"For what it's worth," he said quietly, "I walk that path every day. I have never once seen your dog off the leash except for that deer." He bent down, slowly, and held his hand out, and Rook touched his nose to it. "I see a lot of things at five in the morning. People think nobody is looking."
"Did you see someone in a long rain jacket, Mr. Huynh?"
He straightened up and looked across the room at the head table, where Candace was laughing at something Vince Ostrander had said and putting her laptop in a monogrammed tote.
"I am thinking about it," he said. "At my age I want to be very sure before I say something about somebody. You understand."
"I understand."
"Good." He patted Rook's head once. "I will keep thinking."
V.
Officer Lourdes Ybarra of Tamsen County Animal Services came to my house six days later, on a Wednesday afternoon, in a white county pickup with a dog box in the bed and a dent in the tailgate shaped like somebody's bumper.
She was somewhere in her forties, compact, with black hair scraped back into a low bun and a tan uniform shirt with the sleeves rolled exactly twice. She had a clipboard and a body camera and a pair of reading glasses hanging from the placket of her shirt, and she stood on my porch and looked at Rook through the storm door for a long, quiet moment before she looked at me.
"Mrs. Kowal," she said. "I'm here about a complaint filed by the Heron Bend Homeowners Association. Can I come in, or would you rather talk out here?"