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CHAPTER 47

JULIE AND I visited Martha on Sunday morning.

Dr. Clayton’s waiting room was full of adorable pets and their owners. Julie was ecstatic. She talked to everyone and everything. Finally, the door to the examination room opened and Dr. Barbara Clayton called us in. Julie and I saw our favorite border collie lying on the table.

“Gentle, okay?” Dr. Clayton cautioned my little girl. “We don’t want her to rip her stitches out, right?”

Martha and Julie were so very excited to see each other, and I was part of all that love and reconciliation. Julie and I put our arms around her, ruffled her fur, and cooed at her. And Martha lapped it up. She whined, barked, and wagged her tail, but she couldn’t stand up on her hind legs. I saw that her back was shaved and bandaged. My old doggie turned her big brown eyes on me and yipped and kissed me. I interpreted her high-pitched yipping as Please break me out of here .

After another minute of hugs and sloppy kisses, Dr. Clayton gently maneuvered our furry kid back into her cage. Martha became distressed when the cage door was closed, which almost wrecked me and Julie both. Jules was saying, “If Martha stays here, so do I.”

I picked up my squirming and tearful daughter and thanked Dr. Clayton, who said, “I should have the labs back tomorrow. I’ll call you.” It was painful, but we had to leave Martha with our vet for a still unknown number of days.

I was heading out to run some errands and had just dropped Julie off at home with Mrs. Rose when I heard police sirens screaming. They got louder, closing in on me from behind.

I pulled over to the curb so the cruisers could pass—and one of them pulled up in front of the Explorer and stopped, blocking me in.

What was this? I hadn’t been speeding. I hadn’t gone through a red light. I saw in my rearview mirror that the cop driving the police car had leaped out of it and was coming toward me. I knew that cop very well, but seeing him on the street, striding toward me, froze my brain. Had something happened to Joe? To Yuki?

I got out of my car and met him halfway between our vehicles while trying to read his grim expression.

“Brady. What’s wrong?”

“Double homicide,” he said. “Boxer, I need you to follow me in your vehicle, okay?”

“Where are we going?” I asked, but Brady was already back in his car and buckled up. He hit the lights and sirens, full bore as I followed him to Divisadero Street, then south.

I stared holes through the windshield and kept tight on Brady’s tail. Traffic ahead pulled over to let us pass. The car radio crackled, but I couldn’t make out what dispatch was saying over the racket of the sirens.

This was a Code 3, destination unknown.