Animal Instinct by Rosenfelt, David (novels for students TXT) 📕

It’s not a phobia. The dictionary defines phobia as an inexplicable or irrational fear. That doesn’t apply here; it’s very rational to be afraid of being dragged to one’s death by the ocean monster known as riptide.

The irony is that I have spent my life attacking and overcoming fear; as a cop the criticism most often levied at me was that I was not cautious enough. I think that’s fair; I took it as a badge of honor that I didn’t let being afraid stop me from doing something. In fact, it provided an extra impetus.

I’ve also discovered that when you refuse to give in to fear over so many years, then you stop having to make the gesture of refusing, because you stop being fearful. The trick is to remain careful and cautious without that fear as a motivation.

But I’ve never gone into the ocean, and I’m never going to. That has remained a riptide too far.

“You going in?” Dani asks.

“Not in this lifetime.” She knows my feeling about this, but was just checking to see if I’d bite the bullet.

“What about Simon?”

“He and I have discussed it, and he shares my views on the matter.”

She holds up a tennis ball, one of a half dozen that we’ve brought along. “Should I try?”

I nod. “Fine with me. But you’re wasting your time. Simon and I are land animals.”

Dani rears back and throws the ball into the water, getting it maybe thirty yards in. As she does, she yells, “Go get it, Simon.”

And he does.

He plunges in like he’s been doing it all his life; all he’s missing is a surfboard. I have no idea how he does it, but within thirty seconds he’s got the tennis ball in his mouth and is heading back to us. He drops the ball at Dani’s feet, triumphant.

He looks so damn happy, and I’m glad of that. But my dominant feelings are relief that he has conquered the dreaded riptide, and guilt for having deprived him of this joy his whole life. Simon has suffered because of my reaction to something my mother said to me when I was four.

The sins of the father shall be visited upon the son.

“You learn something every day,” Dani says, handing me the ball.

I throw it in, not as far as Dani did because I’m being protective of Simon. Maybe the riptide was backing off the first time, trying to make him overconfident.

He dives back in, repeating the retrieval, and this time dropping the ball at my feet. He looks at me with a combination of eagerness for me to continue the game, and disdain at my personal wimpiness.

At least that’s my impression.

“Come on, let’s take a walk along the water,” Dani says.

“Okay.”

“You going to take off your sneakers?”

It hadn’t entered my mind, and I notice for the first time that Dani is barefoot. Simon is bare pawed, per usual.

“Do I have to?” I may not be the most free-spirited soul you could run into.

“Of course not; there are no sneaker police on the beach. But most people do. It feels good.”

“We’re walking in dirt. That feels good? I believe shoes and sneakers were originally invented to prevent people from having to walk in dirt.”

“It’s sand, Corey.”

“That is a distinction without a difference.” I think about it for a few moments, then, “Okay, what the hell.”

So we have a nice barefoot walk, throwing the ball into the water along the way. I can’t remember the last time I saw Simon so happy and exhausted.

“I wish I didn’t have to leave,” Dani says.

Dani works as an event planner, and she’s doing a big corporate gathering in Miami. She’ll be gone for a week. “So do I,” I say. “But we’ll have this dirt walk as a memory to hold on to.”

When we’re finished, we stop for brunch at an outdoor café. We both like to read the newspaper in situations like this; it’s one of the many things I like about Dani. She’s comfortable talking or not talking; it doesn’t seem to matter to her either way.

We buy a Newark Star-Ledger; I take the sports section and she has the rest. We’ll trade off as we go along. We order food; she and I each have pancakes and we get Simon a bagel and some scrambled eggs, along with a dish of water.

After a few minutes, she says, “Oh.” It is not a happy oh.

“What’s the matter?”

“A woman was murdered in Teaneck last night.”

I’m a cop, or at least I was a cop. Now I’m an investigator, and I’m still interested in these things. “Let me see.”

She hands me the paper and I look at the story. The entire newspaper seems to explode in my face; I read for a few moments and then lean back in my chair, trying to catch my breath.

“What’s the matter?” Dani asks. “Did you know her?”

“I might have killed her.”

I almost never second-guess myself. I make choices and then live with the consequences, positive or negative.

I always felt that it was part of the job of being a cop. We had to make decisions all the time, sometimes in a split second. So my view is that you do the best you can, in the time you have, and then you move on. That’s been true both in my work and in my personal life.

I don’t think I have looked back with regret on more than a handful of decisions I made in the twenty-five years I was a cop. But there is one that I could never wipe from my mind; one that I feared would come back to haunt me. And it has.

Lisa Yates.

The late Lisa Yates.

Lisa Yates is the reason I’ve called this meeting of the K Team. We call ourselves that because we’re a team, and because among our members is Simon, the former K-9 cop. Okay, we’re not great at team naming, but I rate us as damn