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xianghua I've edited this to make sure it's a little more realistic. I haven't had the energy to work on John *or* Sergeant Preston today. Editing's about the max of it.
There were some days when the animal shelter on Forty-seventh Street in Vancouver, BC, had its first would-be adopters arriving before lunch. There were even some days when people were waiting at the door when Elaine (or Richard, or Angela, or Zoila, any of whom might have morning shift) arrived. Today, a grey, wet, drippy day at the trailing end of January, was not one of those days.
Elaine didn't ask why. As far as she was concerned, it was a mechaieh, and one she could very easily live with. She liked the job, she really did- well, most of it, anyway- it was just that she didn't much care to deal with people before, oh, noon. There were too many things that had to get done. Feeding, mucking-out, the once-over to see if any of the animals had gone ill or hurt themselves during the night; all of it had to get done, and none of it worked very well when there were prospective clients around. You had to give your attention to one or the other and if it came right down to it, Elaine would rather ignore the people and keep to the animals. Impossible, of course, but there it was.
The cages were cleaned and the food dishes filled before she had enough time to look at the calendar. Huh. She'd missed the fact that it was Chinese New Year somehow; normally she liked to visit Chinatown then, take in at least one of the parades. Oh, well. She'd stop by when her shift was over. There would probably be stuff still going on. Come to think of it, there'd be celebrations for the next two weeks straight. The thought cheered her considerably, which was a good thing; Yojimbo, a chronically incontinent Akita who'd been dropped off last week, was at the top of her list of animals to check more closely. He had a tendency to worry at a particular patch of skin on his side, according to the family that gave him up. Sure enough, she found him nibbling at a half-bare patch just forward of his hip. Well, there were ointments to work on that, but what he really needed was someone who could get him away from that kind of repetitive behaviour. If they had a few more volunteers, maybe. As it stood, the best she could do was find the foul-tasting antibiotic ointment and spread it on the spot despite his protests.
Thankfully, there weren't a lot of special cases. The others were mostly cats with chronic health troubles, and those were settled quickly. She finished her rounds with a slow check-up on the dogs at the very back of the shelter. Those cages were never easy; that was where they kept the dogs coming to the end of their time. Forty-seventh Street had neither the space nor the money for a no-kill policy, and some animals. . . well, there were some animals nobody wanted, despite all their efforts. Some of them had such behavioural problems that Elaine figured it was probably a mercy. Others needed more ongoing veterinary care than the people who visited Forty-seventh Street could possibly manage. The rest just didn't click with anyone, and made their last walk with such everyday cheer and energy that most of the shelter's staff couldn't bear to watch. She made sure to spend a little extra time in front of those cages. It seemed like the least she could do.
When she'd finished, she headed back to her desk, concentrating on what was waiting for her instead of what she'd seen. It was the only way to deal with the back end of that room. She had a mug of chai gently steaming on her heat-spot, 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 wince, 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 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 a day when anyone Chinese should've been celebrating or visiting family.
"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 dog you've got. Preferably one who hasn't got a lot of time left."
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. It 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. "It's New Year."
"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're all bringing back the cute little puppies and fluffy little kittens that Dad stuck under the tree for the kids on the court-appointed Christmas and Hanukkah visits. 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 Fraser."
"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 to open the door into the cage area. "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: DETECTIVE, VANCOUVER PD (EET 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 EET 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 scritching an elderly German shepherd under the chin through the bars. "Detective Zhuang?"
He looked up. "Something wrong?" he asked mildly.
"Well- it says I'm not authorised-"
"It would." He straightened up, pausing briefly to give the dog one final scritch.. "Wants a biometric- you've got a thumb reader, right? For financial transactions?"
"Yes, we- hey, come back here!" He'd gone on ahead of her, strides lengthening to the point where she had to scramble to catch up.
When she reached him again, he was already at her desk. 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 EET 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, "What does EET stand for?"
He lifted his thumb away. The names continued to scroll. "Emerging and Exotic 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 said. "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 Yojimbo's pen.
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. Yojimbo's little problem needed more than training to fix. "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, Detective... 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, and she could hear the strain in his voice, "this past July, 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 July. They're still not speaking to me beyond a couple of Cantonese phrases you don't want me to translate. My partner, ordinarily the nicest human being in the entire Department, believes that I am trying to ruin his most recent relationship because I told him I saw his latest companion at Rascals with his hand down another guy's 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 per 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 do the right thing, 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, leading the man past the big dogs and into the back of the room. "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 instead of fighting, only she got pyometra after her fifth or sixth litter. They had her treated and neutered- 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. "The market's big enough that they sold out a bunch of other breeders to save their own hides. That's why the trial never made the papers, there wasn't one... She won't attack people, though, not even when she's provoked. Her owners figured she was useless when they found that out. Since she's on the small side, they decided 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, meat-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 once-cropped ears were so ragged and torn along the edges that it was a wonder they stood up at all. 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 Wayne'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 right 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.
"Happy New Year."
xianghua I've edited this to make sure it's a little more realistic. I haven't had the energy to work on John *or* Sergeant Preston today. Editing's about the max of it.There were some days when the animal shelter on Forty-seventh Street in Vancouver, BC, had its first would-be adopters arriving before lunch. There were even some days when people were waiting at the door when Elaine (or Richard, or Angela, or Zoila, any of whom might have morning shift) arrived. Today, a grey, wet, drippy day at the trailing end of January, was not one of those days.
Elaine didn't ask why. As far as she was concerned, it was a mechaieh, and one she could very easily live with. She liked the job, she really did- well, most of it, anyway- it was just that she didn't much care to deal with people before, oh, noon. There were too many things that had to get done. Feeding, mucking-out, the once-over to see if any of the animals had gone ill or hurt themselves during the night; all of it had to get done, and none of it worked very well when there were prospective clients around. You had to give your attention to one or the other and if it came right down to it, Elaine would rather ignore the people and keep to the animals. Impossible, of course, but there it was.
The cages were cleaned and the food dishes filled before she had enough time to look at the calendar. Huh. She'd missed the fact that it was Chinese New Year somehow; normally she liked to visit Chinatown then, take in at least one of the parades. Oh, well. She'd stop by when her shift was over. There would probably be stuff still going on. Come to think of it, there'd be celebrations for the next two weeks straight. The thought cheered her considerably, which was a good thing; Yojimbo, a chronically incontinent Akita who'd been dropped off last week, was at the top of her list of animals to check more closely. He had a tendency to worry at a particular patch of skin on his side, according to the family that gave him up. Sure enough, she found him nibbling at a half-bare patch just forward of his hip. Well, there were ointments to work on that, but what he really needed was someone who could get him away from that kind of repetitive behaviour. If they had a few more volunteers, maybe. As it stood, the best she could do was find the foul-tasting antibiotic ointment and spread it on the spot despite his protests.
Thankfully, there weren't a lot of special cases. The others were mostly cats with chronic health troubles, and those were settled quickly. She finished her rounds with a slow check-up on the dogs at the very back of the shelter. Those cages were never easy; that was where they kept the dogs coming to the end of their time. Forty-seventh Street had neither the space nor the money for a no-kill policy, and some animals. . . well, there were some animals nobody wanted, despite all their efforts. Some of them had such behavioural problems that Elaine figured it was probably a mercy. Others needed more ongoing veterinary care than the people who visited Forty-seventh Street could possibly manage. The rest just didn't click with anyone, and made their last walk with such everyday cheer and energy that most of the shelter's staff couldn't bear to watch. She made sure to spend a little extra time in front of those cages. It seemed like the least she could do.
When she'd finished, she headed back to her desk, concentrating on what was waiting for her instead of what she'd seen. It was the only way to deal with the back end of that room. She had a mug of chai gently steaming on her heat-spot, 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 wince, 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 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 a day when anyone Chinese should've been celebrating or visiting family.
"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 dog you've got. Preferably one who hasn't got a lot of time left."
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. It 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. "It's New Year."
"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're all bringing back the cute little puppies and fluffy little kittens that Dad stuck under the tree for the kids on the court-appointed Christmas and Hanukkah visits. 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 Fraser."
"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 to open the door into the cage area. "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: DETECTIVE, VANCOUVER PD (EET 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 EET 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 scritching an elderly German shepherd under the chin through the bars. "Detective Zhuang?"
He looked up. "Something wrong?" he asked mildly.
"Well- it says I'm not authorised-"
"It would." He straightened up, pausing briefly to give the dog one final scritch.. "Wants a biometric- you've got a thumb reader, right? For financial transactions?"
"Yes, we- hey, come back here!" He'd gone on ahead of her, strides lengthening to the point where she had to scramble to catch up.
When she reached him again, he was already at her desk. 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 EET 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, "What does EET stand for?"
He lifted his thumb away. The names continued to scroll. "Emerging and Exotic 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 said. "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 Yojimbo's pen.
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. Yojimbo's little problem needed more than training to fix. "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, Detective... 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, and she could hear the strain in his voice, "this past July, 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 July. They're still not speaking to me beyond a couple of Cantonese phrases you don't want me to translate. My partner, ordinarily the nicest human being in the entire Department, believes that I am trying to ruin his most recent relationship because I told him I saw his latest companion at Rascals with his hand down another guy's 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 per 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 do the right thing, 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, leading the man past the big dogs and into the back of the room. "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 instead of fighting, only she got pyometra after her fifth or sixth litter. They had her treated and neutered- 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. "The market's big enough that they sold out a bunch of other breeders to save their own hides. That's why the trial never made the papers, there wasn't one... She won't attack people, though, not even when she's provoked. Her owners figured she was useless when they found that out. Since she's on the small side, they decided 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, meat-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 once-cropped ears were so ragged and torn along the edges that it was a wonder they stood up at all. 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 Wayne'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 right 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.
"Happy New Year."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-03-02 09:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-02 11:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-03 05:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-03 06:47 am (UTC)typo?
Date: 2004-03-03 11:17 am (UTC)CURRENT EMPLOYMENT: DETECTIVE, VANCOUVER PD (EET DIV)
followed by
ECT DIV
and then the conversation about EET.
Re: typo?
Date: 2004-03-03 08:13 pm (UTC)SK on Wayne Gets His Dog
Date: 2004-03-05 05:18 am (UTC)wayne..
Date: 2004-03-13 04:08 pm (UTC)Are you interested in a little geographic/misc. trivia in the name of greater authenticity? (asked the 35 year Lower Mainland/Greater Vancouver area resident)
Re: wayne..
Date: 2004-03-13 07:59 pm (UTC)Re: wayne..
Date: 2004-03-13 10:15 pm (UTC)Okay: first off, there is not a Forty-Seventh St. in Vancouver. There is however, East 47th and West 47th. East 47th would be where there would more likely be a shelter, but both are far outside of Chinatown proper.
Secondly, as of about 2 years ago, all the shelters in the province went no kill about 2 years or so ago. (At least all of the SPCA shelters. I don't know if the city itself has a dog pound.) The only exceptions are animals ruled unadoptable for severe behavioural issues or too ill.
That said, i thought it was a terrific story.
Re: wayne..
Date: 2004-03-13 10:28 pm (UTC)Day and a half in Victoria, day and a half in Nanaimo for the bathtub races, and four days in Tofino. No farther than that.
Okay: first off, there is not a Forty-Seventh St. in Vancouver. There is however, East 47th and West 47th. East 47th would be where there would more likely be a shelter, but both are far outside of Chinatown proper.
I have no idea why I failed to include a direction. I believe I meant to say 'East 47th' and somehow forgot. I think I looked up animal shelters on Sympatico Yellow Pages and pulled East 47th as an address... I'll fix that when I get the chance.
Secondly, as of about 2 years ago, all the shelters in the province went no kill about 2 years or so ago.
Okay, didn't know that. Granted, policy might change by Wayne's time- his birth date is currently 2016 or so, although I need to scootch that back a few years. I'll remember that, though.
That said, i thought it was a terrific story.
Thanks!