As the morning light began to filter through her blinds, thoughts of her night with Aspen came back to mind. She pushed them away and tried to get back to sleep, but then someone was knocking at her door once again. This time, she could see two police officers standing on her front stoop when she peeped out. She pulled her robe around her tightly and opened the door to them.
“We’re sorry to bother you at such an early hour, ma’am, but we wondered if you might answer a few questions for us.”
“Sure, officers. Come on in.”
She pushed the screen door between them open and invited them in. They stepped inside, each looking around briefly before looking back at her.
“There was an incident last night with your neighbor’s dog. Did you hear anything out of the ordinary?”
“Well, yes,” she replied.
Amanda told them what she had heard and the approximate time it had happened.
“This person that rang your bell. Did they have a dog with them?” the first cop asked.
“I don’t know. No one was there.”
“You didn’t see anyone walking away?”
“No. Well, I wouldn’t have. I didn’t open the door.”
“I don’t understand. How do you know no one was there if you didn’t open the door?” the other asked.
“The peephole. I just looked out the peephole. Like, I could see the two of you when you arrived, but last night, there was no one at all there.”
“I see. Well, thank you for your time,” the first cop told her.
“What happened next door? Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Yes. They are just a bit shaken up is all. Someone killed their dog in the early hours of this morning,” he told her.
“Oh, God!” Amanda said, feeling awful despite not having liked the dog that much in the first place.
“You don’t know anyone that would want to hurt their dog do you?” the other cop said, almost as an afterthought. Amanda couldn’t help but wonder if it had been a purposeful tactic, though she wasn’t sure how that worked.
“Everyone, to be honest,” she replied.
They both looked at her in surprise, as if it never occurred to them that neighbors might not have liked the dog. It occurred to her that she was the closest neighbor and she might be the first one they had spoken to.
“How’s that?” one of them said.
“No one liked that dog. It has attacked other animals in the neighborhood on several occasions. It barks if so much as a rabbit hops across the backyard. The only time there is any peace is when they are on vacation and take it away with them, or when it is in the house at night. I’m surprised it was out at night, honestly. They’ve not let it out past ten p.m. for a long time due to the complaints to the neighborhood council.”
“I see. Well, I don’t suppose anyone has to worry about that now then,” one of them remarked snidely.
“I suppose not,” Amanda said. She had done nothing wrong and wouldn’t be shamed for not shedding tears for the annoying animal. She didn’t enjoy the idea of someone having killed a helpless animal. He couldn’t help that he was poorly trained, but it still wasn’t her fault.
“One last thing,” the first cop asked. “Do you know if any of your neighbors have perhaps a wolf hybrid or something like that?”
“No. I haven’t seen anything like that. Why?”
“Just checking on possibilities. It’s highly likely that the dog was attacked by a dog rather than a human.”
“Then why the investigation? That seems pretty open and shut?”
The two cops looked at one another and then the first one replied, watching her face for any reaction it would seem.
“Dog’s leave their opponents dead on the ground.”
Amanda looked at him curiously, but he offered nothing further.
“That’s really all we can say, ma’am. Thank you for your time,” he finished.
The two cops excused themselves and left. Amanda wondered what they had meant for a few moments and then forgot all about it as she decided to go back to bed and catch a few more hours sleep before getting on with the day. Less than an hour later, she was awakened by a loud knocking on the front door.
“For fuck’s sake!” she exclaimed, sitting straight up in the bed. The sound had startled her out of a deep sleep in which she had been dreaming about Aspen. It was a bittersweet ending to leave it behind.
Walking to the door, she once again peered through the peephole to see him standing on her front porch. She debated whether to answer it or not. The man was definitely some kind of trouble, though she wasn’t exactly sure what kind of trouble that was. Plus, she must look a wreck after a mostly sleepless night. She decided it didn’t matter what she looked like, as any possibility of a relationship with him was not in the realm of possibility.
“What do you want, Aspen?” she said as she stood blinking into the sunlight that spilled inside the door frame.
“Well, hello to you too, Amanda. It’s grand to see you.”
“Yep.”
“May I come in?”
“Sure. Why not.”
She opened the screen door that still separated them and allowed him to walk in. He looked around, taking everything in and then turned to speak, but she cut him off as a new thought occurred to her.
“How did you know where I live?”
“It’s a small town. I just asked.”
“Asked who?”
“That’s not important. I need to talk to you about something else.”
“Like what?”
“I can’t talk to you here. How about we go for a walk along the falls where you like?”
“I really don’t know if I can trust being alone out in the woods with you.”
“Are you really afraid of me, Amanda? What have I done to make you feel that way, really?”
“I don’t know. There is just something very wrong with you. I don’t know what it is.”
“How about if we go for a walk down around the falls and I tell you some things that might help clear it up?”
“Things you can’t tell me here in the house?”
“Yes. Things I can’t tell you here in the house.”
Amanda studied his face, looking for anything that she might need to be wary of, but there was nothing. He was just so handsome and he seemed so genuine. Still, so much didn’t make sense about him. In the end, she was just damned attracted to him in a way that she’d never been to anyone before. She decided the worst that would happen was that he would tell her something she didn’t want to hear.
“Okay. Let me get dressed,” she told him. “You can have a seat in the living room. Don’t touch anything.”
“Thanks,” he replied, heading off in the direction she pointed toward the sofa.
When she stepped back out of her bedroom a short time later, he was engrossed in looking at an old photo album he had retrieved from her coffee table. He was smiling thoughtfully as he flipped through old pictures of her when she was a girl. There was one he had stopped on of her and her mother. They were both smiling broadly up at the camera, her mother and a six-year-old Amanda, a huge gap where her recently departed front teeth used to be.
“I thought I told you not to touch anything,” she told him.
Her tone was flat, but he laughed anyway, holding up the picture and tapping on it as if she wasn’t aware of which one he was focused on.
“This is adorable,” he told her.
“Doubt it would be as adorable now,” she told him.
“Probably not, but you aren’t, what - six or seven - anymore.”
“Six, almost seven.”
“And this is your mother?”
“Yes.”
“Where are your parents now?”
“They moved south several years ago.”
“Really? How far south?” he asked.
“Six feet south.”
There was no humor in Amanda’s face. Her parents’ death wasn’t something she wished to talk about, not with him or anyone else. It had long been a coping mechanism to make macabre “jokes” that appalled people and for which she sometimes felt bad about making, but they just popped out.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It happens. Are we ready to go?”
He smiled at her thoughtfully. At least he knew when not to push something, she thought. He closed the album and lay it back where he had gotten it from before standing to walk to the front door with her. Outside, she locked the door and they walked toward his bike. Amanda had that same excited feeling as before climbing onto the back of the Harley, but this time there was something else. Fear? Dread? Perhaps just disappointment.