Mostly because of a comment
Feb. 23rd, 2004 03:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynon my ficlet of yesterday, I decided to sit down and work up Wayne Zhuang's dog. I've been mulling this scene over in my head for quite some time, but this is the first time I've tried to actually sit down and do anything with it.
Elaine didn't mind working at the animal shelter on Christmas. As far as she was concerned, it was a mitzvah, and one she could very easily live with. True, she was as entitled to the day off as anyone who actually celebrated the day, but she didn't mind. It meant Angela and Richard got to spend the day with their families, and she got a little extra time under her belt. Mostly time spent convincing people that they really shouldn't try to make up for the year's slights with the gift of an animal, but eh. Better the argument should be made by someone who didn't resent being at work in the first place. And there weren't that many people on Christmas Day itself- yesterday, now, that had been bad, and Zoila had lost her temper more than once. But today? Nah. Not so bad.
So she made her rounds for the third time that morning, one last check to ensure that no one was out of place or ill, and headed back with a happy sigh. She had a mug of chai gently steaming on her desk, and the first three chapters of Karl Warshauer's latest serial novel were waiting on her Pippin handset. Everything was in order.
She'd got about ten pages in when the infrared sensor over the door plinged. With a sigh, she set the Pippin aside and looked up.
The Chinese man who had just entered the shelter had the joyful, spirited look of a politician who'd been ordered to do his own taxes by hand. He looked about Elaine's height, or maybe a little taller; the way he slouched it was hard to tell. Despite the black umbrella he'd just shaken off and set in the stand, the Christmas rains had plastered his hair firmly down against his head, and there were rivulets of water rolling off the Tilley bomber he wore. It could've been worse, she supposed- his goatee was at least neatly trimmed, and didn't look as if he'd be needing a separate towel for it- but really, he didn't look at all like the sort of person whose judgment could be trusted farther than absolutely necessary. And he was in an animal shelter, on Christmas Day…
"Excuse me," Elaine called out politely. The dripping man looked up. "Can I help you?"
Visibly restraining a sneeze, the man nodded. "I want to adopt a dog," he said. "The oldest, ugliest, least adoptable dog you've got."
All right, that set off alarm bells. Elaine stepped warily out from behind her desk. "Ah, sir," she began, "I'm not really. . ." She faltered; he was looking at her. That was a triple-majored, exams-season, twenty-one-credit-semester engineering-student-with-a-key-to-the-bell-towers sort of look.
"Something wrong?" he asked, eyebrows arching ever so slightly.
"That's kind of an unusual request, sir," Elaine said with as much cheer as she could muster. "Mind if I ask you why?"
"Yeah." He turned away, craning his neck to peer in towards the pens where the larger dogs were starting to bark. "Christmas spirit."
"A-heh." For a moment Elaine considered slipping back behind the desk and tripping the silent alarm. There was something about the man that was the opposite of reassuring. "Sir, I don't think-" He sighed. She ignored it. "Look, sir, this is kind of a touchy time of year for us. We get a lot of people in here-"
"And they all want cute little puppies and fluffy little kittens to bring home and stick under the tree for the kids once Daddy brings 'em over for the court-appointed holiday visit. Yeah, I know. Must be a hard time of year to place older animals, right?"
"Well- yes-"
"So, I'd like to take an older animal off your hands. Something wrong with that?"
"N- well- not exactly. . ."
He gave her another sour look, then shook his head. "Look," he said, "I'm not gonna eat it. Geez."
"I wasn't thinking that!"
"Yeah, right, and I'm Benton Frasier."
"Who?"
"Forget it, before your time. . . Look." He fished around in the Tilley's pockets for a moment and came up with a somewhat overstuffed but still functional wallet. "Here's my ID. You can run a check on me if you want, since I know you're gonna do it anyway. I've got a job, an apartment, and a stack of used-up Tim Horton's loyalty cards as long as my arm. Check my employment history. I'm pretty sure my boss'll vouch for me." His mouth twitched in a momentary smile. "In the meantime, can I at least look at the dogs?"
Somewhere along the way she'd lost control of the conversation, and she didn't know how to regain it. Helplessly she nodded, taking the ID card from him and punching in the security code that led to the cages. "Thanks," he said as he pushed past.
"You're welcome," she called, but if he heard he gave no sign. He was already crouching in front of the big, nasty chow chow in the first pen.
With a sigh, Elaine headed back to her desk and slid her Pippin aside. Identity searches and confirms had to be done with the shelter's terminal, for liability and security purposes. Well, they said security; the terminal was several years old and probably had enough holes in its security code to double as a honeypot for would-be crackers. Mostly it was a matter of authorisation. The Federal identity-search laws were amazingly strict about who was and who wasn't permitted to lay their hands on sensitive data. As the terminal powered on, Elaine slid the man's card into the PeopleReader.
The screen flickered for a moment.
ZHUANG, WAYNE
DOB: 4/17/2017
CURRENT RESIDENCE: APT 125 // 5931 SELKIRK ST // VANCOUVER BC V6M 2Y7
EYES: BROWN
HAIR: BLACK
HEIGHT: 175 CM
- yes, yes, she knew that already. That was driver's-license stuff. Where was the-
CURRENT EMPLOYMENT: VANCOUVER PD (ECT DIV)
She blinked, half-rising from her seat. He was nowhere to be seen, so she sank back down and slid a finger across that line of the screen. The rest of his information faded by several shades; she tapped the still-bright ECT DIV and waited as the request for detail spun through the system. Moments later the answer came back: INSUFFICIENT AUTHORISATION. That was it- no TRY AGAIN, no password box, nothing.
Elaine shook her head, pushing back from the desk again. She found the man in front of the Very Big Dogs Indeed pens (as she thought of them), scritching an elderly German shepherd under the chin. "Mr. Zhuang?"
He looked up. "Something wrong?" he asked mildly.
"Well- it says I'm not authorised-"
"It would." He straightened up, pausing briefly to click the cage lock shut with one hand. "Wants a biometric- you've got a thumb reader, right? For financial transactions?"
"Yes, we- wait a minute!"
He glanced over his shoulder, his look only moderately curious.
"That cage was locked this morning- I checked it myself!"
A ghost of a smile shot across his face. "I know," he said as he started walking again. "You've got Pike locks on these cages, though."
"So?"
"So," he said, holding up a fob from which there hung far too many keys, "I'm Vancouver PD. Pike makes our handcuffs."
"You picked the lock?" Elaine asked incredulously, voice rising. Behind her, the ancient Shepherd whined.
"I dunno if you could really call it 'picking'. I mean, I used a key. It's not my fault the same master works on both kinds of lock."
"What- why did- Mr. Zhuang, you're not supposed to do that!"
"Sorry." He didn't sound particularly sorry. "The dog wanted to get a better sniff at me."
"But- you-"
"Look, I said I was sorry. I knew what I was doing, okay? Nobody was in any danger."
Elaine sputtered, but he obviously wasn't listening. They'd reached her desk, anyway. He leaned past the slimline monitor, inadvertently grabbing the tape dispenser before putting it aside and finding what he was really after- the thumb reader, tethered to her monitor by a short length of cable. "Give it a second," he said, pressing his right thumb against the scanning surface with long-practised ease.
Not quite trusting him, she slid around and into her chair. When the light on the thumb reader flashed from amber to green, she tapped the words ECT DIV again.
AUTHENTICATING. . .
AUTHORISATION ACCEPTED.
A list of names, places, and dates rolled up from the bottom of the screen. Most of them meant nothing to Elaine. As she searched for something she could recognise, she murmured, "I had no idea there were so many psychiatric crimes."
"Excuse me?"
She looked up at him. "Doesn't ECT stand for electroconvulsive therapy?"
He snorted, lifting his thumb away. The names continued to scroll. "No. Emerging Crimes and Technologies. If it's new, weird, and dangerous, and they don't know what category of crime it is because it hasn't happened enough to get properly classified yet, they give it to us. And even if they have classified it, half the time they throw it our way, just because half the offenses out there were never really what you'd call neatly categorised…"
"Like what?"
He glanced at the screen. "Intra-provincial human trafficking," he said, indicating one of the lines. "Smuggling of supposedly local-bred CITES species. Trade in unlicensed transgenic and otherwise genged organisms, SCOPE Act breaches, nanotech releases, the occasional piece of organised crime that slips in under the Mounties' radar-"
A phrase and date that Elaine actually recognised suddenly caught her eye. "The Zodiac murders," she breathed. "That was you?"
"If you mean did I arrest the guys who did it? Yeah. That was me and my partner Dennis." He suddenly looked very tired. "Not exactly our neatest case, but yeah."
She scanned the screen once more as he turned away. Most of the listings, she assumed, represented cases. There were one or two in a different format; those seemed to be commendations (or, much more rarely, reprimands). They stretched back quite a long way, all the way to-
"I didn't know the city police gave out scholarships."
"You have to agree to work for them when you graduate. Have you seen enough to convince you I’m not going to do cheap and evil things to the first animal you give me?"
She blushed, nodded. "Yeah. . . yeah, okay." A quick series of taps closed the records down and ejected the ID card, which she handed back to him. "I’m sorry, sir."
"It's all right."
"You're not looking for an animal for work, are you? Only I thought-"
"No. Not work." He stepped back and let her lead him into the pen area this time. "I'll be taking it to work with me, most likely, but I'm just looking for a companion animal."
"Do they let you do that?" She paused in front of a lethargic-looking Akita.
He shrugged. "Sometimes. Depends on the dog, and the precinct. Captain Tsang's pretty good about that kind of thing, though."
She glanced into the pen, and decided against it almost instantly. The Akita had been dumped by a family unwilling to deal with a chronically leaky bladder. Not the kind of thing you wanted in a police station. "Well… what sort of…"
"I told you already. Old. Ugly. Unpopular."
"Does it matter what breed, or sex?"
"Nope. Just as long as it doesn't go ballistic biting people, and it's running out of time."
Elaine drew a deep breath. "Out of curiosity, Mr.-" She stopped, started again. "Detective Zhuang. . . why? I mean- is there some special-" He'd been examining a caged terrier; he turned and looked at her then. She faltered and fell silent.
"Miss," he said as politely as he could, "this past June, Internal Affairs swept through every precinct in Vancouver, looking for the faintest traces of dirt they could find. My parents think I sold my father out because I told them about some of his less-than-reputable business associates before they got me in the thumbscrews. That was in June. They're still not speaking to me beyond a couple of Cantonese phrases I don't think you want me to translate. My partner, who is ordinarily the nicest human being in the entire Vancouver PD, is currently of the opinion that I am actively trying to ruin his most recent relationship because I told him I saw his latest companion at Rascals with another guy's hand down his pants. And my boss informed me yesterday that my last set of medical results were completely unacceptable, and that if I expect to keep my job come performance review time I am going to have to quit Vivvera right now, despite being up to my eyeballs in a case that seems designed by an angry God to deprive me of even the four hours of sleep I'm currently getting a night. I'd really like for there to be one creature in the world that isn't going to forget that I'm trying to get things right, and I figure you can't get much closer to that than a dog at the top of the queue for the gas chamber."
Elaine bit her lip.
"Do you think you can oblige me? Or should I go somewhere else?"
"Her name is Carter," Elaine blurted.
He blinked.
"Over here," she continued recklessly, turning and leading the man past the big dogs and towards the smaller cages. "She's scheduled to be put down next week. There hasn't been anyone willing to adopt a dog that was part of a pit-fighting ring." Wayne muttered something she didn't quite hear, and didn't try to. "We're not exactly sure what she is- she's at least half St. Francis Terrier-"
"Excuse me?"
"They used to call them American Staffordshire Terriers. Pit bulls," she added, and he nodded. "She's half that, but we don't know the rest. Just that she was being used for puppy production, only she got pyometra after her fifth or sixth litter. They had her treated and neutered, mostly because they thought they could sell her for a guard dog-"
"How do you know this?"
Elaine reached up to one of the cages. "They cut a deal with the prosecutors," she said, her voice shaking a little. "Apparently there's a pretty big market for this kind of thing, so they figured they'd sell out whoever they could and save their own hides. That's why the trial never made the papers. . . They said she wouldn't attack people, though. Since she's on the small side, they figured they'd throw her into the pit and use her as a blood dog-"
"To get the fighters used to ripping other dogs apart," said Wayne grimly.
She nodded.
"Did they get very far with that?"
"Judge for yourself," said Elaine, sliding the cage door open. "Come on, Carter- come on, sweetie, there's someone here to see you-"
From the back of the cage there came a soft whine. Elaine exchanged a look with the detective. "It's okay, sweetie," she coaxed. "The man's not going to hurt you."
Wayne peered into the cage's depths, then reached into his pocket. Holding out a triangular, vaguely beefy-smelling morsel in his left hand, he murmured something in a language Elaine didn't recognise. It sounded as if it was meant to be comforting, at least to her ears.
To the dog's as well- or, at least, what was left of them. When Carter toddled forward, the words hissed to silence in Wayne's throat; her ears, which had originally been cropped, were ragged and torn along the edges. There were scars across her brindled muzzle and back as well, and an unwholesome-looking line of dark, hairless tissue wriggled its way across the white patch at the base of her throat. She wagged her stump of a tail, whimpering with ducked head and exaggerated, awkward puppy-steps, before oh-so-cautiously leaning forward to sniff at the thing in the detective's hand.
He blinked, swallowed. "It's okay, girl," he said softly. "I bought them for you."
Elaine watched as the dog slunk forward a step further, then another. She still hadn't taken the treat. She was sniffing at Wayne's arm instead with a kind of exaggerated caution, as if she expected him to haul off and strike her at any moment. He started murmuring again in the other language, eyes fixed on a space just past the dog- almost as if, she thought, he knew that poor Carter considered any kind of eye contact a threat. His right hand came up very slowly as she watched. Carter froze, visibly cringing- but he clucked to her softly, extending that hand for her inspection as well. He smiled a little as she sniffed the fingertips; the smile broadened as her stump wagged again, and she pushed her head eagerly against the palm of his hand before daring to pick up the treat.
"Good girl," said Wayne softly, still stroking her head even as she crunched away. "Oh, that's a good girl. . ."
Carefully, very carefully, Elaine cleared her throat.
"Yes?" Wayne asked, a trace of annoyance in his voice.
She smiled anyway. "Sir," she said, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to sign these. . ."
His hand stilled on the dog's head as his eyes fell to the papers in her hand.
"Merry Christmas," Elaine added.
Elaine didn't mind working at the animal shelter on Christmas. As far as she was concerned, it was a mitzvah, and one she could very easily live with. True, she was as entitled to the day off as anyone who actually celebrated the day, but she didn't mind. It meant Angela and Richard got to spend the day with their families, and she got a little extra time under her belt. Mostly time spent convincing people that they really shouldn't try to make up for the year's slights with the gift of an animal, but eh. Better the argument should be made by someone who didn't resent being at work in the first place. And there weren't that many people on Christmas Day itself- yesterday, now, that had been bad, and Zoila had lost her temper more than once. But today? Nah. Not so bad.
So she made her rounds for the third time that morning, one last check to ensure that no one was out of place or ill, and headed back with a happy sigh. She had a mug of chai gently steaming on her desk, and the first three chapters of Karl Warshauer's latest serial novel were waiting on her Pippin handset. Everything was in order.
She'd got about ten pages in when the infrared sensor over the door plinged. With a sigh, she set the Pippin aside and looked up.
The Chinese man who had just entered the shelter had the joyful, spirited look of a politician who'd been ordered to do his own taxes by hand. He looked about Elaine's height, or maybe a little taller; the way he slouched it was hard to tell. Despite the black umbrella he'd just shaken off and set in the stand, the Christmas rains had plastered his hair firmly down against his head, and there were rivulets of water rolling off the Tilley bomber he wore. It could've been worse, she supposed- his goatee was at least neatly trimmed, and didn't look as if he'd be needing a separate towel for it- but really, he didn't look at all like the sort of person whose judgment could be trusted farther than absolutely necessary. And he was in an animal shelter, on Christmas Day…
"Excuse me," Elaine called out politely. The dripping man looked up. "Can I help you?"
Visibly restraining a sneeze, the man nodded. "I want to adopt a dog," he said. "The oldest, ugliest, least adoptable dog you've got."
All right, that set off alarm bells. Elaine stepped warily out from behind her desk. "Ah, sir," she began, "I'm not really. . ." She faltered; he was looking at her. That was a triple-majored, exams-season, twenty-one-credit-semester engineering-student-with-a-key-to-the-bell-towers sort of look.
"Something wrong?" he asked, eyebrows arching ever so slightly.
"That's kind of an unusual request, sir," Elaine said with as much cheer as she could muster. "Mind if I ask you why?"
"Yeah." He turned away, craning his neck to peer in towards the pens where the larger dogs were starting to bark. "Christmas spirit."
"A-heh." For a moment Elaine considered slipping back behind the desk and tripping the silent alarm. There was something about the man that was the opposite of reassuring. "Sir, I don't think-" He sighed. She ignored it. "Look, sir, this is kind of a touchy time of year for us. We get a lot of people in here-"
"And they all want cute little puppies and fluffy little kittens to bring home and stick under the tree for the kids once Daddy brings 'em over for the court-appointed holiday visit. Yeah, I know. Must be a hard time of year to place older animals, right?"
"Well- yes-"
"So, I'd like to take an older animal off your hands. Something wrong with that?"
"N- well- not exactly. . ."
He gave her another sour look, then shook his head. "Look," he said, "I'm not gonna eat it. Geez."
"I wasn't thinking that!"
"Yeah, right, and I'm Benton Frasier."
"Who?"
"Forget it, before your time. . . Look." He fished around in the Tilley's pockets for a moment and came up with a somewhat overstuffed but still functional wallet. "Here's my ID. You can run a check on me if you want, since I know you're gonna do it anyway. I've got a job, an apartment, and a stack of used-up Tim Horton's loyalty cards as long as my arm. Check my employment history. I'm pretty sure my boss'll vouch for me." His mouth twitched in a momentary smile. "In the meantime, can I at least look at the dogs?"
Somewhere along the way she'd lost control of the conversation, and she didn't know how to regain it. Helplessly she nodded, taking the ID card from him and punching in the security code that led to the cages. "Thanks," he said as he pushed past.
"You're welcome," she called, but if he heard he gave no sign. He was already crouching in front of the big, nasty chow chow in the first pen.
With a sigh, Elaine headed back to her desk and slid her Pippin aside. Identity searches and confirms had to be done with the shelter's terminal, for liability and security purposes. Well, they said security; the terminal was several years old and probably had enough holes in its security code to double as a honeypot for would-be crackers. Mostly it was a matter of authorisation. The Federal identity-search laws were amazingly strict about who was and who wasn't permitted to lay their hands on sensitive data. As the terminal powered on, Elaine slid the man's card into the PeopleReader.
The screen flickered for a moment.
ZHUANG, WAYNE
DOB: 4/17/2017
CURRENT RESIDENCE: APT 125 // 5931 SELKIRK ST // VANCOUVER BC V6M 2Y7
EYES: BROWN
HAIR: BLACK
HEIGHT: 175 CM
- yes, yes, she knew that already. That was driver's-license stuff. Where was the-
CURRENT EMPLOYMENT: VANCOUVER PD (ECT DIV)
She blinked, half-rising from her seat. He was nowhere to be seen, so she sank back down and slid a finger across that line of the screen. The rest of his information faded by several shades; she tapped the still-bright ECT DIV and waited as the request for detail spun through the system. Moments later the answer came back: INSUFFICIENT AUTHORISATION. That was it- no TRY AGAIN, no password box, nothing.
Elaine shook her head, pushing back from the desk again. She found the man in front of the Very Big Dogs Indeed pens (as she thought of them), scritching an elderly German shepherd under the chin. "Mr. Zhuang?"
He looked up. "Something wrong?" he asked mildly.
"Well- it says I'm not authorised-"
"It would." He straightened up, pausing briefly to click the cage lock shut with one hand. "Wants a biometric- you've got a thumb reader, right? For financial transactions?"
"Yes, we- wait a minute!"
He glanced over his shoulder, his look only moderately curious.
"That cage was locked this morning- I checked it myself!"
A ghost of a smile shot across his face. "I know," he said as he started walking again. "You've got Pike locks on these cages, though."
"So?"
"So," he said, holding up a fob from which there hung far too many keys, "I'm Vancouver PD. Pike makes our handcuffs."
"You picked the lock?" Elaine asked incredulously, voice rising. Behind her, the ancient Shepherd whined.
"I dunno if you could really call it 'picking'. I mean, I used a key. It's not my fault the same master works on both kinds of lock."
"What- why did- Mr. Zhuang, you're not supposed to do that!"
"Sorry." He didn't sound particularly sorry. "The dog wanted to get a better sniff at me."
"But- you-"
"Look, I said I was sorry. I knew what I was doing, okay? Nobody was in any danger."
Elaine sputtered, but he obviously wasn't listening. They'd reached her desk, anyway. He leaned past the slimline monitor, inadvertently grabbing the tape dispenser before putting it aside and finding what he was really after- the thumb reader, tethered to her monitor by a short length of cable. "Give it a second," he said, pressing his right thumb against the scanning surface with long-practised ease.
Not quite trusting him, she slid around and into her chair. When the light on the thumb reader flashed from amber to green, she tapped the words ECT DIV again.
AUTHENTICATING. . .
AUTHORISATION ACCEPTED.
A list of names, places, and dates rolled up from the bottom of the screen. Most of them meant nothing to Elaine. As she searched for something she could recognise, she murmured, "I had no idea there were so many psychiatric crimes."
"Excuse me?"
She looked up at him. "Doesn't ECT stand for electroconvulsive therapy?"
He snorted, lifting his thumb away. The names continued to scroll. "No. Emerging Crimes and Technologies. If it's new, weird, and dangerous, and they don't know what category of crime it is because it hasn't happened enough to get properly classified yet, they give it to us. And even if they have classified it, half the time they throw it our way, just because half the offenses out there were never really what you'd call neatly categorised…"
"Like what?"
He glanced at the screen. "Intra-provincial human trafficking," he said, indicating one of the lines. "Smuggling of supposedly local-bred CITES species. Trade in unlicensed transgenic and otherwise genged organisms, SCOPE Act breaches, nanotech releases, the occasional piece of organised crime that slips in under the Mounties' radar-"
A phrase and date that Elaine actually recognised suddenly caught her eye. "The Zodiac murders," she breathed. "That was you?"
"If you mean did I arrest the guys who did it? Yeah. That was me and my partner Dennis." He suddenly looked very tired. "Not exactly our neatest case, but yeah."
She scanned the screen once more as he turned away. Most of the listings, she assumed, represented cases. There were one or two in a different format; those seemed to be commendations (or, much more rarely, reprimands). They stretched back quite a long way, all the way to-
"I didn't know the city police gave out scholarships."
"You have to agree to work for them when you graduate. Have you seen enough to convince you I’m not going to do cheap and evil things to the first animal you give me?"
She blushed, nodded. "Yeah. . . yeah, okay." A quick series of taps closed the records down and ejected the ID card, which she handed back to him. "I’m sorry, sir."
"It's all right."
"You're not looking for an animal for work, are you? Only I thought-"
"No. Not work." He stepped back and let her lead him into the pen area this time. "I'll be taking it to work with me, most likely, but I'm just looking for a companion animal."
"Do they let you do that?" She paused in front of a lethargic-looking Akita.
He shrugged. "Sometimes. Depends on the dog, and the precinct. Captain Tsang's pretty good about that kind of thing, though."
She glanced into the pen, and decided against it almost instantly. The Akita had been dumped by a family unwilling to deal with a chronically leaky bladder. Not the kind of thing you wanted in a police station. "Well… what sort of…"
"I told you already. Old. Ugly. Unpopular."
"Does it matter what breed, or sex?"
"Nope. Just as long as it doesn't go ballistic biting people, and it's running out of time."
Elaine drew a deep breath. "Out of curiosity, Mr.-" She stopped, started again. "Detective Zhuang. . . why? I mean- is there some special-" He'd been examining a caged terrier; he turned and looked at her then. She faltered and fell silent.
"Miss," he said as politely as he could, "this past June, Internal Affairs swept through every precinct in Vancouver, looking for the faintest traces of dirt they could find. My parents think I sold my father out because I told them about some of his less-than-reputable business associates before they got me in the thumbscrews. That was in June. They're still not speaking to me beyond a couple of Cantonese phrases I don't think you want me to translate. My partner, who is ordinarily the nicest human being in the entire Vancouver PD, is currently of the opinion that I am actively trying to ruin his most recent relationship because I told him I saw his latest companion at Rascals with another guy's hand down his pants. And my boss informed me yesterday that my last set of medical results were completely unacceptable, and that if I expect to keep my job come performance review time I am going to have to quit Vivvera right now, despite being up to my eyeballs in a case that seems designed by an angry God to deprive me of even the four hours of sleep I'm currently getting a night. I'd really like for there to be one creature in the world that isn't going to forget that I'm trying to get things right, and I figure you can't get much closer to that than a dog at the top of the queue for the gas chamber."
Elaine bit her lip.
"Do you think you can oblige me? Or should I go somewhere else?"
"Her name is Carter," Elaine blurted.
He blinked.
"Over here," she continued recklessly, turning and leading the man past the big dogs and towards the smaller cages. "She's scheduled to be put down next week. There hasn't been anyone willing to adopt a dog that was part of a pit-fighting ring." Wayne muttered something she didn't quite hear, and didn't try to. "We're not exactly sure what she is- she's at least half St. Francis Terrier-"
"Excuse me?"
"They used to call them American Staffordshire Terriers. Pit bulls," she added, and he nodded. "She's half that, but we don't know the rest. Just that she was being used for puppy production, only she got pyometra after her fifth or sixth litter. They had her treated and neutered, mostly because they thought they could sell her for a guard dog-"
"How do you know this?"
Elaine reached up to one of the cages. "They cut a deal with the prosecutors," she said, her voice shaking a little. "Apparently there's a pretty big market for this kind of thing, so they figured they'd sell out whoever they could and save their own hides. That's why the trial never made the papers. . . They said she wouldn't attack people, though. Since she's on the small side, they figured they'd throw her into the pit and use her as a blood dog-"
"To get the fighters used to ripping other dogs apart," said Wayne grimly.
She nodded.
"Did they get very far with that?"
"Judge for yourself," said Elaine, sliding the cage door open. "Come on, Carter- come on, sweetie, there's someone here to see you-"
From the back of the cage there came a soft whine. Elaine exchanged a look with the detective. "It's okay, sweetie," she coaxed. "The man's not going to hurt you."
Wayne peered into the cage's depths, then reached into his pocket. Holding out a triangular, vaguely beefy-smelling morsel in his left hand, he murmured something in a language Elaine didn't recognise. It sounded as if it was meant to be comforting, at least to her ears.
To the dog's as well- or, at least, what was left of them. When Carter toddled forward, the words hissed to silence in Wayne's throat; her ears, which had originally been cropped, were ragged and torn along the edges. There were scars across her brindled muzzle and back as well, and an unwholesome-looking line of dark, hairless tissue wriggled its way across the white patch at the base of her throat. She wagged her stump of a tail, whimpering with ducked head and exaggerated, awkward puppy-steps, before oh-so-cautiously leaning forward to sniff at the thing in the detective's hand.
He blinked, swallowed. "It's okay, girl," he said softly. "I bought them for you."
Elaine watched as the dog slunk forward a step further, then another. She still hadn't taken the treat. She was sniffing at Wayne's arm instead with a kind of exaggerated caution, as if she expected him to haul off and strike her at any moment. He started murmuring again in the other language, eyes fixed on a space just past the dog- almost as if, she thought, he knew that poor Carter considered any kind of eye contact a threat. His right hand came up very slowly as she watched. Carter froze, visibly cringing- but he clucked to her softly, extending that hand for her inspection as well. He smiled a little as she sniffed the fingertips; the smile broadened as her stump wagged again, and she pushed her head eagerly against the palm of his hand before daring to pick up the treat.
"Good girl," said Wayne softly, still stroking her head even as she crunched away. "Oh, that's a good girl. . ."
Carefully, very carefully, Elaine cleared her throat.
"Yes?" Wayne asked, a trace of annoyance in his voice.
She smiled anyway. "Sir," she said, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to sign these. . ."
His hand stilled on the dog's head as his eyes fell to the papers in her hand.
"Merry Christmas," Elaine added.
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no subject
Date: 2004-02-23 12:28 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-23 12:44 pm (UTC)Would you still like some of the pet stories that I have stored up? I could start with the cactus.
Sure, I'd love to hear 'em!
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Date: 2004-02-23 12:51 pm (UTC)My parents knew each other about three weeks before getting married. Dad was in the Navy and stationed overseas in Spain. Someone get them a Scotty-mix as a gift. She lived with dad alone for a month a two before mom got over there. She and mom didn't get off on the right foot, as mom was taking the dog's man. Agie, the dog, had legs about two inches tall, she had to lay on her side to dig. She also hated big dogs with a passion. I think she would go for the jugular.
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Date: 2004-02-23 04:00 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-23 09:34 pm (UTC)Gosh, I suddenly miss having a dog.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-23 01:47 pm (UTC)The Benton Fraser shoutout made me laugh, though.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-23 05:30 pm (UTC)(Tiny nit-pick, though: the first paragraph has a fair amount of repetition in it. "True... but she didn't mind" crops up twice in quick succession, and there are two variations on "resent" in the same sentence.)
And, yeah, the Frasier joke made me giggle.
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Date: 2004-02-23 09:14 pm (UTC)As for the closest to sappy, well, yeah. This whole idea's been in my head since I caught myself thinking, 'does this man even HAVE a decent / non-prickly / non-cynical impulse left in his body?'. Next thing I knew, he scowled at me from the depths of the black pit at the bottom of my brain and promptly stalked off to the first animal shelter he could find to demand the 'oldest, ugliest, least adoptable' dog they had. After that, it's all been development of detail, really.
Wayne does have a soft spot, or at least a streak of decency. Anyone- ANYONE- who does anything Not Nice to his dog is going to-
- really, Wayne, that's a bit uncalled for, don't you think? ... Sorry, you don't want to know what he'll do with their gonads.
Cute...
Date: 2004-02-24 04:11 am (UTC)Most shelters have a policy of not doing ANY adoptions during the two weeks to a month before christmas, simply because that do-good impulse frequently wears off when the person gets the dog home and it's now housebroken, it chews, or whatever. Soemone who asks me for 'the least adoptable dog you ahve' INSTANTLY makes me go "whoa, what the hell- are you adopting a dog because you watn a dog, or because you want the recognition for adopting a dog that no one else wants.' Usually 'least adoptable' at least, in my rating system, has more to do with behavior issues than breed, age, or any other factor. (Although a former fighting dog, frankly, probably isn't adoptable at all, simply for liability reasons and the fact that if that adopter isn't completely perfect about keeping the dog contained, there's a good chance that the former figher could seriously injure or kill another pet.)
I like the warm fuzzies. It just... makes.. every realism bone in my body go creeeeeeeeiiiiik.
Cait
Re: Cute...
Date: 2004-02-24 06:11 am (UTC)In my defense, the last time my family went to a shelter for a dog, I was in high school. Still, that is no excuse for getting it grotesquely wrong. Therefore, thank you for this info, and when there is a second draft I will start fixing things.
Most shelters have a policy of not doing ANY adoptions during the two weeks to a month before christmas, simply because that do-good impulse frequently wears off when the person gets the dog home and it's now housebroken, it chews, or whatever.
Not a problem. For all that he complains about his ethnicity and wanting to assimilate, Wayne still takes Chinese New Year seriously as a family-reunion kind of holiday. Shift the date to one year after the Zodiac murders (my first introduction to Wayne came in the form of a writing exercise that involved a very exotic murder happening while Vancouver's Chinatown was at the New Year parade) and we avoid shelter policy problems. Plus, it not only has the 'family day ruined by bad attitudes on all sides' factor, but includes the anniversary of a career accomplishment that makes the Captain's 'quit NOW' pronouncement ring that much harder- and still leaves us with a nice line to sign off on. About all that I lose is the mitzvah part of it.
Soemone who asks me for 'the least adoptable dog you ahve' INSTANTLY makes me go "whoa, what the hell- are you adopting a dog because you watn a dog, or because you want the recognition for adopting a dog that no one else wants.' Usually 'least adoptable' at least, in my rating system, has more to do with behavior issues than breed, age, or any other factor.
Okay, a rephrasing is in order then. 'The dog that's been here longest'- would that be more appropriate?
(Although a former fighting dog, frankly, probably isn't adoptable at all, simply for liability reasons and the fact that if that adopter isn't completely perfect about keeping the dog contained, there's a good chance that the former figher could seriously injure or kill another pet.)
In this particular case I do have a bit of a defense, if only a tiny one. Namely: when I was looking up breeds for Carter- I had the image of what she looked like in my head, and wanted to make sure I didn't inadvertently say the wrong breed, since I know there are multiple breeds people think of as pit bulls- I was working from an American Staffordshire Terrier breed rescue site. Carter is based on several of the dogs in the 'happy endings' section of the site, the ones who were completely unsuitable for fighting and would have wound up torn apart if they hadn't been bought by dog lovers or removed by the police. She simply wasn't suitable for actually fighting- didn't have the temperament for it.
I like the warm fuzzies. It just... makes.. every realism bone in my body go creeeeeeeeiiiiik.
And that's fair. You know more about it than I do. If I didn't get it fixed now it would only cause problems farther down the line, so thank you.
Re: Cute...
Date: 2004-02-24 07:01 pm (UTC)Sure, no problem ^_^
Date: 2004-02-24 09:21 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-26 12:06 pm (UTC)