The sound of the cash register from Episode Five was still ringing in Maya’s ears as she turned the Volvo onto Bittersweet Court.
“The Ledger,” the narrator had said. “You can’t delete a transaction.”
But the episode didn’t start with bank accounts. It started with a bark.
Maya kept the volume low as she parked in her driveway. Sarah sat in the passenger seat, her face pressed against the cool glass, looking like she might be sick.
“Juniper wasn’t alone in that house,” the voice rasped through the speakers. “She had a protector. A golden retriever named Barnaby. Loyal. Loud. A problem for anyone trying to get close to the glass.”
Sarah made a small, wounded noise. “Barnaby,” she whispered. “That’s my dog’s name. I named him after hers. I didn’t… I didn’t realize.”
“The killer knew about the dog,” the narrator continued. “He knew that a barking dog draws eyes. So, three days before he took the key, he took the dog.”
The audio shifted to a gruesome, wet sound. Chewing. Swallowing. Whimpering.
“Strychnine,” the voice said, clinical and cold. “Wrapped in raw hamburger. Thrown over the fence at 3:00 AM. It causes the muscles to seize. The spine arches backward until the head touches the heels. It’s a silent, agonizing death. The dog couldn’t bark. He could only shake.”
Maya reached out and killed the audio. The silence of the car was heavy, suffocating.
“He poisoned the dog to clear the path,” Maya said. “It was premeditated. Calculated.”
“He named my dog,” Sarah said, her voice trembling. “Barnaby. He knows I named my dog after hers. It’s… it’s sick.”
“It’s a message,” Maya said. “He’s telling us he remembers everything.”
Before Sarah could respond, a scream tore through the humid afternoon air.
It wasn’t a podcast sound effect. It was real. Raw. Human.
“NO! NO, DROP IT! DROP IT!”
Maya and Sarah scrambled out of the car. The scream was coming from two houses down—Number 6, the Millers’ old place, now owned by the Gables—the family with the friendly golden retriever that Elena had walked earlier.
Mrs. Gable was on her knees in the middle of her front lawn, wrestling with her dog. The animal, a young, goofy retriever named Cooper, was thrashing, his jaws clamped shut on something.
“He ate it!” Mrs. Gable shrieked, looking up as Maya and Sarah ran toward her. “He found it in the bushes! Help me!”
Maya reached them first. Cooper was convulsing slightly, his eyes rolling back. Foam was already forming at the corners of his mouth.
“What did he eat?” Maya shouted, grabbing the dog’s collar.
“Meat!” Mrs. Gable sobbed. “A ball of meat! It was blue! It had blue powder on it!”
Maya froze. Blue powder.
“Rat poison,” she whispered. “Or strychnine.”
The dog let out a strangled yelp and his legs went stiff. He fell onto his side, paddling the air.
“He’s dying!” Mrs. Gable wailed.
“Get back!”
Elena Russo sprinted across the lawn. She was still in her scrubs from the hospital, barefoot, moving with the terrifying speed of a trauma surgeon.
She shoved Maya aside and knelt by the dog.
“How long ago?” Elena barked, prying Cooper’s jaws open with her bare hands.
“Just now! Thirty seconds!”
“Hydrogen peroxide,” Elena commanded, looking at Mrs. Gable. “Do you have it? Go! Now!”
Mrs. Gable scrambled toward her house.
Elena looked at Maya. “Hold him down. If he seizes, he’ll bite his tongue off.”
Maya threw her weight onto the dog’s shoulders. Cooper was heavy, vibrating with a terrifying, electric energy. His muscles were locking up, just like the podcast described.
“Is it strychnine?” Maya asked, her voice shaking.
“Probably warfarin,” Elena said, checking the dog’s gums. They were already pale. “Rat bait. It causes internal bleeding. But if it’s fast-acting… god, he’s seizing.”
Cooper’s back arched. His head snapped back. A guttural sound escaped his throat.
Sarah stood frozen on the sidewalk, her hands over her mouth. She was staring at the bushes where the dog had found the meat.
“He did it,” Sarah whispered. “He did it again.”
Mrs. Gable ran back out with a brown bottle. Elena snatched it. She unscrewed the cap and poured a generous amount directly down the dog’s throat, massaging his esophagus to force him to swallow.
“Come on, buddy,” Elena murmured, her face inches from the frothing muzzle. “Come on. Give it back.”
For a long, agonizing minute, nothing happened. The dog twitched. The neighborhood was silent, save for the distant hum of the landscaping crews.
Then, Cooper heaved.
“Turn him!” Elena yelled.
Maya rolled the dog onto his side just as he vomited. A slurry of raw hamburger and bright, neon-blue granules spilled onto the pristine green grass.
Elena didn’t recoil. She used a stick to sift through the mess.
“There,” she pointed. “Blue pellets. It’s commercial rat poison. High concentration.”
Cooper let out a long whine and went limp. But he was breathing. The rigidity in his limbs began to soften.
“He needs Vitamin K,” Elena said, wiping her hands on the grass. “Get him to the vet. Now. He’s not out of the woods, but the stomach purge bought him time.”
Mrs. Gable sobbed, gathering the 70-pound dog into her arms. Maya helped her lift him into the back of her SUV.
As the car sped away, leaving tire tracks on the lawn, the three women stood around the pile of blue-tinged vomit.
“It wasn’t an accident,” Elena said, standing up. Her scrubs were stained with mud and bile. “That meat was placed there. Hand-rolled.”
“He dropped the episode at 2:00 PM,” Maya said, checking her watch. It was 2:45 PM. “And forty minutes later, a dog eats poison. He timed it.”
“He’s escalating,” Sarah said, her voice hollow. “First the dress. Now this. He’s moving from symbols to violence.”
Maya walked over to the bushes where Cooper had been sniffing. She pushed back the hydrangeas.
There, nestled in the mulch, was another ball of meat.
“Don’t touch it,” Elena warned.
Maya pulled her sleeve over her hand and picked it up. It was heavy. Cold. It had been kept in a cooler or a fridge.
“Who has rat poison?” Maya asked. “Who has this specific kind? The blue pellets?”
“Everyone,” Sarah said. “The HOA mandated it last year when we had the vole problem. Every garage on this street has a bucket of it.”
“But this isn’t old,” Maya said, examining the meat. “This is fresh ground beef. Premium lean. Probably from Whole Foods.”
She looked at the houses surrounding them. Any one of them could have thrown it.
“We need to warn the others,” Sarah said. “Everyone with a dog.”
“No,” Maya said. She stood up, holding the poison meat like evidence. “We need to find out who bought this meat.”
“How?” Elena asked. “It’s hamburger.”
“The packaging,” Maya said. “If he made these balls, he threw the wrapper away. And today is Tuesday.”
“So?”
“Tuesday Toss,” Maya said. “The garbage trucks came this morning. But the recycling…”
She looked down the street. The recycling truck—the one that came later in the afternoon—was just turning the corner onto the next block.
“The recycling bins are still out,” Maya realized. “If he bought the meat recently, the Styrofoam tray or the plastic wrap is in someone’s bin right now.”
She looked at her friends. They were dirty, exhausted, and terrified. But they were alive. And Cooper was alive.
“We go dumpster diving,” Maya said.
“In broad daylight?” Sarah asked, horrified.
“We’re the Gables Gals,” Maya said, a fierce grin cutting through her fear. “We can do anything if we wear the right shoes. Sarah, get your gardening gloves. Elena, get some trash bags. We’re going to find out who had a barbecue for one.”
She looked at the blue poison on the grass. The killer had made a mistake. He had moved from the digital world into the physical one. And in the physical world, everything left a trace. Even hate.