“Aw, look, I wouldn’t spend the money finding out, you know what I mean?” He gestured to the dog. “When we got her, the RSPCA said she had recently recovered from a break. Needed rehab. Told us how, and all. I tried to tell her, Renni, my girlfriend at the time. Tried to talk her out of it. A rescue dog with a medical problem? You fuckin’ serious? But no, no, no. She wanted her own dog. Had to be a tragedy, something she could feel good about.”

“Right,” I said. I smoothed the white dog’s cheek and neck. She wagged her tail.

“I breed the collies, you see,” Al continued. “Those beautiful, intelligent things you saw back there at the car. The pups are two K each. When I was with Renni, we had seven bitches and seven sires and we were two weeks off having a new litter of six or more. Nope, wasn’t enough for her! Can you believe it?”

I didn’t answer. Didn’t need to.

“She wanted something special. Heaven help me. She goes and brings back this bag of problems.” Al gestured to the dog. “Jay-sus. Honestly. Women.”

“Yup.”

“So anyway, tell us more about the crime, mate.” Al slapped my chest. “You said on the phone it was an abduction? Down in Sydney, was it?”

“Look, it’s not something I can really go that deep into.”

“Right.”

“It’s a complex investigation.”

“Uh-huh.” Al nodded vigorously, looked back at the animal at our feet. She was sitting looking up at me, the cupped ears swiveling, listening, failing to understand. “Nah, I get it. I get it, mate. Look, I’m happy to help. Anything you want to know about her, I’ll tell you. There’s not much to say, really. She’s a piece of shit mongrel with a gimpy leg. When my girlfriend left, she didn’t even take it with her. Thing doesn’t even catch a ball. Were you gonna take pictures of her, or…? You never really said on the phone what you wanted.”

I hadn’t known exactly what I wanted when I’d called a day earlier from my hotel room in Sydney. It had been a struggle to get the information out of the RSPCA, without police credentials, on exactly where the dog had gone after she was dumped at the gates by Kevin on that day. I’d held the receiver, winced at the silence on the other end of the line, wondering if the administrator was about to tell me the dog had been humanely euthanized.

The white dog had been on my mind for a while. In the week since it had all come to an end, as I sat alone in my room drinking Wild Turkey and watching the traffic on the street below, she had returned again and again to my mind. I’d been almost too afraid to make the call.

Leaving Sydney, driving northwest along the inland highway, I still hadn’t known what I wanted. But now I knew. Standing with Al the border collie breeder on his battered, sun-dried porch, looking down at the white dog, I knew.