A large and purposeful German shepherd loped across the garden, circled the pool, stood for a moment with his forepaws on the elevated wall, then, with the free end of his leash in his mouth, sat directly in front of Morgan and stared at him. The handler had set the dog loose in the yard when he went back to his van and had asked Morgan to keep an eye on him. Morgan’s indifference offended the dog, who dropped his leash so that it dragged on the ground as he trotted over to the base of a Japanese maple, cocked a leg, and peed. Then, skirting the lower pond, he came back, stepped lightly up onto the wall, and nudged his reluctant custodian, who was thinking about dogs and hadn’t noticed the German shepherd’s absence.
Morgan didn’t understand dogs. In Cabbagetown they were guards and scavengers. He didn’t think of animals defining themselves by their connection with humans. Morgan edged away while the big German shepherd manoeuvred to maintain contact, then gave up and gazed wistfully into the water. The dog leaned forward until his nose touched, withdrew with a sneeze, and leaned forward again, teetering in a very fine balance, threatening to topple into his own reflection.
The end of the German shepherd’s leash dangled below the surface, and the dog growled at the fish shimmering in flight. Distracted, Morgan spoke to the dog; inconsiderately, his tone ambiguous. Sensitive by training to verbal nuance, the dog heard only a jumble of words, without the slightest inflection to indicate the required response.
Unable to resolve his confusion, the dog wagged his tail with greater and greater vigour until his entire hindquarters quivered. Then, suddenly bounding away in apparent embarrassment, he tore around the big trees, leaped over shrubs and through compost remains, sent divots of grass flying askew, and careened through the air past Morgan, over the wall of the pond, and into the water.
Morgan smiled and turned away to protect the dog’s dignity. The fish would be safe near the bottom.
The dog clawed against the side of the pool. Each time he reached up to drag himself over the stone wall, the compromised ratio of buoyancy to displacement plunged him backward and under. Each time he rose sputtering to the surface, he was closer to drowning and even more bewildered by the man who ignored him.
The handler finally appeared, reached across, grasped the dog by the scruff of the neck, and hauled him over the edge with relative ease despite his size. The dog raced away and shook vigorously, then crept back to sit directly in front of Morgan. He leaned forward and burrowed his damp head deep between Morgan’s arm and body, shivering in gratitude and affection.
“You’ve made a friend for life,” the handler said. “He thinks you’re his saviour. He could have bloody well drowned.”
“No,” said Morgan. “I was right here.”
“His pecker nearly did him in. Male dogs can’t haul themselves over stuff. Like, if they fall through the ice, they often drown when their pecker gets caught on the edge of the ice.”
“I didn’t know that. I wouldn’t have let him drown.”
“He likes you,” said the handler. “Generally, he doesn’t like men.”
Morgan decided he was partial to dogs, though his armpit was saturated and smelled like a wet sofa. If he ever got a dog, it would have to be a terrier. They weren’t so needy, he had heard. A Scottish terrier. They had interior lives of their own.
The German shepherd, its world restored by the return of his handler, and not yet being given a task, wandered away to explore. His leash was dragging, and he came back so that the handler could unclasp it from his collar. Then he resumed his peregrination, sniffing and peeing, covering unseen markers with his own scent. Periodically, he stopped and stood alert long enough to confirm his handler’s location. As a gesture of affection, the handler pretended to ignore the dog, conveying his trust that the dog wouldn’t stray beyond the radius of control they had established between them.
“Nice fish,” the handler said.
“They’re down deep right now. What’s your dog’s name?”
“Rex.”
“Did you think about Prince?”
“We’re not supposed to give them a fancy name. It’s gotta go with commands. I call him Schnitzel at home with the kids. On duty he’s Rex.”
“And what does he call himself?” asked Morgan indistinctly, not really wanting to be heard.
“Dog,” said the handler.
“What?”
“He calls himself Dog.”
Morgan looked up at the man and smiled. “My name’s Morgan.”
“I’m McGillivery. They sent me up from College Street. Said you wanted us to sniff around. What are we looking for?”
Morgan shrugged. “I’ve gotta have something to look for. We can’t look for nothing.”
“I thought that’s what you did.”
“I take it you’re not the one who put in the request. I’ll see what we can come up with.”
“Hold on a minute,” said Morgan. He walked over to the house and disappeared through the French doors, then returned. “Work gloves are the best I can do. He wasn’t the type to leave dirty laundry around. You think you can trace where he went before he died. He was in the pond.”
“Out here? I don’t know.”
McGillivery set Rex to his task, then motioned Morgan to stay still beside him so that their own scent wouldn’t interfere. The dog moved methodically, but at times seemed confused, darting back and forth between the trellised portico and the formal pond. McGillivery reassured him. The dog circled, stopped to gaze into the depths at the fish, then walked nose to the ground in a direct line down to the larger opaque pond, to the green water’s edge. He looked around, sniffing the air as if he were trying to catch a distinct and elusive odour, then abruptly dropped his head and trotted in a straight line back to the upper pond where he came to rest at his handler’s feet.
“That’s about it,” said McGillivery. “Sorry. It seems likely the victim walked about quite a bit between the house and the fish-pond.”
“There are fish in the other one, too.”
“And he made at least one foray down to that pond. It looks kind of grim.”
“It’s just mud. There’s a natural spring. It leaches into the ravine.”
“There was something down there Rex didn’t recognize, something in the water, maybe the fish.”
“It’s sweet water, from clay.”
“He doesn’t know clay from kitty litter. Up closer to the house, the scents are untidy. Your victim came out through the back door and puttered around, then disappeared, maybe back to the house. That’s about all we can tell you, but I’m pretty sure of that much, anyway.”
Morgan admired McGillivery for his aplomb, and Rex for his capacity to recover his dignity through diligence, however unproductive.
Miranda appeared with two coffees in Styrofoam cups and a bag with gourmet sandwiches. “Sorry, McGillivery. I didn’t know you were here.”
“That’s okay. I had lunch on my way up. Rex doesn’t eat on duty.”
The dog wagged his tail and looked hungry.
“Find anything?” she asked. “No, ma’am, not much,” he answered quite formally. He had a faint Scottish burr.
McGillivery proceeded to describe the final outdoor movements of Robert Griffin in the late afternoon before he was murdered, speaking with more authority to Miranda than he had to Morgan, but with a trace of humility that might have been almost subversive. Listening to him recount the obvious,