Even after the talk with Mike, I still felt badly about what happened to him– no matter what he said, I knew it was my fault. Still, Hoove had been in trouble and he was my dog, and you just don’t let bad things happen to your dog.

After covering Mike over with a blanket, I went back down the stairs. I figured Chief still hadn’t finished yelling at me. He had just hung up the phone when I got to the kitchen. He shot a look at me, then around me.

“Where’s Mike?” he asked when he noticed Mike hadn't come down yet.

“He fell off to sleep, Chief,” I let him know.

He got a worried look on his face and turned to Doc.

“It is the best thing for him,” Doc told him

“Unless he’s passed out–”

“No, sir, he just laid down on my bed sayin’ he wanted to rest his eyes for just a minute. Next I knew, he was off to sleep.”

Chief nodded. “I see…well...good." His thoughts appeared t clear of Mike and he leveled his attention completely on me. “Kelly, I’d like to talk to you in my office for a minute.”

Just as I figured, I was in a heap of trouble. My face got warm and my hands got all sweaty. “Yes, sir.”

“Go on,” he said. “I’ll be there in a minute.” He turned back to Doc as I left the room.

I made the distance down the hallway and pushed the door open to the office. It was still a mess. The plate I brought in before sat in the same place Mr. Mort set it down. The sandwiches and soup sat in their same places. No steam came off the soup and none of the sandwiches showed a bite.

The papers still covered the floor, desk, couch and walls and it was really hard for me not to look. But I didn’t. I moved the ones on the couch over so I could sit down. I pulled my legs up in front of me and waited with my chin planted on my knees and my mind on nothing in particular. Across from me was the big sheet of paper stuck to the wall. It had a list of names down one side and another list down the other side. In the middle was a big map, and lines crossed it connecting the names on the lists together. I only knew two of the names, Mr. Clive Blackney and his wife Celine. They were Huey’s grandparents. But they died before Uncle Fred grew up. At the top of the list was written “Dr. Ethan Jonas.” Next to it was “Barrymore Bartlett with a big line under it. Both names were all in caps like they were more important than the rest. A line connected them to four other names at the far right. I shivered. One of the names was Charley Stevens. Billy’s name was written next to it with a big spidery dot after it.

I heard Chief’s footsteps make their way down the slate hall. They stopped suddenly and the office door squeaked opened. Chief pulled the desk chair up in front of me, careful not to stab any of the papers on the floor. His face held the same expression it did the night the tiger broke free. He hadn’t shaved regular since that day. His whiskers were coming up again, in a sloppy way, about his chin and jaw. They reminded me of the Preacher’s whiskers and I had to shake off the cold feeling. His hair was also longer than I’d ever seen it. It came halfway down his neck and fell over his collar, and it too, was a mess. He wore just a white t-shirt. The blood he had wiped off the badge stained it at the bottom. And his eyes made me want to cry. I thought he’d be real angry at me. But he wasn’t. I could handle Chief being mad at me– I deserved that much. But the look in his eyes now– that, I was having a hard time handling. They were full of sadness and unsettled worry. He looked tired and beat-up.

I lifted my eyes to his, but he turned to the floor. He had something in his hand and he turned it over and over in his fingers.

“Chief?”

He looked up.

“I know I shouldn’t have left the front porch.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.”

“I’m grounded again, ain’t I?”

He stared at me and shook his head from side to side; it moved so slow and so little that I barely saw it.

“Ever since Mr. Blackney broke jail,” he started, “you’ve been paying the price. That’s not fair. And I know it’s difficult for you. I don’t like it either.”

“But I disobeyed you.”

“You shouldn’t have been in that position in the first place. You’ve been grounded since he broke out. Not because of any wrongdoing on your part. You’ve assumed his sentence.I had no right to ask that of you.”

“But you had no choice, Chief. He wants to kill me.”

Chief nodded. I could tell he was heavy into thinking something over. “I want to show you this,” he said and held up the thing he had in his hand.

It was long, with a single hole at the end, and one flattened hole on top and it was made from metal.

“What is that?”

“It’s a dog whistle. It makes a high pitched whistle only dogs can hear.”

I stared at him, wondering what that had to do with anything.

He went on, “Mr. Evers found it next to the hole where you found Hoover. Honey, they called the dog out there, knowing you would follow. And knowing we’d go after you, they set the traps to stop us.”

I felt the tears run from my eyes, burning a path down my cheek, but didn’t answer.

Chief stood up from the chair and came over to sit next to me on the couch. He pulled me to him and wiped my eyes with a handkerchief he got out of the back pocket of his blue jeans. Then he took a deep breath.

“He was in the woods with you, baby. Mr. Evers saw him enter at the edge of his property,” he said. Then he turned to me. “We’re making it too easy for him. Too damn easy.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered up to him.

“It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault, honey.”
“If I’d have done what you said–”

“If you want to talk about ‘ifs,’ pumpkin, we could go back an awful long time ago. To mistakes made before you were ever born. Many of which, I can claim myself.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What I’m trying to say, Kelly, is that this could all have been avoided a long time ago. The mistakes I made back then have brought us to this... and for that I am truly sorry. But we can’t change what has already happened. It is up to us to deal with what is happening now.”

“We need to think things out?”

He looked down at me. “Yes,” he whispered. “We need to be smarter than the tiger. And we need to make some very hard decisions.”

“What decisions?”

“I don’t know yet.”

We sat there a while longer, he with his arm around me, and me with my head against his shoulder. Then he said, “That’s all I wanted to say, honey. Just that we need to be careful from now on and not make any more mistakes. Also, that you need not blame yourself for anything that’s happened. You are not responsible.”

“Yes, sir.”

Chief kissed the top of my head and stood. He helped me off the couch, then put an arm around me and led me back down the hall and back into the kitchen. Everyone else was still there, sitting at the table and sipping tea. They stopped talking when we got there.

“You ready, Mort?” Chief asked from above my head.

“Yeah, sure Bob,” Mr. Mort answered. “But don’t you think you’d better put on a clean shirt?”

Chief looked down at the stained tee he was wearing and smiled. “Better at that,” he said. “I’d hate to be mistook for a patient. I’ll be down in a minute. Then we can go–”

“Go where?”

He turned to me. “Hank’s come out of his coma, honey. We’re going to go question him.”

“Can I go?”

“No, I think you better stay here. Joe should be along with your homework any minute now.”

“Yes, sir."

“Besides,” Chief went on. “I want you to help your sister see to Mike. All right?”

I smiled. “Okay.”

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