Page 56 of Yolo

“Find some,” she urged.

Just then, two homeless men came running up from the gas station across the street, and my belly tensed.

“Got some water!” he called out, holding up the two cold bottles. “You have to go back and pay for them, though. I just had to grab them. You might want to tell them I’m not stealing, too.”

I would.

I caught the bottle up with two fingers, then turned swiftly to Rufus.

“Me,” she said as she held out her hand to me, almost as if she knew he’d come straight to her. “I’ll use one to let him drink, and you use the other to pour on his head. Maybe that’ll help cool him down.”

The dog didn’t pick his head up from her lap, and my stomach sank even further.

When she wouldn’t even look at me, I knew that she was still riding her anger, so I backed away and walked to the cruiser to inspect it.

“Keys,” I said to Delphine.

She gave them to me with a glare.

I started the cruiser and frowned, noticing the check engine light that popped up onto the dash.

A light bulb dawned, and I realized what had happened at once.

“What the heck is going on here?” my mother asked as she and a few other officers came out from between two cruisers.

“This woman just smashed my cruiser open with a damn brick!” Delphine yelled, throwing up her hands and imploring my mother to take her side.

Now, I didn’t normally have a problem with Delphine. I didn’t necessarily like her, but I didn’t dislike her, either. She was just a fellow officer.

But I didn’t like what she was implying, as if Bindi was in the wrong for what she did.

Sure, she’d broken the windows on the cruiser, but she’d done it for a damn good reason.

“Just because you’re a police officer doesn’t excuse the fact that you locked your dog in a hot car!” she cried, gesturing wildly as a whole, but likely directed at Delphine.

“She didn’t know,” I promised. “She didn’t know that the dog was in here when the car turned off. There’s a check engine light on in the car, and when that turned on, the remote start turned off.”

“The remote start lasts for fifteen minutes, max,” she countered. “She fuckin’ knew it wouldn’t last that long!”

Delphine bowed up at Bindi’s words.

“I’ve been coming out here every fifteen minutes and starting it back up. I truly didn’t know.” Delphine tried to defend herself, but Bindi wasn’t having any of it.

She turned to where the two homeless men hovered. “How long have you been standing out here by this car?”

“An hour,” he answered. “We heard the dog from our shade over there.”

He pointed to the shade that was next to the gas station they’d just taken the water from.

I tried not to get mad that they knew that there was a dog suffering in a hot car and they didn’t want to come up and tell a police officer the problem.

We would’ve listened.

“Ahh,” Bindi said. “And did you ever hear a honk that indicated that the car was trying to start?”

Homeless man one looked at homeless man two, and they both turned back as one and said, “No, ma’am.”

“You can’t trust them!” Delphine said. “They’re breaking the law every day. We’ve kicked them off of this patch four times this week. What makes you think they’re just not bitter or lying?”