
That didn’t mean the people directly involved had reached that state yet, of course.
A shadow moved over Zaxx, and he turned and watched Darwin step up and sit beside him. He had two cold Coors Lights in his hand; he offered one to Zaxx.
Zaxx took it. “Thanks. And thanks for this.” He nodded at Doof’s grave.
Darwin nodded and smiled around the mouth of his bottle. After a drink, he said, “You thank me every time you come out here.”
“I’m grateful.”
“I know. And I’m happy Doof has a place to rest, and Heidi has a friend with her. I guess we’re both saps. You don’t have to thank me every time.”
“Okay.”
They sat together, studying the resting places of their best friends, drinking their beer. For a long time, the only chatter was from a couple of squirrels hoarding nuts above their heads.
