Part 2
So Eli did. He read while the officer—her name patch said ALVAREZ—scattered three pieces of something soft and brown along the pavement. The shepherd sniffed the nearest one but left it untouched. She did not coax him. She crouched several feet away, talking to Erin in the same level voice she used with the dog.
“Any growling, snapping, vomiting?”
“No. He fell trying to climb the steps.”
“Did anyone see where he came from?”
Owen stepped out of the crowd. “I have it on video.”
Officer Alvarez looked at his phone, then at his face. “The whole thing?”
His cheeks went red. “Most of it.”
“Don’t edit it. I may need a copy.”
One of his friends drifted toward the coffee truck. Owen stayed.
Alvarez asked everyone else to clear the stairs. Once the noise receded, she made a wide arc toward the dog and sat with one knee on the wet ground. She slid a soft slip lead across the concrete rather than reaching for his collar. It took nine minutes and most of Eli’s chapter before the shepherd let her place it high on his neck, above the damaged collar, without tightening it. Once the lead was secure, she unhooked the tether from his collar, photographed it again, and sealed it in an evidence bag. When she finally asked Eli to stop, his lips had gone pale with cold.
“Back up slowly,” she told him.
Eli closed the book. The shepherd lifted his head.
“He can keep my coat,” Eli said.
“We’ll bring it,” Alvarez promised.
The dog could not climb into the truck. Alvarez and a man from the library eased him onto the blanket and lifted him together, keeping his spine level. He gave one low moan but never showed his teeth. Erin felt Eli’s hand find hers when the truck door closed.
“Where are you taking him?” he asked.
“Rosewood County Animal Services. We’ll scan for a chip and have our vet examine him.”
“Can we come?”
Alvarez looked to Erin. The sensible answer was no. Eli was soaked, they still needed groceries, and the shelter would not let a child walk into an intake exam. Erin heard herself ask for the address.
At the shelter, they waited beneath fluorescent lights that made everyone look tired. Eli wore an unused promotional sweatshirt a librarian had found in a supply closet. It said READ LOCAL across his chest, and the sleeves covered his hands.
Through a door marked STAFF ONLY came the squeak of wheels, a dog barking twice, and a woman’s clipped instructions. Erin completed an incident form. Under “relationship to animal,” she checked Finder, though the word felt too generous; all they had done was stop. Officer Alvarez came out forty minutes later.
“He’s stable,” she said before Eli could ask. “Very thin and dehydrated. He has an old, healed scar around his neck and fresh abrasions where the collar rubbed. There’s arthritis in his hips and a bad tooth that will need attention once his bloodwork is back. We don’t see an obvious fracture. Dr. Shah is giving him fluids and pain medication.”
“Can we see him?” Eli asked.
“Not tonight. Intake is hard on them, and he needs quiet.”
“What happens now?”
Alvarez explained the county’s five-business-day stray hold. They would photograph him, check lost-pet reports, scan again for a microchip, and make reasonable attempts to contact an owner. Until the hold ended, no one could adopt or foster him unless an owner legally surrendered him. Eli absorbed this with the grave attention he usually reserved for instructions involving the stove.
“What if the owner is the one who hurt him?”
“Then our humane officer looks into it. Finding an owner doesn’t mean we hand over a dog without questions.”
“And if nobody comes?”
“Then we decide what he needs next.”
She gave Erin a card with the shelter number and the dog’s intake identification, RC-417. On the back she wrote visiting hours, though she warned that visits depended on the veterinarian’s approval.
“Could you put his name instead of a number?” Eli asked.
“We don’t know his name.”
“You could give him one.”
Officer Alvarez glanced through the window in the staff door. “Temporary names have a way of sticking.”
“He has a scar,” Eli said. “Maybe Scar.”
Erin pictured the raw line beneath the buried collar. Before she could answer, Eli frowned at his own suggestion.
“No,” he said. “That’s not his name.”
Alvarez’s expression softened, though she did not praise him. “For tonight, RC-417 is how we’ll make sure he’s fed and accounted for.”
On the drive home, Eli held the book open on his lap but did not read. Rain coursed across the windshield. Erin expected him to ask whether they could keep the dog. Instead he asked if the shelter would wash his raincoat before giving it back.
“They may have to,” she said.
“He can keep it even if it’s dirty.”
At home, Daniel’s reading chair stood beside the dark fireplace. Erin had meant to move it for months. She put Eli’s damp clothes in the dryer, heated soup, and listened while he told her the officer had used a lead instead of grabbing the dog because frightened animals needed choices. The phone rang before bedtime.
Officer Alvarez said the second microchip scan had worked. The chip was old but registered. The owner’s name was Marian Holt.
“That’s good, isn’t it?” Erin asked.
There was a pause.
“It would be,” Alvarez said, “except Marian Holt died fourteen months ago…”
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