Free Bones Omnibus by Mark Wheaton Page A

of knocking and one shout of, “Police! Anyone inside the apartment?”
    The little girl had taken the shepherd into the bathroom and washed the blood off his snout in the bathtub. She’d gone to get a bowl from the kitchen to fill with water, only to come back and find Bones thirstily lapping up the bloody water draining out of the tub. Making a command decision, she opened the toilet lid and urged the dog to drink. He did until the bowl was empty, so she flushed, and he drank that dry as well.
    She eyed the apparatus on his back but wasn’t sure how to remove it. In her search, she discovered his plastic name strip attached to his harness.
    “Your name is Bones?”
    Bones responded with a questioning glance and Becca nodded. “Bones it is. Are you hungry?”
    Bones licked his chops. Becca smiled.
    “Let me see what we’ve got.”
    Becca went back to the kitchen. The German shepherd followed.
    The refrigerator was stocked with the same thing it was always stocked with: fruit and lunch meat, items Kenny brought home from the warehouse. For a long time, Becca worried that he stole it. But then, she’d learned to read the expiration dates and saw that the meats were almost always a couple of days past due and the fruit never less than ripe.
    “They throw it away, can you believe that?” Kenny said every time he brought the stuff home. “Boxes and boxes and ‘returns.’ It would just go to a landfill somewhere. The night manager says anybody who wants it can take it so long as you don’t call in sick after.”
    Becca sorted through the meat drawer. She found several packages of cold cuts now too rancid to eat, some having gone gray, others green. She finally came across a package of hard salami ringed with pepper that had only expired the previous Monday. Opening it, the little girl took out a couple of slices, and tossed them to Bones. He devoured them in one bite, so she simply placed the package on the floor and let the shepherd eat the whole thing.
    When he finished it, he stared up at her expectantly, clearly wanting more. She went back to the meat drawer and selected the next most recently expired package.
    “I really hope you don’t throw up after this.”
    When the police rolled up to Neville Houses, Trey was smoking out with his friends Alvis and Pluto outside Building 3.
    “5-0!” somebody cried out, half-ironically, but already hightailing it away.
    “If they’re after us, they’re gonna be pretty disappointed we ain’t holding,” Alvis cried, hopping to his feet and tossing his joint away. “Still, locker room?”
    “
Locker room
,” Trey nodded.
    Trey pushed the joint through a storm grate and followed. He was high as a kite and knew it, having been drinking since the afternoon. But he’d run in a fog before and knew to push all thoughts aside that didn’t involve placing one foot in front of the other.
    There was a maintenance locker room in the basement of four of the sixteen buildings that made up Neville Houses. The lockers served a dual purpose, giving the workers somewhere to change and keep their personal belongings, but also a place to lock up tools and equipment. Everything got stolen in Neville Houses, this much was understood, but no one stole from the lockers. If Granny on the ninth floor of Building 12 started flooding the place after clogging her sink, the right tool better be there or the neighbor downstairs was going to beat in some heads the next day. That’s why the locker room itself was never locked: a reminder to would-be thieves to think before getting grabby.
    The other thing about the locker room, the thing that appealed to Trey and his friends, was that there were four different ways to get in and out of it. One door that opened into the building, one that opened out into the courtyard, a service hatch that followed along the trash chute and let you out on any floor, and then a second hatch that took you under the building into the warren of water and gas pipes