Free The Deepest Water by Kate Wilhelm Page B

chemicals and fertilizer. After an inane discussion of the new crops, the weather, a new irrigation system, there had been nothing for anyone to say. The farm was several miles from the nearest town, nearly that far from the nearest neighbor. Driving away after their short visit Brice had said bitterly, “See why I had to leave? If I never come back here it’ll be time enough.” The dogs had barked as they left the property; all the way to the county road, the dogs had kept barking.
    Lieutenant Caldwell cleared his throat, a gentle nudge that a question was still in the air. Abby said, “I doubt they’d let him through without barking a lot.”
    “How about Willa Ashford?”
    He had been leading back to her all along, she realized. Wearily she said, “Ask her. I don’t know.”
    By the time they reached Eugene and he pulled into the parking lot of a motel on Franklin Boulevard, she had a pounding headache. “Home,” he said. “You can take over the driving now. I appreciate the time you’ve given us today, how hard it must have been for you. Thanks. I’ll be in touch.”
    They both got out and she walked around the van to get behind the wheel. “Goodnight, Mrs. Connors,” he said, then strode away.
    She drove home.
    Coop always maintained that dogs, at least the dogs he trained, understood a limited number of words, and the first thing to do with one of them was to lead it around the property and say repeatedly, “Home.”
    “Then it will know where it can go and can’t,” he had said.
    When Jud got Spook from Coop Halburtson, she had been a puppy, not quite eight weeks old, still a ball of gray fluff; Abby had carried her as Jud rowed across the finger.
    “Have you named her yet?”
    He said no. “How about Dust Ball?”
    “Oh, Dad!” She studied the little dog. “She looks like Casper. You know, the Friendly Ghost?”
    “Thank God, Casper isn’t a girl’s name,” he said. “I can’t see myself living with a dog named Casper.”
    “Casperella?” They both laughed. She considered Ghost, but shook her head. You didn’t really want to walk around calling ghosts. If not simultaneously, then no more than a half beat apart, they both said, “Spook.” And Spook she was. Later Jud had reported wryly that Coop was putting both him and Spook through some schooling.
    After they both graduated, when Coop said it was time, Abby had trailed along with Jud when he led Spook around the cabin and the surrounding area that was her territory, and as far as Abby knew, Spook never had strayed off the property, nor had she allowed any stranger to enter it without a challenge.
    Now Abby proceeded to introduce Spook to another new home. She snapped on the leash and led the dog around the back yard, all along a high fence, past the attached garage to the front yard, around the house, and back inside through the rear patio door. Although the yard was small and well-lighted, it was a slow process; Spook had to squat again and again, marking her territory, and she had to smell just about everything. “Home,” Abby said over and over. Spook wagged her tail in apparent understanding.
    Inside the house Abby took her through each room. She would repeat the whole process the next day, just to be sure, she thought then, in the kitchen making a pot of coffee. It was after six, but Brice had said he would work late all this week, catch-up time. She took two aspirin tablets and sat down to wait for the coffee to drip. Spook lay at her feet; her ears twitched now and then as she registered unfamiliar noises—a car on the street, a neighbor’s door closing, something Abby couldn’t even hear. That was how Spook had been at the cabin; she knew whenever a boat was in the finger, and she never let out a sound unless and until it landed at Jud’s property.
    “If only you could talk,” Abby murmured. “If only you could.” She was trying to construct a scene that had her father up in the aerie, and Spook anywhere except near