Rachel Alexander 05 - The Wrong Dog

point. The point is that I need you to find the people at Side by Side for me, Rachel, this Loma West person and whoever she works for. They’re spending God knows how much money on this project and the seizure-alert ability doesn’t come through. They ought to be told that, that it’s probably not an inheritable ability. They’re going to break the hearts of whoever they gave those other puppies to. And their own as well. I have to find them and tell them. You will help me, won’t you?”
    I sat there for a while, saying nothing. Then I turned and looked at Bianca, asleep behind the bench, so hidden in shadow that she looked like a gray dog, not a white one. Or was that just dirt?
    Sure, scientists had cloned a sheep, some mice, and some cows. And the South Koreans claimed to have produced the first stages of a human embryo, then they’d halted the experiment for ethical reasons. Still, this was all too fantastic to believe, that someone would be willing to spend millions to clone dogs for other people, out of the goodness of his heart.
    Or did he think that once he’d accomplished this, cloning dogs with special abilities would be worth money? Was he planning on, let’s say, cloning Morris the cat, Lassie, Benji? A triple-crown-winning racehorse? Was that it? Was it about money after all?
    “Can I think this over?” I asked, the only sensible idea I’d had all day.
    “Well, sure.” She stood and picked up Bianca’s leash from where it lay next to her on the bench. “If you feel you have to.”
    When she turned to look at me, I saw there were tears in her eyes.
    “Sophie, I...”
    “No, I understand. That vet didn’t believe the story either. He had a good laugh at my expense. When he pulled himself together, he told me cloning dogs was not commercially viable. You lose a lot of embryos, he said, and it’s very expensive. He said that either the dogs were from totally inbred strains or there was a mix-up at the lab.”
    She gently unwrapped Blanche, who I could now see was wearing the red service-dog vest. She was stiff when she stood, but her tail began to wag as soon as she was up. She was a fantastic-looking dog, that great egg head with a flush of pink along the slope of her nose where the fur was nearly negligible. The only other color, aside from the black of her nose, the dark area right under it, and her small, deepset, dark eyes, was a single black spot at the lower-outside corner of her right eye, like a smudge of mascara.
    “I’ll call you tomorrow with an answer,” I said. “I promise.”
    Sophie blinked. One tear fell.
    She called to Bianca, and when the pup lifted her head, I got to see her up close for the first time, the wondrous stand-up ears, the great, broad Roman nose, the no-frills dark eyes, and the big goofy mouth, open in a smile. And the single black spot, like an ink blot, at the lower-outside corner of her right eye. The spot was pinched in near the eye and rounded at the bottom, exactly like the one under Blanche’s right eye. They both had smudges of black under their noses, too, square mustaches that made them seem even more comical than they already did, looking at me with their small, pig eyes, both their heads cocked toward their left. Except for girth, which reflected their age difference, they surely seemed to be identical.
    Not knowing what to think, I glanced over at Dashiell, who was grinning, as if he knew a secret. Then I looked back at the two bullies, sitting hip to hip, waiting for Sophie to get her coat on.
    Well, isn’t that what took the seven and a half months, I thought, finding a puppy with just the perfect markings?
    I looked at Blanche, then at Bianca. Then back and forth again.
    “Let’s go get some food,” I said. “I’m starving.”
    Sophie just stared at me, puzzled.
    “I get five hundred and fifty a day plus expenses, with a week’s fee in advance,” I told her. “I know it’s steep, but I’m worth it. Besides, it includes Dashiell’s services.”
    I bent down to pet the dogs and take a closer look while
    she thought it over.
    She said, “That’s okay. I figured it would be around
    that. I’ve been saving up.”
    For the first time, there were no questions about Dash’s
    fee. If anyone knew how valuable a partner a dog could be, it was Sophie Gordon, my new client.

Chapter 3
    Would You Do It? Chip Asked

    I didn’t get home from dinner with Sophie until eight-thirty and Chip was due back from teaching at the New York