The torches spaced evenly along the nearer shore seemed to have been adapted from those heaters many restaurants use to warm their patios. A propane tank formed the base of each, supporting an eight- or nine-foot pole that, in the original configuration, rose to a large mushroom-shaped cap that distributed heat down and to all sides. The cap had been removed, and the heating element at the top of the pole had been reworked in such a fashion as to encourage the stream of burning gas to separate into lapping tongues of blue-and-orange flame.
Between the lake and the central building of the property, on a broad stone terrace, stood four more propane torches. The house seemed too large to be a single-family residence and might once have been a corporate retreat accommodating a double score of executives for one of those long weekends when they learned to trust one another and bond before they returned to their offices and to the paranoid and cut-throat behavior that they had pretended to put behind them here at the lake. The architecture, a not entirely successful combination of Frank Lloyd Wright’s prairie style with classic log construction, featured a deep cantilevered deck on the second floor, overhanging part of the terrace, but no deck on the third floor.
Beyond some of the first- and second-floor windows, people were in conversations, while others bustled through those rooms with evident purpose, engaged in one task or another. At this distance, I couldn’t see them well enough to identify anyone, but the gathering included women as well as men. My simmering anxiety might have heated my imagination, but judging by their energy and body language, I had the impression that they were in a state of pleasant expectation, which troubled me. I didn’t think they were delightedly anticipating anything as innocent as the next round of hors d’oeuvres.
To the left of the driveway, about thirty vehicles were parked in two rows, and beyond them stood the rhinestone cowboy’s fancy ProStar+ that I’d last seen in the garage of the industrial building in a Los Angeles suburb but also in that creepy other place that I called Elsewhere.
Acutely aware of how close I had come to being neutered and left to bleed to death in the supermarket parking lot, I crossed the end of the driveway and, staying close to the tree line, slunk past the cars and SUVs. I gave an especially wide berth to the eighteen-wheeler, moving toward the back of the property.
Every window and door in the sprawling house must have been closed, because in spite of the number of people, no noise escaped those walls. Although the air wasn’t cold enough to crystallize my exhalations, the chill kept dormant the insects and toads that usually sang in the night. I heard the distant shrill cry of a bird that I didn’t recognize and the closer communications of two owls no doubt complaining that the weather kept too many tasty rodents in nests and burrows.
At the back of the property, fifty or sixty yards from the house, were two buildings. A rectangular single-story structure, painted white, with barn doors, looked like a stable. The other was a stone-and-timber structure approximately sixty by forty feet, with a steeply sloped roof that beetled over deep eaves, and a forbidding quality. Staying close to the tree line, I cautiously approached the stable.
The night bird shrieking out of the depths of the forest, like a disembodied soul in torment, and the soft hooting of the nearby owls did not mask the sudden rush of some beast sprinting across the yard, panting with exertion and eagerness. I halted, turned, saw a swift low shape, blacker than the night. I thrust out my right arm and pressed the button on the top of the little pressurized can. A stream of sedative, which I couldn’t see, must have hit the target exactly as Mrs. Fischer had advised. I heard a stifled squeal, canine in character, followed by a snarl that quickly diminished to a tired grumble, the sound of four legs stumbling, a heavy body slumping to the grass, and a sigh almost of contentment.
Even as the sigh withered away, a second beast came fast, paws thumping the ground louder than those of the first, suggesting it was a larger specimen. I fired the canister, and the attacker abruptly changed course. But maybe I didn’t score a perfect hit, because the dog, if dog it was, seemed to lumber away, didn’t collapse, but instead sneezed, sneezed, and sneezed again.
I was about to follow the creature and try to administer a more direct dose, but the third beast, close behind the second, launched itself even as I became aware of it. Flashing teeth went for my throat, missed by a few inches, chomped instead on my Kevlar vest, and were foiled more entirely than a bullet would have been. Seventy pounds of coal-black Doberman bowled me over and tumbled past me, snarling in frustration.
Certain that I didn’t have time to get to my feet, I rolled off my back, onto my side, and triggered the canister as the fallen dog whipped cat-quick onto its feet. I missed, the Doberman issued a short guttural sound that probably meant Die, fry-cook, die, and it came at me, so close that I saw the drug stream enter its open mouth, as if I were dispensing a breath freshener. Although none of the sedative appeared to splatter the nostrils, the taste alone proved effective, because this trained attack dog halted just short of its prey, which was canine-loving me. It gagged in disgust, shook its head violently, gagged again, and collapsed, face-to-face with me, inches away. Eclipsing its shining gaze, its eyelids lowered like stage curtains.