Read Online The Dog Who Knew Too Much by Spencer Quinn - Free Book Online

chance.”
    Turk glanced at the sun. Hey! It had sunk pretty low in the sky when I hadn’t been watching. “This ain’t fast,” he said. “What’s your question?”
    “Devin must have had a pack,” Bernie said.
    “Sure,” said Turk.
    “Where is it?”
    “I left it at the campsite in case he came back.” Turk rose. “With food and water inside, plus a note telling him to stay put.”
    “That was smart,” Bernie said.
    “I know my job,” Turk said. He gave Bernie one of those down-the-nose looks. “Had enough rest?”
    Bernie pushed himself away from the tree. We moved on.
    The smell of water got stronger and stronger and then the sight itself came into view, a lovely smooth sheet of blue, darker than the sky.
    “Whiskey Lake,” said Turk.
    Wasn’t whiskey a kind of bourbon, or bourbon a kind of whiskey? I tried to remember the details of a discussion—if that’s what it was, with all the yelling and shouting and broken glass—about this very subject at the last Police Athletic League social. But the point: whiskey was a kind of golden brown, not dark blue. So was this lake full of whiskey or not? I sniffed the air for whiskey, detected none.
    Bernie has some beliefs. One is you don’t bring a spoon to a knife fight. Another is don’t overthink. We’re on the same page about that one, me and Bernie. The next thing I knew I was swimming in Whiskey Lake. Not whiskey at all, but cool, delicious water. Turk and Bernie followed the path around it, appearing and disappearing through a screen of tall cattails. I’d seen cattails once before on a riverbank down on the border. The name botheredme, but I tried and succeeded in not thinking about it as I swam straight across the lake. Love swimming—it’s just like trotting, only in the water—which I don’t get to do nearly enough in the Valley, where we have aquifer problems, a bit of a mystery but one of Bernie’s biggest worries.
    The far shore was steep and rocky. I scrambled out, ran onto the trail just ahead of Turk and Bernie, and gave myself a good shake, the kind that starts at my head, ripples down to my tail and all the way back again—can’t tell you how good that feels—maybe spraying them just the slightest bit. Bernie laughed. Turk raised his hands to block the tiny water drops and said, “Christ almighty.”
    Bernie stopped laughing.
    We climbed a steep ridge, saw rocky mountaintops streaked with white in the distance. The sun sank behind those peaks and the sky turned purple. I’d never smelled air like this, so fresh and pure. A funny kind of air: I wasn’t panting or anything—how could hiking with a couple of humans bring on panting?—but I seemed to need more of it. Bernie was huffing and puffing again, but now he didn’t fall behind, even seemed about to go into the lead once or twice. That was Bernie: there’s something inside him.
    Time passed. We were in the trees again, not those white-bark trees: these looked more like Christmas trees. The going got rougher, the trail almost disappearing as we worked our way along a narrow crest. I was in the lead now, and starting to pick up human scents, faint but there: by a tall spiny bush, I found Preston’s smell, for sure. Not long after that, I glanced back. Hey! Bernie and Turk had put on headlamps. I checked the sky: dark, with twinkling stars. No headlamp for me: night or day doesn’t make much difference. I turned and trotted on, not my fast trot, but the go-to trot, as Bernie calls it, the trot I can keep up as long as I haveto. More scents now: Preston’s again, Tommy’s, and Turk’s. Plus just a trace of that strange locker-room-laundry-hamper scent I’d first picked up at the trailhead. Locker room laundry hamper, yes; human, no.
    Kind of puzzling, but then I caught sight of the white streaks on the mountaintop. I couldn’t see the mountain, just the white streaks, a new and beautiful sight, and I forgot all about whatever had been puzzling me. Other questions