Today, we have an excerpt from Andrea Hairston‘s upcoming new novel, The Redemption Center is Closed on Sundays. An interesting take on the mystery genre, featuring a canine detective, sci-fi elements, and more; here’s the synopsis:

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BOOK I

YESTERDAY
AND TODAY

JOURNAL ENTRY:

The haunted houseboat gathers Strangers, Ancient Enemies, and Lost Souls then waits to see what they will do, if they can survive themselves . . . An improv on their heartbeats.*

STORM MUSINGS:

Later, something kills me. In the meantime, I live happy.*

* Captions from the Iris Library’s International Trickster Exhibition

TODAY

PAULA–Clues

Any random group of people have much more in common than they realize. Not just 99 percent of the same genes, not just sharing this particular moment in history, this unique traverse of the Earth and Sun through vast darkness. Everybody is entangled in miracles and mysteries. . . .

Contemplating cosmic connections with strangers on a hot Monday morning in August, Paula B. Queenie avoided spewing nasty slop she’d regret at the new tenant from across the hall (who said his name way too fast) and at Karl, her upstairs neighbor (who was sweaty and disgusting after a workout). Standing by a rickety banister in the flickering shadows of a busted fluorescent, they yelled about America circling the drain. Mostly Karl yelled.

Two women had gone missing in the last six months, then turned up dead. Unprecedented in this necklace of picturesque New England towns around the university. The cops found one victim yesterday, a few blocks over, a rich lady celebrity according to internet chat. Actually the dog found her sticking out of an RC recycling bin in the borderlands between a good neighborhood and the dodgy section.

No real leads yet, so Karl ranted about corrupt cops with dirty secrets who could give a shit about our side of the map. The new tenant, a defiant middle-aged athlete in running togs, raced away from Karl’s blather, singing a Bulgarian folk song. Paula quivered at this latest horror and wondered, who drew the maps? Who consigned their five-story, cement-block apartment building to the shadowlands, where a killer might lurk in a crowd and pass for harmless, where everyone was suspect: Upstairs Karl, the new tenant, even Paula. Mapmakers, man!

Why would Paula kidnap some rich child then dump them in the recycling with shredded documents and a burnt turkey (that even the dog didn’t want)? Why would anybody mix trash like that? Paula swallowed a curse. She probably shared (secret) impulses with the kidnapper, the killer, and the victim. Of course, Paula beating up a Mercedes-Benz with a sledgehammer wasn’t as bad as beating a person to death . . . She had to think on this tonight, when she had more clues.

“Fuckin’ banana republic!” Karl yelled into the stairwell as the new tenant escaped out the main door. Karl had a bathroom leak and called five plumbers. Nobody was available before this evening when he had to work. “Stupid-ass unions.”

“What about the landlord?” Paula ventured.

“That shitbag’s office put me on hold then hung up,” Karl replied.

Instead of letting him wait, instead of coming home to a flood or reports that socialists were sabotaging American infrastructure, Paula clomped up warped, uneven stairs to fix the leak for free, if she could; turn off the water if not. Karl hovered over her, fascinated, clueless, and funky. A raggedy towel from his gym job stuck to his neck: pump it up! be the best you! Paula showed him a rusty joint and nasty blockage then suggested that whatever he put down the drain on a regular basis, he should dispose of somewhere more appropriate.

Karl almost broke into tears, relieved that the socialists hadn’t found him yet. He huffed and flexed. “I’m ready for ’em though.”

A big guy and a weight lifter, Karl shaved his body hair so as not to obscure the tattoos or muscles. Only bushy, dyed-blond eyebrows remained—a scary look for social media, hashtag Survivalists-Forever. He’d been in training for the apocalypse since he was twenty-five, ten years and some change. His shallow closets were jammed with neatly stacked canned goods and survival gear. Oil lanterns, ancient weapons, paper maps, and tools hung on the walls of his otherwise spartan apartment. Paula liked to be prepared for anything too, but seriously. She started to leave, and Karl blocked the front door, pleading with her to reset the Wi-Fi while she was up.

Instead of saying no, she left a voice message at today’s cleaning job. “An’qwenique, I have a mission—might be running late.” She’d have to race to make the 7:30 am bus. “Oops, almost forgot.” She opened the valve to let Karl’s water through again.

“At least I’m not stuffing bodies down my pipes.” Karl laughed. Paula didn’t. He was keeping something from her. He dragged her to the spaghetti junction by his router. She switched it off then on. No problem.

He shoved his phone in her face and scrolled multiple sites. Supposedly the cops put out a call on social media and everywhere to find the owner of a goofy St. Berdoodle (St. Bernard / poodle mix). Why would cops do that? Every image was blurry, refusing to resolve: a haze of curly silver hair except lopsided black ears and black masks over slitted eyes. Social media hype, but Paula recognized the dog immediately. They’d met when Paula cleaned out the dog’s cage at the Pet and Wild Animal Rescue. Paula deep-cleaned the Rescue every Thursday. Always an adventure.

“Police tried to take that dog in for questioning yesterday. She escaped.” Karl scowled. “I can’t believe you haven’t seen these.” He was one of the average Americans who checked his phone 144 times a day. Paula had trained herself out of that. (Worse than kicking heroin.) She wasn’t letting Karl or anybody drag her back. “A dog like that walked you home from the bus one night, right?” Many nights. She squinted at an image. “You think that stray is the dog cops are looking for?”

“I don’t know. You tell me,” Karl replied. “She’s your friend.”

Few animals stayed long enough at the Animal Rescue for Paula to make friends. The Rescue’s mission was to release everybody back into the wild or find a good people-home ASAP. The St. Berdoodle was there maybe four weeks. She broke out of her cage to follow Paula around while she cleaned or sometimes to go on a midnight stroll. Nobody figured how the dog got loose. Paula asked her point blank once, What’s your secret? She jumped up, put soggy paws on Paula’s chest, and licked her nose.

The landlord’s no-pets-just-service-animals policy prevented Paula from adopting the big fluffball. Good prospects took the St. B home and returned her a few days later till last October. Paula was surprised how sad the empty cage felt. By Halloween, she knew the dog had found a home and wasn’t coming back, and good for her. Then, one Monday night in November, the St. B showed up at the bus stop. Instead of turning her in for bad behavior, Paula gave her a cheese bun. They’d been meeting ever since, no questions asked. Paula refused to check the collar for an owner.

“I can’t tell these stray-hounds apart,” Paula lied.

Karl didn’t notice. “Give up anything you know. The cops could use some help.” He raged on about the idiot police allowing a major suspect to chase after the dog and poof, they were both smoke. This was not mere incompetence. This was part of the plot to destroy capitalism: recycle or die! “RC’s Disposal—their motto is ‘DUMP IT ALL AND START DOING BETTER!’ ” Karl shook his head. “That ain’t random, that’s new-age code. We’re supposedly so messed up, we gotta dump everything American and—”

“Right.” Paula never knew what to say when Karl spun these theories. She wiped flecks of spit from his screen. The St. Berdoodle was magic. Forget trying to lock her up.

“You claimed the dog could Houdini her way out of San Quentin!” Karl interrupted his own rant.

“Your Wi-Fi was fine, right?” Paula sidestepped.

He hugged his bare chest, sheepish. “You’re my one friend in this building.”

She was the only person who listened to him for more than thirty seconds. Did that make them friends? Paula could talk to anybody, one of her superpowers. Karl wanted to talk about murder, mystery dogs, and that suspicious character, a burly Black man, who claimed the dog wasn’t his. Exactly, this dog belonged to herself. According to the trash-talking disinformation-nuts Karl mainlined, the Black man walked away from the crime scene and nobody had seen him since. He was a serial killer sex addict, an anti-fascist terrorist, or both. The internet, man!

“OK,” Paula said carefully. Challenging disinfo-teers in possession of flimsy camera evidence was almost impossible. “Black Mystery Guy is more likely an innocent bystander, a later victim, or even an alien with unknown powers.”

“Alien?” Karl looked offended. “I’m being serious.” So were the other disinfo-teers.

“According to your sources, Black Mystery Man walked into the brush following the dog, then both of them literally disappeared on the security cameras. The police and the Feds combed the entire area and found nothing. Disappearing is a difficult trick for us Earth beings. And how’d the Feds get there so quickly?”

“OK, maybe not the Feds.” Karl pouted, furry eyebrows wiggling. “Guys checking out the scene saw shit.”

“Did they understand what they saw?”

The Norse gods on Karl’s chest became agitated. “But an alien? No way.”

Paula sighed. “I clean a building over there, Cloud Heights Enterprises, a cutting-edge tech firm. Their security cameras are no joke. Nobody’s disappearing on that rig.”

“Calling nine-one-one then disappearing is this guy’s how-to-get-away-with-murder plan.”

“Not the optimum plan for a burly Black man,” she countered.

“I’m not being racist,” he insisted. His jaw and hands clenched.

“Uh-huh,” she replied, weary. Karl sputtered. He expected her to argue. Why? People believed in the world they wanted to believe in and ignored evidence of other worlds. Karl, his disinfo-teers, and Paula too, lived in a multiverse while insisting it was one world. What could anybody do about that besides despair? Paula refused despair, however she had yet to come up with anything better.

Karl squirmed. “You got me wrong. I just mean, we are all suspects.”

Paula startled at her earlier thought in Karl’s mouth. She narrowed her eyes at him. “Tattooed, burly, bald white dude, with a hint of a southern accent . . . Alabama?”

He nodded. “Tuskegee, but from New England, mostly.”

“I don’t imagine you murdering anybody,” she said gently.

He licked his lips, excited by her faith in him, yet still unsure. “I don’t think of you like that either.”

“How sweet of you.” Hard to predict what she might do. Beating up that Benz was a total surprise. Anger and violence crackled under her breath, snuck across her skin.

“I’ve seen someone disappear, live, on stage,” Karl said. “What you need is the right setup. Dude at the gym says you can even fool cameras. Deepfake ’em.”

“Deepfake? Not this particular horror show. The clues don’t fit,” Paula declared.

Karl’s eyebrows went up. “Oh yeah?”

Especially the St. Berdoodle bit. The dog walked Paula in and out of some nasty mess on High Street several times. Saved her butt down by the river too—when she got lost in a tunnel and a maze of trails. A rescue dog! Burly Black Man was probably the dog’s friend. She led him into a dangerous situation and when it got dicey with the cops, she helped him disappear.

Paula had seen the dog disappear before, at the Mooseberry Mall that night last spring when half the county lost power. The St. Berdoodle blinked out like the lights. The other time, they were walking by the Maple Street fire station and the alarm went off. Engine after engine screeched into the street. The dog growled at tones Paula couldn’t hear. Her tail was a blade and her silver hair shimmered like it was full of tiny sparks. She leapt over the fire hydrant and was gone.

Both times Paula refused to trust her eyes and concocted crap explanations about sudden dark, sensitive dog ears, and mad dashes that explained nothing. This allowed her to ignore uncomfortable, inexplicable possibilities. She refrained from mentioning any of this to Karl.

“Deepfake or not, the dog is key.” He was right about that.

“Yeah. OK, but I can’t be late for work.” Paula patted Karl’s arm. “I have dust and pollen patrol for An’qwenique.”

He nodded. “Your rich lady writer.”

Paula slipped toward the door. “An’qwenique thinks she’s middle class.”

“That’s rich.” He smirked. “Ignore my rant. Tell the cops where the clues take you. I maybe rag on them too much, but they didn’t do squat for Melody.”

“Similar case.” Paula shuddered. “Except Melody was sticking out of a car wreck with a dead otter.”

Karl shuddered too. “Nobody cares about a mouthy waitress.” He loved sparring with Melody over a hot mocha, and Melody liked it too, or so Paula thought. “Don’t sit on what you know.” Karl was adamant. “Hand over info about dogs and danger-mysteries to professionals.”

“Uh-huh.” What did Paula have to tell the professionals? Admitting to herself that the dog was magic or alien was hard enough. “Update me tonight with what else you dig up on this murder mystery.”

“Sure thing.” Karl was thrilled by the prospect.

Paula escaped into the hall as he mulled over his assignment.

Half the wonky fluorescents winked out. The landlord would wait till it was pitch black to replace burnouts. Paula stumbled down uneven stairs not thinking about the treacherous dark.

Because—What was the St. Berdoodle up to?

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Andrea Hairston’s The Redemption Center is Closed on Sundays is due to be published by Tor Books in North America, on May 26th.

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