Something Missing_ A Novel - Matthew Dicks [76]
Even before the attack, Martin knew that something was wrong.
The side door of the Green home opened up into a long, rectangular kitchen. As Martin scanned the room from one end to the other, he realized that his assessment of Laura Green had been completely wrong.
Had he been asked, Martin would have said that it was the refrigerator that gave it away, but in reality, he had detected a number of clues on an unconscious level that quickly led him to the same conclusion. The lack of dishes in the sink. The kitchen table pushed up along the far wall, leaving room for only one person to sit comfortably. The single place setting on the table. A raincoat and a sweater hanging alone on coat hooks mounted next to the door. The cleanliness of the linoleum.
But the refrigerator had been the dead giveaway. A stainless-steel model, devoid of fingerprints of any kind, the only magnets attached to its surface lined in a neat row along the top of the door. Half a dozen plastic vegetables, aligned in perfect symmetry, with not a single scrap of paper beneath them.
This was not a home in which small children lived.
Had Martin managed to avoid assuming otherwise, he might have remembered to ring the doorbell before picking the lock. He always rang the doorbell of a new client, finding it an effective determinant of dogs in the home.
Had the possibility that Laura Green might be single entered his mind, Martin would have most assuredly rung the bell, knowing that women who live alone often kept pets, and if the woman was at all nervous about being alone, that pet was usually a large dog.
These thoughts and observations rushed into Martin’s mind in the seconds before he heard the first angry bark and saw the black Labrador retriever come bursting through the entranceway into the kitchen and toward him.
“The Attack,” as Martin would henceforth refer to it (referencing a chapter from one of his favorite novels, Treasure Island), was not as violent or as painful as the previous attack he had suffered, as a child, the one that had led to his lifetime fear of dogs.
Martin had been pedaling his bike down a long, winding driveway to the home of David Durand, one of his few friends at the time. Martin was twelve years old and had been over to the Durands’ home many times, and he was very familiar with their Doberman pinscher, Valerie. Despite her ferocious appearance, Valerie had proven herself to be a gentle and fun-loving dog—until that fateful spring day.
David and his tall, balding father were standing at the end of the driveway, peering at the engine of one of the Durands’ many fixer-uppers, this one an ancient Ford Mustang, as Martin glided across the pavement atop his knobby-wheeled Huffy. As he closed to within fifty feet of his friend, Valerie burst out of the open garage, hurling herself toward Martin at a furious pace. Though he had spent many an occasion with the animal, Martin took one look at the dog and knew that something was wrong, in much the same way he knew that something was wrong from the moment he entered Laura Green’s kitchen.
As Valerie closed the gap between them, Martin turned his bike left to avoid the attack, but was too late. The dog leapt into the air, connecting with Martin’s right leg and biting down hard. The collision caused the bike to topple over and threw Martin to the pavement with the dog still clamped onto his throbbing leg.
Upon striking the ground, Martin screamed, feeling the gruesome tear of skin off his right elbow as he struggled to free his leg from Valerie’s ironclad grip. David’s father ran over, his son trailing close behind, and the two of them bent down to examine the carnage. As Mr. Durand attempted to remove the dog’s jaws from Martin’s leg, Martin watched as David carefully examined Valerie, never giving his wounded friend a second glance. In fact, minutes later, when David finally looked up and