Part 7 — Countdown
“Who, precisely, authorized the incision—and on what authority?”
I stand with my palms flat on my knees so the tremor in my hands has somewhere to go. “Your Honor,” I say, “Maya Torres, County Animal Control. I seized the animal under exigent circumstances related to a domestic call. Under county code, I have custody for purposes of health and public safety. I requested veterinary evaluation and authorized medically necessary care.”
Dr. Ito doesn’t wait for a cue. “Kenji Ito, DVM. Radiographs showed a foreign body with non-biologic geometry. Leaving it in place posed risk of migration and infection. Under my license and duty of care, I performed a small, sterile incision with local anesthetic to remove the object. Chain-of-custody began at removal. The patient is stable.”
Opposing counsel tries to fold it into something it isn’t. “So, without the owner’s consent, you cut open a dog to remove potential contraband.”
“It wasn’t contraband,” I say evenly. “It was a health risk and potential evidence.”
Judge lifts a hand. “Counsel, spare me adjectives. The facts are sufficient.” He turns back to Ruiz. “Write-blocked preview only?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Ruiz says. “Bit-for-bit image. Preliminary authenticity supported by hash match, sensor pattern, timestamps, and environmental continuity. For the limited purpose of this motion, it’s enough.”
The judge leans back, robe pooling like a dark shoreline. “I’ll rule on two questions by ten a.m.: whether the stay extends beyond noon and whether the digital media is admissible for further proceedings. Until then, the existing administrative stay remains. No euthanasia.” He checks the time. “It is seven forty-two. We’re adjourned.”
We step into a corridor that already feels crowded with 8 a.m. problems. Outside, cameras pivot; across the street, Ava lifts her cardboard: CHECK THE EVIDENCE. Leah squeezes my arm. “Protective order hearing went through,” she whispers. “Temporary order granted. He can’t approach Grace or contact her.”
“That buys her air,” I say. “We need hours for Scout.”
We split—Whitaker to file, Leah to brief Grace, Ruiz back to the shelter with Eli and me. In the car, the radio picks up a weather report, then a song, then the steady thrum of a morning that doesn’t care who we are.
At 7:58 a.m., we badge into the shelter. The lobby is already warm with breath and intent. Staff in blue polos, the euth team with their cart parked respectfully out of sight, admin in a suit that says “today is logistics.” I tape a second EVIDENCE HOLD — LITIGATION NOTICE on the quiet-ward door because redundancy is a love language.
“Morning,” the operations supervisor says. She’s not unkind; she’s just holding a schedule like a shield. “We’ve got in-service at nine. We need the hallway clear by eight ten.”
“Scout is on a court-recognized administrative stay,” I say. “No one moves him, feeds him anything not on Dr. Ito’s list, or opens his run without me present. The judge will rule by ten.”
“Everything else proceeds,” she says gently but firmly. “We can’t let one case stall the entire building.”
“Agreed,” I say. “One case doesn’t stall the building. One case gets a fence around it.”
I hand over my one-page memo, the one that turns legal into plain: No alteration, movement, or destruction of evidence—including this animal—without written release. She reads it, sighs a little because good fences take time, then nods. “We’ll route around him,” she says.
Dr. Ito checks Scout—heart, temp, bandage, water. “Vitals good,” he murmurs, as if telling the room to unclench. Scout watches him with that patient curiosity dogs invented to make humans behave better.
Eli posts a guard schedule on a whiteboard: Quiet Ward Door — Present at All Times: Brooks / Torres / Any Available Officer. It’s not ceremonial. It’s practical. Phones ring. Someone brings in a box of found kittens. Life layers on life.
At 8:12, Nina in Dispatch pings Eli: Pattern of calls restarted—same male voice asking exact time of euth. Logged, preserved. Eli types back: Route trace request. Patrol swing by lot. Then to me, quieter: “Feels like fishing.”
“Or pressure,” I say.
8:15. The hallway hums. A vet tech slips two fingers through Scout’s run, scratches where fur meets ear. “Good boy,” she says, and he does the slow-blink of a creature who believes her.
8:19. Operations asks us to shift ten feet so a gurney can pass. We move, bodies making room for bodies. Ruiz ducks into Exam 2 to print stills for the judge—three frames with timestamps, the kitchen clock, the plant in the window, Scout’s silhouette taking up exactly the space between a man and a woman.
8:27. A man in a gray city badge—not Whitaker—steps in with a clipboard. He’s new to me. “Facilities,” he says. “We’ve had reports of intermittent flicker on the south bank. We may need to cycle a breaker to reset.”
“Not the evidence fridge,” I say before he can finish.
“Of course not,” he says. He’s offended in a professional way. “We know how to keep critical on.”
“That’s what everyone says before a breaker forgets to be polite,” I say. “Tell me before you do anything.”
He nods, and for a moment I believe him.
8:31. Ava peeks through the glass with a smile that doesn’t ask for anything. Behind her, a handful of neighbors stand quietly, hands in pockets, making a line that says “we’re here” without saying anything else.
8:36. Admin returns, this time with a printout. “Media FOIA,” she says, not happy about it. “They expect names and times on the euth roster. Legal says we release categories, not names.”
“Good,” I say. “Names are for thank-you notes, not TV crawls.”
8:41. Eli’s phone pings with a new email. He reads, lips thin. “Defense counsel filed a supplemental,” he says. “Arguing the card is fruit of an unlawful veterinary search.”
“Unlawful is when you harm a patient,” Dr. Ito says, calm as a page. “I treated a patient. The fact the treatment revealed a memory card is incidental.”
8:48. The facilities guy reappears. “Breaker cycle in thirty seconds,” he calls, already halfway down the hall to the electrical closet. “South bank only.”
“Hold,” I say, jogging after him. “Talk me through exactly what goes dark.”
“Hall lights, radiology overheads, noncritical outlets,” he says. “Critical is isolated.”
I look at the evidence fridge—a metal upright with a green LED that means “I’m keeping my promise.” “Do it,” I say, but I stay where I can see the green dot.
He flips the switch. The hallway lights blink, the radiology room inhales, the green LED stays solid. One Mississippi, two, three—back on.
“Thanks,” I say. “Appreciate the heads-up.”
“No problem,” he says, and disappears with the relief of someone who did a small thing right.
8:52. Whitaker texts from the courthouse: Judge reviewing now. Ten on the dot for orders. Be ready. I thumb back the only thing I can: Standing by.
8:55. The euth team wheels their cart down the far hall, past the cats, past intake, nowhere near quiet ward. Their faces are composed. This is their job. They do it carefully. It hurts them when people assume otherwise.
8:57. I duck into Scout’s run long enough to lay a new blanket. He noses it, circles, settles. I tell him what I wish someone would tell me: “We’re okay right now.”
9:01. The shelter phone rings with that “outside line” trill. Reception answers, then covers the receiver and calls down the corridor, “Maya? Caller says he’s the owner and wants his dog back.”
“Take a message with counsel info,” I say. “Dog is on an evidence hold.”
A beat later: “He’s not leaving a number. He said, ‘Tell them to do it early. Everyone will be safer.’ Then he hung up.”
Eli writes it down, date and minute and tone, because words like that evaporate if you don’t pin them.
9:05. The lobby bell dings. The operations supervisor meets a couple from out of town who want to adopt a senior cat. The world keeps rotating on the axis of small good choices.
9:09. Ruiz emerges with a slim folder for the judge: stills; chain-of-custody; hash values; Dr. Ito’s brief; my memo. She sets it on the counter like a tray of something you can only carry flat.
9:12. I look at the clock because I can’t help it. It was 9:12 when I signed three signatures yesterday. I feel the echo in my ribs like a second heart.
9:15. My sergeant texts: Heads up. Admin wants a walkthrough at 9:30. Optics. Keep the hallway professional. Translation: no scenes, no speeches, keep your pen, not your feelings, in your hand.
9:18. A maintenance cart squeaks past with a box of lightbulbs and a coil of plastic zip ties half-hidden in a side bin. The sound scratches at something in my memory and I can’t place it.
9:22. Eli checks the back exit and finds it propped with a rubber wedge. He nudges it closed with his heel. “Fire code,” he says to no one, and clicks the latch home.
9:25. The green dot on the evidence fridge winks once—just once—like an eyepeck. I step closer, watch. Steady. Still steady. My jaw unclenches a notch I didn’t know had been tight.
9:28. A text from Leah: Grace is safe, phone off. She asked me to tell you she’s thinking of Scout. I text back a photo of his paw, tucked like a comma under his chest.
9:30. Admin arrives for the “walkthrough,” a small caravan of tidy concern. We move as a group, the way tours do when they want to be unimpeachable. Quiet ward, exam rooms, intake. When we stop between radiology and Scout’s door, the operations supervisor turns to me. “We’re aligned,” she says, not in a meeting way but in a human way. “Whatever the judge rules, we follow it.”
“Thank you,” I say. It feels like finding a step in a dark stairwell.
We make it fifteen feet before everything changes by half a degree—just enough to notice. The lights don’t flicker this time. The hum changes. I can feel it in my teeth. Somewhere, metal clicks in that way that isn’t right for this hour.
I turn. The quiet-ward door is shut, of course it’s shut, but the push-bar sits wrong—muscled forward, held in place by something I can’t see from here.
“Hold up,” I say, moving back fast. When I reach it, I see the problem: a clear plastic zip tie cinched tight around the bar and the frame bracket from the inside, pulling the mechanism into a permanent “closed” posture. It’s tidy, practiced, almost invisible unless you’re looking for it.
“Who locked this?” I ask—too loud, and the hallway hears the edge in my voice.
No one answers. The operations supervisor’s eyes go wide. “That’s not… we don’t… who did that?”
Eli’s radio crackles at his hip. He doesn’t answer it. He’s already lifting the intercom to page Facilities when the evidence fridge chirps—a single high note like an alarm throat-clearing, the kind it gives when internal temp rises one degree from its set point.
Green dot, still on. Alarm, chirp. Zip tie, tight.
Somewhere in the building, a breaker throws again, a softer click I feel more than hear. The hum drops one more notch.
I reach for my pocketknife and then don’t, because cutting a zip tie on a locked evidence door without a witness is how you turn a clean chain into a crooked one.
“Camera on me,” I tell Ruiz. “Record.” She lifts her phone, time-stamped video rolling. I hold my hands where everyone can see them. “On the record,” I say, voice steady because steadiness is the only currency we’ve got, “the quiet-ward exit bar has been zip-tied from the inside without authorization. The evidence refrigerator has issued a temperature alert. We are initiating a documented entry.”
Eli keys his radio at last. “Dispatch, Brooks. Send Facilities to Quiet Ward, priority. Also requesting patrol to the rear entrance. Possible tampering.”
He looks at me. I look at Scout through the glass, at the calm rise and fall under his bandage, at the life that doesn’t know it’s the center of a morning.
The evidence fridge chirps again. The hum dips one more shade quieter.
And then—because countdowns don’t always end with a bang—the building breathes in, holds it, and every light on the south bank goes dark.
Part 8 — When the Lights Went Thin (Maya)
Everything goes quiet in a way that isn’t silence.
Emergency exit signs glow the color of old mint. The south-bank hum drops a note. Somewhere behind the wall, the building inhales and forgets how to exhale.
“Record,” I tell Ruiz, and she’s already got her phone up, timestamp burned into the corner. “On the record: south-bank power loss at oh-nine-thirty-something, temperature alert chirp from the evidence refrigerator, and an unauthorized zip tie securing the quiet-ward push bar from the inside.”
Eli keys his radio. “Dispatch, Brooks. Facilities to Quiet Ward, priority. Also roll a unit to rear entrance for possible tampering.” He looks at me and adds, softer, “We stay boring.”
“Boring saves cases,” I say, and hold my hands where everyone can see them.
Ruiz pans to the door. The zip tie is clear, tight, the kind you buy in a hundred-pack to tame cables, not to teach a door a new habit.
“Photo,” I say. She snaps three: wide, mid, detail with ruler. I keep my voice level. “Dr. Ito, stay with Scout. No one opens any run. We will open this door with a witness from Facilities and the camera rolling.”
The evidence fridge chirps again, a polite throat-clear that lands like a warning bell when you’re responsible for things that can’t speak. I check the green LED. Still on. My brain remembers what my hands already did right: the microSD is not inside that fridge—it’s in a sealed envelope, logged and dated, inside a fire-rated lockbox bolted to the wall of Exam 2. The fridge holds vaccines, samples, and the sort of small, vulnerable truths that prefer cold to chaos.
“Facilities!” a voice calls, jogging toward us. It’s the same guy from earlier, still with the clipboard, now with a key ring that looks like a small wind chime. He stops short at the sight of the tie. “That’s… not ours.”
“Glad we agree,” I say. “You’re our second witness. On video, please announce your name and role.”
He does, eyes a little wide, because not everyone expects their Tuesday to include being narration.
“Cutting,” I say. “Ruiz, on me. Eli, you too.” I hold the knife up, blade locked, keep it where the camera can see it enter and exit the frame. I slide the steel between plastic and metal. Small pressure, one crisp snap. The cut tail skitters to the floor. Ruiz photographs it where it lands, then in an evidence bag.
“Documented entry,” I say, and push the bar. The door opens on the low hush of the quiet ward. Its emergency lights are on battery—thin, steady, just enough. Scout lifts his head in his run, eyes finding me, then finding Dr. Ito, then deciding the world is still on its hinges.
“Vitals?” I ask.
Dr. Ito doesn’t look away from Scout. “Even. Calm. Bandage clean.”
“Good.” I check the ward: windows latched, runs locked, nothing moved, the blanket I laid a half hour ago still folded the way Scout decided to fold it. No shadows where shadows shouldn’t be.
Eli steps to the back exit and checks the crash bar. Latched. He checks the alarm panel: armed. He frowns at the floor. “Was this wedge here?” A stray rubber stopper lies near the jamb like a suggestion.
“Bag it,” I say. He does, gloved.
The hallway hum creeps up a notch, then another—the building remembering how to breathe. Lights on the south bank flicker and return, not full, but enough. The evidence fridge chirps once more, then quiets. The green LED holds.
“Power stable,” Facilities says into his radio. “South bank restored. No critical load drops recorded.”
“Thank you,” I say. He nods, grateful to have a sentence that sounds like a receipt.
We’re not done. You don’t get a zip tie from the inside without inside access or a door propped somewhere you shouldn’t prop it. “We sweep,” I say, and we sweep—paired, methodical, camera on, voices low. Intake: clear. Laundry: clear, except for the smell of warm cotton and the sight of a maintenance cart with a coil of plastic zip ties half-hidden in the side bin.
“Those yours?” I ask Facilities.
He blinks. “We use them for cords, but not… not there. And not that brand.”
“Bag three,” I say. Ruiz photographs the coil in place, then gloved hands lift it into an envelope, label neat.
In the tiny med room, the drug cabinet’s lock is solid; the breakaway tag on the controlled drawer is intact. We count caps on first glance—nothing obvious missing. Dr. Ito signs the tag as unbroken, his initials the kind of small ink that makes later arguments shorter.
Back in the corridor, the front lobby bell dings once, twice, the normal rhythm of life resuming. I exhale the breath I’ve been holding between my top ribs.
“Unit’s at the rear,” Eli says, listening to his radio. “No one in the lot. Door secure.”
“Copy,” I say. “We stay layered. If we didn’t cause this, someone meant us to react fast and messy.”
“Fast and messy is what they teach you at internet school,” Ruiz murmurs.
“Good thing we dropped out,” I say.
We step back into the ward. Scout is standing now, head angled, listening the way dogs listen—with their whole body. “Hey, buddy,” I say, softer than the hum. He blinks at me like, You call that a surprise? and does a single, quiet tail sweep.
The clock drags itself toward ten. Ruiz has the packets ready for the judge. Whitaker texts: Any incidents to disclose? I reply: Temporary south-bank loss; evidence secure; documented unauthorized zip tie on ward door; fridge alarm now resolved. He thumbs back: Tell it straight. Judges like straight.
We make it to 9:52.
The building sings a little, the way buildings do when their bones settle. A staffer laughs at something in front, the sound floating down the hall like a soap bubble that refuses to pop. Eli steps into the admin alcove to refill his coffee from a machine that does not know it is supporting a constitutional concept.
And then the back door clicks.
Not loud. Just the sound metal makes when it’s asked to do something twice in one hour.
Eli is moving before my feet decide. Ruiz flips her camera. Dr. Ito turns his body between Scout and the hallway without raising his shoulders—calm telegraphed as a shape.
“Facilities?” I call, and the echo returns without a person in it.
The corridor narrows toward laundry; the lights are up now but shadows still like corners. A shape breaks off from the dark—hood up, head down, a mask pulled under his chin as if he forgot which world he was in. He carries himself like a man who doesn’t want to be seen and is familiar with not wanting to be seen.
“Sir,” Eli says, voice even, stance open. “Hands where I can see them. We’ll talk. Don’t reach for anything.”
The figure freezes, then pivots—not toward an exit but toward the med room, the one with the locked drug cabinet. He’s fast in the way people get fast when they aren’t thinking, just doing. Eli closes the space at a pace that says “I’m not turned on by this” and “I will not let this get sloppy.”
“Stop,” Eli says. “You’re on camera. Don’t make this worse.”
The man’s shoulder brushes the cart. A pen rolls, then a capped syringe—blue cap, label flashing white-black-white—clatters and skates under the cabinet with a hollow tick. He flinches, looks down, looks up. For a heartbeat I see the face he didn’t mean to show.
“Derek,” I say before I can decide not to. The name lands in the air like a recognition, not a shout.
He stares past me as if he can will himself into another hallway. Eli doesn’t give him the chance. “Hands,” Eli repeats, steady. “Palms out. You are being detained for trespass and attempted tampering with evidence. Keep it calm.”
Derek’s hands lift in jerks, then higher, then—with a kind of sag you only see when someone’s adrenaline realizes it’s been lying to him—his knees soften and he drops to them.
Eli moves in, not hard, just competent, one hand to steady, one to secure. “You’re okay,” he says in that cop voice people don’t talk about—the one used for confused kids and scared adults and nights when the room could tilt. “We’re going to stand up now.”
I take two photos: Derek on his knees, the capped syringe visible where it slid, the cabinet lock intact. Ruiz narrates the time; Facilities breathes the kind of breath you breathe when you realize you weren’t crazy about the hum changing.
“Why are you here, Mr. Miller?” I ask, because the record likes questions, not assumptions.
He shakes his head once, twice, eyes on the floor. “I want my dog back,” he says, but it’s not a statement, it’s a script, and his voice misses the stage.
“Not today,” I say. “Not like this. You’re under a temporary protective order regarding Grace Miller. You are now additionally detained on suspicion of trespass, attempted evidence tampering, and violating facility protocols.”
Eli reads the rights without poetry. Dr. Ito kneels and uses a towel to slide the syringe out from under the cabinet without touching the cap, like a magician making a coin reappear and then putting it immediately into a sealed bag. He labels it without editorial. Science prefers its adjectives elsewhere.
A patrol officer arrives at the back door, breath fogging, eyebrows up. “Morning got interesting,” he says, and Eli gives him the short version, which is the kind of kindness you owe a partner: no surprises in the first five sentences.
We walk Derek past the quiet ward. He doesn’t look toward Scout. Scout doesn’t bark. He stands the way some dogs do when rooms get loud: head level, eyes open, waiting for the humans to remember themselves.
On the way to the lobby, my phone buzzes. A new email sits on the lock screen, subject all courthouse vowels:
Orders — Administrative Stay & Digital Media (10:00 a.m.)
The hallway has that feeling again—the pressure of a held breath. Eli glances at the screen, then at me. Ruiz’s camera finds the subject line and lingers, making its own kind of record.
I don’t open it yet. Not here, not with our chain mid-link and a dozen hearts listening.
“Secure the syringe, log the zip tie, escort Mr. Miller,” I say, because my mouth knows how to build a bridge while my chest waits for its verdict. “Then we read.”
We step into the lobby’s thin morning light. Outside, Ava’s sign catches the sun. Inside, the clock flips to 10:00 with the modesty of plastic.
My thumb hovers over the screen.
The building is finally breathing again.
I tap.