Part 3
The screenshot had been taken from Willow Creek Pets, a Facebook group Emma checked only when someone lost a dog or needed a recommendation for a vet. She had never thought of it as a place where a life could be counted down in the comments under a blurry couch photo.
Maya took the phone from Emma and enlarged the image with two fingers. Her face did not harden the way Emma expected. It went quiet instead, and that was worse. Maya had spent enough years in rescue to know that people could make ugly choices politely, with normal profile photos and heart emojis and words like “out of options.”
“That’s him,” Maya said.
Dr. Lang came closer without touching the phone. “Same spot by the ear.”
Tara leaned against the counter. “Who posted it?”
Emma scrolled back to the top of the screenshot. “Not the registered owner. Someone named Paula Greene. She wrote that she was posting for a family friend.”
“Can you find the original?”
Emma searched the group. The post was gone.
Nina messaged again before Emma could type.
She deleted it this morning. I only have the screenshot because I sent it to my sister. I thought maybe Mom could foster him, but by the time I asked, Paula said he was already handled.
Handled.
Emma looked down at that word and felt something cold move through her that had nothing to do with the creek.
Maya handed the phone back. “Send me everything. The screenshot, the messages, Nina’s name if she’s willing. I’m going to talk to animal control.”
“Will they do anything?” Emma asked.
“They’ll try.” Maya rubbed one hand over her face. Mud had dried on her sleeve in brown streaks. “But there’s trying, and then there’s proving.”
Jasper made a tiny sound from under the towels. Maya turned to him immediately, and the whole room shifted back toward the smaller emergency: his body temperature, his blood work, the risk of shock, the way his damp tail trembled when someone adjusted the towel. Dr. Lang said he would need to stay at the clinic for observation at least overnight, maybe longer.
“He’s older, but he’s not in terrible shape otherwise,” she said. “A little dental disease. Mild arthritis, probably. Nothing that explains why anyone would do this.”
Maya’s mouth tightened. “Nothing ever explains it.”
By midafternoon, the story had started to move through Willow Creek the way stories did in small towns now: not by whispered fences or church parking lots, but by screenshots and shares. Emma had posted only what was safe. Found senior white cat. Dangerous situation near Riverside Park. Receiving veterinary care. If you have verifiable information about ownership or how he got there, please contact Second Chance Cat Rescue or Willow Creek Animal Control.
She did not name the registered owner. She did not post the screenshot with Paula’s name. Maya insisted on that, even when people demanded it in the comments.
“We don’t get to ruin the case because everyone wants a villain by dinner,” Maya said, tapping out replies from the clinic lobby. “If animal control can build something, we let them build it.”
But people recognized Jasper anyway.
By four o’clock, three different women had messaged Maya to say they had seen the rehoming post before it disappeared. One had offered to take Jasper the following week if the family could wait. Another had asked whether he was good with older dogs. A retired teacher named Beverly had written that she could foster him for a month if no one else came through.
The replies they had received were all slightly different, but they meant the same thing.
He’s taken care of.
We found a solution.
Don’t worry about him anymore.
Emma sat in the clinic lobby with a paper cup of coffee going cold in her hand, reading the messages Maya forwarded to her. Each one added a new layer to the morning. The carrier on the ice was no longer a random cruelty by a stranger in the dark. It was beginning to look like the end of a chain of choices, each one made by people who had known Jasper’s name.
At five-thirty, animal control officer Denise Ramirez arrived. She was a compact woman with silver threaded through her black hair and a face that looked patient until someone mistook patience for weakness. She took statements from Emma, Maya, Mr. Alvarez, and the fire captain. She photographed the carrier, the towels, Jasper’s collar, and the microchip paperwork.
When she saw the screenshot, she looked at it for a long time.
“Send me the original file,” she said. “Not just a screenshot of a screenshot if you can get it. Dates matter.”
“Will the microchip be enough?” Emma asked.
Denise looked up. “Enough to prove ownership? Yes. Enough to prove who placed that carrier on the ice? Not by itself.”
Maya had been expecting that answer. Emma could tell by the way she went still.
“But they owned him,” Emma said. “They were trying to get rid of him.”
“That can support a case,” Denise said. “It doesn’t complete one. They can claim they rehomed him and someone else did this. They can claim he was stolen. They can claim a lot of things unless we have a witness, a camera, an admission, or physical evidence tying a person to the river.”
Emma looked through the glass panel into the treatment area. Jasper had lifted his head and was watching Maya’s reflection in the metal cabinet door.
“So they can just say they don’t know?”
Denise put the paperwork into her folder. “People say all kinds of things when the truth gets expensive.”
That evening, Erin Whitaker finally returned Maya’s call.
Maya stepped into the quiet corner near the clinic’s vending machine, and Emma followed only because Maya motioned for her to stay close. The call was on speaker. Denise Ramirez stood a few feet away, listening without making a sound.
“This is Erin,” the woman said. Her voice was careful, not sleepy, not surprised. “You called about a cat?”
“Yes,” Maya said. “A white cat named Jasper. His microchip is registered to you.”
There was a pause just long enough to matter.
“We don’t have that cat anymore,” Erin said.
“Can you tell me who you rehomed him with?”
Another pause. “A woman from out of town. I don’t remember her last name.”
Maya looked at Denise. Denise’s face revealed nothing.
“What was her first name?”
“Carol, I think. Or Karen. I’m not sure. My husband handled most of it.”
“And when did she take Jasper?”
“Thursday night.”
Emma felt her fingers curl around her coffee cup. The carrier had been found Friday morning.
Maya kept her voice even. “Do you have any messages from her? A phone number? A pickup location? Anything that would help us confirm that?”
“No. It was arranged through a friend.”
“Was that friend Paula Greene?”
The line went quiet.
When Erin spoke again, the caution had thinned into irritation. “I don’t know what this is about, but we did nothing wrong. We had to rehome him. My son’s allergies were getting worse, and nobody wanted an old cat.”
Maya’s gaze moved to the treatment room, where Jasper lay under a warm towel with an IV catheter taped carefully to one front leg.
“He was found this morning in a carrier on the ice at Riverside Park,” Maya said. “Near open water.”
A small sound came through the phone. It might have been a breath. It might have been nothing.
Then Erin said, “That’s terrible.”
She said it the way someone might respond to bad weather in another state.
Denise stepped closer and asked for Erin’s address, her husband’s name, and the name of the friend who posted the rehoming notice. Erin answered some questions and avoided others. She repeated that they had given Jasper away. She repeated that she did not know the woman well. She repeated that everyone was making assumptions.
After the call ended, no one spoke for several seconds.
Emma wanted Maya to say what everyone in the hallway was thinking. Maya did not. She simply looked down at her muddy hands and went back into the treatment room.
Jasper was awake.
When Maya touched the towel, he lifted his head and pressed the top of his skull into her palm. He was too weak to stand, but he pushed with what little strength he had, insisting on the contact.
Maya bent over him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry, old man.”
Emma’s phone buzzed again.
This time the message came through the rescue page, not from anyone she knew. The profile photo showed a teenage girl in a school hoodie, half her face hidden behind a curtain of blond hair. Her name was Lily Whitaker.
Please tell me he’s alive, the message said. My mom told me Jasper went to a farm…
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