Free Scents and Sensibility by Spencer Quinn

more like an enormous skinny weed. Now he leaned forward in a weedy way and said, “Which simply indicates that your competence matches your judgment.”
    What did that even mean? Don’t ask me. But it made Bernie boil up inside. I could feel the heat! Next would come that lightning jab to the chin and then the cracking hook right off it: BAM BAM BAM , the last BAM being the sound of Malcolm hitting the ground.
    But no. Instead . . . Bernie backed away? Yes. I saw it with my own eyes. First, he glanced at that upstairs window, where Charlie was still looking out. Then he stuffed his hands in his pockets. And backed away. We walked toward the car, like . . . like we’d lost. Some dudes, when they win, keep their mouths shut. I heard Malcolm say, “. . . grounds for revisiting the whole custody arrangement.” As we got in the car, I looked back, saw Leda and Malcolm heading toward the front door, hand in hand. There was no face in the upstairs window. Not glancing back even for a moment, Bernie missed all that.
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    Valley PD headquarters are downtown, standing on one side of a little park, the college being on the other. Love college kids, myself, and it was nice to catch a glimpse of them doing college things—like working hard on their suntans and throwing Frisbees and smoking all kinds of smokables, a dense smoky cloud hanging over the park all year except for summer, when the kids were gone and the street people took over, the street people being into smokables in a smaller way but other stuff in a bigger way. We climbed the steps to headquarters, said hi to people we knew, got patted a few times—me, not Bernie—and ended up in the office of our buddy Captain Stine.
    Our buddy, yes, although not a human of the friendly-looking type. Captain Stine had a sharp-shaped kind of face and all his looks were dark. But he’d only made captain because of a case we’d cleared for the mayor, me and Bernie, details pretty much forgotten except for a cat name of Brando. Why couldn’t I forget Brando and remember all the rest instead? You tell me. Actually, don’t. What I want you to hang on to is the fact that Captain Stine—a tough cop who liked to lean on everybody and owed nobody nothing—did owe us.
    â€œAh, Chet,” Stine said. “And Bernie. Want you to meet Ms. Newburg’s boss, Carl Conte, director, Special Investigations, Department of Agriculture.”
    The only other person in the room was a dude in a suit, sitting on a chair to one side of Stine’s desk, so it had to be him. This dude was smaller than Captain Stine but also had a sharp-shaped face, and although I didn’t know about all his looks, the one he’d locked on Bernie at the moment was dark. Then a strange thought came to me: the dude—Conte, was that it?—owed us zip.
    â€œMy condolences,” Bernie said.
    Conte nodded. No handshaking took place. Bernie sat on the opposite side of the desk from Conte. I sat beside Bernie, kept my eye on Conte across the desk. He eyed me back.
    â€œI think I’ve heard of this dog,” he said.
    â€œEverybody knows Chet,” Stine said. “He’s—”
    â€œI have problems with dogs, ecologically speaking,” Conte said. “But that’s neither here nor there.”
    Whew. For a moment I’d worried we’d gone off the rails. But if something wasn’t here nor there, it wasn’t, so no worries.
    â€œUh, well then, Bernie,” Stine said. “How about you walk us through it?”
    â€œStarting where?” Bernie said.
    â€œStarting,” Conte said, before Stine could answer, “with how you got involved in my case.”
    â€œInstead,” Bernie said, gazing across the desk at Conte, kind of just like me, “since you raised the subject of dogs, how about we start with Shooter? Where is he?”
    â€œWho,”