He hooked into the last room and immediately saw the cluttered desk where the attendant had been working on his charts. On a table beside it, the television that had cast a flickering glow through the window was tuned to a late-night talk show, its host mugging at his viewers. Otherwise the area was very sparse. There was a steel gurney in the middle of the floor. Some file cabinets stood against one wall. Another wall was lined with a dozen or so boarding kennels, the four largest on the floor, the rest above them on wide metal shelves.

Ricci scanned the kennels from just inside the entryway. Most were vacant. Each of the few containing animals was tagged with a case number and what was presumably the pet-owner’s surname. He saw a house cat watching him curiously from an eye-level shelf. Several kennels apart from it on the same shelf, a small furry dog was curled up into a sleeping ball.

In a big kennel on the floor, a greyhound lay on its side facing him, its bandaged flank rising and falling with its slow, heavy breaths, an IV tube running into it from a drip bag mounted above the kennel’s wire-mesh door. The dog’s eyes were open, staring, and blank. Ricci couldn’t be certain whether it was aware of his presence.

The tag below the door read: 03-756A-HOWELL CENTER.

Ricci’s gaze held on the dog a long moment, went to the file cabinets. No, he thought. Not there. Case is too fresh, too outstanding.

He turned toward the desk and noticed a rack holding several plastic clipboards, their neatly labeled tops facing outward. The board with the number and name matching those on the greyhound’s kennel jumped out at his eyes almost at once.

Ricci pulled it from the rack, hastily inspecting the notations on the attached sheets of paper.

His eyes widening, he heard his own sharp intake of breath.

Ricci needed under a minute to take digital snapshots of every handwritten page with his WristLink. After he was finished, he replaced the clipboard, went through the desk drawers, located the tray that held the sealed glass vials and transparent evidence bags referenced in the vet’s notes, and photoed them as well before returning them to the drawer in which they’d been found.

He had taken a half step toward the entryway when he paused, turned to look back at the wall of kennels, and went over to crouch in front of the wounded greyhound.

His fingers reached through the mesh and gently, gently touched its snout.

“Good girl,” he whispered. “You’re a good girl.”

Then Ricci was up on his feet again, racing from the clinic into the night.

TWELVE - VARIOUS LOCALES

TWELVE

VARIOUS LOCALES