Part 17 (1/2)

She had thought that the dog wandered to their booth with no more purpose than to explore that section of the floor and to cadge tidbits from them if they had any food to share.

Its gaze was unusually intense, however, and more than intense: strange, compelling.

She considered how the dogs, en ma.s.se, had reacted to her when she had first arrived in the tavern. They had seemed to be watching her surrept.i.tiously ever since.

”Neil, we've been thinking pretty much only about ourselves, how to survive. That leaves us with nothing to do but find a hidey-hole, hunker down, and wait.”

He understood: ”You've never lived that way-pa.s.sive, just waiting for what's next.”

”Neither have you. There are children tonight, in this chaos, who aren't being given the shelter and protection they need, they deserve.” She was relieved to have a purpose, to be suddenly filled with the urgency of meaningful commitment.

”And if we can't save them?” Neil wondered.

Ears p.r.i.c.ked, head c.o.c.ked, the dog turned to Neil.

”Maybe no one can save anyone anymore,” Neil continued, ”not with the whole world lost.”

The dog whined at him as it had whined at Molly.

Intrigued by the shepherd's att.i.tude and behavior, she wondered if something extraordinary might be happening; but then the dog padded away, weaving through the crowd, soon out of sight.

”If we can't save them,” she said, ”then we'll try to spare them from what pain and terror we can. We've got to put ourselves between them and whatever's coming.”

He glanced at the six children.

Molly said, ”I don't mean them. Their parents are here, and the group is big enough to protect them about as well as anyone can be protected in these circ.u.mstances. But how many kids are out there in town? Not teenagers. I mean, younger kids, small and vulnerable. One hundred? Two hundred?”

”Maybe that many. Maybe even more.”

”How many of them have parents who are dealing with this the way Derek and his crowd are dealing with it-getting drunk and worse, leaving their kids afraid and undefended?”

”But we don't know most of the people in town,” Neil said. ”There are-what?-maybe four hundred or even five hundred houses, and we don't know which families have kids. It'll take hours and hours, maybe a full day, for just the two of us to go door-to-door. We don't have that much time left.”

”All right. So maybe we can get a few of these people to help us,” Molly said.

Neil looked doubtful. ”They've got their own agendas.”

Weaving among the tables and the milling residents of Black Lake, the German shepherd returned. In its mouth, the dog held a red rose, which it brought to Molly.

She couldn't imagine where it had found a rose in the tavern. She hadn't noticed any floral arrangements.

The dog seemed to want her to take the flower.

”You've got a suitor,” Neil said.

Inevitably, she thought of her father murdering the boy in the rose garden. His voice snaked through her memory in sinuous coils of words: I buried his little disposable camera at the foot of a rosebush. It was the Cardinal Mindszenty rose, so named because of its glorious robe-red color. I buried his little disposable camera at the foot of a rosebush. It was the Cardinal Mindszenty rose, so named because of its glorious robe-red color.

At first inclined to suspect a connection between Render and the dog, Molly hesitated to accept the rose.

Then she looked into the shepherd's eyes and saw what is to be seen in every dog's eyes if it has not been broken by a cruel master: trust, strength without arrogance, a desire to give and receive affection-and an honesty so pure that deception, if contemplated, cannot be perpetrated.

The shepherd wagged its tail.

Molly pinched the stem of the rose, and the animal unlocked its teeth to surrender the fragrant bloom.

As she took the flower, Molly saw evidence of a thorn p.r.i.c.k, a spot of blood on the dog's tongue.

She thought at once of Render-although not as he had appeared this night, rather as he had raged maniacally in that third-grade cla.s.sroom twenty years previously-and not of Michael Render only or even primarily, but also of one of his victims, a girl named Rebecca Rose, with s.h.a.ggy blond hair and blue eyes, who died that afternoon in Molly's arms.

Rebecca Rose. A shy girl with a faint lisp. Her last words, whispered in delirium, apparently a meaningless delusion: Molly...there's a dog. So pretty...how he s.h.i.+nes. Molly...there's a dog. So pretty...how he s.h.i.+nes.

Now the shepherd watched Molly. In his eyes were mysteries to rival any others in this momentous night of enigmas, puzzles, and perplexities.

On a rose thorn, his blood.

Rose of forgetfulness, brought to her by the dog, became the Rose of memory, cut down so young.

By the c.o.c.k of his head, the shepherd seemed to question whether Molly Sloan-sensible Molly, she with the strong mainspring wound tight, she who always lived less in the moment than in the future, she who strived toward meticulously planned goals and was prudent in all things except her writing, she who avoided drama in her life but poured it out upon the page-could understand the intentions of a flower-bearing Sphinx, this rebus on four paws, which wanted so urgently to be properly read and understood.

The rose trembled in her hand, and a loose petal fell, like a sanguinary drop, to the tabletop.

And the dog waited. And the dog watched. And the dog smiled.

In a night of dark wonder and extraordinary events, this was a moment no less important but of a different character from all that had come before it.

Her heart raced. Her thoughts quickened, too, perhaps eventually toward a breathtaking revelation, but first through blind alleys of dead-end speculation.

She put down the rose. She reached to the dog. He licked her hand.

”What?” Neil said, for he knew her almost well enough to read her thoughts.

In her mind, she walked the waters of a lucid pool and stepped ash.o.r.e with an insight nearly clairvoyant in character: ”The dog is going to lead us to any children who need help.”

Neil regarded the dog, which turned its limpid eyes upon him as though its purpose could be read by anyone as easily as Molly had read it.

”Don't ask me how he knows what we need to do,” Molly said. ”But he knows, all right. I don't understand how he'll find them, but he will. By scent, by instinct, by some greater gift.”

Neil stared at the dog. He stared at Molly.

”I know it sounds crazy,” she said.

He looked at the long empty frame from which the bar mirror, peopled by the living dead, had shattered and fallen.

”Then it's the dog,” he said. ”After all, what do we have to lose?”