Marshall Beck sat in the dark in the Assessment Annex at Urban Paws. Only light from the streetlights lit the room. The fighting dogs were quiet. They’d been rechristened. Many had never been given names and the ones that had wore moronic fighting ones, like Killer or Beast or Diablo, given to them by their moronic owners.
He came here most nights, after hours, to hang out with the animals. He enjoyed the solitude. The creatures helped him decompress when people and their attitudes overwhelmed him and he needed somewhere to escape. When the noise of his thoughts threatened to split his skull, they offered him silence. They didn’t bombard him with their problems and petty squabbles. They gave him space. He liked that about them—they weren’t sentimental, and they didn’t judge. If one of them died, they didn’t mourn. They moved on. He felt a special kinship with these fighting dogs. It was why he’d chosen to sit with them instead of the others. Life and death were all they knew. They’d understand the enormity of the problems he faced now.
Beck leaned against the wall, watching Brando—one of the pit bulls—in his cage. While all the other dogs slept, this one remained awake. He sat upright and stared back at Beck. Of all the fighting dogs the shelter had taken in, Beck felt an instant connection to Brando. Life had dealt these dogs a shitty hand, and it had taken its toll. The ordeal had broken some, driven others crazy, and left some frightened, but not Brando. He still possessed the soul he’d been born with. The behavioral trainers at the shelter would be able to rehabilitate the other dogs, but not him. Brando wasn’t the type to change. He was a universal constant. The instructors hadn’t seen it or hadn’t wanted to, but Beck did. Underneath the lacerations and scars, the truth about Brando shone bright in the dog’s eyes. And what he recognized in the dog, the dog recognized in him. They were both survivors. They’d both suffered, but they hadn’t succumbed.
A lightning flash of his past arced across his mind—him, a child, in the foster home, whipped again for an infraction.
He winced at the memory. Brando bristled at the sign of his weakness and growled. Beck smiled. “That kind of reaction will get you killed,” he said.
The dog stopped growling.
“Not that it matters. You know they’re going to have to put you down, don’t you?”
Brando just stared.
One of the dogs whimpered at the sound of Beck’s voice and retreated to the corner of its cage. Except for a twitch of an ear in its direction, Brando remained statuelike.
“It’s a sorry state of affairs when you have to pay the price for the person who put you in this predicament.”
The dog neither agreed nor disagreed.
“Hardly seems fair. But life is like that.”
The whimpering dog settled down.
“I bet you wish you could even up the score, don’t you, Brando? Of course you do. If you’re lucky, you might even get the chance.” He sighed. “I’m not sure I’ll get the chance to continue my work, though.”
After tonight’s fiasco, he was in virgin territory. His work had been discovered. Where did he go from here? He felt as trapped as these dogs.
“I screwed up, Brando. I got it wrong again. There’s a chance I could end up in a cage now.”
The damage had been done. He’d given the cops an opening. Laurie Hernandez was a big chunk of evidence and so was the construction site. They had the beginning of a trail.
But could it lead back to him?
He didn’t think so. At first, panic had told him that it was a foregone conclusion the cops would be beating down his door, but the feeling had changed in the tranquil surroundings of the rescue center. Logic had replaced panic—thanks to Brando’s soothing influence. When he picked apart his earlier actions, he saw that he was safe. He’d been careful. The cops would be hard-pressed to make any connection between him and Laurie Hernandez. He hadn’t left any prints at the scene, and even if they found any DNA, they had no comparison source. Other than the plastic sheeting and Laurie Hernandez herself, he hadn’t left anything behind. He still had his whip and knife. The police had a corpse, and that was it. Despite his screwup tonight, he was indeed safe. He smiled.
Brando stiffened.
Beck nodded. “Can’t be too cocky about these things. I suppose I should check the situation.”
He clambered to his feet, and the sudden movement set off a sea of reactions from the dogs. He let his absence settle them.
In his office, he switched on his computer. He looked up all the local news channels on the web. Laurie Hernandez was their collective top story.
“Let’s see how bad it is,” he said and clicked a video link.