Page 29 of Wild Card
“He can’t come around here and threaten my girl and steal my dog, man. It ain’t right,” Rusty said. “We’ve been violated!”
“Yeah, I feel violated,” Candy said, nodding and smacking bubble gum. “I won’t feel safe until he’s off the streets.”
“He needs to go to jail,” Rusty added.
They were both a little twitchy. Rusty kept tugging at his hair and then pacing in a small circle, and Candy was working that bubble gum like her life depended on it.
“All right, calm down,” I said as their ranting took on a fevered pitch. “Why would Axel take your dog?”
“Because he’s a thief!” Candy screeched. “We’ve been over this already?—”
“Quiet,” I barked, bringing out the deputy voice to cut through the word vomit. It was a deep tone of authority that made most people stop and take notice. “I want to know exactly what happened. Is this the first interaction you’ve had with Axel?”
It took some doing, and finally, Chloe and I had to separate them to get a coherent report. I let her handle Candy while Rusty led me into the trailer to dig through clutter on the coffee table, knocking down half a dozen beer cans as he did.
“Here!” He thrust a piece of paper at me.
I took it and scanned the print. It was a purebred certification for a Samoyed dog named Freya. I scanned the details. “Your name isn’t on this anywhere.”
Rusty pointed to the “owner at birth” line: “That’s my grandma. She died a few weeks ago. I got the dog, mainly because no one else wanted the damn thing. I didn’t get any of her good shit.” He grinned suddenly and grabbed the certificate. “But see, they don’t know this dog is my payday. The look on their faces when they find out…” He cackled. “It’s going to be sweet as fuck.”
“How is she a payday?”
“A full-bred Samoyed with papers? I can get thousands for her, man!”
Damn. That didn’t bode well for Axel. If this dog really was worth thousands, it would be felony theft at the minimum.
“So now you see why I had to take my dog back,” he said. “If I’d known she was worth so much, I would have never let her go the first time.”
“Wait, what do you mean the first time?”
Rusty shook his head. “Uh, no, nothing, man.”
“What did you mean you had to take your dog back? Back from where?”
“Nah, just, that’s why I need her back. That’s all I’m saying.”
There was a cagey look to his expression that I wasn’t buying. “I think there’s more to this story you’re not telling me.”
He hesitated. “She’s my dog, right? You see the papers. My grandma was the owner. So it doesn’t really matter that I lost her for a little while. She’s stillmydog, right?”
“So you lost her…”
“Out by Axel’s place, and you know how he is, always picking up strays. He took her in.”
“I see.”
“Yeah, but she’s my dog, so I had to go get her, right? It’s not my fault if he got attached or some stupid shit like that…”
I tuned him out while he continued to justify his actions. I had a pretty good guess about what had actually happened. Rusty got this dog when his grandmother died, and instead of taking care of her and loving her as his grandmother had, he’d chosen to dump his dog out by the junkyard.
It was a badly kept secret that if folks dumped their pets out that way, Axel would take care of them. Some he kept permanently, and others only until he could find a good home for them.
Rusty must have ditched the dog before he realized she was worth money.
“Okay, Rusty,” I interrupted his latest rant. “This has been helpful. We’ll take care of it.”
“You’ll get my dog back?”
