Free A Fine Line by William G. Tapply Page A

an old sweatshirt and dropped it on the floor beside my bed. Henry sniffed it suspiciously, pushed it around until he got it the way he wanted it, then curled up on it, let out a long snuffling sigh, and went immediately to sleep.
    He’d had a hard day.
    The light on my answering machine was blinking. I hoped it was Ethan, telling me he was okay and wanted his dog back, or maybe one of his classmates telling me where I could find him.
    There had been three calls, all hangups. I hit star-69, which would give me the number of the last call.
    But the recorded voice informed me that I could not reach the number by that method. Whatever that meant.

E IGHT
    W hen I woke up the next morning, Henry was straddling me, licking my face. I rolled onto my belly and buried my face in my pillow. Henry poked at my head with his nose. When I told him to cut it out, he jumped off the bed, sat on the floor, and whined.
    I looked at my alarm clock. It was a little after five-thirty.
    I sat up on the edge of the bed and rubbed my face. “I can’t do this,” I told him.
    He went over to the door and poked it with his nose, then turned and whined at me.
    “Do they have litter boxes for dogs?” I asked him.
    He wagged his tail.
    So I pulled on my jeans and sneakers, got Henry on his leash, took the elevator down six floors, and we went to my neighborhood park, a lovely little strip of greenery—a sort of miniature Boston Common—along Commercial Street. There were paths and trees and gardens and bushes and benches. Kids sometimes rollerbladed there, but mostly itwas a place where folks from nearby business establishments ate lunch on a nice day and nearby residents went for an evening stroll. I unleashed Henry there and let him snuffle around and take care of business, while I sat on a bench and smoked a cigarette.
    Henry stayed close by, and when I spoke to him, he lifted his head and perked up his ears. “Don’t go away,” I told him, and he sort of nodded and resumed snuffling around.
    I’d been there a few minutes when a pretty college-aged blond woman approached me. A golden retriever was leading her around on a leash.
    “You should keep your dog leashed,” she told me.
    “Henry won’t go anywhere,” I said.
    “Well, he could get run over, you know.”
    “I told him not to do that.”
    She shrugged. “Anyhow, you’re supposed to take care of his poop.”
    “Take care of it?”
    “Clean it up, bring it home.”
    “Bring it home,” I said. “Then what?”
    She smiled. “I guess that’s up to you. Just so you don’t leave it here.”
    Her dog had eyes for a bed of irises, and she allowed herself to be hauled in that direction. She smiled at me over her shoulder, and I waved.
    This young woman seemed to have her hands full with that one golden. There were city people, I knew, who kept many dogs in their apartments. Some of them owned five or six dogs. They walked them several times a day, their whole gang of dogs on leashes. It was a big responsibility.
    I liked Henry. But I didn’t like the idea of scraping up hisleavings and carrying them home with me, and I profoundly disliked waking up at five-thirty in the morning.
    Mainly, I didn’t like responsibility.
    We walked to my office, I in my lawyer suit with my briefcase in one hand and Henry’s leash in the other, and Henry trotting along beside me.
    When we got there, he was exhausted. He curled up in the corner and went to sleep. I was pretty tired myself.
    In the middle of the morning, I called Detective Mendoza’s cell phone.
    “It’s Brady Coyne,” I said when she answered.
    “Mr. Coyne,” she said. “What’ve you got for me?”
    “Nothing. Unless I can talk you into a dog.”
    “No Ethan Duffy, huh?”
    “I was hoping you—”
    “You talked to the guy at the record store,” she said. “You talked to Ethan’s mother. You talked to the registrar at Emerson College. You’ve been busy.”
    “You’ve been keeping tabs on me.”
    “I’m a