Paw of the Jungle

by Diane Kelly

  I found Brigit on her back on the living room rug, wriggling around playfully as Zoe swatted at her tail.

  “C’mon, girl,” I called to Brigit. “Duty calls.”

  She deftly leveraged herself to her feet and trotted over so I could attach her lead. Partner? Check.

  Of all my tools, Brigit was by far the most useful. While I had to rely on my eyes and ears when searching for a suspect who’d fled or hid, she had a top-notch nose at her disposal. That skilled snout made her instrumental in finding contraband narcotics, too. No more time-sucking car searches for me. Brigit could sniff out drugs in mere seconds. She could also run faster and farther than me, and take down large suspects that, admittedly, the thought of wrangling with scared me to death. Since partnering with her, my arrest statistics had gone through the roof. Though she deserved the lion’s share of the credit, I received the bulk of the pay, including a small additional stipend for her care. She didn’t seem to mind that she never got a raise. She wasn’t in the law enforcement game for the glory. She was in it for the liver treats.

  I slid into my jacket and gloves, and out the door we went. Another day, another dollar. Also another day closer to making detective, which was my ultimate goal.

  As we headed down the porch, my boyfriend Seth pulled up to the curb in his seventies-era blue Nova complete with flames painted down the sides and a license plate that read KABOOM. Seth worked as a firefighter. In fact, he was the one who had initially interested my roommate in joining the department. He also served on the city’s bomb squad along with his K-9 partner, Blast, who was trained to detect explosives. Blast stood on the backseat, looking out the window. When he spotted Brigit, his tail began to whip back and forth. The yellow Lab had an incurable crush on my partner. But who could blame him? She was smart and fun, with beautiful big brown eyes and lots of shiny fur. She could even be sweet when she wanted to be.

  Seth parked and climbed out of his car. “Glad I caught you!” he called, his breath visible in the frigid air. Seth stood five feet ten and sported broad, muscular shoulders formed from countless laps swimming the butterfly stroke at the local YMCA. A former explosives ordnance specialist in the army, he continued to serve in the reserves and kept his blond hair shorn short in regulation. He had gorgeous green eyes and a manly army eagle tattoo that spanned his back and those aforementioned strong shoulders.

  He turned back to reach for something inside his car and, as I approached, held a large cardboard coffee cup out to me. Steam wafted through the tiny hole in the lid.

  I gave him a smile as I took the cup. What a thoughtful gesture. “This is a nice surprise.”

  “Thought you could use a hot drink this morning.” He quirked his brows. “’Course I’d rather keep you warm another way.”

  “I bet you would.” I bet I’d enjoy every minute of it, too. Though we didn’t officially live together, Seth kept clothes, a toothbrush, and a razor at my place. He also stayed here on most of the nights when my roommate was gone, and he and I were both off work. Otherwise, he lived in a patchwork house in east Fort Worth with his mother and grandfather, a surly Vietnam veteran named Ollie. Still, Ollie had been noticeably less surly since I’d introduced him to Beverly, a burglary victim I’d met on an earlier case. Nothing can change a man like the love of a good woman.

  I took a sip of the luscious latte and moaned in bliss.

  Seth groaned in return. “You trying to torture me?”

  I gave him a coy smile. “How was your shift?” While working as a police officer and firefighter had distinct differences, all first-responder jobs shared some similarities. Long periods of downtime broken by bursts of frenetic action. Dealing with people in highly emotional situations. A tight bond with coworkers who had your back and, like yourself, put their lives on the line each day.

  “A day-care van caught fire on Rosedale this morning,” he said. “Luckily all the kids got out and there were only minor injuries. Alex had put a box of colored bandages in the ambulance. It was a great idea. Even the kids who weren’t hurt wanted one.”

  “Alex?” Because Seth’s station sat within my beat, we covered the same general area and I’d met all of the firefighters and paramedics assigned to his station at one time or another. I didn’t remember an Alex.

  “New paramedic,” he replied. “Started a few days ago.”

  I made a mental note to stop by the station and introduce myself. “Gotta go or we’ll be late.” I leaned in and gave Seth a kiss that was nearly as warm as the latte. Let the neighbors gawk and talk.

  When I stepped back, he said, “I’m off the next two days. Why don’t I come by tonight? We could watch some TV, maybe order a pizza.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Brigit let out a bark to let us know pizza sounded good to her, too. Woof!

  A half hour later, I downed the last of the latte as Brigit and I cruised our beat in our specially equipped K-9 cruiser. The vehicle had the standard equipment in front—laptop stand, radio, dashboard-mounted camera. But, rather than the usual backseat, a carpeted platform spanned the space, enclosed by metal safety mesh. I’d added a comfy cushion for Brigit to lie on, as well as an assortment of chew toys to keep her occupied during the dull downtime. Now that the weather had grown colder, I’d added a fleece blanket to keep her cozy. With the blanket and toys strewn about, her enclosure resembled a child’s playpen.

  As we meandered about our beat, waiting for a call to come across the radio, my mind pondered the irony of law enforcement driving black-and-white vehicles when the situations we dealt with every day were rarely clear-cut black-and-white, but varying shades of gray. Depending on a suspect’s mental state or abilities, the accused could be guilty of a crime or found innocent. Sometimes people did illegal things for good reasons, such as speeding to the emergency clinic with a passenger suffering a serious asthma attack. Or they violated the law, but prosecuting them would do no good for anyone, such as when two otherwise friendly neighbors get in a minor shoving match at a backyard barbecue after a few too many beers. Shake it off and shake hands, guys. People loitered about on occasion for no other reason than that they had no other place to go, or simply needed to stop and think. Though we liked to think of police work as a game of the good guys versus the bad guys, the concept of good and bad could be quite fluid.

  Whoa. All that caffeine had me feeling philosophical, huh?

  Of course Brigit’s world was more black-and-white than mine, though not entirely so.

  All dogs relied more on their noses than they did their eyes, especially dogs like Brigit who were trained to scent for drugs or lawbreakers who’d fled or were hiding. Still, it was a myth that dogs were color-blind. As I’d learned in my K-9 handler training, their color spectrum was more limited, given that their eyes had only two types of cones while human eyes had three. Their range included yellows and blues, but, thanks to evolution, filtered out common background colors like greens and browns to make other objects, such as their prey or predators, stand out more readily. And, despite their limited color range, canine eyes had much better night vision and could detect movement much better than the human eye.

  My radio came to life. “Report of a fender-bender at Pennsylvania and Hemphill. Who can respond?”

  I grabbed my mic from the dash and pressed the button. “Officer Luz and Brigit responding.”

  The wreck was resolved in twenty minutes, both vehicles dented but functioning, no tow trucks required. I issued a citation to the driver with the crumpled hood, who, according to witnesses, was looking down at her cell phone and failed to stop in time. The remainder of the morning was spent sending truant teens back to class at Paschal High School, issuing a speeding ticket to a college student near the TCU campus, and unsuccessfully scouring the area around the Shoppes at Chisholm Trail for a shoplifter who’d run off in a brand-new pair of sneakers when security had spotted her slipping her own worn shoes into the box to leave behind.

  Around one o’clock, the outdoor te
mperature had risen to nearly sixty degrees and my butt had grown numb from sitting in my seat. Time to get out of the cruiser and get moving. I cast a glance at Brigit in my rearview mirror. “Want to walk the zoo?”

  On hearing two of her favorite words, Brigit’s ears perked up and she issued an excited arf-arf!

  Minutes later, we were making our way inside. One of the perks of patrolling this beat was free admission to the zoo while we were on duty. I raised a hand in greeting to the ticket seller, a sixtyish black woman named Janelle whom I’d introduced myself and Brigit to a few months back. Janelle wore a broad smile and a yellow knit hat to keep her head warm.

  “Back again?” she called through the open circle cut out of the glass in her booth.

  “Brigit insisted. It’s her favorite place to patrol.” Still, the worst offense I’d witnessed on the premises was when one bonobo stole a piece of fruit from another while the latter turned his head.

  “You two have fun!” Janelle called after us.

  “Thanks!” I called back. “We will!”

  I let Brigit take the lead, determining where we’d go and what we’d see today. While we walked, I spun my nightstick. I’d been a twirler in my high school band, and old habits never die, right? Besides, I found the motion and sound soothing. Swish-swish-swish.

  My partner strolled past the giraffes and gorillas, stopping when we reached the red wolf exhibit. As I’d learned from a zookeeper on an earlier visit, the wolves were critically endangered after being mistakenly blamed for killing livestock and slaughtered indiscriminately. Brigit stared into the exhibit, making eye contact with a wolf lying under a tree. She issued a soft whimper, as if sympathizing with their plight.

  As we meandered about, it dawned on me that, like my police cruiser, many of the animals here were black-and-white. The zebras, of course. The white tiger. The aptly named eastern black-and-white colobus monkey. The rockhopper penguin and Andean condor. The zoo even had a fish called the “convict tang” that was white with four black vertical stripes.

  We soon found ourselves at the black rhino exhibit. According to an informational sign, black rhinos were critically endangered, like the red wolves, but for a different reason. Some cultures wrongfully believed rhino horn had medicinal qualities or served as a powerful aphrodisiac, fueling demand for horns. If it takes ground-up animal parts to make someone horny, maybe they should look for a partner they’re more attracted to or just read a darn book instead. The placard noted the black rhino population, once widespread and numerous in southern Africa, had decreased to a mere 3 percent of its 1970 level by 1992, nearing extinction. Due to the scarcity of the animals, their horns were more valuable than gold. Though attempts had been made to protect the animals, brutal poachers routinely killed the animals for their horns, sometimes murdering park rangers, as well. The sign noted that the loss of habitat to agriculture played a role, too, and conservationists realized too late that more of their focus should have been on preserving the habitats. When an ecosystem was disrupted and the only specimens of a species were in captivity, there was little chance the creatures could be returned to their native lands.

  A thirtyish white man in a long-sleeved green T-shirt, khaki pants, and a safari-style vest worked inside the enclosure, while a zookeeper kept an eye on the rhinos lounging on the other side of their pen. This buddy system was a wise arrangement. A few years back, the zoo had been cited by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for safety violations after a zoo worker was injured by an elephant tusk. The practice of “free contact,” in which there were no barriers between zookeepers and animals, could be controversial. No problems today, fortunately. Though rhinos could be extremely dangerous in the wild, these enormous beasts paid the man and the overseer little mind, accustomed to humans in their environment.

  While one of my duties as Brigit’s handler was to clean up after her, the droppings she produced were tiny compared to the cantaloupe-sized rhino poops. It was no wonder the man’s well-developed biceps strained the fabric of his sleeves as he used a flat, wide shovel to scoop the piles of excrement into a rolling bin lined with a plastic garbage bag.

  Brigit looked up at me and issued a soft woof. Looked like she needed a potty break of her own. I led her over to a landscaped area where she crouched and did her business. I tugged a biodegradable bag from the dispenser on my belt and used it to retrieve the mess. As I was tying the bag closed, a gate opened and the man in the green shirt emerged, pushing the rolling bin. The name tag attached to his vest identified him as Danny L.

  I smiled at the man and raised my bag. “Looks like your job description and mine have some overlap.”

  He chuckled. “I’ve learned more about animal dung on this job than I ever wanted to know. At least the rhinos poop in one spot. Makes it easier to clean up.”

  As I’d learned from the informational display at the exhibit, the rhinos’ communal dung piles were called “middens.” The display also noted that the dung contained chemicals that rhinos could read, telling them the age, health, sex, and reproductive status of other rhinos in the area. Rhinos sniffed the dung piles for the same reasons dogs sniffed each other’s rears, fire hydrants, and light poles used as common urination spots. Though I sometimes envied Brigit’s heightened senses, I was glad that, as a human, I could refrain from such sniffing. If I wanted to know someone’s age and status, I could read their Facebook profile.

  “Need someplace to ditch that bag?” When the custodian raised a palm to indicate his bin, my eyes spotted a small tattoo below his thumb—five dots configured like the five sides on dice, with four dots in a square and one in the middle. The tattoo was a common prison tattoo. The shape was symbolic, the center dot representing an inmate trapped inside four walls. Most likely, the tattoo had been applied using a sewing needle or paper clip. The ink had probably been drained from a ballpoint pen. Not exactly hygienic.

  I wondered what he’d been in for. It couldn’t have been a violent crime or he would never have been hired here, where he’d have contact with the public. Drugs, maybe? Some kind of theft? Those were the most common nonviolent crimes. But whatever he’d done in the past, I was glad the guy had found work now, been given a second chance. If he was smart, he’d make the most of it, stay out of trouble. Recidivism rates for convicts with steady jobs were significantly lower than for the unemployed. Unfortunately, unskilled, convicted felons had an uphill battle finding legitimate work. Many employers assumed they’d be unreliable and untrustworthy. Studies showed this assumption was incorrect. Offenders, especially those under supervision, tended to be more productive than the average worker, especially when maintaining employment was a condition of their early release. Employers who hired ex-cons also reported lower turnover rates, which helped their bottom lines. Many who’d done time did whatever it took not to return to the clink. I’d visited prisons myself. They were far from pleasant places.

  To reduce recidivism, prisons offered work-training programs ranging from custodial work to information technology. They also taught barbering, cooking, plumbing, HVAC installation and repair, welding, and other construction trades. Heck, there were even programs for animal training, with convicts taught how to train horses and dogs. Given the bias against former inmates, civil rights advocates were pushing “Ban the Box” or “Fair Chance” legislation to preclude employers from asking on job applications whether an applicant had a criminal record. Eleven states had adopted such laws. Texas, which prided itself on being tough on crime, was not among them. Ironically, the tough-on-crime pride didn’t extend to sexual violence. The state had a huge backlog of untested rape kits. Rather than pony up the money to test this critical evidence and take violent offenders off the streets, the legislature voted to allow residents to make a donation for this purpose when renewing their driver’s licenses, essentially a GoFundMe program with no guarantee of raising a single dime. Frankly, I thought the legislature should go “fund” itself for showing so little regard for victim
s.

  My curiosity got the best of me. Besides, part of community policing was getting to know the people on my beat. The more I knew, the better I could do my job. “What were you in for?” I asked the man.

  His cheeks reddened with what I assumed was shame. “Felony theft. I used to be an orderly at the children’s hospital. One of the nurses caught me taking diapers and baby formula from a supply room. My kid needed the stuff and I couldn’t afford it on my pay.”

  Per the Texas Penal Code, felony theft involved property valued between $1,500 and $20,000, and carried a penalty range of 180 days to two years in prison and a fine up to $10,000. Not the worst crime a person could commit.

  His eyes narrowed. “How’d you know I did time?”

  I gestured to his hand. “The tattoo is a dead giveaway.”

  He looked down at the tattoo and frowned. “I should get that thing removed.”

  “First offense?” I asked.

  “First and last. I got no interest in going back to jail.”

  “Don’t blame you.” I cocked my head. “I’m surprised your sentence wasn’t probated.” Many first-time offenders were placed under supervision rather than incarcerated. Under the circumstances, it seemed a judge might go easy on him.

  He shrugged. “I’d confessed to the cops. The prosecutor made a big deal about me stealing from a kids’ hospital. Said it was heartless. I had a lousy defense attorney, too.”

  Most court-appointed attorneys did a competent job, but they were paid poorly. Some took on excessive caseloads to make ends meet and didn’t have time to fully prepare each case for court. My heart squirmed in my chest. Sure, the guy had broken the law, but his reasons for doing so weren’t selfish or hateful. He’d done it out of desperation. This situation was another instance of the gray areas we in law enforcement confronted constantly.