The Man Who Wasn't All There by David Handler (book recommendations website TXT) 📕

Annabeth drew in her breath. ‘Keep her away from me,’ she pleaded.

I led her into the kitchen for her reward. ‘You saved my life, Lulu,’ I said as I fed her one, two, three anchovies. ‘You’re a genuine heroine. Why, they make movies about dogs like you. Just wait until Mommy hears about this. She’ll be so proud of what a brave girl you are. Tell you what, first thing we’ll do when we get back to the city is head to the Oyster Bar in Grand Central for a pan roast.’ The pan roast in Grand Central’s Oyster Bar was her favorite food in the whole world. ‘How does that sound?’

She didn’t respond, which wasn’t her style at all. I bent down to give her a belly rub, but she didn’t want a belly rub, which wasn’t her style either. Instead, she sat up and raised her bandaged paw the way a dog does when it shakes hands. But that wasn’t what she wanted either. She wanted me to sit down on the kitchen floor with her so that she could climb into my lap and lick my face. I put my arms around her and hugged her as she whimpered softly. ‘Hey, we’re OK, girl. We’re both OK. Yes, we are.’

I was saying a few more things to her that I won’t bother to repeat here when the ambulance came speeding up the gravel driveway trailed by two silver Crown Vics. I got up and let them in through the front door. The EMT gave Annabeth a shot of novocaine and put a temporary bandage around her wrist. Also wrote down Lulu’s rabies vaccination number from her tag and the name of her veterinarian in New York City. The two huge state troopers stood there in their rain slickers with Tedone, watching.

‘Would you mind getting my raincoat and boots, please?’ Annabeth asked me.

‘Sure, no problem.’

‘Search the pockets,’ Tedone ordered one of the troopers. ‘And cuff her. I want you riding to the hospital with her the whole way.’

After the trooper had searched the pockets of her coat – and found nothing but her wallet and keys – he helped her to her feet, draped it around her shoulders and held her steady while she stepped into her rubber Wellingtons. Then he cuffed her left wrist, the one that Lulu hadn’t sunk her teeth into, to his own right wrist.

‘You’ll be fine,’ I said to her as they started for the door together. ‘You just got mixed up with a family that was a good, solid three hundred years’ worth of deranged. Take care of yourself, OK?’

Annabeth McKenna said nothing in response. Didn’t even look at me as the trooper escorted her outside into the rain with the EMT leading the way. While they got settled in the back of the van, the other trooper hustled out to his cruiser to serve as escort to the Shoreline Clinic. And then off they went, sirens blaring.

Tedone and I stood there in silence for a moment, emotionally spent, before I said, ‘Thanks for backing my play, by the way.’

‘No problem. It wasn’t what I’d call a conventional play, but it got the job done.’

‘Seriously, what’ll happen to her?’

‘Seriously? Exactly what I said. No way she’ll put her kids through the ordeal of a trial. She’ll quietly cop to an insanity plea and take up residence in York’s criminal psych ward. Kind of a strange place for a Yale School of Medicine professor of psychiatry to find herself living, but it’s been my experience that the world’s getting stranger and stranger lately.’

‘I’ve noticed that, too.’

‘You’ve had yourself quite a week. You OK?’

‘Who, me? I’m fine.’

‘C’mon, I’ll drive you up to Meriden and take your formal statement. Why don’t you wait here while I fetch my cruiser? No sense in both of us getting wet.’ He’d stashed it in the barn before Annabeth got there. He started for the door, then stopped. ‘I’ve got to say, you showed some real nerve taking her on in that way.’

‘I felt sorry for her more than anything else.’

‘Don’t kid a kidder, Hoagy. She murdered two people and was more than ready to murder you, too. You telling me you weren’t scared shitless?’

‘Little bit.’

‘Oh, hey, that’s not true about Miss Nash and Mel Gibson is it?’

‘No, Lieutenant, I made that part up.’

‘Good, because my wife would be crushed.’

We both had oyster pan roasts. We ate at the counter. Always do.

As an appetizer I had nine blue points that I squirted with lemon juice and Tabasco sauce and washed down with a spicy Bloody Mary, which is my drink of choice whenever I eat raw oysters. I wore my pigskin driving cap so that I wouldn’t have to explain my head wound to Tony, the counter man, who’d been there since VJ day and was just as delighted to see us as we were to see him.

When he asked me about Lulu’s bandaged paws I explained that she’d tussled with a badger on Merilee’s farm. ‘And that was one sorry badger, let me tell you.’

‘You don’t have to,’ Tony assured me. ‘Lulu’s street tough.’

‘You bet she is.’

It was a bit after nine p.m. when I settled our tab and Lulu and I strolled our way out of Grand Central, me dragging on a Chesterfield that I’d lit with Grandfather’s Varaflame lighter, the one that had helped save both of our lives. We caught a cab home, the night-time air in the city feeling uncommonly mild after being in the country.

I’d already taken care of business when we’d arrived home that afternoon. Unpacked my clothes and shaving kit. Deposited my baskets of apples and pears from Merilee’s trees in the kitchen along with Mr MacGowan’s jug. Parked my Olympia, my manuscript, notepads and that all-important wad of prescription pad notes on the Stickley library table in my office, gazing out the windows at my view of Central Park. I’d also scheduled appointments for later in the week