Page 38

CHAPTER 38

THE ANIMAL SHELTER WAS a sprawling place, a low brick compound ringed by trees and hidden from the lights of nearby Koreatown, a dark pocket in a glowing city. Baby could hear barking from where she stood at the roadside brushing down the front of her pencil skirt and adjusting the collar of her crisp white button-down shirt in the side mirror of the station wagon. Arthur watched her from the front passenger seat, one elbow slung over the windowsill, his cheeks flushed in the warm night.

She hit the buzzer on the intercom, shook tingles of nervousness out of her fingertips.

“Yeah?”

“We’re here for the pickup,” Baby said. There was a pause. She glanced at the cameras over the cyclone fence. The intercom crackled.

“Sorry, what pickup?”

Baby flashed a badge at the camera over the fence like she didn’t know there was a more accurate camera on the intercom panel. “Got approved this afternoon. It’s on the schedule.”

“What schedule?” Arthur asked. Baby shushed him and waved at the car. She waited, her breath a hard ball caught in her throat. The cyclone fence buzzed and slid back.

“Don’t blow it, Arthur,” she warned him as she got back in the driver’s seat.

“I might be the only guy in LA who’s never taken an acting class,” he said. “Wasn’t a problem until now.”

“So keep your mouth shut and we’ll be fine.” She slapped his chest lightly. When he didn’t smile, she slapped his chest a little harder. She heard her father’s words come from her own lips, as if Earl were riding along with them: “Come on. Where’s your sense of adventure?”

The monster dog dragged itself to its feet when Baby and Arthur appeared before its cage, lumbering to its full height one heavy limb at a time like a wounded elephant rallying. The animal was a saggy, probably drugged, and definitely demoralized version of the one Baby had seen in the thieves’ den earlier this week, but the dog stirred something in her. She had been terrified the first time. Now she was curious. Arthur’s eyes nearly bugged out of his skull until Baby knocked his shoe with her own, reminding him to keep cool. The shelter’s night attendant scoured the heavy, tattered logbook lying open on his desk in the concrete hall full of cages.

“I got nothin’ in here about a pickup,” he said. “Certainly nothing about a visit from any cops. Makes me nervous, letting a dog go without the proper outtake forms and all.”

“We’re not cops, we’re feds.” Baby squared her shoulders. “And the fact that your manager didn’t note the transport approval down is not my problem. This dog is coming with us whether you’re emotionally and administratively prepared for it or not.” She jerked her thumb at Arthur. “My partner’s put twelve months into this case. Without the dog, the whole thing sinks.”

“I don’t get how a dog can be a witness,” the attendant said, watching with trepidation as Baby opened the cage and Arthur attached a leash to the beast’s thick collar. “You gonna put that thing on the stand or what?”

Baby didn’t answer. She observed the huge animal as it lumbered out of the cage. The shiny black dog gave the weakest tail wag she’d ever seen, and she tried to hide a smile.

“This dog’s going to do what he was born to do.” Baby stroked the dog’s head. “He’s gonna make bad guys run for their lives.”