A Walk in the Park

A short story by Lis Angus
published in Black Cat Mystery Magazine #11, February 2022

Dooley trotted to the top of the hill, tail high, nose raised. A breeze ruffled his thick fur, and tall trees sighed overhead. He sniffed. Gopher scent, old. Porcupine, more recent. Tree and plant smells, unimportant. Mice, here now, in the underbrush near the path; he could hear them rustling. He cocked his head but didn’t feel drawn to pursue them.

He could hear Boss close behind him on the path, and his attention shifted to her. Her stride was strong and steady. Her scent reached out to him, familiar as his own.

“Hey, Dooley,” she said, coming up beside him. She knelt down and wrapped her arms around him, stroking his fur, rubbing his ears. He arched his neck to greet her caress. “Good boy, Dooley. Great fall morning, isn’t it?” He gave her a quick lick on the face. She moved her head away, laughing.

They were a team. She was a good Boss, and his loyalty to her was unquestioning. She had been his Boss for a long time now. He had only a dim memory of his other boss, the man who had trained him.

He trotted ahead again, Boss moving quickly behind him. He listened for her footsteps, setting his pace to match hers. They walked here almost every morning, following one of the several trails that wound through woods and parkland and along the lakefront. They walked early, just after sunrise. Sometimes they passed other people, walking or running, with or without dogs. He knew each one’s scent.

As they left the trees and moved into the open grass between woods and the rocky shoreline, he saw two people up ahead, a man and a woman. They weren’t on the path but seemed to be coming from the rocks by the water. He had seen these two here in the park before, though never previously off the path. Both were thin and dark, and not young. The woman moved as if she were sick, and always walked a few steps behind the man, struggling to keep up. The man never turned to look or speak to her.

Dooley focused his ears on them; he could hear the woman wheezing, but neither person spoke. As they reached the pathway, the wind brought their scent in a strong gust. Dooley’s nostrils twitched. He recognized their scents: each had an individual person-odor, overlaid by something he recognized as a food-smell, though not one he was familiar with.

The woman also always smelled afraid. She was afraid of the man. Sometimes the fear smell was stronger, sometimes weaker. Today it was strong.

The man walked in the center of the path, not moving to the side to pass as most people did. He looked straight ahead, not glancing at either Boss or Dooley. The woman hurried after him.

Boss moved onto the grass to let them by. As they passed, Dooley got a strong whiff of another scent, one he hadn’t smelled on them before. One that sliced through to old, terrible memories and made his hackles rise.

He stopped and turned, watching them, a low growl rumbling in this throat.

“Dooley!” Boss hurried up and grasped his collar. “Hey, boy, what’s the problem?”

He growled again and moved to follow them, but Boss held him back. She spoke soothingly and he settled back on his haunches, still rumbling but obedient to the restraint. The scent faded as the couple reached the trees.

He turned again and looked up at Boss. She patted his shoulder and said, “Let’s go, boy.” He trotted beside her as they resumed their walk. They reached the point where the man and woman had joined the path. He could hear the waves crashing on the rocks at the shoreline, just below.

Now he could smell that odor again. It was stronger here. He bounded ahead, off the path and down the rocks, following the ever-more-pungent smell.

It smelled of meat, spoiled meat.

It unlocked memories of smoke, people screaming and shouting, children crying. Explosive noises, men attacking the village. His old boss coming out of a collapsed building, a small girl lying limp in his arms, a bloody cloth wrapped around the stump of her leg. Memories of a later time when his boss, and many other people, lay on the ground, still and unmoving, the spoiled-meat smell filling the air. And despite everything Dooley tried, his boss did not get up again.

He could smell that odor again now. It was coming from the rocks ahead. Something between them, wedged in tight. Smooth and dark, like the bags Boss put garbage in and took out to the street. He grabbed a corner and pulled, hard, yanking the bag up and out from between the rocks. He dragged it over to where Boss was standing.

“Dooley, what do you have there? What did you find?” Boss bent to open the bag. “Whew, it stinks.” She waved her hand in front of her face.

Then she screamed.

* * * *

The television was on. A young woman was speaking. “And in a shocking development earlier today, police have retrieved what they believe to be the dismembered limbs of an elderly person. We go to Jed McQuire for more.”

The TV image shifted to show a young man standing outdoors, his hair mussed by the wind. He lifted his microphone. “Earlier today, a woman walking her dog here in Waterfront Park made a gruesome discovery. Her dog found a green plastic garbage bag, apparently hidden in the rocks by the water. When she opened the bag, it contained a severed hand and forearm. She immediately called the police, who in a preliminary search found another hand and a thigh, also in plastic bags. Police say the limbs appear to be those of an adult, probably an elderly woman. The investigation is ongoing. Police are looking for a middle-aged couple, a man and a woman, who were seen in the area this morning. And now back to you, Pamela.”

* * * *

Dooley lay on the floor, watching Boss. A man wearing a uniform sat on the sofa.

“You know, I don’t think I can be much help,” she said. “I’ve passed both of them walking in the park before—they seem to like to walk early in the morning, around the same time as I often go—but to be honest I’ve always paid more attention to her appearance than to his. She always looks cowed and frightened. I felt sorry for her, always scurrying along after him. In fact, I was concerned about her: a few weeks ago, she seemed to have a black eye, though she had a scarf covering part of her face, so it was hard to tell. I worried that she was being abused. I looked at him too, especially then, but I’m afraid I don’t remember enough specific details about his appearance to be of help. I don’t know if I’d even recognize him again, if he were alone. I just recognized them as a couple.”

The man in the uniform cleared his throat. “Well, that’s possible, ma’am, but we’d appreciate it if you could spend some time with the artist anyway. Even an approximate likeness will give us something to go on.”

* * * *

The television was on again. “Pamela Jones here with the six o’clock news. Just before news time, there was a breaking development linking two unsolved murder cases here in the city. To tell us about it, we go to Jed McQuire.”

The young man stood in front of a small apartment building, snow swirling in his hair. “Viewers will remember Maria Nagy, whose strangled body was found in November in the apartment where she had been living with her husband, Peter Nagy, and her elderly mother. Neighbors interviewed after the murder said that Mr. and Mrs. Nagy moved to Canada from Hungary a year ago, with her mother joining them about six months later. When Maria Nagy’s body was found, neither her mother nor her husband could be located. Police announced this afternoon that, according to DNA evidence, the severed limbs found in garbage bags at Waterfront Park in October belonged to Maria Nagy’s mother. It’s now clear that the mother, whose name isn’t yet known, was killed about a month before her daughter. The rest of the mother’s body has not been found. Neighbors say the family was very reclusive, though they at times heard raised voices from inside the apartment. Police are stepping up their search for Peter Nagy, who is now a suspect in both deaths.”

* * * *

Dooley trotted along, breathing in the crisp air. A sudden thaw had opened the snowbound paths, and Boss had driven them both to the park for a vigorous walk through the woods and down past the shore. “We can’t let that experience spoil the best walking route in the city,” she said. “And it’ll be good to get outside for a real workout in the fresh air again, now that spring’s almost here.”

He could hear birds twittering in the trees, and could hear rivulets running under the snow still lying beneath the underbrush. He could tell that a jackrabbit had passed by sometime recently, but otherwise there were no small animals about yet.

Boss was close behind him and keeping pace. She was whistling. They left the woods and moved toward the rocky shore. Dooley was alert. He could sense that Boss was especially anxious about this part of the route, where they had found the plastic bags with the spoiled-meat smell.

As they neared the shore, Dooley noticed movement ahead—there was someone behind a tree, a short distance from the path.

At the same time, he smelled a distinctive odor: the scent of the man they had seen here before with the woman. With the odor came the man—darting out from behind the tree, moving quickly, running toward Boss. He held his arm high, with something long and sharp in his hand.

Though the man didn’t have that spoiled-meat smell on him today, the memory of the smell was suddenly sharp in Dooley’s mind. He didn’t hesitate. He leapt to intercept the man, clamping his teeth into the man’s upraised wrist. The man shrieked and hit at Dooley’s head with his other hand. Dooley’s momentum carried them both forward, onto the rocks. They both fell over, Dooley’s teeth in an iron grip around the man’s wrist.

Dooley heard footsteps on the rocks behind him. He felt something move past his ear and heard a heavy thump. Suddenly the man jerked and went limp.

Dooley’s teeth were still clamped to his wrist when the men with the uniforms came to talk to Boss and take the man’s body away.

* * * *

The man in the uniform sat on Boss’ sofa again. “He’s definitely Peter Nagy,” he said. “He may have followed you to the park, though it’s possible that he was there already, clambering around on the rocks. Who knows what significance that location had for him—it’s where he tried to hide his mother-in-law’s body. In any case, he must have recognized you. He probably thought you could identify him, and here was his chance. That’s a lethal knife he was carrying; you’re lucky your dog was so quick to react. And, to be frank, I’m not sorry the guy hit his head on a rock when he fell. His death was an accident, but sometimes I think there’s something called natural justice.”

Boss sipped her drink; ice clinked in the glass. “Well, it’s over now. I’m just glad Dooley was with me and was so alert.”

“Tell me: was he trained as a defense dog?”

“I’m not sure what training he’s had. My brother is in the Armed Forces and was stationed in Afghanistan. He found Dooley in a village that had been attacked by insurgents; Dooley seemed to have belonged to one of the people who had been killed. My brother took pity on him and brought him back to Canada, but he couldn’t keep a dog on the base, so he gave Dooley to me. And it’s worked out fine: he’s a wonderful dog.”

Boss leaned over and stroked Dooley’s fur. Dooley leaned his nose on his paws and closed his eyes.

This time he hadn’t failed his Boss.

THE END