by Lyle Howard
“Two more questions.”
Dolan slammed the heel of his foot against the ground to secure the boot. “Make them fast.”
“Do the names Barnes, Peters-Smythe, or Kirby ring a bell?”
Dolan sniffled and rubbed his nose, because sitting so close to the ground, the disinfectant was getting to him. “Peters-Smythe? Is that one name or two?”
“One.”
Dolan shook his head. “Never heard of them. Should I have?”
Lance rubbed his bottom lip speculatively. “If you put an animal to death, do you know the owner’s name?”
Dolan stood up to face Lance. He was nearly a head taller and at least a foot wider at the shoulders. As he spoke, he slipped on his rubber gloves. “No, how could I? The animals I kill are strays.”
Lance pulled off his sunglasses and stared deeply into Dolan’s eyes. There was that slight tingling sensation of menace coming from Dolan, but nothing significant. He was intimidating in proportions, but there was something else wrong here … something that Lance couldn’t quite put his finger on. “I’m not talking about the strays. I’m talking about the people who return their pets for one reason or another.”
Dolan bent over and picked up the coiled hose and slung it over his shoulder like a python. “By the time the animals get to me, their collars have been removed. I have no idea who they belonged to,” he said, dragging the hose across the concrete. “Believe me, it’s better for them if I don’t know. It would really piss me off.”
Lance slipped his sunglasses back into his pocket. “How bad would it piss you off?”
Dolan turned and stared at Lance. “Jacob! Turn on the water again!” he screamed.
Lance never released his gaze from Dolan, but behind his back, he could hear a set of staggering feet and then the sound of the spigot being turned on. Dolan pointed the pistol sprayer at Lance’s head, holding it there momentarily, and then slowly turned it away.
“Real bad,” he shouted, as a torrent of water and disinfectant smashed against the rear wall of the kennel.
Lance walked over to the hose, reached down and crimped it in his hand, cutting off the water supply. Dolan shook the sprayer like it was defective, until he turned and saw Lance restraining the bent line. “I thought we were through,” he moaned. “I’ve got work to do.”
Lance moved closer to Dolan, until he was only a few inches away. “I’ve got the authority to question you all day, pal.”
Dolan didn’t flinch. “You said two more questions.”
Lance looked up into Dolan’s beady brown eyes. “I lied.”
Dolan pouted and let the spray gun hang down by his side. “You want me to shut off the water?”
“I want you to tell me what you know about pet carriers.”
The hose made a squealing sound in Lance’s fist. “Did you say pet carriers?” Dolan asked, looking at Lance like the man was nuttier than a squirrel’s cheeks in winter.
“You heard me.”
Dolan did a double take. “What the hell do pet carriers have to do with anything? Are you gonna tell me what’s going on here?”
“You never come across pet carriers in your daily routine?”
Dolan thought he would have been able to blame the peculiar line of questioning on the oppressive heat, but the man standing in front of him had yet to break a sweat. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, man. The only pet carriers I ever see here are the ones that people lug their pets in. When I get called up to the front office, I carefully remove the animal from the carrier, and then the customers usually take their cages home with them. That’s it, end of story.”
Lance believed him. “So there would be no reason for you to keep any spares lying around?”
Dolan shook his head. “No reason. Come on,” he pleaded, “can I get back to work now? Most of us who work in this place have to hold down two jobs just to make ends meet. Jacob over there,” he said, pointing at the little man struggling with the spigot, “is holding down two other jobs besides this one.” He tugged on the hose but Lance’s grip was firm. “Most of the people who work here show up every day just because they care for these animals,” he said, pointing around the compound. “The pay the county gives us stinks worse than this crap I’m washing away. So please, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to get these kennels cleaned before two o’ clock so I can get out of here. Are we done now?”
“What’s your second occupation?” Lance asked.
Dolan shook his head in futility. Wasn’t this guy ever going to leave? he thought. “Photography,” he said wearily. “I work in a commercial photo lab developing vacation pictures. Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon? Your face looks familiar.”
Lance ignored the verbal dig and scanned down Dolan’s employment record. “It doesn’t say anything here about a second job.”
Dolan tapped his foot impatiently. “It’s none of the county’s damned business what I do when I leave here. Are we through now?”
Lance folded the paper and slipped it into his back pocket. “Yeah, I’m through.”
Dolan looked up at the roof of the kennel. “Thank God!”
“You’ve been a lot of help, Eddie,” Lance said, releasing his reign on the hose.
Dolan studied the arson inspector as he walked away. “Hey,” he called out to him, “you’re not going to tell me what this was all about … are you?”
Lance never looked back. “No, Eddie, I’m not.”
NINE
Esther Paulsen was usually as punctual as she was obnoxious, but today she returned from lunch ten minutes late. She threw the keys from her ‘68 Impala into her purse and cursed at the stifling heat as she stepped into the air-conditioned office.
“Anything earth-shaking happen while I was out?” she asked him, doubting his competence.
He looked up from behind the computer screen and half-smiled. “Has it been an hour already?”
She set her purse down on a table behind the counter and, from it, removed an uneaten container of peach yogurt in a brown paper sack. “No one showed up while I was gone?”
“Quiet as a cemetery,” he answered.
Esther held up the paper bag. “Can you hold down the fort for a few more minutes? I want to throw this into the refrigerator and then pay a visit to the ladies’ room.”
He waved his hand like it didn’t bother him. “Sure, take your time.”
As she walked across the room, she turned to look at him when she heard his fingers tapping at the keyboard. “What are you doing back there?”
“Just fooling around.”
“I didn’t know that you knew how to work the computer.”
He smirked. “There’s probably a lot you don’t know about me.”
Esther knew he was right, and was never more grateful about anything in her life. He gave her the heebie-jeebies. “I’ll only be a minute.”
“Take as long as you need.”
Esther placed her snack into the tiny refrigerator the county provided in the employee’s lounge. It wasn’t really a lounge, it was more of a closet with a coffee machine and a collapsible bridge table crammed into one corner. After tossing the empty paper bag into the waste can, she paid her visit to the restroom and then walked back out into the office.
“Everything come out alright?”
Esther smirked at him. Potty humor, how droll, she thought. “Thanks for watching my desk. I’ll take over from here.”
His head nodded as he tore a sheet of paper from a note-pad on the counter. “I don’t want to forget this,” he said, slipping the note into his jumpsuit’s breast pocket.
“Have you been snooping into everybody’s salaries again?”
He continued to nod. “You know how I am, Esther, I like to compare.”
The old woman leaned against the counter. “You know that everyone here makes the same salary. I’ve told you that, time and time again. The only way you’ll ever take more money home is to work more hours.”
&n
bsp; “Hey, I work plenty of overtime,” he argued.
Esther agreed. “I know you do, and don’t think that the animals don’t know it, too.”
“I wish I could quit my other job and put in more hours here.”
“Quit the photo lab?”
“I’ve thought about it. The animals need me more here than they do there.”
Esther looked astonished. “I can’t believe that you would give up working in the film lab!”
He walked around to the other side of the counter and paused by the door that led out to the compound. “I don’t know. Someone has to be here for the animals.”
Esther smiled warmly at him. “I guess there really is a lot that I don’t know about you.”
He shrugged lackadaisically, opened the door and stepped outside to be with the animals he would even kill for.
Esther watched him walk out and then began straightening up behind the counter. Nothing seemed to be out of place. He usually left things the way he found them. She was shuffling some papers from one drawer to another when a customer walked in. He was a man in his mid-thirties, dressed impeccably in a navy blue business suit, a pin-striped shirt, and a red tie that was supposed to signify power. He conveyed an air of self-confidence that flowed out of every pore on his clean-shaven face.
“Can I help you?” Esther asked.
“I’m looking for a pet,” he said in a British accent as thick as London’s fog.
Esther reached under the counter for her pad of preprinted applications. “Here you are, sir,” she said, offering him the form. “Just fill this out, and we’ll see what we can do for you.”
The Englishman looked up and down the form and handed it back to Esther. “Can’t I just go outside and pick out a dog?”
Esther frowned. This guy is so stuffy, she thought to herself, that when he broke wind, it probably smelled like mothballs. “I’m sorry, Mr. …?”
“Chadwick, Elliot Chadwick.”
Esther held out the form again. “I’m sorry, Mr. Chadwick. No ticket. No doggie. We have regulations to follow.”
Chadwick held the form out at arm’s length and studied it. He had to move it closer and then further away to read the different-sized print.
“Forget your reading glasses?” Esther asked.
Chadwick cinched the knot on his tie. “My good woman, I don’t wear glasses.”
“And they say women are vain?” Esther mumbled under her breath.
“Did you say something?” he said, stiffly.
“No, sir,” she said, holding out her hand. “I’m also going to need to see some form of identification.”
Chadwick pulled out a gold pen and his driver’s license from his inside coat pocket. He flipped the license across the counter, and then began filling in the application. Esther took the driving permit and walked over to the computer screen. “I’ll just get a head start by punching in the information directly from your driver’s license.”
Chadwick didn’t even have the common courtesy to acknowledge her.
Over the years, Esther had learned to ignore this sort of individual and it had become second nature to her to let his impertinence go in one ear and out the other. All she could pray for was that he would have the good fortune to choose an animal that would crap all over his Persian rugs. She was just about to type in the first numeral of Chadwick’s license when something on the screen struck her as peculiar. It had only been a few minutes since he had gone outside, but she remembered him saying that he was in the system comparing salaries. The information that was on the screen wasn’t an accounting record, it was a personnel file. The same one she had pulled up and then passed over nearly two hours before. It belonged to that good-looking arson inspector: Lance Cutter!
Esther Paulsen stared at the screen and then down at the note-pad.
“Is this going to take all day?” Chadwick asked.
“Hmm?” Esther said, noticeably distracted.
Chadwick was standing across from her with his hands firmly embedded on his hips. “Can we please get on with this? I’ve finished your silly little form.”
Esther looked at the personnel record one last time, and then grinned at Chadwick. “Oh yes … sorry,” she apologized as she pressed the F3 key to clear the screen.
TEN
Like some mythical, self-perpetuating monstrosity, it was spawned off the western shore of Africa. In the perfect breeding ground, where the warm tropical air is exceptionally unstable, and the trade winds of the two hemispheres are displaced over unusually warm areas of the sea, massive rotational forces suddenly took control, evaporating enormous amounts of water into the air and carrying it like nourishment, upward into the voracious spiraling bands of powerful winds.
Soon to mature into a colossal cyclops, created out of counterclockwise swirling clouds and wind, this freak of nature slowly gathered strength and momentum as it was carried westward across the Atlantic Ocean by the prevailing wind currents.
The National Hurricane Center located in Coral Gables would watch it, track it, and eventually label it Tropical Depression Number 3. In a few days time, if the storm displayed any inclination toward strengthening, they might elect to send in reconnaissance aircraft to observe and take atmospheric pressure readings.
It was the same old routine, year after year. All taken quite seriously, but rarely with any consequence.
ELEVEN
Lance apprehensively knocked on the half-opened door before stepping inside the poorly lit room. Everyone who was sitting solemnly around the bed had turned on any artificial lighting inside the private room, so the only illumination came from the afternoon sunlight that managed to stream in through the partially opened window blinds. The vertical shades that blocked the sunlight created bleak, striped shadows on every wall, giving the impression of a prison cell rather than a hospital room.
In the center of the room, with his head propped up by two pillows, Brandon Muller seemed to be resting comfortably with the top of his skull shrouded in gauze bandages. Sitting on the far side of the room, an older couple that Lance took to be Muller’s parents gripped each other’s hands tightly for solace.
At the foot of the bed, sitting in front of the window for reading light, Julie struggled with a crossword puzzle she had found in the back of a woman’s magazine. She looked up and smiled when she saw Lance enter the room. “Pull up a chair,” she whispered.
Lance winked at her. “In a second.” He stood quietly at the side of the bed and looked down at the broken form lying in front of him. Muller’s eyes were closed and they looked slightly inflamed. They might have been swollen from the head trauma, but most likely, Lance knew, it was from crying.
A fierce anger rose from a shadowy place deep inside Lance’s tortured spirit. Seeing Muller lying immobile in the bed and knowing the magnitude of his loss had suddenly changed the rules of the game. Lance couldn’t help but think how, when a tragedy strikes, everyone who hears of it surely feels some sense of loss. But when it hits this close to home, perspective is suddenly turned upside down. This didn’t have to happen, Lance scolded himself. He had to find out why this was happening, but his mind was a jumble of disjointed thoughts and abstract theories ricocheting off each other like bumper cars. He took a deep, sorrow-filled breath and then stepped around the bed to introduce himself to Muller’s parents. Muller’s father’s handshake was firm and steady, but his mother barely had the strength to raise her hand to greet Lance. “How’s he doing?” Lance whispered.
Muller’s father nodded. “He’s a strong boy … he’ll survive,” he said, revealing only the slightest trace of a German accent.
The old woman unfolded the tissue she was crumbling in her hand and held it up to her reddened nose. “That poor young girl … ” she said, shaking her head.
Muller’s father reached around her shoulder and pulled her close. “It’s okay to cry, Miriam,” he said regretfully.
Lance put his hand on the old woman’s trembling arm. �
��You’re husband is right, Mrs. Muller, it’s good to cry. You can cry for all of us.”
Across the room, Julie dabbed a tissue beneath her eyes.
Lance knelt down next to Muller’s father until he was at eye level with him. “I know this really isn’t the time or place, Mr. Muller, but if it’s okay, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
The old man released his grip on his wife and clasped his hands helplessly in his lap. “I don’t know what I could tell you that might help.”
Lance shrugged timidly. “I just wanted to ask you a few questions about your future daughter-in … I mean, Crystal Barnes.”
A cloud of melancholy crossed the old man’s face. “It’s all right to say it, young man. She was going to be my future daughter-in-law, and my wife and I both loved her like she was our own.”
Lance nodded his understanding. “So you had already come to know her fairly well?”
“If you want to know about Crystal, why don’t you ask me?”
Everyone’s eyes in the room suddenly turned to the still figure lying in the bed. Brandon had been awake the entire time and had been eavesdropping on the conversation. Mrs. Muller rose to her feet and stood beside the bed, rubbing his arm that had an intravenous feeding tube plugged into it.
Lance stood back up and moved to the foot of the bed so that Brandon wouldn’t have to strain his neck to see him. “I didn’t realize that you were awake, kid, how are you feeling?”
The light coming from the window behind Lance surrounded him like a halo and Muller had to squint to see him clearly. Shielding his eyes, Muller glimpsed Julie sitting behind Lance. It was a good thing she was a firefighter, he thought, because in this light, her red hair was a blaze of crimson flame. She peeked out from behind Lance and waved amiably.
“Can you close the blinds and turn on a light, Jules?” Muller asked politely.