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The dog isn’t.
There is a brief moment, a very bad one, when I think that perhaps the dog has curled up into a ball and died. Maybe his heart gave up before his kidneys did, even with the fluids I’ve been dutifully injecting under his skin as Dr. Ben prescribed. Maybe he just got too sick when he was wandering around without a place to live.
“Rip,” I yell now, putting some snap into my voice. “Don’t you even think about dying on me.”
He’s not in the kitchen, either.
It’s after I’ve gone upstairs that I hear the whimpering from behind the closed door of my walk-in closet.
Rip is in there, a muzzle over his mouth, trembling, tail pointed straight down.
I’ve taken off the muzzle and fed him the treat I still have in my hand when I hear my phone, still in the bag that’s over my shoulder.
“This is Jane,” I say.
A voice I don’t recognize, a guy, says, “Now you’ve officially been warned, too.”
“Who is this?”
“We both know the answer to that one.”
“Warned about what, exactly?” I say. And then I add, “Bitch.”
“About staying in your lane.”
“What does that even mean?”
I want to keep him talking, on the outside chance that he might reveal something about himself.
“Here is what it means, counselor. What you need to do right now is stick with the trial.”
“By the way? Pretty ballsy for you to show up here after what you did to McCall and Jimmy.”
“Ballsyanda bitch?” the guy says. “Pick a lane on that, too, counselor.”
I tell him what he can do to himself.
“And you a lady,” he says.
“Not even on a good day.”
“Stick with the trial,” he says again. “Who knows? If you do, you might live until the end of it.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I’ll kill your dog, too.”
Thirty-Nine
I CALL GUS HENNESSYas my first defense witness, even though he’s already been called as a witness for the prosecution. I informed Judge Prentice and Kevin Ahearn of my plans on Friday afternoon so Hennessy would be in the room first thing this morning.
Now it’s a couple of minutes before the judge will come walking through the door and it will feel like Opening Day, at least to me, all over again.
In the words of the great Jimmy Cunniff, former boxer, the preliminaries are officially over. It really is time for the main event.
Not Ahearn’s case.
Mine.
