Like so many stories, this one began with a girl.
A ten year old girl named Kayla, to be exact-one who’d witnessed her best
friend being forced into a rusty, white van right before her eyes.
In the blink of an eye her best friend was gone—she’d been the one Kayla
talked to while her parents were out drinking. She was the one who’d made
her feel needed. And on occasion, when Kayla’s parents had spent the
money for the heat bill at the bar, and left their daughter shivering in her bed
with only a thin, stained sheet to cover her, her best friend had been the one
who’d kept her warm.
Kayla’s parents weren’t around much, so they didn’t care if her friend was
gone.
And the cops had “bigger fish to fry”—because after everything her friend
had done for her, and for all she meant to Kayla, her friend was still “just a
cat,” after all.
So that’s when Kayla contacted me. It took a few days and some doing,
(I don’t exactly have a 1-800 number), but eventually I got the message.
I’d gotten wind of other, similar reports coming in from all around Vilas
County, which meant only one thing: this wasn’t an isolated incident and was
probably a precursor to something much bigger than a bully terrorizing a small
child.
I staked out families with pets in nearby neighborhoods until finally I
hear the sound of a bad muffler coming around the bend of the culdesack.
So far I’d come up with nothing and Kayla had mentioned the van was loud.
The hairs on my neck stand straight up as I watch tensely from the roof of an
overlooking house, holding my breath in anticipation of what I hope is my first
lead.
And then it comes, chugging around the curve. I tap my cowl,
switching to eagle lenses and I zoom up on the van. Two hoods are in the
front—the driver and the spotter, and I catch sight of at least one shadow
moving around in the back—he was the grabber. “Baiters.” I swear
under my breath. Baiters are people hired by dog fighting rings to go out
and find smaller animals that’ll be thrown into the ring to get the blood
flowing at the start of a match. I grit my teeth at the thought and I
can’t wait to break up their disgusting business. The van parks outside a
nice two-story home with white siding and red trim. A man, maybe in his
early thirties, plays with a brown Wookie-looking Lhasa Apso on his
snow-covered lawn and the van backfires. Nervously the man ties up his
dog on a cable runner and makes haste back inside his house. His dog
looks agitated and he scratches on the door after him but his owner’s T.V. is
already on.
The dog knows something horrible is about to happen. And regrettably,
if I want to get to the slime running the show, I have to let it happen.
But I also have to know for sure…
I turn the dial on my belt and my suit goes invisible as thousands of tiny
cameras built into the fabric record and playback my surroundings. I
stretch my arms out as far as I can and the glider-flaps under my arms catch
the wind. I push off the slush-covered roof and glide down on thermals.
When I land on the roof of the van I hear commotion inside. The rear door
bursts open and a thug with a green trench coat and a five o’ clock shadow
emerges with his hand hovering over his holstered pistol, itchy to use
it. I keep still, not wanting to press my luck and he eventually looses
interest and turns towards the house, casually strolling up the walk and into
the yard.
I don’t have much time so I grab a hold of the roof rack and swing down
into the back of the van with a nearly soundless metallic THUD, but it’s
still enough to alert those up front. “HEY!” The driver shouts with
a pound of his fist against the metal backing behind his seat. “Keep it
down back there or I’ll skin you all right now!” The light is dim so I
switch to owl lenses. My mouth gaps open at the stacks of small cages
with cats and small dogs crammed into them so tightly that some of them can’t
even move. The air is thick with the scent of blood and urine and I have
to fight the urge boiling inside me to free the animals and take out the
degenerates right now, but that would solve nothing in the long run—it wouldn’t
stop anything.
Not to mention the fact that Kayla’s cat is not among the imprisoned.
If I jump the gun now I’ll never find her cat—her best friend. And I have
to—the reason the cops didn’t help Kayla in the first place—the “bigger fish”
the policeman referred to—is me.
I flip on the Jargon and let the creatures trapped in the van know
that they’ll be freed presently. I move in to place a small tracking
device I engineered to look like a tick onto an old beagle in a cage on the
bottom row but he doesn’t move. I gently lay my palm on his belly—it
doesn’t rise with breath and he feels cold. His dry tongue lies limp
outside his mouth. I hang my head as I finally let myself realize what
his stillness means…
I’m too late.
A shiny chain-link collar around his neck catches my attention and I remove
it, I don’t know why.
I read the name on the tag and promise Rascal that his death won’t go
unpunished. Then I slip the tick tracer on another prisoner and dive out
of the van just as frantic high-pitched barking fills the air as trench coat
nabs the Lhasa. I reach a row of hemlocks on the opposite side of the
street just as the grabber slams the van door shut and they peel out of the
neighborhood. I call for the Sky Fox, my hover craft, and within a
few moments I feel it swoop in overhead. I enter the craft through a
hatch on the ventral side of the ship and the light filtering in through the
green glass of the cockpit baths me in a pale glow. The radar screen to
my right blinks with the location of the tick tracer and I set the autopilot to
follow the signal. I place my hands on the accelerators and realize for
the first time that I’m still clutching Rascal’s collar. I stare at it
for a moment before looking back down at the white house with red trim as the
Lhasa’s owner comes back outside looking for his dog. I glance back at
the collar and for some unknown reason, shove it in my utility belt then I hit
the thrusters and take off for the van and the nerve center of the dog fighting
ring it’ll lead me to.
Three
hours later we cross into the city limits of Madison, Wisconsin. Five
minutes after that we seem to have reached our destination—and it’s not where I
thought we’d arrive. Dog fights are usually held in little-known, out of
the way places—abandoned factories, old warehouses or shacks out in the woods.
But the building the petnappers pull into is neither out of the way nor is
it abandoned. I check my scope one more time to make sure I’m hovering
outside the right place.
I am.
I rub my eyes through my mask and check the sign outside the buildings’
main entrance again, convinced that I’ve misread something.
But the name of the building remains the same—and I know I’ve had it all
wrong all along.
This case isn’t about dog fighting.
This is about something far more sinister because the van has pulled into
Madison College…
To Be Continued…
No comments:
Post a Comment