Free Dancing With Werewolves by Carole Nelson Douglas Page B

around wire cages while I wandered among them, eavesdropping. What else is a reporter but a professional snoop? Just browsing.
    “Gosh, I hope one of these guys goes soon,” a petite redhead fretted as I passed. “The city shelter will have to kill any one that comes back today.”
    “Maybe we should put a sign out.” The plump, gray-haired woman sounded bitterly passionate. “‘Adopt me now or I die tomorrow.’”
    “ Shhh! Truth doesn’t get good homes. People can’t face that.”
    I’d seen death up close and personal at the park’s other end. I couldn’t face a return encounter here. So I hunted for an Achilles look-alike. Small, white, cute.
    These were all big dogs. Crossbred. Unwanted.
    One in particular hunched hopelessly in a big wire crate still way too small for it. It was a shaggy gray ghost of a dog, ten times Achilles’ size, nothing cute and apartment-sized about it.
    I approached the cage, then tapped the wires to see the most beautiful pale blue eyes ever, way better than my own, turn to me from a silver-and-cream furred face. A widow’s peak of darker fur over those amazing eyes made them seem almost human.
    “Too big,” I heard the women whisper behind me. “What a shame.”
    Am I easy? Maybe. Or maybe I’m just ambitious.
    “How big?” I turned to ask.
    “A hundred and fifty pounds. He’s definitely from the wolf-spitz family, but really big for the breed. Maybe a touch of Irish wolfhound or Alaskan malamute in him. The eyes are blue, but pale to gray in the right light. Random-breds are hard to tell sometimes, you know?”
    No, I didn’t know, except for the hole in my heart. I scanned the organization’s single-spaced adoption papers. Eighty dollars, no other pets, a permanent address . . .
    I copied Ric Montoya’s street address in the appropriate blanks.
    “Really? You want this guy? He’s a monster dog. You’ll need to exercise him daily.”
    “I run,” I told them. “A lot.”
    So forty minutes later I walked out of the area with a huge gray dog wearing the black leather-and-steel two-inch-wide collar he came with, attached to a new limp nylon half-inch-wide leash, blue with white letters reading Nevada SPCA.
    He will go where I lead, and that’s to Sunset Road coming up on 4:00 pm.

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    “Okay,” I told him like he could get it. “I’m new here too. We’ve got to swing on a star and get into this place by hook or by crook. You ready?”
    The pale blue eyes said yes.
    We lurked outside in the juniper bushes until the pool service truck paused, then gunned past the electrically opened gate. We slipped in after the truck. I led. He followed. I held his leash. He already held my heart.
    Can we really storm this castle? And, if so, who will care?
    The truck chugged past the second round of gates, but I spotted the needed squawk box here. Also a camera eye. I’m attuned to recognizing cameras. I went on tiptoe to hit the lever and speak my piece into the impersonal infrared eye.
    “Hi, Mister Nightwine. My name is Delilah Street. I’m a TV reporter from the heartland, and I’ve got a few questions about a dead body on a recent episode of Las Vegas CSI V .”
    I heard the echo of my own words. Recorded. Dismissed. No go.
    Suddenly the box squawked back at me, sounding like a televangelist. Rotund. Ponderous. With great big bad hair.
    “Miss Street. My deepest apologies for keeping you and your, er, associate, waiting. My man will be down post haste.”
    “Post haste,” I told my new dog.
    He tilted his huge head, then whimpered and strained at his leash, showing his teeth in a big grin. My God, he had a maw the size of a grizzly bear’s! Good