The Analyst

Lifting his eyes to the sky, he saw that the day’s last light had finally slid away, and darkness was only moments from descending. It is the most unsettled time of day, he thought, and perfect for what he was about to deliver.

With that in mind, Ricky removed the small crowbar and the bicycle lock, and placed them in his right hand, gripping them tightly. Then he returned the backpack to his back, took a deep breath, and burst from the bushes, sprinting hard for the front of the building.

A bedlam of aroused dogs instantly creased the growing shadows. Yelps, howls, barks, and growls of all sorts and sizes pierced the air, obscuring the scrabbling sound his ru

Within a few seconds, he’d reached the front of Brutus’s ke

Ricky moved quickly, rapidly threading the bicycle lock around the twin posts of the ke

He thrust the crowbar into the doorjamb and snapped out the lock with a creaking, splintering noise as the wood broke. It was old, and showed some warping with age and broke easily. Ricky guessed that the ke

Inside was an opera of dog anxiety. The racket filled the air, making it hard to think, but giving Ricky an idea. Clicking on his flashlight, he raced down the musty, foul-smelling corridor where all the dogs were pe

Within seconds, Ricky was surrounded by a leaping, barking tangle of breeds. Some were terrified, some were overjoyed. Smelling, yelping, confused but all aware they were free. Some three dozen dogs, of all different shapes and sizes, unsure what was happening, but more or less determined to be a part of it nonetheless. Ricky was counting on that basic dog-think that doesn’t really understand all that much, but wants to be included in whatever is happening nevertheless. The sniffing and snuffling that flowed around and between his legs made him smile right through the nervousness of what he was doing. Surrounded by the pack of leaping, bouncing animals, Ricky returned to the ke

He saw the floodlight click on outdoors and heard a door slamming.

The ke

It was at that moment that Ricky threw open the front door to the ke

“Okay, guys, you’re free,” he said, waving his arms. Nearly three dozen dogs bolted through the door, heading toward the warm New Jersey night, their voices raised in a confused song of joyous freedom.

He heard the ke

The man had been bowled over by the rush of animals, knocked back and down to one knee by the wave of dogs. He scrambled up, partially regaining his feet, searching for his balance. He was trying to catch them at the same time that they were jumping all over him, knocking him about. A welter of mixed beastly emotions-some dogs afraid, some joyous, some confused, all uncertain what was going on, knowing only that it was far out of the ordinary routine of ke

When the ke

“Are you alone?” Ricky asked just loud enough to reach past the dogs’ barking.

“Huh?”

“Are you alone? Is there anyone else in the house?”

The man caught on. He shook his head.

“Is Brutus’s buddy in the house? His brother or mother or father?”

“No. Just me.”

Ricky thrust the pistol closer to the man, close enough so that the pungent odor of steel and oil and maybe death could fill his nostrils, without needing to own a dog’s sensitive nose to understand what the potential was. “Persuading me that you’re telling the truth is important to staying alive,” Ricky said. He was a little surprised at how easy it was to threaten someone, but he had no illusion that he would be able to call his own bluff.

Behind the steel fencing, Brutus was in a paroxysm of fury. He continued to thrust himself at the metal, his teeth pressed up against the barrier. Foam streaked his jowls and his growl singed the air. Ricky eyed the dog warily. A hard thing, he thought, to be bred and raised for one single purpose, and then, when that moment came where all that training was supposed to coalesce, to be restrained by the frustration of a gate locked by a child’s bicycle chain. The dog seemed to be almost overwhelmed by impotence, and Ricky thought that it was a little bit of a microcosm for the lives of some of his ex-patients.

“It’s just me. Nobody else.”

“Good. Now we can have a conversation.”

“Who are you?” the man asked. It took a second for Ricky to remember that he’d been wearing a disguise on his first visit to the ke

I’m someone you’re going to wish you’d been more pleasant to on our first meeting, Ricky thought, but what he said was: “I’m someone you would probably rather not know,” simultaneously gesturing at the man’s face with his weapon.

It took a few seconds for Ricky to get the ke