Exit Wounds - J. A. Jance [24]
After several seconds, Tigger had let his captive go. Lucky had jumped up and gone racing around the room, his tiny claws clicking on the tile floor as he skidded around the corners. Each time he returned to Tigger, the older dog had growled and bared his teeth again, but he made no further move to attack the little interloper. The scene was so comical that Jenny had giggled with delight. Butch and Joanna, too, had laughed aloud. And now, because she had taken in the little rascal to give him a good home, Joanna was suddenly in the doghouse with her Animal Control officers.
Making up her mind, Joanna punched her intercom button.
“Yes, Sheriff Brady,” Kristin Gregovich answered.
“I’m going out for a while,” Joanna said.
“When will you be back?”
“I don’t know,” Joanna replied. “I’m on my way out to Animal Control. You might call ahead and see if Officer Phillips is there. Let her know I’m coming to see her.”
The several miles between the Justice Center and the Animal Control compound on the far side of Tin Town gave Joanna plenty of time to think about her upcoming meeting. And the more she thought about it, the more she suspected Jeannine Phillips was in the right and she was wrong. After all, police officers investigating crime scenes were charged with collecting evidence connected to whatever crime had occurred. At the same time, they were prohibited from taking any items not thought to be part of the criminal investigation.
Going strictly by the rule book, Joanna had no excuse for taking the puppy. But Lucky was by no means part of the Carol Mossman homicide, and the animal was far too small to be shipped off to a pound. That opinion was underscored when, a few minutes later, she found herself wandering through a maze of dog runs searching for Jeannine Phillips. Joanna’s passage set off a cacophony of barking. She found it difficult to look at the sad collection of animals, their muzzles pressed hopefully up against the chain-link gates, watching as Joanna walked by. One in particular caught her eye—a blue-eyed Australian shepherd bitch.
Joanna finally located Jeannine Phillips. Hose in hand, she was cleaning out an empty run. Joanna didn’t want to consider what had happened to the previous occupant. The Animal Control officer nodded in greeting when Joanna walked up, but continued hosing down the concrete-floored run.
“What can I do for you, Sheriff Brady?” she asked finally after turning off the hose. “I suppose you’re here to bitch me out for lodging the complaint?”
“Not exactly,” Joanna said. “Although I did come to talk to you about that.” She paused. “I guess it never occurred to me that saving one puppy’s life was a breach of procedure.”
“If it had been a child,” Jeannine said brusquely, “you would have turned it over to Child Protective Services.”
“But there were all those other dead dogs,” Joanna objected. “Seventeen dead dogs.”
“Right,” Jeannine agreed. “What’s the big deal about seventeen dead dogs? We put away that many every week. And by the time we get through with the Fourth of July weekend—with all the dogs that get scared and run away from home because of firecrackers and are never reclaimed—we’ll do double that next week.”
Joanna felt sickened. “That’s outrageous!” she exclaimed. “We euthanize that many? I had no idea.”
“I didn’t think you did,” Jeannine Phillips said. “But don’t feel bad. Nobody else knows, either. Since puppies don’t eat much, we can keep them a little longer. And we could probably have placed your puppy. It’s a different story with older dogs. For one thing, they aren’t that cute, and they eat too much. When the board of supervisors dished out the budget cuts, our unit took a ten percent hit right along with everyone else, Sheriff Brady. But so far I haven’t been able to convince any of the dogs that they should eat ten percent less.”
As the morning sun climbed higher