Free Bloodlines by Susan Conant Page B

only thing,” he wasn’t talking about football. He meant dog shows. Anyway, Faith Barlow’s eagerness to beat Lois Metzler extended beyond the conformation ring. Lois was unobservant? Well, Faith wasn’t.
    “She’s about twenty, give or take a year,” Faith said definitively. “Long dark hair plastered with some kind of gel. She had on a long skirt, kind of a dark paisley pattern, and a navy pea jacket, sort of a throw-back-to-the-sixties look. Bad skin. No makeup. And she’s short, maybe five one or two. Oh, and she was wearing a, uh, backpack—what do you call it?—like a little backpack. Rucksack. It was green, sort of loden. Dark green. Didn’t Lois...?”
    I gave a sigh of exasperation. “Lois didn’t tell me any of that, and she didn’t tell the officials, either. Or she won’t. They’re probably still talking to her. Could you?”
    “I have to go back anyway.” Faith waved toward the trade center. “I’m just getting something. I’ll tell them. But probably it’s too late. If she has any sense, she’s long gone.”
    “But it’s not too late for next time. There’ll be other shows. People like that—”
    Faith slammed the van door shut. Then she finished my sentence, but not quite as I’d intended. “People like that ought to be shot,” she said. “They ought to be shot on sight.”
     

9
     

     
    In the foggy early darkness of that Sunday afternoon, Route 128 glowed red with the brake lights of the backed-up cars and trucks headed toward Boston. Instead of swinging onto the highway to await the inevitable multivehicle collision, I decided to take the back way, Route 38, all the way to Medford, where I could pick up Route 16 to Cambridge. I followed 38 over 128 and into the center of Woburn.
    Woburn. You ever hear of a parts match? It’s a conformation fun match with categories for best head, ears, tail, that kind of thing. The point of a parts match is that every dog has at least one good feature. Cow-hocked or not, he has a great muzzle. Roach-backed? Sure, but with a spectacular coat. As I pulled to a stop at a red light in the center of Woburn, I was wondering what category you’d need to create in a parts match for small cities that would let Woburn win best anything or, for that matter, worst anything. I’d just awarded Woburn first place in the Most Ordinary competition when my peripheral vision registered something moving to the right of the Bronco. The object in motion turned out to be a gloved thumb. Attached to it was a small, drenched person stationed on a traffic island near the stoplight.
    My only excuse is that my perception must’ve been slowed and distorted by the residual images of a parts match. Best size in a toy breed? Very short. Itchiest headgear? She wore one of those pointy-topped Peruvian hats with rows of cream white stick figures knitted into the brown wool. The ear flaps were knotted under her chin. Long, dark, sopping hair dripped onto her forehead and streamed over the shoulders of her navy pea jacket. In the dusk, the day pack was a dark lump. I wondered whether it had been safe for women to hitch rides in the sixties and how someone could imagine that it was still safe for anyone, male or female.
    The light changed to green, and my mental processes finally shifted into first. Green. Sixties. Pea jacket.; Very short.
    I leaned over, unlocked the passenger door, opened it, and yelled, “Get in!”
    She did. I wondered why. Rowdy, safe in a Vari-Kennel behind the wagon barrier, wasn’t visible, but the crate and barrier certainly were. Also, despite my persistent and repeated application of every commercial deodorizing product marketed to dog owners, as well as a few dozen folk remedies, the predominant odor in the Bronco wasn’t Outright or cider vinegar but distilled essence of dog. Especially on that cold, wet day when the windows were closed and the heater was blasting, she must’ve smelled it the second she approached the open door. Yet she got