Puppy Mills, Puppy Kills (Animal Instincts Book 3)

by Chloe Kendrick

  “Taking her home. Seeing what she can tell me. Maybe giving her a proper name.” I added, feeling annoyed in general and with him specifically. This was my first case outside the immediate Toledo area, and I’d wanted to do a good job in being able to read the animals. That hope was gone, because these pets were going to be shell-shocked for ages. Finding out anything from reading them like a normal pet would be nearly impossible. I didn’t want to have to refund the money I’d gotten, especially since I’d already spent it on extravagances like food and the mortgage.

  After the long drive back to Toledo, I dropped the puppy off with my groomer. She wasn’t at all happy about the state of the puppy, but I kicked in another 20 dollars for the works, and she found some compassion in her heart.

  That left me a few hours to start working on finding out something. I knew that a cleaned up dog would be more helpful to me in learning about what her life was like, or so I told myself. She was bolder than some of the dogs in the crates, but then again she was younger and had spent less time in the crates.

  I headed home, and I’d barely put my clothes into the washing machine when a knock came at the door. I threw on a ripped T-shirt and jeans on and answered it. It was Detective Green, standing at the door with a small brown bag in her hand.

  “I thought you might need this,” she said as she stepped inside without being asked. That was one of the things I liked about Detective Sheila Green of the Toledo Police Department. She just assumed that I was going to invite her in and acted accordingly. That applied to her personal life as well as her professional one, since she’d made it quite plain that she was interested in dating, though I had yet to do anything about it.

  “What’s this?” I asked, fumbling through the bag. I had every right to ask. This was not a traditional courting present. She’d brought me a tube of menthol spirits.

  “I got word this morning that you were down at that farm this morning when they found the body. Most of the detectives keep a tube of this stuff with them to keep down the smell. That or Vicks, but that stuff burns – bad.” She eyed me like I’d been trying to hide something from her, but I hadn’t. Since the case was outside of her jurisdiction, I hadn’t seen fit to mention it to her. She had enough murders in Toledo without me bringing my own cases to her.

  “Um, thanks. I think. That was kind of you.” I wasn’t sure of the protocol here. I wasn’t very adept at the whole courtship routine, and small talk over bottles of menthol spirits were far beyond my pay grade.

  She felt a need to fill the silence. “You use that stuff under your nose. It helps to keep you from gagging when you smell a dead body. It’s the worst smell imaginable.”

  “I had that smell plus they found the body in a pool of dog poo and pee. It hasn’t been my best day so far.”

  She nodded. “So I heard. I can tell you that the police in Green Springs are not having a good day either. They don’t have the manpower or resources for this type of thing. They usually handle people letting their cows cross the street or tipping them over.”

  I tried to follow her line of reasoning, but wasn’t sure that I got it. I’d seen the sheriff there, and I knew that he only had three deputies under him. That was the extent of the force. They hadn’t had enough resources to utilize the latest in forensics. “So you don’t think the case will be solved or you think they’re going to want me to solve it for them?”

  “I don’t know where they even got the money to pay you. That should be the first thing you ask those dogs. Who signed my check?”

  Now I suspected that she knew something that I didn’t know. Likely she’d just heard rumors around the station, but I didn’t like that she was playing games with me. If she knew something, she should just spit it out. Instead, she always made me work for any information.

  In a similar fashion, she had given me the police file regarding my sister’s disappearance. She had commented that I didn’t know the whole story behind the investigation and the police work, but she’d left her comments at that. Instead of just telling me what I needed to know, she’d shown up and handed me the file. Her thought was that I would read the whole thing and learn the truth for myself.

  However, one of our first fights had been over the file. I had refused to even open the file for several months, and when I’d actually sat down to read part of it, I’d stopped at the first mention of unpleasantness in the family. The file had held two police reports for domestic violence calls at our house in the year leading up to Susan’s disappearance.

  I didn’t remember these events at all. I might not have been home, or they might have been washed away in the flood of events that followed my sister’s disappearance. In either case, I’d given up the reading at that point, not wanting to delve any further into the most painful section of my own life. I’d rather leave it in the past, where it belonged.

  Now though Detective Green was taunting me with a small piece of information about my current employment. If the police department was broke, then how had they paid for my services, which could kindly be called an extravagance?

  “So what have you heard?” I asked, leaving the question open to be interpreted as either about my payment or the case in general.

  “About the murder?” she asked, taking the safer approach. Green did have a way of knowing when she’d perhaps pushed too far, and she knew enough to back off. Perhaps that was part of her detective training or maybe that was just a part of herself that made her a good detective.

  “I’m sure you hear plenty.”

  “Not much yet. They’re looking at the body and trying to figure out a CoD. Once they do that, then they can figure out if it’s accident, homicide or suicide.”

  “Homicide,” I replied without thinking.

  “Homicide? Why? Because you want to get paid?” Her tone was a bit sharp, and I looked at her. What was really going on here?

  “Homicide, because there are no recorded cases of accidents or suicides by dog poo. Whoever killed this person wanted to hide the body, and this had to be the worst place in the county to stick a body. No one would ever want to look there.”

  “Did you just call it ‘poo’?” she asked with a smile. Whatever had happened to her mood was gone just as fast as it had arrived.

  “Yeah, my pets don’t shit and piss. They’re refined. They poo.” Even as I said it, I knew it sounded stupid, but of all the things in my life that might not sound right, I felt this was pretty far down on the list.

  She rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

  “Besides,” I said, holding my ace until now, “someone called in and said it was murder. That should tell you something.”

  She sighed. “The old anonymous tip. Two things about tips that you should know. First, 90 percent of all tips are poo.” She gave me a small smile as she said the word. “People call to say that they’ve seen Elvis rob a liquor store or a killer shown on television was seen at the mall on Victoria’s Secret. It’s all a bunch of people with overactive imaginations. Attention seekers who can’t get people to look at them in the sphere of influence so they try to engage in a police matter.”

  Her mention of Victoria’s Secret had activated my imagination. Our encounters were typically like the current one. She came to see me with something for a case or I called her or arranged to meet her to ask something about a case. Some flirting ensued, and we left it at that. Nothing had progressed beyond that, though she’d made a few less than subtle hints over the 10 months we’d known each other. I wondered if her comment had been premeditated.

  “So what else about tips?” I asked finally.

  She had a smile on her face that seemed amused; however, she didn’t say a word about my few moments of distraction. I wonder if she knew where my mind had gone. “If the person calling in knew about a murder in a quiet barn in a rural community, where silence is needed so that they can keep the dogs, then likely the person who called in either heard stories about the murder from someone they know well or they were an accompli
ce at some level.”

  “So now I just need to find out who talked or who helped?”

  She nodded. “Unless, of course, you plan on getting help from the dogs. Are you sure you want to work on this case? I can easily see you failing.”

  Now it was my turn to give her a smile. “Thanks. I appreciate the support. Is that what people do for each other?”

  “People or girlfriends? Is that what you wanted to ask?”

  I paused, trying to think of a response. “I guess. Maybe?”

  She laughed. “If you want to move past people into dating, we have to do more than swap menthol spirits and talk about dead people. Dinners are nice. You do eat, don’t you?”

  I nodded. “So what else should I look for in this case?” I was so far out of my comfort zone that I needed a bullet train to make it back there. I took a deep breath and tried not to panic. To date would be wonderful, but it would also be putting myself out into a world that I didn’t much like. The thought was terrifying.

  Green seemed to know this, because she went back to talking about the case without further mention of a date. “I really should let you struggle and fail on this. It would save all the dupes a few dollars in talking to their pets. But here it is. You have a person who was found in the barn under the dog crates. That means that most likely that person had to know about the puppy mill operation. Since that farmer was trying to keep it under wraps, that should mean that the potential victims should be a very small group of people. You’ll just need to find which of those people are missing, and that’s half the case right there.”

  I nodded. I could at least work on that aspect of the case. Someone in a small town had to know something, even if the police were stumped. Maybe that would be my way into a case.

  “You might want to use some of your mad pet-talking skills to get a foot in the door there. They’re not going to talk to a stranger for no reason. That’s one reason that Capote took Harper Lee with him to Kansas to write In Cold Blood. He wasn’t the type to inspire confidence. She was. If you get them talking about pets, they might talk about other things as well.”

  In some ways I was grateful for all of her advice, but in other ways I was annoyed that she was treating me like I was a child playing detective. It likely would have hurt more if I hadn’t felt the same way myself.

  My phone chirped; the groomer had texted me that the dog was cleaned up. Green and I said our goodbyes at the door, and I went to pick up the puppy. I hadn’t told Green where I was going, because we’d argued before about the use of dogs in a case and whether or not they were evidence. In this case, I’d really made the evidence more presentable.

  When I got to the groomer, the Corgi puppy was bouncing up and down. She peed on the floor once to show her enthusiasm and a second time because I knew she’d never been trained. She was adorable, but incredibly thin. The matting and the stench were gone, and it would be much easier to be around her now that she was clean.

  “What’s her name?” the woman at the cash register asked me. “She’s just adorable.”

  I paused for a second, remembering “Number 32.I’m not sure. I just got her today – something of an emergency circumstance, and I haven’t’ had time to think about that yet.”

  “You need to find a name for her,” the woman chided as if I knew nothing about pets. “She’s such a high spirited little thing.”

  I picked her up, since I hadn’t even found a leash for her yet. She slid back into my jacket and curled up. I was surprised that she would want to since my jacket still smelled like her most recent accommodations, but she fell asleep there in under a minute. All of this excitement was apparently too much for her.

  Next up was a quick trip to the vet, who gave her a round of shots. She whined a little but accepted her fate without too much trouble. She licked my hand as I tried to hold her still. Though I’d made no decisions about her fate yet, it was getting harder and harder to admit that I wouldn’t be keeping her. I was such a sucker for a cute face and a loving lick on the hand.

  After that, we went home. Bruno was surprised to see a mini-version of himself running around the house, but he was ridiculously patient with her, trying to show her how things were done at the Fitzpatrick home. The Countess gave me a glare and went to lay on a window sill that was far above the maddening pup.

  She was starved, and I gave her two bowls of food before taking her for a walk. I used a body harness to keep her somewhat subdued. I tried to make the walk fast, but she wanted to sniff everything that appeared on her path. I’d seen messages on my machine, and I wanted to find out what was going on, but at the moment, I was in sniff mode with this little girl.

  She finally wore herself out, and we headed back to the house. She’d made a mess, which I’d scrupulously cleaned up. She was definitely the first puppy I’d ever seen that just peed in the middle of the street, relieving herself when she needed with no care for where.

  I scrounged an old collar from Bruno’s batch of leftovers and hung it around her neck before checking the messages. The first was from Allison who asked me to call her right away. The second was from my mother, who asked me to call her right away. Since Mom didn’t provide me with a paycheck, I opted to call Allison first.

  “Griff, I’m so glad that you called back so fast. I’m not sure what to do.” Allison sounded out of breath and somewhat ruffled. Since she usually moved at a snail’s pace, I was surprised. I didn’t think anything ever bothered her.

  “What’s up?”

  “We’ve had an offer to adopt all 15 of the animals we retrieved today from that farm,” she said. “I’m not sure what to do.”

  “Do you allow that?”

  She cleared her throat. “Technically, no. We allow small groups of pets, one or two, to be adopted together if they’ve lived together their entire lives. But we don’t get groups this large often, so the rules are different. I’m just worried because if word gets out that we turned down a good home for these dogs, we could lose out on fundraising and such.”

  “What about Cleveland? Did you call the rescue organization there?”

  She sighed. “Yes, they had a similar offer there, and they accepted. All 15 of the animals coming in are being processed, but they’ll all go to one family after that. Something is off, and I don’t want to put these animals in homes that aren’t in their best interest.”

  “So what do you plan on doing?” I asked. I was stumped for an answer here. Someone had requested 30 of the 56 dogs that had been collected from the farmer’s barn. Apparently, something was up about these dogs. I couldn’t tell it from my own experience, as my puppy was now engaged in trying to turn over the food bowl, but something unique had to be happening here.

  “Right now, I’m going to do what non-profits do best – drown them in red tape. I’m going to stall until we get the dogs all checked out, and then I’m going to investigate the hell out of them before they even look at the dogs. That gives me at least ten working days to get an idea of what’s going on here.”

  It sounded like a plan. Sometimes just being slow was an answer. We hung up after she promised to keep me informed about the situation. She hadn’t noticed that I’d taken the Corgi from the site, and I opted not to tell her yet. I didn’t want anyone to know that I’d been a softie and wanted a new puppy here.

  The next call was to my mother, who was just as much of a mystery to me as wanting 15 dogs. She answered on the third ring, which was always a ruse on her part since she rarely left the house. In fact, she’d rarely gone anywhere since my sister had disappeared so many years ago. She’d been concerned about the problems of crime in our city and in general, and she’d opted to stay inside, hoping to avoid a similar fate to my sister by keeping the world at arm’s length.

  “What’s up?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

  “I heard a rumor, and I needed to hear it from you,” she said without preamble. “I heard that you have a copy of the police report on Susan’s disappearance.”r />
  I was shocked by the forthrightness in her speech. My mother went years without mentioning my sister’s name. It was always “your sister” or “my daughter.” Never did she callSusan by name. So this had to be a big deal.

  “Yes, Detective Green gave it to me a while ago. She thought that I might want to see it, since it plays a big part in our family history and all.”

  Those last two words encompassed all the pain and suffering that had happened in our family over the past decade. My family had fallen apart like one of those bows where you can pull a single piece of ribbon, and it becomes so many strips of plastic.

  My sister had gone to meet her first real boyfriend at the movies and never returned. He’d called several times that evening asking about her, but in my youth and annoyance, I hadn’t notified my parents until the third time he’d called. By then she was long gone. My own guilt weighed heavily on me, a series of “what ifs” that stayed in the back of my mind at all times.

  Susan had never returned. My father took to drinking in order to remove the pain of his daughter’s loss. He’d died not too long after that, having destroyed his body almost like it was a mission for him. My mom had opted to stay inside, keeping away from the world that had taken her daughter away. You’ve read the articles where people get along with the internet for a period of time. Mother had done this for years without publicity.

  My brother had chosen to leave. He’d perhaps recognized that staying in Toledo meant he’d always be known as Susan Fitzpatrick’s brother. In Denver, he was just another guy. He rarely came home, especially now that he was married with children. I didn’t know if he kept us at bay to hide the family defects or because the thought of losing one of his own children would be too much for him here in Toledo.

  That left me. I’d coped in my own way. My sister had been beautiful and vivacious, the type of girl who stood out in a crowd. My adolescent mind knew that she’d been taken for just those qualities. To keep myself safe, I opted to do the opposite.

  I became bland, weird, and unkempt. I became the type of person who would automatically make people keep away from. I wore clothes from Goodwill and the thrift stores that often didn’t match. I had kept my hair longer until a threat on my life had made cutting it shorter a necessity. Even my grass, which was in the fall stages of dying, was kept longer. I led a life that flew under the radar, or so I’d thought until Sheila Green had turned up. She’d pushed me to get out, to dress in coordinating outfits and to actually mow the lawn, for which the neighbors were grateful. I wasn’t sure what was in it for her, but she’d definitely changed the way that I saw myself and how others saw me.