Written by Tony Fleecs
Art by Trish Forstner
Published by Image Comics
Sophie, Rusty, and the rest of the pack are back for more grisly mystery in Stray Dogs Issue #2.
Picking up the morning right after Issue #1, Rusty and Sophie continue their conversation from the night before. Trouble is, Sophie doesn’t remember the accusations she made against their master the night before. Rusty has an idea how to jog her memory.
He retrieves the scarf that triggered Sophie’s memories the day before. She remembers. She remembers that scarf around her lady’s neck and a man pulling it tighter and tighter. There’s no forgetting that now.
After their master heads out for the day, taking fellow dog Aldo with him, Sophie persuades Rusty that they absolutely have to get into the master’s private room.
Bizarrely, the room is left unlocked this day when it’s normally sealed tight. The two dogs make their way in. Sophie is convinced they’ll find some clue about what happened to her lady.
Instead, the pair stumble into a room full of questions.
Rusty and Sophie barely scratch the surface of all of the objects they find. Clothing, accessories, photographs … ropes, handcuffs, bolt cutters? What have they walked into?
The master comes home and catches Rusty in this collection and kicks the dog out. Tiny Sophie manages to go unnoticed, hiding in a box of photographs. When their master steps out of the room briefly, she tries to make a break for it. Instead she has to make a run for the closet when he returns.
From her new hiding spot, Sophie listens to the master muttering to himself, like he’s trying on sentences to see which ones fit just right.
These words sound awfully familiar.
Her realization is short-lived when she knocks into a box in the closet and the master comes charging at her. In the living room, Rusty creates a diversion by knocking over furnishings. He’ll pay for that with hours in an inhumane shed and a busted leg.
His own ordeal leaves Rusty more ready to hear Sophie’s theories about what kind of man the master is. He asks Aldo about his day with the master. Aldo regales them all with stories of the dog park, the lady they met at the park, and the way the master followed her after to take pictures of her.
Sophie rushes to retrieve a photograph she snuck out of her hiding spot, hoping to make a connection. No, says Aldo, that’s not the woman they saw today.
That photograph is someone else’s lady.
