Free The Defenseless by Carolyn Arnold

quiet.
    “Something happened, didn’t it? I can tell by your faces.”
    “You don’t read the paper, or watch the news?” Zach asked.
    She slowly shook her head. “Between here, night class, and another paying job, no. What happened?” She paraphrased her original question. Her eyes clearly communicated she wasn’t going to back down until she had her answer.
    “A man was murdered, and we believe it has to do with his past. He was charged with poisoning a dog, but ended up beating those charges.”
    Alisha ’s eyes blanked over. “We haven’t had a case like that in a while. We recently brought in a few cats who were given antifreeze to drink.”
    “This specific instance goes back over twenty years.”
    “He was killed twenty years ago?”
    “No, he was killed last week, but the charges go back that far.”
    “Oh.”
    “Oh?” Paige mimicked, hoping Alisha would expound on her line of thought.
    Alisha shook her head. “All I know is, I didn’t do it. I know what I just said—” She crossed her arms.
    “We’d like you to walk us through the process of placing charges,” Zach said.
    “From the beginning? Let’s see. We have what we call agents. They are specifically trained for handling these types of situations.”
    “Types of situations?” Paige asked for clarity.
    “When we have to go in and get the animals out of these homes. First, we’ll receive a report of abuse. From there we arrange for one of these agents, along with staff from the shelter, to go to the address, and, of course, cops need to be there too.”
    Paige nodded. “Whenever a formal charge is involved, that would make sense.”
    “Exactly. That’s the gist of it, but basically, just as a lawyer makes a case for the courts, the same is true when it comes to the agent. They are responsible to ensure that we gather everything to support the charge and have this submitted as evidence in the case. If they mess up and forget to log something, it’s too late. There’s no amendment. A few guilty parties have walked because of this.”
    “Give us an example.”
    “Proof of ownership.” Alisha adjusted her stance. “First you have to prove that the animal fell under the person’s care. Whenever you remove an animal from a property, they must sign off that you’re taking them. This serves as proof of ownership. I know in at least one case this let a man get off. He and his live-in girlfriend had over thirty cats. They were tired of them taking over. They called for us to get them off the property. It started off as a plea for help, but when our volunteer told them it would take time to arrange something like this, the man said that if we didn’t get there within a half hour, they’d poison the cats.”
    “What happened?”
    “Everything was arranged in a thrown-together rush and we were still too late for some of them. We pulled in and the man was walking back to the house from the barn. He had just laid out the rat poison and antifreeze.”
    The thought that a human being would do something like this had Paige’s stomach churning. “I can’t believe people are capable of this.”
    “You’ve probably seen a lot worse.”
    Paige swallowed awkwardly. The woman was right, on a certain level. The victims she sought justice for were humans, but it somehow struck her as worse when the abused were animals. It went against the natural order where men were to care for them. She spoke her thoughts out loud. “I’m used to seeing people taking out their own perverse justice against other people, but not their aggressions on an innocent animal.” Realizing that she phrased it used to seeing made her realize how callous the job had made her.
    “It is rough to witness.”
    “So what happened in this case?”
    “The one with the cats? The property owner signed off for every cat removed, but these weren’t submitted as evidence, and once you’ve had your say, well, you’re done there.”
    “They walked?”
    “Yep. And sadly,