Dog Missing

It was Friday, February 11, and Bill “The Hook” Lockwood was shivering on the worn couch at Cannon, Doctorow and Lockwood, P.I. after his somnambulism. His whisky bottle had been broken during the burglary yesterday, but it turned out that both Cannon and Doctorow had whisky bottles stashed away in their desk drawers, so Lockwood was grasping a well-fortified cup of coffee between his hands. Bessie Coleridge was already on her way to the office to continue the strange investigation, and the intrepid investigators were quite certain that the curious and irredeemable Madame Tekla would show up shortly. However, when there was a knock on the door it turned out to be a swarthy, tall and stocky police officer. Doctorow greeted the uniformed gentleman cautiously, but Frank Cannon leapt out of his chair and greeted the officer with a wide smile and a firm handshake.

“Rick Gallo! What the…what are you doing in Arkham?”

“We left The City, you know. It is not a good place to work as you grow older, and you know Corinne, my wife, her folks are from Kingsport, so we decided to move here two months ago, and the Arkham P.D. had an opening. I only realized that you were here the other evening when that other P.I., Moe Zuckermann, told me about your agency. Anyway, I thought I’d surprise you. Hey, I see that liquor bottle. Do I need to report this? Nah, just gimme a cup of joe.”

Rick Gallo

Cannon poured officer Gallo a steaming cup of coffee, and introduced him to Lockwood and Doctorow.

“Hey, Frank, you remember when you worked in the city?” Officer Gallo’s New York accent was way out of place in bucolic Arkham. “Youi used to work on some weird cases, right? Like the Doll man homicides? And Rex the Paper Cutter?” Cannon nodded quietly. There were still too many bad memories from New York.

“Yeah, so whaddaboudit?”

“I saw something really weird yesterday. Perhaps not by New York standards, but still...”

 “Ok?”

“I was out patrolling my beat by the Miskatonic river, by the Old Port, when I heard a really horrifying shriek somewhere by the Ecclestone pharmacy at around 8 p.m.” Gallo took a sip of his coffee. “It was a girl. I didn’t recognize her, but she might have been ten or twelve or so. Her winter coat was splashed with blood, and the was holding a leash. Her dog walk had ended really badly, since the head of a mutt was the only thing left on the leash. Below the neck there was just a mass of tendons, some spine, and torn dog meat. It also seems as if the torn parts were partially covered in some weird foam or ichor, orange to the color and emitting a fetid stench. But then, that might only have been the contents of the poor mutt’s digestive tract. Anyway, thoroughly disgusting.”

Some of the old warehouses by the Miskatonic River.

“I took the girl to the station, and it turned out that she was recognized by one of my colleagues as Annamaria Brady, who lives with her parents, John and Carrie, on 22 East Main Street, next to Christ Church. She had been out walking their Chocolate Lab Rover, when the dog started sniffing something. It apparently then became furious and tore the leash out of Annamaria’s hand. Annamaria ran after Rover, and she was relieved to see Rover peeking out from the corner of a building a few minutes later, but imagine her horror when she realized that the dog’s body had been torn away.”

Cannon, Doctorow, and Lockwood were listening intently. Lockwood had stopped shivering, but he was still all bundled up. “We had her parents pick her up, and they were terrified as well. Poor people! Now, Frank, have you heard of anything like this happening in Arkham or elsewhere, or will this be labelled a car accident?"

That is when Bessie Coleridge and Madame Tekla stepped in to the office.

Annamaria Brady