“Never can tell,” I answered.
If there was one thing I’d learned in this job, it was that people were a lot stranger than animals.
*
At five-thirty, Joaquin flicked the lock on the front door and turned off the waiting room lights, then followed me through the exam room to the rear exit.
Trees ringed the parking lot that backed my clinic. Only my Bronco and a waste receptacle occupied the space. However, I’d had a night-light installed, and it blazed bright as the noonday sun.
“Sorry to leave you with the Horace and Tigger problem,” I said.
“It was my fault for letting Horace run free.”
It had been, and I bet he never did it again. Between patients I’d seen him sweeping up dirt from an overturned potted plant and wiping the floor beneath one of the chairs. It was anyone’s guess if Horace had peed and Tigger had knocked over the plant or vice versa.
I’d never had a better assistant than Joaquin. His long-fingered, gentle hands calmed the wildest pet. He also had the best manners of any adolescent in town, not that there’d been much of a contest. From what I’d seen of the Three Harbors youth, being a smart-mouthed, uber-delinquent was the current fashion.
“You going home or did your mom work today?”
Joaquin lived in a trailer park outside of town. Not a long trip, but one that involved a sketchy stretch of two-lane highway, with only a bit of gravel on the side. I didn’t want him walking it after dark, and at this time of year, dark had come a while ago.
“She’s working.”
“You’re going straight to the cafe?”
His lips curved at my concern. “If you saw where we lived before we came here … This place is safe as houses my mom says. Although I don’t really know what that means beyond really safe.”
Three Harbors was safe, at least for people, which reminded me. “Have any of the kids been talking about…” I wasn’t sure what word to use. Did they call Satanism something else these days? And if so, what? “Cults?” At his blank expression, I kept trying. “Sects? Devil worship?”
“That’s why the chief wanted the list of black animals?” His voice was horrified. “Someone’s killing them?”
“We don’t know that.”
“What do we know?”
I hesitated, but now that I’d opened the door, I couldn’t close it without freaking out Joaquin worse than he already was.
“There are several cats, a dog, and a rabbit missing. They’re all black, which almost surely rules out a feral dog, coyote, or wolf.”
He nodded. The kid nearly knew as much about animals as I did.
“I was thinking that since it’s so close to Halloween maybe some kids were messing around. Hear anything?”
“No one talks to me at school.” He twitched one shoulder in an awkward, uncomfortable, half shrug. “I’m Mexican.”
Three Harbors didn’t have a lot of Mexican-Americans. In fact, now that Joaquin and his mom were here, we had two.
“I don’t fit in,” he continued. “I’m dark and foreign and new.”
Joaquin was a beautiful boy—ebony hair, ebony eyes, ridiculous lashes—also ebony—smooth cinnamon skin.
“Doesn’t that make you exotic and exciting?”
“Not,” he muttered.
“No one’s talked to you?”
“Teachers. I heard one of the kids saying that I didn’t speak English.”
“And what did you say to that?”
“Hablo Inglés mejor que usted habla Espa?ol, estúpido.”
“You didn’t.”
“You understood me?”
“I’d have to be estúpido not to understand estúpido. Once I got that much, the rest wouldn’t really matter. Have you been participating in class?”
“Have to.”
“In English?”
He cast me a disgusted glance. “Have to.”
“Then why would anyone think you couldn’t speak the language?”
He rolled his eyes the same as every kid I’d ever met. “Hence my use of estúpido.”
I pursed my lips so I wouldn’t laugh. I liked this kid so much. Why didn’t everyone?
Because kids were mean. I knew that first hand.
But were they mean enough to sacrifice helpless, harmless animals?
I hoped not.
*
I lived in an efficiency apartment above my clinic. When I’d taken over Ephraim Brady’s practice after college, it was part of the deal.