“Any tracks over your way?” she asked.
“Plenty of man tracks and a bunch of an animal of some sort,” he replied. “We need to call this into the Allegheny County Sheriff.”
She nodded, pulled out her cell. “No service.”
Sampson looked at his, said, “So much for ‘Can you hear me now?’”
Aaliyah backed away from the smoking debris and moved toward the pickup truck. The Chevy was parked under a tin-roofed shed that hung off the side of the cockeyed barn. There were landscaping tools in its bed, and shovels, pickaxes, ropes, and the like. Holstering her gun, she squatted to peer under the carriage at the tires.
Sampson joined her, said, “They seem bald to me.”
The tires would have to be examined by an expert to say for sure, but they looked the part. What did that mean? If these tires and the tracks in Cross’s alley matched, was Thierry Mulch also Claude Harrow, and vice versa? Was that the madman over there, burned to a crisp?
Or was it someone entirely different?
Aaliyah prayed that the potential evidence had not all gone up in fire and ash, and then she stood and walked to the doors of the barn. There was a steel bar and a padlock on them. The wind shifted and she could have sworn she smelled stale urine again, and then something new, another odor she recognized all too well.
Sampson stepped up beside her, and she pointed to her nose and sniffed. The big detective took a deep breath. His expression hardened, and he said, “That’s blood rotting.”
“I’m going in there,” she said.
“Absolutely,” Sampson said.
He went to Harrow’s pickup truck, put on a pair of work gloves, and got the pickax. The blade hit the wood and chopped the hasp holding the lock with one blow.
Sampson dropped the tool, slid back the steel bar, and tugged open the doors. Pistol out again, Aaliyah stepped up, seeing in the gloom what looked like a horse barn that had been turned into a woodworking shop.
There were several stalls on the right wall filled with stacked lumber. In the center of the space stood band and table saws, an old lathe, and several other woodworking machines she couldn’t name. There was a long wooden bench at the back of the barn, and hand tools hung on the wall above it. Flipping on the small Maglite she always carried, Aaliyah took another step, trying to get a better angle on all of it.
The dog exploded from the shadows without warning, a huge leaping Rottweiler.
CHAPTER
40
AALIYAH TRIED TO GET the gun around but instead felt crushing pain bolt through her right forearm as she was knocked off her feet by something with the force of a tackling linebacker.
She hit the wet ground hard. The wind was slammed out of her lungs, and her pistol and flashlight fell from her hands.
The dog instantly released his hold on her arm. His toenails ripped into her shins and thighs as his powerful legs scrambled for purchase. The Rottweiler lunged up her body, snapped at her face and neck with his bloody mouth.
Aaliyah tucked her chin down, trying to protect her throat.
The dog clamped down on her cheek and forehead and began to shake her. She screamed at the white-hot pain of the bite. That seemed only to inflame the dog to further violence.
As the detective felt her skin starting to tear, the attack dog suddenly hunched up stiff, from nose to tail, opened his muzzle, and released her head. Then he let out a mournful, bug-eyed howl, rolled off her, and howled again, over and over.
For a second, the detective remained dazed by the sudden ferocity of the attack, and then she realized blood was trickling down her cheeks and dripping from her forehead into her left eye. Her right forearm was throbbing and she thought she was going to be sick.
“Sampson?” she gasped.
He grunted. “Gimme a second and don’t move.”
She turned her head and saw him dragging the dog by a rope he must have gotten from the truck bed and looped around the animal’s neck. The Rottweiler’s head was down, no fight in him at all. When Sampson tied the rope tight to one of the shed’s support posts, the beast immediately lay down, groaning and panting.
Aaliyah was sitting up by the time Sampson got back to her. He’d already taken off his jacket and shirt and was tearing strips off the latter.
“Stay put,” he said. “He bit you something good.”