It’s not fun watching someone’s life get ripped to bits. Lucia didn’t ask what I’d seen in the room—her nose, human as it was, could smell it, too. She just raised her chin and turned around.
Gary kept his eyes down, careful not to make eye contact with me or Adam, and led the way back through the house. I wondered what I would have seen in his eyes if he’d let me look. Because he wouldn’t have hidden his eyes just to avoid offending someone; coyotes don’t run that way.
As soon as we were all outside, Adam surged to the front of our little parade. He rounded the end of the house, where the gate to the back had been ripped off and thrown to the side. The rest of the fence was a thick hedge, so it was impossible to see what was in the backyard until we were right on top of it.
Gary made a noise, but Lucia just walked into the middle of the bloody mess in her backyard and knelt beside her big white Amstaff and closed the dead dog’s eyes.
There were ten chain-link kennels in the yard, taking up exactly half the space. Each had a doghouse with an extended roof that gave the dogs outdoor space and still had some protection from the weather. The other half of the yard was lawn, mowed to golf-course neatness.
It must have been neat and tidy, even pretty, before someone had killed all the dogs and left. The gates of eight of the kennels had been ripped off their hinges and thrown willy-nilly. Some of them could have been rehung with new hinges, but some of them were badly damaged. One had been crumpled into a ball.
In front of the kennels, eight dogs lay on their sides, each with a single deep wound that had laid open their necks. I recognized the dog that had put his head on my knee and blinked back tears.
“I hate it when the dog dies at the end,” said Gary, his voice tight. He slapped the chain-link wall of a kennel. “I tore up my copy of Old Yeller and threw it away.”
Lucia didn’t flinch at the noise, just rubbed her dead dog’s uncropped ears.
Adam gave me a sharp look, like there was something I wasn’t seeing. I looked again and drew in a breath. The dogs were laid out, staged just like the women Guayota had killed. But this staging wasn’t for us, there was a formality here, each dog in front of its kennel.
Innocent sacrifices.
I called Kyle’s number.
“What?” he asked. The foggy connection told me that he was on his Bluetooth connection and driving. He should have already been at Honey’s.
“Did the Canary Islanders sacrifice dogs to Guayota?” I asked. “And why aren’t you already at Honey’s?” The dead dogs and the state of Lucia’s bedroom made me sharper than I should have been.
“First,” said Kyle grumpily, “we are very nearly at Honey’s. We’d have left sooner if I hadn’t had to figuratively hold the hands of one of my clients whose soon-to-be-ex wife called and said she was sorry for all the times she slept with other people and couldn’t they reconsider their marriage. The answer to that one is no, by the way, because she darn near drove him to suicide once, and he’s a good man and deserves better.”
“Okay,” I said. “What about the dogs?”
“I know they used to sacrifice goats to Achamán,” he said. “One of the guided tours we took mentioned it. I don’t know anything more.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll see you both when we get to Honey’s.”
I looked at the dead dogs again. They still looked like sacrifices to me. Witches drew power from pain and suffering, but also from death. Gary had said that Guayota needed a source of power. There had been dead dogs among the bodies I’d discovered out in Finley, too. But I didn’t think Guayota had made sacrifices to himself.
I wasn’t going to say it in front of Lucia, but I was pretty sure that what had killed the dogs had not been Guayota. Guayota could have killed them, could have twisted the gates off their hinges. But there was a possessive sort of territoriality in the destruction of Lucia and Joel’s bedroom—whatever had done it had been marking his territory. And none of the dogs had put up a fight.
Maybe Guayota could control dogs the way he’d controlled the tibicena in my garage. But if he were going to kill something, I didn’t think he’d use a blade—he’d have used fire.
I mouthed “Joel” to Adam because no one else was looking at my face. His muzzle dropped, then rose in a nod. He agreed. Guayota had been here, there was no disguising his scent, but Joel had killed the dogs and desecrated his own house.
It was Adam who noticed that one of the two remaining kennels was occupied. He drew my attention to the kennel on the end, with an empty kennel between it and the dead dogs. I put my hand on the latch, and something growled from inside the doghouse.
“Don’t open that,” said Lucia, her voice sounding hoarse as if she’d been crying, though her cheeks were dry. “Cookie is not very friendly with humans yet.”
I pulled my hand back.
“Cookie, come,” she said. “Good girl.”
The dog in the doghouse didn’t come, though she moved around, and her growl increased in volume and general unhappiness.
I suppose that for people who don’t turn into a coyote, growls might all be the same. But not for me. This growl said, “I’m scared and willing to kill you because I think you are going to hurt me.”
I raised an eyebrow at Adam. He whined softly, telling the dog that no one here was going to hurt her. It might have been more convincing without all of the dead dogs.
“We need to get out of here,” Laughingdog said, bouncing nervously on the balls of his feet. “If he comes back, he might just finish the job.”
He looked at me, and I saw that he was frightened and wanted nothing more than to leave us here and never come back. It wasn’t cowardice, any more than the dog hiding in the doghouse was a coward.
This was an expression brought on by experience—an understanding that said bad things happened, and the best way to survive was to leave as quickly as possible. I don’t know what his life had taught him to bring on that look, but I could tell he was holding on by a fingernail.
“Can’t leave any innocents behind,” I told him. “That would be wrong. And even if it weren’t wrong, it would be dumb. I think that the deaths of these dogs gave Guayota power. No sense leaving him another dog to kill.”
“She’s not coming out,” Lucia said. She stood up. “We got her three days ago. Humane Society got her because her owner’s neighbors turned him in for beating on his dog.” She laughed, a sad, broken sound, as she looked down on her dog. “I ranted for an hour after I saw her. Swore that if I could hit a button and destroy the human race, I’d do it in a heartbeat. You know what my Joel said? He said, ‘Niña, most people are good people. Take this dog. A lot of good people worked to save her. People noticed, they called the police. The police brought in the Humane Society, and they took her—risked getting bitten so that she could have a better life. Lots of people working to undo the work of one bastard. You know what that means? Lots more good people out there than bad.’”