CHAPTER ELEVEN

1995

You’d think that over ten years, a man would become accustomed to waking up at six in the morning to take the dog out, but Frank Jessup could tell you otherwise. He’d been doing the same thing every damn day of the year for the last decade, and it wasn’t even his dog. Sweetie belonged to his wife, but he was the one who had to take the little idiot out when it started yapping in the morning while Sandra snored. And it’d been just the same this morning—five fifty-seven on the dot, Sweetie was jumping up and down on her fat little legs and scratching at the door with nails that weren’t trimmed often enough, her eyes about ready to pop out of her head.

So Frank got up, went to the bathroom, and pissed, grimacing at the burning sensation he’d been having in his groin over the last few years, and slipped on his shoes. Sweetie had been barking the whole time, but Sandra was still fast asleep. Sometimes he was sure his wife was faking, just so she didn’t have to get up and lap the neighborhood with a plastic bag in one hand just in case Sweetie decided to take a shit, which she sometimes did, which seemed like some sort of punishment to Frank, fumbling around with a bag in the dark, trying to scoop up a warm pile of waste.

And of course, this morning Sweetie decided to take a squat right on the edge of ol’ man Vandercamp’s lawn, and she turned and stared right at Frank while she did her thing, as if the only way she could perform was through eye contact, and Frank was wondering, as he always did, how one little dog could produce so much shit without exploding. It was business as usual, until Sweetie suddenly straightened out, pinching it off, and started barking.

“Why don’t you shut up?” Frank hissed, yanking on her leash. “People are still sleeping, stupid.”

But Sweetie kept on barking, really working herself up into a frenzy, the way all small pea-brained dogs are apt to do, until Frank looked around to try to figure out what was driving her nuts. The only people ever out this early were trashmen and the lady who drove around in her station wagon, pitching newspapers out the window, and Sweetie ignored them. And then he saw the man in the street, walking toward him—no, not walking. The man was moving at more of a slow stumble, like he was drunk. Or injured.

“My wife,” Matt Evans said. This was once he’d come close enough, stepping into a circle of yellow light thrown down by a streetlamp. He nearly fell when his foot caught the curb but managed to save himself at the last moment. He reached a bloody hand out toward Frank, who shrank away from that reach. Frank recognized him—the young man lived two blocks down with his woman. They were a good-looking couple, kept to themselves. “My wife. I think she might be dead.”

And Sweetie barked on.