Case of the Hot Dog

by Erik Schubach

  I squished my lips to one side and narrowed an eye at Oscar. “Alrighty then, stinker.” Sometimes the subcutaneous chip migrated on dogs with loose skin around their necks. I started at his neck and worked my way back and around. He thought it was a game and got all wiggly excited. “Settle you monster, let me...” It beeped when I ran the scanner low across his chest. “Ah ha! Got ya!”

  I rubbed my nose on his and got a nostril lick for my trouble. Boys are always opportunistic like that. I stood and wiped his slobber off as I pulled out my cell and looked up the number in the AAHA Universal Pet Microchip Lookup database.

  Again I squinted at him in accusation at what I saw. “Playing hard to get?” On the screen, it read Doxy 2716 instead of a name. That was what some breeders did. I was surprised that Miss Mueller hadn't had it registered to her after she adopted the little guy. But then again, the microchip had migrated, and her vet may not have done a thorough search for it, or never had a reason to even scan it.

  I pointed at him as I put the scanner back in its place. “You, Mr. Enigma, are still Oscar then.” I looked at the address registered for the generic name. “Well, maybe we can drop by the breeder after we walk our clients today, boys. They'll have her home address, I shouldn't ask Jane, she's not supposed to be talking to me about her cases. We can see if anyone else is missing you.”

  I geared up, making sure to top off the water jug and replenish my disposable paw bootie supply before we headed out to get our first clients of the day, in the furnace that was Manhattan in summer.

  We had a wonderful day, and I kept reminding myself not to fall in love with Oscar. The look on Jane's face last night told me that we didn't need two dogs if we couldn't find Oscar's family.

  After lunch, when it was the girl's turn to walk, they were fully enamored with the newcomer.

  Especially Princess, the adorable King Charles Cavalier, who split her time between Calvin, who they saw as the alpha of our pack, and Oscar.

  We refilled our water, and instead of heading home, I looked at the address for the dog breeder. I

  squinted at the map. The address was in East Harlem, looking like an alley between two four-story tenements on 116th. Did the building get torn down? This was getting to be a real adventure. I glanced at the microchip info again. The entry was only a year old. I told the boys, “Adventure time, boys. They probably have the address marked wrong on the map app.”

  A half hour later, we stepped up to the space between two buildings. It had a flimsy screen of dilapidated plywood panels screening the area from the sidewalk. I peeked between the gaps to see an overgrown garden space with a lot of construction materials stacked up and an old white van.

  I glanced at the buildings, the one on the left was freshly remodeled and looking almost fresh and brand new. The one on the right looked to be halfway remodeled, some of the upper story windows covered with plywood and an old demolition slide out the third story window. It looked as if the remodel had been abandoned halfway through. The ground floor seemed to be mostly finished though, and it had signs of tenants.

  The muffled sounds of dogs yipping drew me back to the screen, and I peeked through again to see some well-maintained kennel fencing up against the structure. I could see a few Doxies milling about in the shade there.

  I smiled. This was the place. I could feel my excitement building, I always loved meeting new fuzzies. I said, “Come on guys, this way.” They obediently followed as I made my way around the corner to the front of the tenement. From this side, it looked to be mostly restored. They had probably concentrated their efforts on the front first to attract new tenants.

  It was an old story in New York, well-meaning building owners undertaking a renovation like this, to find that cost overruns, unanticipated problems, and not greasing the right palms wound up killing the projects in midstream. I could see more evidence of the first floor and part of the second having renters.

  On the far corner, there was a little shop space, I grinned at the breeder sign, Sausage Breeders.

  See? It isn't just me with the wiener dog jokes.

  But my grin faded, the sign was in poor repair, and the windows were dirty, like a mar on the pristine look the building was shooting for. By the tail and tongue, please let these be reputable people and not a puppy mill.

  The door was propped open, telling me they likely didn't have air conditioning. The poor puppies would be miserable.

  I stepped up to the door and glanced in to see a waiting room, not unlike that at a vet. I moved in with the boys and saw a bunch of old dilapidated posters of dachshunds on the walls. I was getting the puppy mill vibe and that just chaffed at me.

  I hated breeders who just churned out dogs to maximize profits, treating them like dollar bills instead of living breathing animals who deserved compassion and respect. They often inbred them to the point of sickness and just kennel them until someone bought the pups. No self-respecting breeder would treat dogs that way.

  I could hear dozens of dogs barking in the back.

  I called out, “Hello?”

  Nobody answered, they probably couldn't hear over the dogs. I ventured down the hall and into a big open space that was lined with cages floor to ceiling with at least three dozen long-haired dachshunds. Some nursing pups and some just full of puppies. The place smelled of uncleaned cages.

  I saw a man spraying out an empty cage with a hose, and another one stuffing a pregnant dog into a portable kennel. It was a mill. I felt my stomach tie in knots. I called out again, voice wavering,

  “Hello?”

  The men stopped. The big burly one shut off the hose. The other man, dressed in a fine suit, his silver hair combed back and neatly trimmed, giving him the air of a businessman, put on a politician's smile as he asked pleasantly, “Hello, miss, what can we do for you? Another Doxy perhaps?”

  He looked at my dogs with that well-rehearsed feeling smile and mannerism that was meant to make you feel relaxed. But then his smile faltered when I saw recognition in his eyes when he looked at Oscar. He was snapping at the other man, pointing at me as he growled, “Grab her!”

  The big brute yelled at me as I started backing back down the hall quickly, my heart pounding as my panic rose, “Where is that double-crosser, Vin? And where is the collar, bitch!?”

  Brute's hand closed around my upper arm like a vice, making me squeal out in pain. Calvin was in the air in a moment, snarling as his jaws clamped around the man's arm, shaking his head violently to dig his fangs in deeper.

  The man hissed and pinned me against the wall with one arm across my chest, then he slammed his other arm against the wall. Calvin released him with a yelp. I screamed at the dogs, “Go! Get out.”

  Then I was slammed against the other wall of the hall, pain and white hot light exploding in my vision.

  As I slid down the wall and the world faded into darkness, I saw Calvin running out the front door down the hall with a limp, Oscar hot on his heels.

  Chapter 5 – Caged

  My whole body ached as the world slowly made itself known to me again. I was laying down on warm concrete, the smell of urine strong. I went to wipe the sweat from my forehead as I tried to focus, but I found my arms were secured behind my back. Had I been arrested again?

  No, wait. The puppy mill! Everything snapped into clear focus through an excruciating headache that was threatening to tear its way out through my eyes.

  I glanced at myself, I was laying on the floor of one of the cages, my legs bound with duct tape, my arms were likely secured the same way. A piece of tape was across my mouth, and I made muffled screaming sounds as I struggled against my bonds. The endless barking of the dogs in the space making it hard to concentrate.

  That's when the fear threatened to overwhelm me as I realized my situation. I was in a cage, like a dog. Tied up. Nobody knew where I was. I looked around frantically at the other cages, and a small bit of relief washed through the paralyzing panic, Calvin and Oscar weren't there. They didn't cat
ch them.

  I forced myself to calm and started to put the pieces together while I strained against the tape. Why would the breeders do this to me? They had mentioned a collar. Was it Oscar's? This Vin guy who double-crossed them... did he have it, and they thought I was working with him for some reason? Then I realized that Suit had recognized Oscar before Brute snagged me.

  God, why were people so evil to each other for just things, for possessions? Again, I got mixed up in a murder that was over things, over jewels. Did people really have that little disregard for life that they would kill just for money?

  I was getting light headed and realized I was hyperventilating, breathing heavily through my nose.

  I had to pull myself together. I had to think. And I couldn't do that If I passed out again. I closed my eyes and just thought about breathing slowly, in and out.

  But I was in a cage! I screamed into the tape and thrashed.

  A memory came unbidden into my aching head. This wasn't my first time being locked up in a tight space and helpless like this. I had felt this same panic once before.

  It had been the first day in my final year of junior high, ninth grade, my first day at school in a dress. I really owe mom an apology for how I had freaked out about my clothes the week prior. I had organized them all by color, and type and bagged the stacks individually and put tape labels on each and gave them all away to the Salvation Army when they came by for donations. I only had the clothes on my back – the one pair of jeans and a Rolling Stones teeshirt just like Garrett's.

  I had been telling mom the whole summer that I needed new clothes. That I wanted to dress more feminine. She had insisted we didn't have the money to replace my wardrobe and had offered to get me a few pretty things, and more as we could afford them.

  She didn't understand what I was going through at school, I never told her about the teasing and bullying, and had begged Garrett not to worry mom about it. She already did so much raising us alone, we had lost dad the year before to cancer. She didn't need any additional stress to worry about it.

  Yet like a spoiled brat only thinking about her own problems, I had created a new one for mom when I ditched my wardrobe. Creating a whole new thing for her to stress over. But mom never got mad.

  I remember her sad smile as she shrugged instead of yelling at me and said, “Well, I guess there's nothing for it then.” She took me out that day to a secondhand store, and we bought a handful of sundresses, and some shoes on her credit card. We had so much fun primping in front of the mirrors there, mom trying on dresses too.

  They were old and worn, but they had so much style, and I loved them. Mom said I looked so pretty in the solid colored ones, so those were the ones I got. I had never had time out alone with mom like that before then, and even though I felt guilty we had spent money we didn't have, it was the first time I think I really bonded with mom as her daughter and not just her child. The years prior we spent rallying around dad as he fought the cancer that was eating away at him.

  She tutored me in applying makeup, and not sitting like the tomboy I had always been. I was going to show everyone at school, and they wouldn't be able to tease me anymore. It was really weird when Garrett started treating me differently like I was fragile or something. Just because I was dressing like a girl didn't mean I was breakable suddenly. But nobody understands boys, they're all wired weird.

  My best friend growing up, Kerry, who was just as big a tomboy as me, just thought I had lost my mind and thought I looked like a completely different person. “You don't even look like you, Tempe, you're so... girly girl now.” She had made a sour face at that, though she was still smiling.

  She still stood by me until her father got stationed in Texas and they moved the following year.

  I went by Tempe back then because my middle name is Temperance and Finnegan sounded like a boy's name, and that was part of the never ending teasing I endured. I love my name now, and I dare anyone to say anything about it.

  I had insisted to Kerry that this would prove to the others I didn't want to be a boy and the bullying would stop. She disagreed.

  I... was wrong.

  Apparently, since I was puberty's bitch back then, and what she had been doing to me the past year

  was just enhanced by the dresses, the girls who teased me before had taken to straight out hate... and according to Kerry, jealousy.

  The cheer squad took issue to all the attention the boys had started paying me on the first day of class. I had never blushed so much in my life with all the attention, even from the boys who tormented me with the girls the prior year.

  They cornered me in the at my locker in the back hall between classes. The girls and their boyfriends, and when the halls had emptied out, the girls threw insults at me. I did what I always did, I closed my eyes and ears and just held a hand outstretched to try to stop the hate rolling off them. This incensed them as usual, and they had the boys stuff me in my locker for them.

  The teacher never came out to investigate my screaming as they manhandled me into the steel coffin. Then the door was closed on me and the ensuing panic silenced my screams.

  I remember the almost complete darkness, just a tiny bit of light filtering in from the vents, I had freaked out and hyperventilated, not knowing what to do, it was so tight, I couldn't move, and it was hard to breathe. I thought I was suffocating, but I was just hyperventilating. I remember feeling the tears on my cheeks and thinking I was going to die in there because I couldn't get the breath to scream anymore.

  I passed out. As my world fuzzed and fade to black, I really thought I was dying... I didn't want to die. I remember that thought echoing in my head as the darkness claimed me.

  To this day, I still don't know how long I had been unconscious. I just remember hearing voices and opening my eyes. The hall was full of kids again, so I must have been there for a whole class. I started freaking out in a panic again, my whole body ached, being jammed in there. And I started screaming the best I could with the shallow breaths I was forced to take.

  All I remember is people laughing, then the voices of the ones who did this to me as they taunted,

  “Oh my, did Fin-Dyke-Again get stuck in the closet?” Another added, “I thought she came out already.”

  The laughs of the other kids were cut short by someone yelling my name in rage. It was Garrett. I heard a struggle. Girls screaming and people getting slammed hard against the lockers and the thunking sound of someone's head being slammed into the floor before adult voices were yelling.

  Garrett was yelling back, “The assholes put my sister in the locker!”

  I was so scared when the locker door was opened, and I felt the bile rise when the bright lights of the hall hit me. The world spun around me as I took in all the kids gawking at me in the hall. Three boys were bleeding on the ground and one girl. The vice principal was holding Garrett by the arms, Kerry was being restrained by Mrs. Keller, blood on Kerry's fingers and Tiffany's face. I proceeded to

  throw up all over the principal, Mr. Kent.

  I'll never live that moment down. Nor the moment mom had to leave work to come down to the principal's office to find out about it. She was so hurt we had never told her about the bullying. They suspended Garrett and Kerry for fighting. Gar had broken Troy's orbital socket and nose, and two of Larry's ribs.

  None of the girls got in trouble for all their verbal abuse, except a week's detention, and the boys who stuffed me in the locker got expelled. It took weeks for the angry red scratches across Tiffany's face to heal.

  The DA refused to press charges against the boys who had manhandled me into the locker, saying boys will be boys, it was a harmless prank, and that it would ruin their futures. Harmless? And what about my future?

  Everyone was sort of scared of Garrett after that, and a lot of the girls fawned over him. I guess being handsome and badass were attractive traits. I smiled at that though, being pretty and badass looked really good on Jane so I can relate.

  The
worst of it was that all the kids in school, for the rest of the year – knew. They knew I was the girl who got stuffed in the locker. The girl who got her popular brother suspended. The girl who threw up on the principal and had to be carried to the nurse's office when I couldn't walk because my legs had fallen asleep in the locker. That was worse than being teased. Most had pity in their eyes when they looked at me and I always felt the shame of it.

  But I'm not that weak little girl anymore, and these... these... assholes, put me in a cage! I rolled up to a sitting position, keeping my head low in the cramped space as I growled. I leaned forward and rubbed my cheek on the inside of the latch. I winced at the pain as a sharp edge cut into my cheek, but the tape peeled off. I could taste blood from the cut, but I could breathe better.

  I twisted backward and worked the tape on my arms across the latch. A few seconds later I was tearing the tape off my wrists, ignoring the new cuts there too as I quickly untaped my legs. Then I scrambled to the door of the cage and exhaled in frustration, seeing the heavy padlock on the latch.

  So I leaned back, putting my back on the back of the cage and started kicking the door solidly with both feet. The cages along the whole wall shuddered, and the dogs all went into a frenzy, the wire bent, but I couldn't break the latch or the hinges.

  So I did what any level-headed escape artist would do and did what my mom always said to do when in trouble. Her sage advice? “Scream your pretty little head off.”

  I screamed, a lot. And the splitting headache certainly made it feel like I was going to scream my head off.

  The men came back down the hall into the chaos of dozens of dogs barking in a frenzy and my screams for help. I stopped screaming, and Suit studied me as they approached, straightening his tie as Brute slammed the palm of his hand on some of the cages. Stopping a lot of the barking as the dogs started whimpering instead. That made me glare. Did they abuse the poor babies here too?