Free Catch Me by Lisa Gardner Page B

whined a little.
    I’d started buying bags of dog food five months back. She was just so skinny, and then when she kept running like that…The first vet visit was two weeks later. No fleas, no ticks, no heartworm. The vet gave her shots, gave me Frontline, then wrote up a bill that made my. 22 semiauto look cheap.
    I paid. Worked some overtime. Kept running with the dog that was not my dog. Started pouring dry food into a bowl.
    I had a Baggie of food in my pocket, had filled it when Frances had told me Tulip was waiting on the porch. Now I emptied the kibble on the front porch. Tulip advanced gratefully. She looked skinnier to me. I saw a fresh mark near her hindquarters, a tear on her right ear.
    I’d put up posters in the fall, trying to see if anyone had lost a dog. I’d even spent precious cash on an ad in the local paper. Once, I’d called animal control, but when the officer started to ask me too many questions, I panicked. I just wanted to know if Tulip had a real home, somewhere where she was loved and missed and needed to get back to. Because I understood that sort of thing, felt it myself.
    But I didn’t want her carted off to a pound, then killed, just because somewhere along the way she’d become her own creature instead of someone else’s.
    “You need a coat,” I murmured to her now, smoothing back her ears and scratching the heavier folds of skin around her neck. She leaned against me, pressed against my legs, and I could feel her body shiver again. Nineteen degrees and dropping. Couldn’t take her inside, ’cause my landlady would kill us both. But couldn’t leave her outside, quaking with the cold.
    I checked to see how much cash I had in my wallet. Enough, I figured.
    Then I looked down at the dog that was not my dog, still leaning against me, her eyes closed as she exhaled her exhaustion and worry over some misadventure I’d never know.
    “This has to be our secret,” I told her seriously.
    I hailed a cab and both of us went to work.
    “N INE-ONE-ONE. Please state the nature of your emergency.”
    No response.
    I studied my ANI ALI monitor in front of me, as the information started to scroll. “Nine-one-one,” I repeated, shifting slightly in my desk chair. “Please state the nature of your emergency.”
    “I got a big butt,” a male voice said.
    I sighed. Like I hadn’t heard that one before. “I see. And this enlarged gluteus maximus resides at ninety-five West Carrington Street?”
    “Dude!” the voice said. Laughter in the background. Giggles really. This is what happens, I reminded myself, when you work graveyard shift.
    I continued, in a professional manner: “And does this enlarged posterior belong to Mr. Edward Keicht?”
    “Man,
how
did you know?”
    “Sir, are you aware that when you dial nine-one-one, your name and address appears on our monitors?”
    Awestruck silence. “No way, dude!” Apparently, Mr. Keicht had been imbibing a little more than just beer this evening.
    “And are you aware that a prank call to nine-one-one is a felony offense that could land you in jail?”
    “Cool!”
    “Say hi to the nice policeman at your door, Mr. Keicht.”
    “All right!”
    “And remember, this is your brain on drugs.”
    I clicked off line one, then contacted one of my officers to do the deed. All calls to nine-one-one required an officer response. Hence that whole felony offense thing. In approximately three to five minutes, Mr. I Got a Big Butt wasn’t gonna be feeling so grand about life.
    One twenty A.M. My twin monitors remained blank, the phonelines quiet. Not too bad a night, but then it was only Wednesday. Call patterns had a tendency to pick up as the week went on. Friday and Saturday were madness, a deluge of domestic assaults, drunken disorderlies, and OUIs. Sunday around five was the second busiest time. The witching hour, we called it: five o’clock being the hour when most noncustodial parents were required to return the 2.2 children to the custodial