Something Deadly

The back of his neck prickled anew. “What do the dogs know?”

A couple of seconds ticked by; then she shook herself visibly. “I’m sorry. I’m just…a little unnerved.”

“I can’t blame you. After all, they were barking the other night.”

“Exactly.” She smiled wanly. “They have senses we don’t have. Sometimes it can be…scary.”

“Yeah, it can.”

“Do you have a dog?”

“No, it wouldn’t be fair. I’m not home enough.”

“Cat?”

“I’m, uh, not at all fond of cats.”

“No wonder Kato likes you.” She managed a laugh. “He thinks cats should be on the menu.”

Declan chuckled, but it sounded hollow. “Tell me about a dog’s senses.”

She poked at her fish again before looking at him.

“Well, their eyes are extremely sharp. Most people think they’re color blind, but they’re not. The only color they can’t see is green.”

“Really?”

“Yup. When you think about it, it makes sense. An awful lot of the natural world is green. For a predator, it would be a distraction.”

“That’s fascinating. I had no idea.”

“Most people don’t. Another myth is that dogs can’t process two-dimensional images. Kato loves animal shows on TV. He prefers bears, horses, deer…and most especially other dogs. Sometimes I put on movies that have dogs in them just for him.”

Declan smiled. “I like that.”

She shrugged. “On the other hand, people generally bore him. He’ll sit on the recliner through a full hour show about bears, but the commercials bore him.”

“He has good taste.” He shook his head, still smiling.

“If you take a look at my TV screen, you can see how many times he’s poked his nose at it in the last few days.”

Now Declan laughed, and his uneasiness began fading. “Trying to smell?”

“Yes.” She was totally ignoring her dinner now, wrapped up in a favorite subject. “That’s a dog’s most important sense. I think they read entire novels with their noses. When I’m out walking him and he stops to sniff a tree…well, I call it pee-mail.”

He laughed again. “I like that.”

“We know dogs can discern sex in each other’s urine, and whether a female is in heat. Some studies suggest they can also sense the dog’s emotional state—fear, pain, joy—although we’ve really no idea how much they can read. It might be far more than we can imagine.”

“Our noses certainly don’t come close.”

“No, they don’t. But there are some things we do know. A dog can follow a scent that’s weeks old, despite overlaying scents. We’re talking about a nose that’s sensitive to a few parts per billion.”

“I’ll be the first to admit I can’t imagine that.”

“None of us can. It’s a whole different world. And we can’t begin to guess how they process that information. We know they react to it, but we don’t know how they piece it together into their view of the world.”

Declan looked at Kato with new respect. “I wish I could find out.”

“Me, too.” Finally she forked a piece of fish and put it in her mouth. After she swallowed, she added, “Pascal justified vivisection by claiming that dogs were nothing but a bundle of hard-wired responses without any real consciousness, that everything a dog does is instinct, that they’re not self-aware, that they have no ability to reason. That view was widely held for a long time.”

Markie shook her head. “I defy anyone to truly pay attention to a canine and believe that. They feel guilt and shame, they feel jealous, and they make decisions. And they love.” She trailed off and suddenly blushed, a very charming blush. “Sorry. I’m on my soapbox again.”

“That’s okay. I’m enjoying it. Unfortunately, I’ve never owned a dog, so I don’t know any of this.”

He looked at Kato, who was still waiting patiently for a tidbit from Markie, and all of a sudden felt the acute intelligence in the animal’s gaze, sensed that he was being weighed, measured and judged.

“So,” he said, still looking at Kato, “when he gets upset about something, it’s natural for it to unnerve you.”

“That’s the whole point, isn’t it? We allied with dogs a hundred thousand years ago because they have better senses than we do. Because we can rely on them to alert us and protect us.”

“True. He alerted. I was going out to check on it.”

She looked at him again, and her eyes held something almost as unnerving as what was in Kato’s. “But don’t you see, Dec? That wasn’t just an alert.”

“But…”

“No, wait. Kato doesn’t bark like other dogs. His way of alerting me is to stare out a window in silence. A trespasser wouldn’t raise his hackles. This was something a hell of a lot more threatening.”

At that instant, for some utterly unknown reason, Declan felt his own hackles rise and a chill pour down his spine.

His gaze drifted from Markie back to Kato. Golden wolf eyes were heavy-lidded now, as if to convey that the threat had passed, that it was okay to relax.

Declan flaked off a bit of fish, twirled some pasta with it, and finally ate. “It’s delicious.”

The flavors melded perfectly, each bite a bright taste explosion that very nearly drew an ecstatic moan from him. Markie smiled at his obvious enjoyment and joined in the feast. For a few minutes they ate silently.

“Wow,” Declan said, looking at the empty plate. “Just…wow.”

“Thank you,” Markie said, a wide smile creasing her delicate features. “I’m honored.”

“The pleasure was entirely mine, I assure you.”

Markie put the plates on the floor, allowing Kato to satisfy his palate. But the dog gave them barely a sniff. His golden eyes were still fixed on the window.

Declan stayed to help with the cleanup and was just about to leave when his cell phone chirped a chorus of Jimmy Buffet’s “Margaritaville.”

“Dr. Quinn, it’s Tom Little.”