Part 3
Dean reached for the notebook. “Keep the original messages. Don’t send anybody’s private information around.”
“I haven’t. I asked whether they’d let us look.”
“All right. Bring what they agreed to share.”
On Monday morning, Lydia carried a thick folder into the shop with two coffees balanced against it. The wind had turned cooler, and the loose edge of the shop’s metal door rattled whenever a gust came off the water.
Arthur put a block under it before joining them.
“Please tell me those aren’t all letters to the dog.”
Lydia placed the folder beside Dean’s clean work cloth. “I wish they were.”
A little girl smiled from the first photograph, one arm around a shepherd puppy. Beneath it was an emergency veterinary invoice. A close-up on another page showed three letters Dean had already written several times in his notebook.
He moved the coffee well away from the papers.
“Who gave permission for the medical records?”
“The owners. I’ve kept their contact details separate.”
He began sorting. Documents in one group, accounts that might be checked in another, unconfirmed posts in a third. Arthur watched him add a blank sheet between the piles.
“Engine parts weren’t complicated enough?”
“Parts usually stay where you put them.”
Some owners described sick puppies. Others reported mismatched dates on health certificates. A Georgia man had supplied a sharp photograph of a tattoo. Not every dog was a shepherd, and not every marking matched beyond the opening letters.
Dean called Celia and put her on speaker with permission.
“The similarities are worth looking at,” she said. “They don’t establish a common source. We need records connecting the identifiers to actual animals and shipments. And keep medical problems separate unless there’s evidence tying them together.”
Lydia rested a hand on the picture of the little girl.
“This one’s better,” she said after the call. “His name’s Winston. They sent a recent photograph. He’s nearly grown and steals every dish towel they own.”
“Rookie’s got a colleague,” Arthur said.
Lydia opened the next section of the folder. “Some didn’t get better.”
That afternoon, she and Dean drove to Lydell, a nearby town shaded by old trees and crossed by shallow drainage canals. Vera Langford had agreed to see them after Celia explained that they were trying to identify Rookie’s origins, not make another popular video.
Vera was seventy-two. She opened the door wearing a faded plum cardigan and a small enamel brooch. Tea waited on a tray in the sitting room. Beside an empty armchair, a pair of men’s slippers stood neatly together.
Dean noticed them before he could help it.
“My husband’s,” Vera said. “Leon died three years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“We had forty-six years.” She adjusted one cup on its saucer. “You learn where another person belongs after that long.”
They spoke first about Lydia’s teaching, the weather, and the puppy in the recording. Vera wanted to know whether Dean had taught him the trick.
“He appointed himself assistant,” Dean said.
Vera laughed, then reached for a little box.
Inside lay a blue collar small enough to circle Dean’s wrist.
“Archie liked those slippers,” she said. “He’d drag one to bed every night. Some nights he thought he needed both.”
After Leon’s death, she had kept the television on for company. A friend suggested a dog. At a pet store, an employee had assured her that the shepherd puppy was healthy and properly cared for.
“He used to get halfway across the room and stop to rest with the slipper still in his mouth.” Her finger followed the collar’s edge. “I told him Leon would be wanting that back.”
Archie became ill soon after she brought him home. She took him to the veterinarian, followed instructions, returned when he worsened. Nineteen days after the purchase, he died.
The teaspoons on the tray hadn’t moved. Dean could hear a clock in the hall.
“I knew having a dog meant saying goodbye eventually,” Vera said. “I didn’t expect it before he knew all the rooms.”
She handed Dean a folder. Purchase papers, medical bills, and a photograph of the tattoo were arranged with small paper labels. VLR appeared at the beginning of the marking.
“Could somebody have known he was sick?”
Dean read the first page before answering. “I can’t tell you that. I can get these to people who can examine them.”
“That’s what I want.”
At the door, Vera touched his sleeve.
“Please don’t think I regret him.”
Dean turned.
“I got up looking forward to something for nineteen mornings,” she said. “Those are mine to keep.”
He thanked her for the tea and carried the folder carefully to the truck.
The next lead came from Malcolm Ives, a fisherman who lived near the marsh south of Marden. They met him at a public landing, where he stood coiling a rope that no longer needed coiling.
At sixty-nine, Malcolm had a face weathered by glare and wind, and the habit of pausing before he gave an answer.
“The night before you found him, I passed a van on the marsh road,” he said. “Rain was coming down. Rear door open, crates on the shoulder. Two people moving things around.”
“Anybody hurt?” Lydia asked.
“Not that I saw.”
He remembered a small animal running through the grass. It headed toward an old shelter beside the walking path, a structure with enough roofing left to offer protection from rain.
“Looked like a dog. Can’t tell you what kind. Can’t swear it was yours.”
“Did you get a plate?” Dean asked.
“No. Had no reason to write one down.”
Dean looked along the reed beds. The shelter lay between the road and the beach. A puppy could have spent the night there and wandered toward the surf at daylight.
He didn’t say so aloud. Malcolm had given him an observation, not an answer.
“Thank you for being clear about what you saw.”
Malcolm shrugged. “Wouldn’t help you much if I improved it.”
Dean passed the account to the authorities handling his report. He didn’t walk the route, knock on doors, or try to identify vans himself.
Celia continued reviewing voluntarily supplied records. Some cases had no reliable connection. A few puppies had recovered without complications. Other files contained questions worth asking, including supplier references in Georgia.
“Getting sick isn’t proof of neglect,” she reminded Dean. “The tattoo tells us where to look, not what happened.”
“I’m keeping the piles separate.”
“Good. Keep the puppy healthy, too.”
“He’s devoting himself to sabotage.”
She laughed. “That sounds like progress.”
Still, whenever the phone rang, Dean wondered whether someone had produced the record that would end his temporary arrangement. He had learned Rookie’s sleeping sounds and the small cough that was growing less frequent. He knew which toy disappeared beneath the sofa and how long it took the puppy to settle after dinner.
He didn’t know whether he would be allowed to keep knowing those things.
When he came home that afternoon, Rookie heard his voice and charged toward the safety gate. His feet tangled, recovered, and carried him the last few inches with considerable pride.
“Slow down, recruit.”
Dean opened the gate and knelt. Rookie greeted him, turned in a circle, and stepped into his water bowl.
The spill spread beneath the mat.
“We’ve discussed this.”
Dean fetched a towel. While he wiped, Rookie stretched into his little play bow beside the puddle.
“No. Absolutely no floor exercises in standing water.”
He was still smiling when a delivery truck stopped outside. Its metal door slammed shut.
Dean’s shoulders locked. Rookie fled to his bed.
For a few seconds, Dean held the wet towel without moving. Then he set it down and sat several feet from the bed. Celia had told him not to crowd a frightened puppy or force comfort on him.
A motor idled outside. The refrigerator clicked. Rookie watched from the corner.
“You can stay there,” Dean said quietly.
He rested his hands on his thighs. Eventually, a little black nose emerged beyond the bedding. Rookie took a few steps, stopped, then came close enough to smell Dean’s fingers.
Dean waited until the puppy settled against his knee before touching him.
That evening, Celia called with an older commercial record.
“There’s a breeding company called Vellora,” she said. “It appears in connection with some of the suppliers. Rural eastern Georgia.”
Dean wrote the name.
“It’s a lead,” she added. “We still need a connection to that specific tattoo.”
“I understand.”
He was studying the page when another call arrived concerning Malcolm’s account. Preliminary route information had identified a Georgia-registered van associated with Vellora. Whether it was the van Malcolm saw remained unverified.
Dean turned to a fresh page as the caller gave him the name of a previously authorized driver.
Travis Maddox…
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