would fall asleep the moment he put his head on his pillow, but he did not. He
couldn’t stop thinking about Nora Devon. Her gray eyes flecked with green.
Glossy black hair. The graceful, slender line of her throat. The musical sound
of her laughter, the curve of her smile.
Einstein was lying on the floor in the pale-silver light that came through the
window and vaguely illuminated one small section of the dark room. But after
Travis tossed and turned for an hour, the dog finally joined him on the bed and
put his burly head and forepaws on Travis’s chest.
“She’s so sweet, Einstein. One of the gentlest, sweetest people I’ve ever
known.”
The dog was silent.
“And she’s very bright. She’s got a sharp mind, sharper than she realizes. She
sees things I don’t see. She has a way of describing things that make them fresh
and new. The whole world seems fresh and new when I see it with her.”
Though still and quiet, Einstein had not fallen asleep. He was very attentive.
“When I think about all that vitality, intelligence, and love of life being
suppressed for thirty years, I want to cry. Thirty years in that old dark house.
Jesus. And when I think of how she endured those years without letting it make
her bitter, I want to hug her and tell her what an incredible woman she is, what
a strong and courageous and incredible woman.”
Einstein was silent, unmoving.
A vivid memory flashed back to Travis: the clean shampoo smell of Nora’s hair
when he had leaned close to her in front of a gallery window in Solvang. He
breathed deep and could actually smell it again, and the scent accelerated his
heartbeat.
“Damn,” he said. “I’ve only known her a few days, but damn if I don’t think I’m
falling in love.”
Einstein lifted his head and woofed once, as if to say it was about time that
Travis realized what was happening, and as if to say that he had brought them
together and was pleased to take credit for their future happiness, and as if to
say that it was all part of some grand design and that Travis was to stop
fretting about it and just go with the flow.
For another hour, Travis talked about Nora, about the way she looked and moved,
about the melodic quality of her soft voice, about her unique perspective on
life and her way of thinking, and Einstein listened with the attentiveness and
genuine interest that was the mark of a true, concerned friend. It was an
exhilarating hour. Travis had never thought he would love anyone again. Not
anyone, not at all, and certainly not this intensely. Less than a week ago, his
abiding loneliness had seemed unconquerable.
Later, thoroughly exhausted both physically and emotionally, Travis slept.
Later still, in the hollow heart of night, he came half awake and was dimly
aware that Einstein was at the window. The retriever’s forepaws were on the
windowsill, his snout against the glass. He was staring out at the darkness,
alert.
Travis sensed that the dog was troubled.
But in his dream, he had been holding Nora’s hand under a harvest moon, and he
did not want to come fully awake for fear he would not be able to regain that
pleasant fantasy.
7
On Monday morning, May 24, Lemuel Johnson and Cliff Soames were at the small
zoo—mostly a petting zoo for children—in sprawling Irvine Park, on the eastern
edge of Orange County. The sky was cloudless, the sun bright and hot. The
immense oaks did not stir a leaf in the motionless air, but birds swooped from
branch to branch, peeping and trilling.
Twelve animals were dead. They lay in bloody heaps.
During the night, someone or something had climbed the fences into the pens and
had slaughtered three young goats, a white-tailed deer and her recently born
fawn, two peacocks, a lop-eared rabbit, a ewe and two lambs.
A pony was dead, though it had not been savaged. Apparently, it had died of
fright while throwing itself repeatedly against the fence in an attempt to
escape whatever had attacked the other animals. It lay on its side, neck twisted