Cadaver Dog (7 page)

“I mean,” Mark said, “a crimson wasp was put in this stroller last night, then taken out today and placed somewhere in this mall. It is a great decoy.”

“No,” Angie growled, barely able to contain herself, “It is a great source. You may have another wasp around here, but this is a wasp. Congratulations. You’ve proven that against a direct order to stay away from the source, my dog will still locate your damn wasp.”

“But this isn’t the target,” Director Summers said slowly, like he was talking to a child. “There is still a wasp in this mall, and it hasn’t been found.” He looked at his watch. “And you only have ten minutes left to find it.”

“That is bullshit!” Angie yelled. “This is a bullshit test and you are full of bullshit if you don’t accept my dog into your program. To hell with it. I don’t want my dog in your program.”

Angie leashed Murder and walked out to her pickup and drove away.

Chapter Five

She ignored Dr. Saracen’s calls, not because she was angry with him but because of everything else. And she was embarrassed. She cursed her ‘all-bitchiness’ temper. She wondered why she couldn’t stop the words from coming out of her mouth. She thought of calling somebody to talk about it, but the few people she could think of were more colleagues than friends. That got her thinking of her anti-social tendencies and how her father had always said she needed to join a dog club or something just so that she could socialize with the outside world.

She was an anti-social, tempestuous, slovenly (looking at her house, which looked like the dilapidated house in a Febreeze commercial—
With Febreeze, You Won’t Realize How God-Awful Nasty Angie Graves’s House Smells
—
Angie Graves, the home that smells like a grave
) agoraphobe who can only talk to dogs. It was a downward spiral for her, one that usually ended at the bottom of a pizza box and cheap romance books.

A few days later, the dogs were in the house, and she was eating pizza and scrutinizing her body in the mirror, thinking of how her hair was as greasy as an oil check garage and how when she was a teen her aunt had said that she had “Similac breasts” because there was no way she was ever going to breast-feed children with what she had under her shirt.

Her cell rang. She wanted to silence her phone. She wasn’t taking calls, not even when the hospital called to confirm she was negative for Hepatitis C and AIDS. This time, though, the ringtone sounded like the calling card pipe organ music to the
Phantom of the Opera
. That meant it was Lieutenant Hankamer. She answered the phone.

“I really can’t,” she started to say when she was interrupted.

“I need to see you. Now. Drop whatever you’re doing and come on over. It’s about the zombie you found in the funeral home.”

“Oh, uh, okay.” Angie thought about saying she needed time, but that wouldn’t make sense to Jasper, who didn’t care one way or the other because he had already ended the call.

Jasper Hankamer’s small office was Spartan in design, with 1970s wood paneling under a quilt of stained ceiling tiles. On the cheap veneer of an old aluminum office desk stood a line of radios. The room had three padded fold-up chairs, two in the front of the desk and one behind it. Jasper shut the door behind them as Angie entered.

“I do not pay you for the human remains recovery work you conduct for my PD. I have, however, recommended you to Denver and Chicago units, who purchased your bomb dogs,” Jasper said.

“What are you getting at?”

“I am about to say something, and I don’t want it to come off as tit-for-tat. You and me, we already have that established. So this is in no way connected to our working relationship. Animal Control has asked for you.”

“Those sons of bitches set me and my dog up. I would never work for a couple of degenerates like them.”

“Degenerates like the Director of Animal Control?” Jasper said sarcastically.

“Damn straight.”

“They told me there was a misunderstanding at the demonstration. They were very impressed with you and your dog.”

“Impressed? Did they really use that word?”

“More or less.”

“There is a lot of interpretation to ‘More or Less.’”

“What is important is that you want to continue doing cadaver work for me. You need it. You feed off of it the way some cops feed off the thrill of the chase. And if you want to keep doing it, Angie, then you are going to help Animal Control. You are going to do exactly what they tell you to do. Hell, they’re even going to pay you for each find. Don’t that sound like the kind of deal you want to make?”

“I don’t deal with liars and thieves.”

“I don’t care what you think of them. You need to rearrange your thinking. If you ever want to be called out again by my unit to do cadaver work, you will work with Animal Control.”

“If you don’t have me to do your human remains work, who are you going to use?”

“Steve Franklin out of Alpine County Search and Rescue. He has a dog he says is ready.”

“Steve is over 300 pounds and Alpine County is an old person’s club.”

“You aren’t hearing me, Angie. I don’t care if he is 400 pounds, 100 years old, and has trained parakeets to find human remains, you don’t support Animal Control and I will make him my go-to handler.”

Angie could not think of a good retort that would make her look more clever than him, so she didn’t say anything. She walked out on Jasper.

Before she could begin work, she had to visit the director. He wanted to see her before she was processed.

Director Mark Summers was on his phone, so Angie had to wait ten minutes before she could be seen. She perused his office. He had diplomas from Embry-Riddle. There was a large metal device lying on his desk. She could not make out the function of the device. There was a small family photo of him, his wife, their two dogs, and a Pomeranian, but other than that, there was no “animal” in the director’s office.

Unlike the more quaintly furnished sheriff’s office, the director’s office did not have folding chairs or wood paneling. His chairs were high-backed, with lumbar support; the walls were obviously thin. Everything about his office proclaimed his department fiscally responsible. State-of-the-art by the lowest bidder. Angie chuckled.

Dr. Saracen knocked at the door, and the Director waved him in like he did Angie. Dr. Saracen smiled at her as he took his seat.

The Director caught Angie scrutinizing his room, so after he hung up, he said, “To be honest, this place has always felt a little too grandiose for me. When I was a little kid, my older brother used to tell me, ‘you know how to tell the cool kids from the posers? The cool kids never try.’  This building is trying to sell a product everybody’s already buying. I guess it tries too hard for me.” His honesty was a little off-putting.

“I was thinking of the phrase, ‘state of the art,’” Angie said. “I was wondering where it came from. Why would anything be called state of the art? I mean, to call a device ‘high engineering quality’ or simply ‘well built,’ that makes sense. But ‘state of the art.’  Shouldn’t that be reserved for opera houses and libraries?”

“I used to be an engineer with the county, so I can appreciate that, Ms. Graves.”

“How does an engineer get to run Animal Control?” Angie asked.

“When Animal Control focuses on using robots. Still, at least it isn’t like the Animal Control offices down south. Those are grand cathedrals to zombies. I guess we don’t get enough bugs up here to warrant the attention. The winter cold keeps the numbers low.”

“Right. It makes me wonder why Animal Control has their panties in a bunch trying to make me happen.”

“Do you know who that was on the phone? That was a concerned citizen. Mother of two. She owns the Jack Calf Garden Center on High Point. You may have been there. My wife and I go there sometimes. She was calling to complain about goats getting into her property despite the fencing she puts up. The goats are not there now, so I gave her the emergency dispatch number and told her to call when and if the goats return. She then asked me about the new Wolfs and whether they were a good expenditure of tax dollars. I detailed the functionality differences between the old and new Wolfs. When that didn’t help her, I explained to her the budget process and that her city councilman voted for the new Wolfs. She thanked me for her time and then we hung up.”

Director Summers steeled his voice to ask “Did you know that the word
samurai
means to serve? I think every government worker should know that. We are here to serve the public. We owe it to use funding wisely and make the best judgments based on the benefit to our citizens. I tell you this because I want you to know that I have no ulterior motive. I have no vendetta against you. I’m not some ungracious bureaucrat insensitive to the work you both have done. But I have a duty to the people to ensure that we do what is best for them.”

“What is best for them is that we find the larvae,” Angie said, “And we find out if these zombie bastards are stealing our elderly and our young.”

“But how do I know you will track larvae? So far, you have shown me that you can track wasps, not larvae.”

“But we have no larvae,” Angie said. “Only wasps. How can I use larvae when I don’t know if they exist?”

“Exactly,” Director Summers said.

“Correction,” Dr. Saracen interjected. “We KNOW they have larvae. All wasps pass through a larval stage. We just haven’t been able to find the burrows yet.”

“You still haven’t proven to me that you can find the burrows.”

“The strategy,” Angie said, “Is for us to track the wasp. We will follow it back to its burrow.”

“Emerald wasps,” Dr. Saracen added, “Die shortly after dropping their eggs. So the zombie should lead us to its burrow.”

Director Summers turned his attention to Angie. “What are you searching for, Ms. Graves? What I mean is, what drives a woman to teach her dog to hunt zombies?”

“I like working with dogs. What difference does it make?”

“It makes all the difference. If you are going to be in my employment, I need to know what motivates you. To put it another way, ‘Why do you want to work for the Animal Control Department of Jack Calf, Colorado?’”

“I’m not searching for anything.”

“Everybody’s looking for something.”

“Take me as I am or leave it, Director Summers.”

The director folded his hands and thought on this for a moment, long enough for Angie to notice the drabness of his cigar-colored jacket and tapioca pants. It was dull, and she’d had enough. As she was getting up to leave, the director stopped her.

“Well, you left before we could finish the exam. After careful consideration, the esteemed brotherhood of the wasp hunters has accepted you in its ranks. You will go out on calls for zombie sightings where the location of the zombie is not known. You are to help the Animal Control officers, but remember that you work for them, not the other way around. As appropriate, and long as you do not interfere, you can pursue the burrows theory.”

“And for all this I get a small fee. What’s the hitch?”

“That despite what I saw out there, I don’t believe your dog can do this line of work. Houston has an office that has been trying to develop a zombie dog for years, and they can’t get the dog to distinguish between a cockroach and a wasp or a dead guy who lies in the grave and a dead guy who walks the earth. But they’ve heard about you, Mrs. Graves, and your special dog. They want to know if he can really work. If I let them, they’d have you wrapped up in demonstrations and presentations for the next three months. And when your dog makes a mistake, guess who it will all fall back onto?” He paused a moment to catch his breath and said, “I want you, Mrs. Graves, because Animal Control has purchased two new scent-detecting robots. I want to prove they are field-ready. More importantly, you are going to help me prove that they are better than your dog.”

“You don’t know me very well if you think I’m going to help you prove my dog is ineffective.”

“Is your dog ready? Be honest.”

“Training these specializations takes years, not months.”

“Then, Mrs. Graves, you don’t have to do anything but take your dog on the hunts. History will take care of the rest of it.”

The portion of the dome that the mountains and trees allowed to be seen had dropped two inches of water earlier in the morning. It was a rare downpour in the middle of an unrelenting heat wave. The rain and the cool air the front brought with it had revitalized the mountains. Birds were chirping, leaves were opening up, and the after-rain smell was still thick and pungent when Angie rode up on her father. She had saddled one of his horses from the stable and ridden up the mountainside after him.

In the metal corral stood a young boy and a small horse. Also in the corral, kneeling, was her father. The boy was watching the horse, and her father was keenly watching the boy.

The boy was about to take a step−his heel pulled away from the soft earth slightly−when her father said in his soothing voice, “Be patient.”

The boy rolled back onto his heel and waited some more. His hand was outstretched, inviting, open. In the other hand, tucked at his side, was a carrot.

The horse walked up to the boy and put her nose to the boy’s hand. The boy turned to Angie’s father. The boy’s face opened up with quiet happiness.

Half an hour later, the boy was driving a truck that had little more than a few boards and an exposed driveshaft in the back. Angie and her father followed behind.

When they got back to the house, a cherry red Camaro was waiting. The boy’s father sat in his car, fumigating the yard with exhaust while he chain smoked.

“Thanks, Mr. G!” the boy said, waving his hand as he ran up to the Camaro. As soon as the boy got to the car, a transformation overcame him. His shoulders tightened and his spine stiffened. He climbed into the car and looked straight ahead as his father turned around.

“You spend your life studying animals, and people think they’re different somehow. That they aren’t like animals,” her father said. “Is it right for anyone to become so tense by getting into a car?”