Hellhound (2 page)

Sergeant Youman stared into the permanently trashed bedroom that was the German shepherd’s domain. The bed had been shredded, newspapers laid down in case of “emergency” torn to ribbons, and countless allegedly indestructible dog toys eviscerated. If he’d been called to this scene on the job, the assumption would be domestic violence.

“
Bones
,” Sergeant Youman repeated.

As if the animal hadn’t heard him the first time.

“Goddammit,” Youman swore.

This was the wrong day for him to lose his partner.

•  •  •

Bones had figured out the window latch the day he and Sergeant Billy “Billy Bones” Youman moved into their place at Westfield and Hampshire in Beechview. Using the tip of one claw, the shepherd had only to toy with the latch a couple of times before it popped free. They were on the second floor, but Bones had been trained for just this kind of thing. Once he was on the outside, he carefully made his way across a narrow ledge of brickwork like a wire-walker. At the corner of the building, he balanced for a quick moment before leaping to the roof of the storage shack that stood beside his and Billy’s apartment. The shack was made from the same quality of aluminum as siding and gave just as much when the gravity-aided weight of an eighty-five-pound German shepherd landed on it. After the first dozen or so such escapes, Bones’s repeated battering of the roof created a dent that began to collect rain water. This started to rust.

The shepherd didn’t notice.

It wasn’t often that Sergeant Youman left Bones alone during the day, but when he did, Bones’s routine was fairly set in stone. He would investigate the trash cans along the side of the building and continue on to the ones in the alley. On the rare occasions when he was able to slip up to a rat, the German shepherd would snap it up in his jaws, often devouring it with a single bite.

The rest of Bones’s day would alternate between naps, more dumpster-diving, and the occasional jaunt all the way out to Mt. Washington or Grandview Park. There he would feast on picnic leftovers, the hoardings of the sleeping homeless, or even the occasional squirrel.

It wasn’t like a massive German shepherd with a police collar wasn’t noticed hauling ass across the various roadways of downtown Pittsburgh. Quite the opposite. Calls would go out to animal control, local police precincts, and even to 911 dispatchers. A truck might be sent out, but the phantom shepherd was never rounded up. The one time word had gotten back to Billy, he’d come home and found Bones right where he’d left him, so he’d forgotten all about it.

But today was different.

Billy had gotten the call from the assistant chief of operations the second he’d walked into the office. It was a paperwork day, hence leaving Bones at home for a change. When Billy’s phone rang, he figured it was some administrator breathing down his neck about dignitary security for the pope’s visit the following month. Apparently, the pontiff’s detail had contacted the mayor’s office and announced that PNC Park lacked even the most basic anti-terrorism defenses.

Yeah, well, don’t come to Pittsburgh next time, ya prick
, Billy thought.

“This is Youman,” he said, already sighing into the receiver.

“Hold for the assistant chief of operations,” came a voice.

Youman sat up straight.
What was
this
about?

“Sergeant Youman?” barked the voice of what could only be a career bureaucrat.

“Yes, sir?”

“You’re the K9?”

“Um, yes, sir.”

“What’s the name of your dog, or ‘partner,’ whatever you want to call it?”

Youman bristled. Half the department treated animal officers with the respect the sergeant believed was their due, likely because they’d worked with them in the field. The other half didn’t see any difference between them and the family pooch getting fat on Alpo and shitting on anthills back home.

“Bones, sir.”

“Bingo. You’re to deliver him to the airport. He’s being loaned to NYPD for a short-term operation. Human smuggling.”

“I’m not going with him?” Youman asked.

“They’ve got a handler there. NYPD is short of K9 units due to budget cuts. They put out a search. Yours comes the most highly-recommended.”

“Is it dangerous, chief?”

“How the fuck should I know? Collect your animal and get him to the airport. Pronto. You’ll be contacted en route as to flight number.”

The line went dead.

Billy slowly hung up the receiver, less than thrilled with the way he’d just been ordered around.

But that’s when he remembered Mitzi.

Mitzi, the chick in the property room who never missed an opportunity to flirt with him whenever he swung by. Mitzi, who had her tongue in his ear and her hands so far down his pants at the Christmas party that he spent the rest of the season getting a hard-on every time he heard “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” Mitzi, who was allergic to dogs and had never made good on her promise to ditch her husband for a night to spend an evening doing nothing but sucking his balls while he watched
Thundercats
.

Maybe ditching the roommate for a week or two wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

So when Billy got home to an empty apartment, his frustration at finding Bones gone was compounded by a much greater factor than it might’ve been
sans
Mitzi.

“Bones!” Billy yelled in frustration.

He tromped over to the window and threw it open. Eyeing the ledge his shepherd must’ve used to further his escape, Billy couldn’t help being at least a little impressed at his partner’s ability. But then his concupiscence-tinged indignation returned with a vengeance, and he set out to locate his dog.

Bones had watched this entire spectacle from the pigeon-shit-covered rooftop of the liquor store across the street. He had heard the familiar grumble of Billy’s Bronco as it rattled up to the apartment and parked half a block up. But Billy was so engrossed in leaving a message on Mitzi’s voicemail that he hadn’t noticed the animal. A second later, when the window was thrown open, Bones had seen Billy again, this time his face colored by righteous fury.

The cop was soon back out on the street, leash in hand, as he glanced down towards the shack Bones used as a stepladder. Deciding a promising lead might lie in the alley, Billy slipped between the buildings and disappeared in back.

Bones waited for Billy to return. When he didn’t, the shepherd got to his feet, stretched, walked to the edge of the roof, and hopped off, descending down a pile of pallets to street level. Waiting for a break in the traffic, the furrier half of the K9 unit trotted across the street towards his building. Climbing on top of the aluminum shack, he leaped to the narrow ledge on the second story, eased around the corner to the front of the building, and disappeared back inside his apartment.

When Billy returned to his apartment four hours later, he found Bones asleep on the sofa. Furious, he had to resist the urge to pull his service automatic, a Heckler & Koch 9mm USP, and empty it into the shepherd’s body. He knew the instant he pulled the weapon, his dog’s sixth sense would trip him awake and, maybe, just
maybe
, the animal would tear his arm off before he’d gotten off a single shot.

Some days it was a short walk from “partner in law enforcement” to “that fucking dog.”

“We’re heading out, Bones,” Billy said.

Bones hopped off the sofa and began trailing his handler around the apartment as Billy gathered up Bones’s supplies for the trip. He almost couldn’t find the extra-large pet carrier. It took up so much room in the apartment that he’d been using it as a table, covering it with magazines and mail. Shunting all that to the side, Billy tossed Bones’s blue teddy bear inside, stuffed the paperwork he’d brought home from the precinct into the bag containing Bones’s “handler history,” and picked up Bones’s leash.

“Let’s go.”

It was always a long trek out to the airport, but there was little traffic. Billy allowed Bones to sit on the passenger seat and flipped through radio stations as they went. As much as the sergeant wanted to pretend otherwise, his mind was already well past Bones’s drop-off.

He’d Tivo’d
Thundercats
, hadn’t he
?

The thought made him smile. He accelerated towards the exit for Pittsburgh International.

•  •  •

The United Express flight to Newark lasted only an hour, but Bones fell asleep the moment he’d entered his carrier. And only when the crate was bumping along the ramp out of the cargo hold did he wake up. He knew that he was thirsty and hungry, in that order, but was also curious to see what would happen next.

“Bones?” came a female voice.

Bones moved to the wire cage door of the carrier and saw a young woman looking in at him. She was short, five-foot-nothing, Latina, and had her hair knotted up inside her policeman’s cap tight as a drum.

“Sergeant Marina del Vecchio,” the woman intoned. “I’ll be your handler while you’re attached to the NYPD.”

She moved close enough so that Bones could get her scent. He smelled other dogs on her gloves, including one that was recently in heat. He also picked up the dank stench of human blood, sweat, and excrement. Snorting, he took a couple of steps back.

“Out of the cage or in the cage?” the sergeant asked.

Bones didn’t move.

“I’m going to take that for
in
,” del Vecchio replied.

She unlatched the cage door and reached in for Bones’s collar. Attaching a black lead to his Pittsburgh P.D. harness, she scowled at the familiar checkerboard pattern of the out-of-town force.

“We’ll have to get you fixed up with a loaner so no one thinks you’re not local.”

She tugged on the leash and Bones dutifully followed.

•  •  •

On the car ride to Manhattan, Sergeant del Vecchio talked to Bones the entire way, stopping only to yell at someone she seemed to know while going around the toll booths at the Lincoln Tunnel. She told him that she was born in Jamaica, Queens. She explained that her family had been there for years and, for a time, she dreamed of becoming an actress. When she was in high school, she’d seen the respect the Junior ROTC kids got and, despite her school having an over fifty-percent dropout rate, managed to graduate and went straight into basic training two weeks after she’d cleaned out her locker. It was there that she learned she had a natural ability with “MWDs.”

“An MWD is what they call military working dogs,” del Vecchio explained. “Once I got into the handler program, my first assignment was with a Belgian Malinois named Destry. He was just the sweetest dog. We trained together for months before deployment. We did three tours together in Afghanistan, but he was kept on after I finally cycled out. I really hope I can adopt him when he’s on the other side.”

As the sergeant continued describing her time in the military alongside Destry, Bones stared out the window, taking in all the new smells. The area was heavily industrialized, so the shepherd’s olfactory senses were being assaulted by the acrid smells of wastewater treatment facilities industry, oil refineries, and any number of chemical plants, combined with the exhaust fumes of thousands of heavy trucks and commuter vehicles.

Bones came close to vomiting several times, though his mostly empty stomach would’ve discharged little.

The New York Police Department’s Canine Team was part of the NYPD Emergency Services Unit, which was part of the even larger Special Operations Division. There was a training facility on West 20th across the street from the large kennels that housed active-duty dogs on operation days.

“The reason we had to bring you in, Mr. Bones, is because we’re just stretched too thin and have had too many injuries lately,” del Vecchio said, leading the shepherd out of her car on a lead. “My dog, Perseus, got shot on a narcotics raid in Staten Island a few weeks ago after being loaned out to those bozos. I’m still pissed on that one. So, when we go after these assholes today, I’m going to have you in a vest. Pretty sure you’re only being used on point. Detection, intimidation, possible pursuit but not likely.”

The Special Ops division building was old and in desperate need of a facelift. A onetime precinct house, the place had been taken over by Special Ops in the late seventies. Year after year, renovations projects were budgeted and put forth to the city and, year after year, they were among the first things cut. It had gotten so bad that a couple of officers had even come in with buckets of paint on their days off to at least make the first floor presentable. They made it an hour before a visiting administrator accosted them for a work order and shut them down.

So now, alongside curling linoleum, rat-eaten corkboard ceilings, and chipped doorframes, were four half-painted hallways, a reminder to all of the power and absurdity of police bureaucracy.

“That the Pittsburgh mutt?” called a uniformed tactical officer when he spied Bones and del Vecchio.

“This is the guy. Already told him if he felt like biting someone in the ass, O’Hara was just the douchebag to see.”

“Oh, fuck off, del Vecchio,” O’Hara snarled. “Ever wonder why no one buys your shit about gender bias in the division? Five minutes next to you and they know it’s your mouth holding you back. And in an outfit as small as New York’s finest, people talk.”

“Fuck yourself,” del Vecchio called. “But I guess you’ll be doing that a lot now that your wife ran off with your son’s LittleLleague coach.”

O’Hara blanched. “How’d you…?”

“Like you said, people talk.”

A smirk on her lips, del Vecchio led Bones towards the kennel in back.

“Problem is, he’s
exactly
my type,
Huesos
. Six-foot, family of cops going back four generations, Irish drunken fuck, works out every day, probably going to be a captain one day, maybe even deputy chief. His whole life is policing. Kind of guy needs a cop-wife to keep him in line. I just might try to get in on that.”

Bones picked up the scents of at least two dozen different enforcement dogs in the kennel, though there was only one being housed. Del Vecchio led him to the last enclosure, swung open the chain-link gate, and put him inside.