by S. L. LUCK
Outside, the sky was gray and heavy with moisture. Umbrella-swinging pedestrians hurried to their places while the last currents of morning traffic slowly abated. In his cruiser, Dan quickly reviewed his schedule while the vehicle warmed. Another day of hell awaited him, and he sighed deeply as he ran through his press conference notes.
Already late, he closed his book and was about to pull from the parking lot when something thumped against his door. He depressed his brake and peered into the back seat. Again, the door was struck, but Dan saw nothing and no one that could explain the sound. He set the car in park and curled his fingers over the door handle, ready to inspect the exterior of the vehicle, when the wide, snapping mouth of a German Shepherd smashed against the glass mere inches from his face.
Dan cried out as the dog hit the cruiser again, scraping the window with its teeth. The dog’s tongue slithered wildly against the glass, and soon the animal’s mouth was bloody and one of its teeth broke loose. Enraged barks and the clattering of nails drew the attention of onlookers, and now unprotected pedestrians ran for shelter, pointing at the breeze of fur warring against the police car.
Dan engaged the radio. “Dispatch, this is 222.”
Crackling came from the radio. “Go ahead, 222.”
The dog flew at Dan’s face, shaking the glass. “I’ve got a 10-91V out at the Sunset Motel on Brighton. The animal has me trapped in my vehicle.”
“Sunset Motel on Brighton. Copy.”
Dan looked at the dog, presently rearing for another strike. “He’s going to bust into my vehicle. 10-33. Repeat. 10-33.”
Clutching the radio on his shoulder, Dan’s other hand found his taser. Inching backward, the dog snarled, yapped and braced its paws, its mean eyes targeting the space behind the fragile glass where Dan trembled. Slowly, he unbuttoned his holster.
Just then, a door behind him opened and Dan saw in his mirror a small boy. The boy looked at the dog attacking Dan’s cruiser and froze. From the open door came no adult to usher the boy away, and Dan knew that if he didn’t do something, the dog might go for the boy. As if sensing Dan’s thought, the German Shepherd’s ears pricked up and his focus moved from Dan and to the boy. Too slowly the boy backed up, and too quickly the dog turned its body, so Dan did the only thing he could think of. With the flick of his thumb, he turned the siren on.
The dog yelped as a flash of blue and white lights stung its eyes and the heavenly-high wail of Dan’s siren punctured its ears. At once the animal calmed.
From across the street, a woman came running. “Tally!” she cried. “Tally, you get back here!”
Her shrill voice carried through the sound of the siren and through Dan’s closed vehicle. He worried that the woman’s panic might stir the animal again, but the rage that previously thrummed inside it was gone. Obediently the dog called Tally wagged his tail and trotted to his owner, a contented tongue lolling from the side of his mouth.
Dan unrolled his window an inch and watched the dog submit to the woman as she connected a leash to its collar. “Your dog almost got me there, ma’am,” he said through the opening.
“I’m so sorry, officer. I’m so sorry. He’s usually not like this. Honest. I don’t know what got into him. He’s never done anything like this before.” Her small face drew up to Dan’s window, where she saw patches of Tally’s fur and spots of Tally’s blood on the glass. Squinting, she inspected her dog’s smeared saliva on the widow. The woman’s fingers went to her open mouth. “Oh! Oh no! Oh, officer! Did he—?”
Dan nodded, nervous as he opened his door and stepped out of his cruiser. “I’m fine, ma’am, but you need to keep a leash on him. I have to ask, was he spooked by something? Or maybe he hates law enforcement? We get some of those every now and then, but you don’t look like the type to train a dog like that.” Staying close to his open door, Dan regarded the animal curiously. Tally sat panting, tilting his head up at Dan, then he whined and rolled onto his back.
“He wants you to pet him,” the woman said with a tremble in her voice.
“Two minutes ago, he wanted to eat my face,” Dan told her, puzzled.
Large, worried eyes stared back at him. “Am I in trouble, officer?”
The dog whined, his rump rubbing against the pavement as his tail wagged. It looked friendly, Dan admitted to himself, and maybe because he was tired, maybe because yesterday’s events had knocked the sense out of him, he knelt down and ran his fingers over the dog’s belly. Soft yips of pleasure came from its mouth, and before Dan could remove his hand, the dog licked his wrist.
“He seems peaceful enough,” Dan said. “But I’d like to have our animal control pay you a visit and get their thoughts on him. If they clear him, and if you cover the damage to my door, I think we’re settled. Does that sound fair to you?”
The woman nodded, and Dan recorded her information. Sirens rushed nearby, flooding the parking lot with more red and blue lights as the help Dan had called for finally arrived. He silenced the sound with a wave of his hand and bid the woman a better day. Then he returned to his car and called Sarah to apprise her of his situation and tell her that he was on his way. He would not regret using the dog as an excuse for being late.
As expected, the press was savage. Where previous conferences had the usual lineup of local reporters, today’s conference produced affiliate journalists in droves for papers from Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa to cities as far away as Edmonton, Vancouver, and even Detroit and Chicago. It was a spectacle, and Dan was in the center of it. In other cities, homegrown reporters might engage sensitively in the wake of tragedy, but Garrett’s own Jessica Chung, keenly aware of extra cameras and wider audience, drew upon her holding in the city and dragged the ordeal into something more appropriate for a referee and a three-count. Why hadn’t Dan had any answers yet? she asked. Why had it taken so long to recover the bodies? Would more people have survived if Dan’s team had responded sooner? Why was there police presence around the lone survivor? Did Dan really believe he was doing enough? Would former Chief Tom Widlow have handled the situation any differently?
While Jessica hadn’t used Dan’s actual name, she might as well have bent him over and kicked him in the ass in front of everyone, then stabbed him in the gut with one of her stilettos. She was brutal, and by the end of the conference, Dan had a raging headache.
When he finally lumbered into his office, Sarah rushed in and thrust a glass of water and two Tylenol before him. “What a bitch,” she said, watching Dan swallow his pills. She took his glass and shook her head. “I don’t know how you do it, Dan. If I were you, I would have kicked that woman’s ass out the second she opened her mouth.”
He sighed into his chair, slumping his chin onto his cupped hands. “That’s why they pay me the big bucks. Chief Shit-Putter-Upper. I should get a new nametag, don’t you think?”
“You deserve a fucking medal for that one. How does she come up with that?”
Dan shrugged. Twenty-three years on the police force and most of his interactions with journalists had been amenable, but since the Holy Redeemer cold case had been solved after a two-decade delay, there were suggestions of information withheld that could have otherwise prevented the deaths of three more people. While Phil Beecher and his team at the Garrett Gazette were understanding of the precinct’s position, Garrett’s CGTV, a small-market independent station with a staff of seven and audience consisting mostly of seniors and other isolates, took the department’s reserve as a slight against media. In the three years since, their ruined relationship had the station taking every opportunity to portray the Garrett Police as incapable, incompetent, self-important and—the worst, Dan thought—as generally unconcerned with the wellbeing of the city’s people.
He’d hoped that, given the scale of yesterday’s accident, Jessica Chung would have deferred to the tenets of empathy and understanding, but she came at him with her barbed questions and didn’t stop until a reporter from the National Post suggested none too delicately that Jess
ica herself might need counselling. The collective chuckling that filled the room was the only bright spot in his day, and he recalled it now, if only to soothe his headache.
He said, “Everyone has their defects. My mother used to tell that to me and my brothers whenever she’d hear of one of us getting in trouble at school or failing an assignment. She’d say, ‘Everyone has their defects, but the winners turn them into strengths.’ I’ll always remember that. Ms. Chung might give me heartburn, but she’s someone’s winner, I think. Besides, that station is going to hate us no matter what we say, so there’s no reason to poke them, if you get me."
A response was on Sarah’s tongue, but then something whacked against Dan’s window. When he swung his chair around, he saw a patch of feathers stuck to the glass.
“I’d say that makes at least two of us with a headache today.” He leaned toward the window and laughed to his constable, then jumped back as another bird hit the space five inches in front of his eyes. It slid down the window and fell to the ground.
Sarah came beside him and looked out. Yesterday’s wind had subsided to a slight breeze and the afternoon sun was already beginning its descent, but the field behind the station was otherwise bright and calm.
“Must be the weather,” she said, and then she was blinking at the face of a duck headed straight for the window. “I think it’s going to—" she warned when the duck hit the glass.
Dan stood and they both stumbled backward as the impact split the glass into a spiderweb of cracks.
“You got some bird food on the windowsill?” Sarah asked.
Dan shook his head. “But the way this day is going, I wouldn’t be surprised if an elephant came next.” He picked up his phone and called Marty’s Glass, explaining the need for an urgent repair. “Put something on it. I don’t care what. Anything that will keep the birds away.”
“You’re the sixth one this morning,” Marty told him. “I don’t know what’s happening out there, but it seems like all those fellas want to be inside today. I got two different schools with geese inside them, the TD bank on Weller was hit by an eagle, Boomer’s front window was shattered by a crow, and two apartments on Mitton were damaged by sparrows. Sparrows! Can you believe that? Something’s in the air, I tell you.”
“Have you seen anything like this before, Marty?” Dan asked, his previously receding headache now resisting the pills.
“Not in many years,” Marty told him. “Fifteen or twenty years ago we had quite a few strikes when that Hurricane Ivan ran through the coast down there. Something about it affected the air currents up here that’d done it to them. Busiest month we’ve ever had.” He was chewing on the phone, and Dan pulled the receiver away from his ear.
“Maybe it’s that Xavier storm near Texas,” Dan reasoned aloud, remembering the news he read before he’d finally fallen asleep in the morning. “But I think it’s already over, isn’t it?”
“Nor sure about that.” Marty swallowed. “It’s hurricane season anyway. There’s always a storm somewhere, but if it keeps going like this, I’m going to run out of stock. Ah, well. That’s how it goes sometimes, huh? Anyway, I won’t keep you, Dan. I’ll have Tina measure the window this morning, but we likely won’t be ready to install until tomorrow if it’s standard, a week if it’s not. We can close it up in the meantime, though,” Marty said helpfully.
“As soon as you can get it done, Marty, we’d be grateful,” Dan said.
“You got it,” the man responded, and Dan ended the call.
Occupied with the phone, Dan hadn’t realized Sarah was still in his office until she cleared her throat. “You want me to ask Jesse about this?” Her jaw worked at a piece of gum she had been chewing since she entered his office, and she blew a small bubble that popped almost instantly.
Sarah’s husband, Jesse Cardinal, was the city’s only animal control officer. Occasionally, such as in the case of a wandering bear or moose that strayed too far from home, protection officers from the province might assist Jesse, but not for something as small as a few birds.
Dan said, “Ask him about the birds and have him do an animal check at this address for me.” He held a small slip of paper between two fingers and gave it to Sarah, who regarded the paper with a raised eyebrow.
“The dog?” she asked.
Dan nodded. “Yup. Tell Jesse to be careful. That dog would have torn me apart had he got to me. One minute he was wild, but then … Lord help me if he wasn’t calm and friendly and wanted a belly rub. I don’t know what to make of it, and I don’t know what that dog’s going to be like when Jesse sees it, but make sure he’s prepared. Tell him to bring Johnny if he can.”
The constable rolled her eyes. “He hates working with his brother, you know that.”
“I don’t know why he doesn’t get off his ass and hire him already. He needs the help and he’s got the budget. Nepotism aside, Johnny’s a good worker. He was great when we had him over the summer.”
One of five interns the department had engaged during the recent summer months, Johnny Cardinal proved himself to be responsible, eager, and showed an infinite willingness to work hard. Unlike many graduates, he was flexible and self-motivated, and his ability to intelligently engage with Aboriginal communities was a great benefit to the department. Barely over twenty, the kid was mature and exhibited a great deal of promise. Dan himself liked the kid, but he also understood Jesse’s rationale for not wanting to hire him for animal control: Jesse was good, but he was also tragically narcissistic.
“He’s young, Sarah. Right now he’s puffing his chest, but that’ll blow over eventually. Hell, I was probably the same at his age.”
“Impossible,” Sarah disagreed.
Dan shrugged. “Whatever the case, Jesse’s going to need help. I need this done today.”
With a reluctant sigh, Sarah swung her small body around and left Dan’s office, her ponytail swinging rhythmically against her back. As she left, Dan’s mind swept again to the vision of the bus in the water and to the length of divers, firemen, paramedics, and constables carrying the bodies up the embankment, and then to the crowd of sobbing citizens. He pinched the bridge of his nose and spread his thumbs hard and wide over his eyebrows, trying to squeeze the images away, but they wouldn’t budge. Those thoughts, still there, still lurking, intermingled with impressions of snapping dogs and charging fowl. Bodies, beaks, and barks clashed inside Dan’s head, and it took the ringing of his phone to finally yank him from the melee.
“Fogel,” he answered distractedly.
Over the line there was a murmur of low chatter and the mechanical sounds of steady beeps and a powerful ventilation system. “Dan,” Greg Huxley breathed steadily into the phone. “We have a problem.”
7
In the dim light of his office, Greg Huxley flexed his fingers around his stress ball and looked out over the grounds of the hospital, three floors down. Though it was not yet dinner, the day had grown dark, and Huxley could see the glow of lit cigarettes in the hospital’s small smoking area in front of the emergency department, near the parking lot. He watched them for a time, seeing the intensity of the lights grow, recede, snuff out—when the flames of other lighters and matches spread their glow before new faces desperate for relief.
Somewhere a man cried, and Huxley returned to his desk and Anabelle Cheever’s file. Had it not been for the issue of the girl’s electrical charge, there was little doubt the girl would live. The surgery was successful, and her vitals were strong. Even the slight dip in Anabelle’s blood pressure had remedied itself. For now, she was an induced coma, as was common practice after the surgery she’d endured, but eventually the medications would have to be reduced and Anabelle would have to be wakened. Huxley estimated that would happen sometime in the next few days, perhaps a week, but the more immediate problem was how to care for Anabelle when she couldn’t be touched.
His mind turned to the image of Morley on the ground. How quickly the man had fallen. As Huxley touched the tender ab
rasions on his face, he reflected on his fortune of not ending up on a gurney like Morley. He, too, would live, but given the man’s health, the cardiac arrest he’d suffered would likely mean immediate retirement once he recovered.
Never before had a patient stumped Huxley like Anabelle Cheever. Most conditions could eventually be reasoned by science, but no matter which studies he returned to, and no matter which colleagues he consulted with, Huxley found no answer or even hint of an answer for Anabelle’s situation. At a complete loss as to how to proceed, he spent the last two hours emailing his familiar counterparts in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Philadelphia, and New York and waited for their responses. He wasn’t expecting much, but anything they gave him would be more than he had now. Lastly, he called Dan Fogel both to explain the situation of the lone survivor and to engage a protection detail to the ICU after one of the nurses found reporter Jessica Chung nosing around the nursing station after she had been escorted out only twenty minutes before.
He waited for Dan now, closing his eyes for a moment when his phone rang. Three minutes later, a tired-looking Dan Fogel was escorted to his office by one of the security guards, who quickly and wordlessly departed.
“You’ve seen better days,” Dan said, shaking Huxley’s hand.
“As have you,” the doctor responded. “Maybe we call it a career and hit the road to Vegas?”
Dan groaned. “I wish, but I’m sure the shit would find us there, too.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” Huxley agreed. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Water? Something stronger? I don’t keep anything in my desk, but my colleague in pediatrics does.” He winked at Dan.
“Wish I could, but it would probably put me out, I’m so goddamned tired. Haven’t seen this kind of hell since that fire, but this is worse, so much worse.” The quick silence was heavy on them, and the two men sighed. Dan said, “It’s good to see you, Greg, but I have to admit, I’m not sure I believe what you told me on the phone. Outside of the movies, I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
