Dog Tags for Christmas

by Lindsay McKenna

  When his truck jerked to a stop in front of the house, Willow rushed out to meet him. “I can tell the door has been forced. I called Sue and Nicky and told them to come in late.”

  Flynn nodded, then with Maya at his side, walked across the yard to the back door of the office. Without touching the frame or door he opened it wide enough to creep in.

  Willow counted the seconds in her head, her heart pounding with fear. Flynn could be a very scary man but she still worried about him. It had been a long time since he’d had to fight.

  When he appeared several seconds later she could have cried with relief. He gave her a fierce hug, then led her toward the office. “I’ve called the police to come file a report, but I wanted you to check the medicine safe. It’s ripped open as well. I need a list of what was taken, then I’ll go home and run the security tapes.”

  She nodded. Yes, they had closed circuit TVs. That’s right! They would be able to see who had broken in.

  “Don’t touch anything, okay?”

  He handed her a pair of latex exam gloves to put on.

  Inside, most of the clinic looked okay. The cash register was on the floor, busted open. The cash box that Sue kept in the bottom drawer of her desk was been pried open as well. Some coins littered the floor.

  Flynn led her past the exam rooms to the lab. Inside, the white medical box had been ripped off the wall. It was propped open on the floor and Willow could tell that several major medicines had been taken. “Oh, no.”

  Flynn handed her a pad of paper and a pen. “Start listing what is missing.”

  “A few things I’ll have to check with Nicky. She does the ordering.”

  Flynn nodded and moved back through the room, looking for more evidence.

  Willow felt like she was going to cry, but she forced herself to concentrate. The large bottle of liquid Ketamine was gone, as well as a bottle of Fentanyl, used for sedation. There were also several large bottles of pain pills gone and several miscellaneous bottles. They probably just grabbed everything that was on that lower section, assuming the meds had the same purpose.

  She gave the list to Flynn, then talked to the Denver PD officer that came to take the report. When Nicky and Sue arrived she told them what had happened. Sue immediately started calling appointments to reschedule, and Nicky also made her own list of what she thought was gone. It was much more extensive than Willow’s.

  “I don’t know if it’s connected or not,” Nicky said cautiously, “but it seems like I’ve had bandages and needles taken as well, but they’re in a completely different cabinet, which was still latched shut.”

  Flynn nodded, then headed over to the house. Willow followed, because she wanted to see who had broken into her space.

  When Flynn’s boss John had had issues with his girlfriend Shannon being stalked and threatened, he’d had video cameras installed, and it had been instrumental in catching the culprits. Though Willow didn’t have the same problems, she knew other veterinarians had been broken into for the same drugs. They were made for use on animals, but some enterprising addict had started cutting it with heroine to enhance the high that it gave them. For years the drugs had been stolen and it was a well-understood threat to have them on premises. Unfortunately, they were needed for the care of the animals.

  Flynn sat down at his laptop and clicked through a couple of apps, until a view of the back door flashed onto the screen. The cop was there, as well as Willow and Flynn. Pressing a button, Flynn began rewinding the tape.

  It wasn’t long before they could see who had broken into her office.

  “No,” she breathed. “He wouldn’t have done that.”

  Mateo’s black sweatshirt covered his hair and body, but the garment was easily recognizable. The camera was positioned to look at the door, so they could only make out his back as he wedge a crowbar into the doorjamb. He popped it open surprisingly easy, then walked inside.

  Flynn switched to another internal camera. It caught Mateo moving through the office looking for things. He went to the cash register first, then began pawing through Sue’s desk. He found the cash drawer and raised a fist in triumph, not something she’d ever seen him do before. Then, face averted he started going through the exam rooms, which Willow thought was a little strange. He’d worked here for a couple months; he knew they didn’t keep anything valuable in the exam rooms. People had been known to walk away with things left accessible on the counters.

  Mateo exited the last exam room and headed to the lab. Flynn switched to another camera.

  Though they still couldn’t see his face, Mateo didn’t waste any time taking the crowbar to the lockbox. He beat at it first until it fell to the floor. Then he began wedging the head of the crowbar into the seam of the lockbox. When it popped open, he began grabbing things immediately. Some of the bottles he would pick up and look at, then toss away.

  “We can get fingerprints off those if we can identify them,” Flynn murmured.

  Willow made note of the bottles, then turned back to watch.

  Mateo left the lab and turned left, toward her office. Willow had looked inside and seen the damage, but she didn’t think anything had been taken. There was nothing to take in her office.

  The entire incident only took a few minutes, but it felt like years as she watched him move through the office like he’d never been there before, peering into drawers and corners and cupboards. He was very careful to keep the hood of the sweatshirt forward, obscuring his face.

  “I don’t think it’s Mateo,” Willow murmured, recognizing her gut feeling.

  She prayed it wasn’t him, because she would be heartbroken from betrayal if he turned out to be such a liar.

  They watched the figure stuff a white plastic bag from the reception area full of bottles and vials, then do one last glance around. He jumped over the mess in the office and went back out the door he came in.

  “He didn’t go see Ranvir. There’s no way to mistake the love that boy feels for that dog.”

  “It was at six fifteen in the morning. He knew he needed to get in and out because you were on the way in.”

  “Why didn’t the alarm go off?” she asked him.

  Flynn frowned and shook his head. “I’m not sure. Did you set it before you left?”

  Willow wracked her brain, trying to remember. “I don’t know,” she whispered, feeling terrible. With a gentle smile he squeezed her hand, then turned back to his laptop.

  Flynn switched to the last camera view of the front parking lot. The figure darted across the pavement, bag in hand. Then, with a final glance behind him, faded into the gray morning.

  “Wait,” she cried. “Rewind it!”

  Flynn pressed a button and the scenes jumped back. With a triumphant cry, she pointed at the screen. “It’s not him! He doesn’t even have peach fuzz yet.”

  There, more clear than they could have hoped for, was the picture of the assailant as he looked back at his handiwork. There was a grin on his goateed face. It definitely was not Mateo, but he had gone to pains to look like Mateo.

  “Excellent,” her husband murmured. Willow could tell he was relieved too. “I’ll print this off if you’ll call Angela Holloway. I think they already called a crime scene team to come in to sweep for prints, but maybe she can get things rolling a little faster. Also, I’ll check to see where that tracking chip has been tonight.”

  They separated to complete their individual tasks. Angela answered on the first ring of her cell phone, voice brisk.

  “Hey, Angela. It’s Willow James, ah, Flynn.” Damn. Still flubbing her married name. “We had a burglary this morning and we have a picture of who did it. There’s supposed to be a detective coming later but I wanted to get this to someone as soon as possible.”

  Angela promised she would be over as soon as she could get away from the current crime scene she was at. Less than twenty minutes later she was on Willow’s doorstep. “Come in.”

  The tall, thin woman had the attitude of a serious co
p. She’d been with Denver for many years and looked at the photo carefully.

  “I don’t know who this is, but I know someone who probably does. Can I have this picture?”

  Flynn nodded. “I made a couple of copies.”

  Willow guided her into the house and settled her on the couch, then explained how she’d come to know Mateo. “It has to be someone who knows he works here, which can’t be very many people. He was positive that if he told anyone they would make him quit working here.”

  Angela wrote everything down in her notebook, nodding her head occasionally and asking questions. Flynn brought his laptop in and showed her the length of the surveillance tapes, then rewound it further to find a picture of Mateo to compare the printed picture to. That was when they found the other thefts.

  Mateo was very cautious in the way he acted. The first time he pushed a wrapped bandage into his pocket, Willow almost missed it. But the second and third times she did not. It looked like he took small things, like cotton pads to cover a wound. Once he took a package of small gage needles. The boy didn’t take very much, and Willow had a feeling he had a purpose for all of these items, but he was still stealing. At one point he wore the dark sweatshirt with the wings on the shoulders, and his resemblance to the burglar from last night was very apparent.

  “It has to be a brother or a cousin or something,” Willow murmured.

  Angela nodded. “That’s what I was thinking as well. Very often entire families are wrapped up into the crimes their family members perpetrate. The drugs stolen suggest a trafficking, drug related crime.”

  She frowned, not feeling like that sat right. “I don’t think Mateo would take those small items for that. What if the drugs are actually being used for animals?”

  “It could be a dog fighting ring, then…” Angela’s voice trailed away as something occurred to her. “I’ll take this picture and see what I can dig up. Did he give you a living address?”

  Flynn handed over a slip of paper. “That’s where he’s living right now.”

  Angela glanced at the paper with a raised eyebrow, but Flynn just shrugged. “We have our tricks.”

  Angela left with a promise to let them know what she found out.

  Willow turned to Flynn, letting him wrap his arms around her. She pressed her lips to his neck, wishing they could just drive away and let this miserable day be cleaned up by other people.

  They couldn’t do that, though.

  Cleaning the office took hours, then they had to have a contractor come in to replace the rear door. All of the bright decorations Nicky had put up for the holiday seemed a little garish against the mess.

  They cleaned for hours, and took breaks to care for the animals. When three o’clock rolled around, Willow found herself watching for Mateo to show up. When three-thirty rolled by, she realized he probably wouldn’t.

  Were the cops questioning him? In spite of herself, Willow hoped that they were nice to him. Mateo seemed to have a good heart, and even though he’d been taking a few things, she had a feeling it was for an altruistic reason.

  Chapter Eleven

  The pain woke him up. Mateo groaned as he rolled over, wondering what he had ever done to anyone to be given this kind of life. As his father said, he was the lowest of all. It was so… futile to fight against.

  Blinking his eye open, he looked around. He was on the floor of the living room, where his father had left him. The small pile of sterile wrapped medical supplies he’d managed to pilfer still sat on the beat up coffee table, his offering to his father, discounted completely when Paulo came in with his bag of bulk drugs.

  It had been obvious who the most important son was.

  Then Mateo had seen the name on the bag, and Dr. Willow’s picture with her hand down to the animals. He’d seen her do the same thing many times over the months he’d worked there.

  “Where did you get those medicines, Paulo?”

  His brother had given him that smug grin and tossed his own sweatshirt at him. “Thank you for loaning me that. It protected me nicely when I broke into your doctor’s office.”

  Mateo didn’t even remember moving, he was just suddenly on Paulo. It didn’t matter that his older brother had several years and almost forty pounds on him. The fury just rolled in and had to be released somewhere.

  Paulo took a fist to the jaw before he started fighting back. Even with the disparity, Mateo fought like a lion. At one point he thought he was even gaining the upper edge, until his father stepped between them and took Mateo out with a single strike to the jaw. His world went dark before he even hit the ground.

  With gentle fingers he felt his jaw. It didn’t seem to be broken, but it didn’t want to move much, that was for sure.

  His gaze fell to the discarded white bag on the floor and his vision turned blurry with tears. He had seen the aftermath of Paulo’s robberies before, and it wasn’t nice. The thought that Dr. Willow had walked in and found her shop ransacked that way made him incredibly angry all over again. That woman was the nicest person he knew. She’d given him a chance to prove himself when nobody else had. The thought of seeing tears in her eyes, and anger in Mr. Flynn’s, was enough to make him think about calling them and begging forgiveness. He would admit to stealing the gauze and would take any punishment they wanted to give him, even if they wanted to arrest him.

  No, he hadn’t stolen what Paulo had, but it was just as bad.

  Picking himself up off the floor, he tried not to stagger from the pain. It radiated through his belly, where Paulo liked to hit, and up through his head. Mateo walked to the bathroom and looked in the cracked mirror.

  Wow.

  He did his best to wash off the blood. Then he pressed a cold washcloth to his jaw. As the cold seeped in it started throbbing with pain again.

  There was another dogfight coming up soon. He’d heard his father and brother talking earlier. They had dogs to get ready and Luis had been giving Paulo orders.

  Mateo threw the washcloth into the stained bathtub. He was fourteen years old. Even if he did try to tell someone what was going on, where would he go?

  He’d stolen from the only two people in the world that might have believed him.

  Willow scratched Ranvir on the head, wishing she could explain to the dog what was going on and why Mateo hadn’t shown today. Actually, she wished she knew. Once they’d gotten the office fairly put back together, they’d taken care to reassure the animals. There had been a lot of commotion in the building today. Most of them seemed okay, but Ranvir had been curled up in the corner, looking desolate. Playful Bosco couldn’t even lighten his mood.

  Willow wanted Mateo to come to them and explain what he had done and why. If she could just understand what motivated him, she would be able to forgive him. Heck, there wasn’t really anything to forgive. If he needed the materials he had taken for animals at home, she would never begrudge him that.

  When she was done here she wanted to go cuddle Raven and get her mind off all this mess.

  Flynn seemed disappointed in the boy. Willow didn’t think they’d become too chummy, but Flynn had started to like him as well. The boy had a scrapper’s attitude. He would fight through anything and come out on the other side. Kind of reminded her of Flynn himself, actually.

  It was almost an hour later before she headed home. The office was as put together as it could be right now. The new door had been installed, as well as the new dead bolts. They had a new medicine locker on order and all of the left over medications had been stored in a smaller safe. Not ideal for everyday business, but they would make do.

  Deliberately, she punched in the numbers to set the alarm and headed home.

  Raven squealed when she saw her mother, and Willow smiled. “Hello, pumpkin.”

  Willow could smell dinner cooking and Debbie stuck her head out of the kitchen. “You okay, dear?”

  Willow nodded. “Yeah, just tired.”

  Flynn came out of the living room and leaned down to press a gentle kis
s to her lips. The baby giggled between them, smacking her hands against them. Willow laughed. “Guess she likes being the peanut butter in the sandwich.”

  Snorting, Flynn walked his fingers up over the baby’s belly. “I think she’s the jelly.”

  Raven giggled and fell toward her father, curling into him.

  This normalcy was exactly what Willow had needed. “Mind if I go take a shower?”

  “Nope. Better yet, why don’t you go take a bath and soak for a while? We’ll hold down the fort till you get back.”

  “I love you, babe,” she murmured, emotion tightening her throat.

  “I know you do, and I love you just as much. Go relax. We’re not going to hear anything tonight.”

  Nodding, she headed toward the bathroom to soak her fears and sadness and heartbreak away.

  Half an hour later, Flynn wished he hadn’t told her nothing would happen.

  “Mr. Flynn? Are you still there?”

  “Yes, Mateo. I’m here. What do you need, buddy?”

  There was a sniff on the other end of the line, and a pregnant pause. “I’m sorry. I’m just sorry.”

  “What are you sorry for, Mateo?”

  The silence lengthened on the other end of the line, and Flynn thought he was really crying. The tough little Hispanic street kid was showing heart.

  “I’m sorry for my family. Paulo showed me what he did.”

  “Is Paulo your brother?”

  “Yes,” he admitted softly. “My father told me to steal medicine for the dogs, but I wouldn’t do it. I need he..help, Mr. Flynn. I don’t know what to do.”

  Flynn winced, wondering how the heck he got himself into these situations. Oh, yeah, he’d given him a card and told him to call if he ever got into trouble. “Are you at home, Mateo?”

  “No. I slipped out to the carryout on the corner.”

  “And are you willing to fix this, Mateo? Those drugs are incredibly dangerous and shouldn’t be out of a doctor’s care. Are you willing to talk to the police?”