Trouble's Child Read online

  Amazingly enough, though, he fell mostly on the blanket.

  The wolf’s eyes half closed as he panted.

  The effort of trying to get up seemed to have used up what little fight the animal had left. He didn’t protest as Angela gathered up the corners of the blanket. When she pulled it all tight, the wolf was snugly encased inside. She thought that the darkness and being cocooned in the blanket, along with not being able to see what was happening, might help to keep him calm.

  Without delay, she started dragging the wolf through the woods, weaving her way among the trees, following her own tracks back to her truck. It wasn’t as easy as she had imagined it would be. The weight of the animal made him sink down in the fluffy snow, rather than glide over the top of it. Still, it was the only way she was going to get him out of the woods and to help, so she held the corners of the blanket over the front of her shoulder and leaned into the weight, dragging it behind her.

  The wolf didn’t make any sound of protest. She thought he must be so exhausted and cold that he had given up. She knew what it felt like to be at that point of giving up.

  She panted herself with the effort of pulling the heavy load through the woods. Every so often she had to tug fallen branches out of the way from under the blanket.

  Several times she fell forward into the snow. Each time she got back up as quickly as possible, brushed snow off her face, and kept going. Her nose was running, and even though she had gloves on, her fingers were freezing. Her toes hurt from the cold. She ignored the discomfort of the struggle and forged onward. She kept telling herself that it wasn’t all that far and she could make better time if she quit worrying about herself and only worried about getting the wounded animal to help.

  When she finally reached her truck, she dropped the tailgate and sat on it briefly to catch her breath. The metal tailgate was icy cold, so she didn’t sit on it for long.

  She knew the hardest part would be lifting the wolf up into the bed of the truck. It had to weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred pounds.

  Urged on when she heard a pitiful sound from in the blanket, she bent down and pulled the blanket back to take a look. His eyes were closed.

  Angela covered him again and scooped him up in her arms, putting one arm under the front of his chest and her other arm under his rump, folding all four legs into the middle so that his weight was in the crook of her arms.

  She didn’t know how she did it, but with a last, mighty effort she managed to lift him up onto the tailgate. From there the blanket slid easily into the bed of the truck.

  Angela gently rubbed the wolf’s side as she caught her breath.

  The warm cab of her truck finally thawed her fingers. Her thighs burned from the effort and from the icy cold. Angela pulled her gloves off with her teeth as she raced into town. She wished she could give some of the warmth inside the cab to the injured animal. She was sure that the wind blowing over him was not helping. At least he was covered with the blanket. Since she couldn’t do anything about it, she did her best to hurry.

  It was quite a ways into Milford Falls, but once she reached town the streets were virtually empty. Since there was no traffic, she did four-wheel drifts around corners and through red lights, not wanting to slow any more than absolutely necessary.

  Angela felt a sense of triumph to finally turn in to the twenty-four-hour emergency veterinary hospital. She spun a one-eighty through the empty parking lot, stopping with the back end of her truck facing the front door.

  Angela had done courier work for the emergency animal hospital several times, but she didn’t really know anyone there the way she did at the regular hospital. Inside, an older woman at a computer behind the long counter asked how she could help. Angela told her that she had an injured dog and she would need help getting it inside. The receptionist called people in the back.

  In a few minutes a vet tech came out through a swinging door pulling a cart behind her. She wore blue scrubs like the nurses at the hospital. She didn’t look much older than Angela.

  “Hi, I’m Carol. You have a dog you need help with?”

  Angela gestured toward the door. “Yes. He’s in my pickup. I think he may have been shot. I can’t carry him by myself.”

  Outside she helped Angela lift the wolf, still in the blanket, onto the cart. Blood spread through the blanket and then the paper covering the stainless-steel top of the cart.

  On the way in through the doors, Angela put her hand on the wolf and felt that he was still breathing.

  “I’ll take it from here,” Carol said, rushing for the swinging door. “You can wait out here. After the doctor evaluates your dog she’ll come out and talk to you.”

  Angela grabbed her sleeve. “Listen, Carol, you all need be careful. This dog is part wolf. It’s injured and afraid. I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  The woman lifted the blanket for a look. “I understand. We deal with situations like this all the time.”

  Angela didn’t think they really did.

  “I mean it. He could really hurt you.”

  The vet tech smiled her understanding before she started wheeling the bloody, blanket-wrapped wolf through the swinging door into the back area. “The doctor will be out to talk to you as soon as she can,” she said back over her shoulder.

  Angela wondered what she had gotten herself into.

  “Could you fill out the admittance form, please?” the woman behind the long counter asked.

  Angela took the clipboard with a pen attached by a string and sat down in one of the orange, molded plastic chairs. The form asked for all kinds of personal information. Angela never let people know where she lived. She used a box at Mike’s Mail Service for her mail and packages. She put that address on the form. She filled in what other information she could. She didn’t think they would have her arrested if she left a lot of blanks, so she didn’t worry about it.

  She was brought to a halt by the list of questions about the “pet.” They wanted to know how old it was, when it last had its shots, its ailments, injuries, and all kinds of other things Angela couldn’t answer. She simply wrote “found the injured dog by the side of the road” and left everything blank.

  It was an hour and a half before Carol led her into a consultation room to meet with the doctor. The doctor was a big-boned woman with a warm smile and a professional disposition. She folded her arms as she leaned back against the mauve counter.

  “So, is he going to be all right?” Angela asked.

  The doctor peered down at Angela. “Well, that’s kind of up to you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She regarded Angela for a moment, apparently gauging how well she could take bad news. “What’s your wolf dog’s name?”

  Angela drew a blank. “Well, it’s not exactly my pet. I live out in the country.” A story she thought would be satisfactory formed in her head. “I’ve seen it around a few times, but I’m pretty sure it’s wild. Tonight I found it laying in the ditch at the side of the road. I think some jerk must have shot it.”

  The doctor nodded. “I see. Well, I think you’re right. We have him sedated right now so he’s comfortable. What we do next is up to you.” She handed Angela two pages with a lot of boxes checked and things written in. “The wolf dog is going to die if we don’t do emergency surgery. It sounds like he doesn’t belong to anyone, so I guess it depends on how much he means to you.”

  Angela looked down at the forms. The doctor leaned in to point with her pen at several items. “This is for anesthesia, the IV drip, an MRI, the operation itself, various miscellaneous things we’ll need, and the estimated stay under observation.”

  In the rear of the building, beyond the door at the back of the consultation room, small dogs barked nonstop. One cried continually. It was nerve-racking trying to think with all the racket.

  “So what’s the bottom line,” Angela asked. “How much?”

  “It’s this number here, but this is just an initial estimate. We wo
n’t know for sure until we see how much damage was done to know if it will cost more or not. And you can see here with the total, it’s going to be at least thirty-four hundred dollars. I’ll do my best not to go over that, but if we’re going to operate we’ll have to do what we have to do.”

  Angela wasn’t surprised by the estimate. She had expected at least that much. She knew surgery wasn’t cheap. When she had gone home to get her truck she had brought four thousand dollars in cash with her. She let out a deep breath. That was a lot of money for a wild animal that still might not even make it.

  She had started out the day just wanting to go for a hike in the woods, to have some peace and quiet, to get away from the drunks and guys in the bar always hitting on her.

  She felt a pang of guilt for thinking only about herself. That woman she found, Kristi Green, had a much worse day. She had been brutally murdered.

  “Can you save him?”

  The doctor was ready with an answer. “I think so. The thing is, he’s hurt pretty bad so I can’t promise anything. Right now we have him anesthetized—he’s asleep. If you prefer we can just let him go. He’s not a pet so I would certainly understand that decision. He will feel no pain, I promise. It’s up to you if you want to let him go and have a peaceful, pain-free end to his life. I can make that happen.”

  “But you can operate and save him?”

  “I can’t promise, but I’m pretty damn good.”

  To a degree Angela felt responsible for the creature being shot. She was the one who had called the police. Then that jerk deputy showed up, shooting first and asking questions later.

  It was just a wild animal. But still …

  “Angela, I can’t afford the time to describe the damage and injuries right now or what I need to do. If you want to let him go, I completely understand. But if you want me to try to save his life, time is of the essence. He’s losing a lot of blood. I need to get in there and operate immediately if you want me to try to save him.”

  Angela didn’t know why, but she didn’t want his life to end this way.

  “I’d like you to go ahead and do the surgery. I’d like you to do everything you can to save his life. I’ll pay for it.”

  The doctor was apparently as good as she’d said she was. The wolf survived the surgery. They thought everything had gone as well as they were hoping.

  Angela was relieved.

  She came by the animal hospital every day to check up on him. At first it was sad seeing him lying in a small enclosure, a blanket covering him, an IV in a shaved spot on his front leg. The vet techs assured her that he was getting pain medication and he was resting comfortably. His eyes were closed and he was unresponsive to all the barking and yapping of the other dogs.

  He belonged in the woods, running free.

  The third day she visited the animal hospital the wolf was awake. He didn’t get up, but his eyes turned to look at her when she walked up to the enclosure door, which had clear plastic on the top half. She talked softly to him for a few minutes. She wanted to reach in and stroke his fur, but she suspected that would be a bad idea. The people there had equipment to handle him. They were careful with him, and about their own safety.

  On the fourth day Carol told her that he had eaten and was doing remarkably well and getting stronger all the time. The doctor said that he could go home the next day. That eventuality had been continually on Angela’s mind and she didn’t know what in the world she was going to do when he was released.

  She obviously couldn’t take him home into her house. He would likely kill her. He was beautiful and had his place in the world. But he wasn’t domesticated and never could be. He was a wild animal and that was what she wanted for him—to be wild.

  Fortunately, the animal hospital had an old dog crate someone had donated. The vet techs told Angela that she could have it and that they would get the wolf dog into the crate for her so she could take him home.

  When Angela came the next day to pick up the wolf, they had managed to get him into the crate. He cowered in the back and snarled when anyone got close.

  “He’s been here long enough that we’ve all gotten kind of fond of the big guy,” Carol said. “We rarely see wolf dogs in here. He’s magnificent. We named him Bardolph. ‘Bardolph’ means ‘ferocious.’ He’s shy like most wolves, but he’s also pretty ferocious.”

  Angela thought it a fitting name.

  Carol and a male orderly helped lift the crate into the bed of Angela’s pickup and tie it down.

  Carol handed her some papers. “These are instructions on his postoperative care.”

  Bewildered, Angela looked through some of the instructions. “I don’t know if—”

  “I understand,” Carol said. “Between you and me, just feed him and keep him quiet for a while. The incisions are small and most of the sutures are internal. Keep him quiet so he doesn’t tear them open. They will all dissolve over time. If you think there’s any problem give us a call, but I think he’s going to be fine if you just let nature take its course and finish healing him. What he really needs most is rest.”

  “How long? How long should I keep him in there?”

  Carol shrugged. “Maybe a week? Hard to know exactly. I think you’ll know when it’s time to release him.”

  Angel tied a heavy old bedspread over the crate to help keep him calm. She drove home relatively slowly, not wanting to give Bardolph a jarring ride or have him fall and rip stitches.

  It was cold and clear by the time she got home. She hooked some aluminum ramps on the tailgate and then carefully slid the bedspread-covered crate down onto a bed of straw she’d laid on the ground. She had to go to work to tend bar, so she left the thick bedspread over the crate to help keep him warm. She knew wolves felt safe in dens, so she hoped he would feel that way in his temporary den. There were several big old blankets inside the crate that he could arrange to his liking for bedding.

  Before she left for work, she lifted the edge of the bedspread and carefully opened the door just enough to toss in half a raw chicken. Bardolph was pressed up against the back of the crate watching her. His low growl let her know he was not pleased.

  Angela talked to him in a calm voice each day when she gave him the chicken. She mostly tried to leave him alone so he wouldn’t get stressed or agitated. She wanted to let him rest and heal. Every time she threw in another meal, there was not so much as a scrap left of the previous meal. He managed to do his business in one corner so at least he wasn’t lying in it. She would have liked to clean out the crate, but she knew that would be far too dangerous, and besides, once she opened the door enough, he would be out.

  After eight days she could tell by how active he was in his crate and the way he snarled at her that he was feeling better and he wanted out. Angela waited two more days and finally decided it was time. She put the ramps back on the tailgate, covered the crate with the old bedspread, and with great effort slid it up the ramps and into the pickup bed.

  She didn’t really like the idea of releasing a wild wolf by her house. She thought it best if she took him back to where he had been living—near to where the murdered woman had been dumped. He would recognize his territory.

  She parked by the side of the road and dropped the tailgate. She pulled the bedspread off and peered in at him in the back of the crate. He growled and snapped at her.

  Angela smiled, happy that he had not learned to be unafraid of people.

  “I hope you have a good life in your woods,” she cooed to him.

  Angela climbed up on top of the crate. Holding her gun in one hand, she leaned over to look inside and then carefully opened the latch on the crate with the other.

  “Don’t you dare attack me now. It cost me a lot of money to get you fixed up. After all that, don’t you make me have to shoot you. Run off back to your woods, you hear?”

  The wolf remained quiet in the back of the crate. Angela reached out and with a flick of her hand sprang the crate door wide open.

 
When he still didn’t make a move for freedom, she banged a fist on the back of the crate. That was all he needed.

  The wolf dashed out of the crate, leaped off the tailgate, and raced away into the woods.

  It was a bittersweet moment seeing him stop and turn to look back briefly before loping off into the woods.

  Before leaving, Angela flung two raw chickens off into the woods. She hoped he would find the meal and get his belly full.

  Shit,” Brittany said under her breath just before she picked up the tray off the bar.

  Angela had just finished putting the four beers on the tray for Brittany to deliver to a table. “What’s the problem?”

  Brittany gestured with a nod of her head toward the door. “That creepy blind evangelist and the mute are back.”

  Angela saw that, sure enough, it was the Reverend Baker and his sister Lucy coming in the door. Once she had closed the door, Lucy took her brother’s arm to guide him into the room. He swept his white cane from side to side as she led him in.

  “Back?” Angela asked. “They’ve been here before?”

  “Yeah. A few weeks ago—when you were off.” She stuck a finger through her tangle of teased blond hair to scratch her scalp as she tried to remember. “It was that night we had that first big snow. You remember that big snow?”

  “I remember the snow,” Angela said, absently, as she watched Lucy lead her brother to a table in the corner on the far side of the restrooms where they both took off their coats. “That was the night I found that woman’s body. Kristi Green.”

  Brittany turned back as it came to her. “Yeah, that’s right, the hooker from up the hill. That was the night.” She laid a hand on Angela’s forearm. “That must have been horrible, finding her body in the woods like that.”

  “It was,” Angela said.

  From what she’d heard on the news, the authorities still hadn’t found the woman’s killer. Angela knew that it wasn’t the guy’s first kill. He was a serial killer. That kind of killer was smart, devious, and hard to catch. Sometimes the police never found them.