The Triggerman Dance

She takes up her gun again and starts the search with a wave of her arm. She walks into the meadow, dogs ahead of her. She sends them left with two short blasts of her whistle, then right with one. Left again, right again. John is aware of them, but all he can focus on is Valerie as she traverses the green meadow grass. On their first pass by the razor grass, neither dog picks up the scent. But on the second, both get it at once and their bodies snap back toward the clump in unison and their tails blur. Even from so far away, John can see the change in musculature the bird dogs undergo when they're on game—the dogs seem to condense in size and their movements are reduced to pure efficiency. Then the pigeon flutters into the air, unsteady at first, but still rising and gaining speed. It lifts off over the meadow. It is in perfect shotgun range. But Valerie never lifts her gun, she just lets the bird fly, then issues one long loud blast from her whistle. The toughest thing for a young dog to do, thinks John: come back when they've just put up a bird. Neither Lewis nor Clark seem to hear. They bound across the meadow after the diminishing pigeon, yapping skyward, utterly fried with frustration. They disappear into the hillside scrub, still ignoring Valerie's third and most adamant whistle command. The bird is just a fleck in the blue now, bearing south.

A few moments later, Valerie returns with two penitent springers. She has slapped them smartly, then marched them back. John sees no anger in her, no impatience—just a clear and guiding discipline.

"Mission was a failure," she says. "Back to the lead lines."

"Good call. That's always the toughest thing for my dogs. Youth and all that. Pure energy."

She nods and wipes her forehead, tilting back the cap. John notes, furtively, the darkened plaid of her shirt beneath her armpit where the sweat has soaked in.

For the next hour, both springers come on command, encouraged by long lead lines that John pulls in when the whistle blows. At first the dogs tumble ass-over-teakettle when the lines are drawn, then they get the idea. By the end of the session they're coming back without John's help.

"End of class," Valerie says. "They're tired and I'm hot. How about a jump in the lake?"

"Perfect."

The afternoon continues with the easy, weightless atmosphere of a dream.

They swim in the lake, then sun themselves dry on the

wooden dock. The dogs—John's three plus Lewis and Clark— splash in and out of the water like kids on a hot beach.

They walk the groves in the first cool of the evening, an evening drenched in the smell of oranges.

They leave each other to shower and primp. Valerie says she can meet him on the dock in one hour. She wants to take a boat over to Liberty Island to have a picnic dinner she made up earlier in the day.

John walks to his cabin and tries to put a clamp on the giddy beating of his heart.

CHAPTER 23

He stands inside his cabin and looks out the window to the lake. The dogs on the deck stare through the window back at him.

His body starts to buzz inside, a delayed reaction to his first covert mission into Holt's office. He sees the "view messages" light on the computer blinking, and presses command F2, which, as Valerie has told him, will show him what's in his basket. He is confident there is a little note from her.

Two messages appear on the monitor

: STOCKED FRIG WHILE YOU WERE OUT. EAT A CARROT. HOW' S LIFE ON THE RIDGE? JUST KEEPING IN TOUCH-

A. SEX

John smiles. His nerves are still brittle but he smiles anyway. He wonders if this is some kind of game, so he goes to the frig— freshly stocked, all right—and pulls out the vegetable drawer. He and Rebecca used to play little games on the Journal e-mail system, and he has the same anticipatory jitters he had back then, that lifetime ago, reading her innocent messages on the screen at his work station.

Enjoyed flyfishing piece. Never had a barbecued trout. . . . The secret's not to overcook them.

The carrots are in the crisper. But he can see that just beside them is something not vegetable at all.

He looks at it for a long beat, then reaches down, slides away the carrots and lifts up a freezer bag. Through the clear plastic he can see paper, bent over but not firmly folded.

He pulls it open and shakes the papers onto the tile. The pages land face-up, curving slightly from the chilled confinement of the bag. There are two.