Two Road Dogs

On The Road With My Dog

Tango and I are having quite a day. The morning started with coffee by the wall, and we each gave Eve a sloppy kiss before she went to work. My boy hung with me at the range. I practiced ducks, switching hands, and getting well-aimed shots off in twos. Shooting when moving and at various yardages is essential. It's the little things that can keep you alive. When I dropped two Afghani terrorists in my house, my practice paid off. If they weren't dead, I would have been. It's simple.

I am rolling up the highway again, and we are listening to the great Johnny Rivers belt out his greatest hits. Tango loves Johnny, and so do I, but Eve is kind of tired of hearing me and Johnny sing "Doot Doo Doo Wah Shoobie Doobie" when the Poor Side Of Town comes on. Me? I could put it on an endless loop and listen all day.  

When I think of tape loops and mix tapes, I think of a case I fell into last year, but that's for another day. That case was too dark for a bright day like today.

Sophie's father, Gerry Tanner, turned out to be the good guy she knew he was. I'm glad I investigated. She will return to college after delaying her first semester for apparent reasons. Her plans include selling her house and figuring out where to live when she graduates college. It will be dorm life, books, finals, beer, and boys for a few years.  She and Ron Striers' daughter Meghan want to find waitressing gigs on Martha's Vineyard for the summer, and it sounds like a good plan. Teammates forever.

Tango and I will walk in the northern New Hampshire woods today. We are searching for woodpeckers, turkeys, and what I think are advanced Chinese spy cameras. Eve and I did not have enough room in our packs after we left the compound double time with scads of bills in significant denominations.

I hope the cameras are still in place. Based on my description, my drinking buddy Ben Mason is itching to dissect one of them.

As we get closer to the area off the highway where the compound is, the first thing I notice is hundreds of newly erected no-trespassing signs. These are not the signs you buy at the big box hardware store. These signs are made of metal and are staked menacingly. "This is a U.S. Government Facility, blah blah blah.

This "Hunting Lodge," as it was portrayed in the press, now has serious access control on site.

I calculated the fine for trespassing against what Eve and I found here, and it didn't take a brain like Einstein's to know I could afford to be yelled at and fined.

I parked the truck in the tractor store lot, and Tango and I crossed the barbed wire in search of The Pileated Woodpecker.

Med Flight To Boston

If Natalie Leuze ever thought about her lucky number, if it's not three, it should be now. They estimate she died three times on her med flight to Boston. And perhaps once in the parking lot of the Breakfast Bee. 

Someone coming out of The Bee heard Natalie's screams and saw her slumped as a car drove away. She called 911 immediately, and the local first responders did an excellent job giving skimpy first aid to a serious problem.  When someone told them who the bloodied unconscious woman was, they went into "We better not screw this up mode." First Responders forced everyone to get their cars out of the parking lot so a chopper could land.

The helicopter arrived from a Portland hospital, and a correct decision was made to get Natalie to Boston, where they had world-class trauma units where little things like stabbings and shootings non-plussed the medical professionals. 

The Paramedics started doing what they could to stabilize Natalie and provide the telemetric data to the trauma unit, which was waiting. 

Natalie died, revived, and died again within the first ten minutes in the air. 

The Paramedics had their hands complete with one of the most memorable days of their lives.

In the future, T.V. shows and a movie about Natalie's Bad Day will be made, and the roles of these two crash scene pros will lead to one Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and two Emmy awards for the man and woman who played them on the screen. 

As they rolled Natalie through the glass doors of the E.R., she died on the stretcher again. Natalie took a little longer to revive this time, but as she says, "I saw the light, and I didn't walk toward it. I decided it was not my time yet. I still had too much to accomplish, so I walked away from the light."

Reporters and T.V. trucks arrived outside the E.R. as the medical trauma team descended on Natalie from every helpful angle. The crews in the T.V. trucks started raising and aiming their dishes as the word got out that Natalie Leuze, the beloved star of the television comedy Stanley's Girls, was dead. She was only 40.

Los Angeles, California - The Office Of David Maldive

David was stunned as the conflicting reports of his ex-wife started interrupting all the judges and game shows. He picked the most reliable station that had a live feed from Boston, where the reports kept vacillating between Natalie being dead and then alive. At this point, whether she was dead or alive, David was pretty sure America would start thinking he was behind this.

The reporters and T.V. trucks were on the cement plaza outside David's office. David did not want to face them, had nothing to say, and did not do this. 

If he had to take a polygraph test, the needle would go north like an Elon Musk moonshot when he is asked, 

"Did you ever think about killing your ex-wife?" 

David thought about killing her every day while sitting at his desk eating lunch. 

One of his favorite fantasies involved cutting the brake lines on her Jeep and having Natalie and her Chihuahua Rickie Ricardo drive off a cliff in Maine.

Nobody could accuse David of being a dummy. He picked up the phone and dialed his lawyer.