VIII.
Candace called Officer Ybarra at 8:01 the next morning. I know because Officer Ybarra told me, much later, with a certain dry relish.
"She wanted to withdraw the complaint," she said. "Said she'd had time to reflect. Said she'd been under a lot of stress, she'd overreacted, she believed in second chances, and in the spirit of neighborliness she didn't want to see an old dog suffer in a kennel. Very sincere. Then she asked where the samples were."
"Where they were?"
"Where they were physically located. Whether they'd already been shipped. Whether they could be retrieved and disposed of, now that the complaint was withdrawn, since she assumed there was no reason to waste county money testing them." Officer Ybarra smiled, very slightly. "I told her the complainant can withdraw a complaint. The evidence can't be withdrawn. Once it's logged, it's the county's."
"What did she say?"
"Nothing for about five seconds," said Officer Ybarra. "Then she asked me if the lab could tell the difference between, quote, 'different kinds of animals.' I told her that was the general idea."
Because the dangerous-dog allegation rested entirely on Candace's own complaint, and Candace had now withdrawn it in writing, the county had no basis to hold Rook pending a hearing on it. Paloma filed a motion at nine. By three, the county attorney had agreed. By five-fifteen on a Tuesday evening in late September, I was standing in the lobby of the Tamsen County Animal Shelter, which smelled the way every animal shelter in America smells, of bleach and kibble and fear, when the door to the back opened and a kennel tech walked out holding Royce's old leather leash, and Rook was on the other end of it.
He'd lost weight. Four pounds, the shelter vet said later. He was stiff in the back end from nine nights on concrete, even with the blanket and a raised cot Officer Ybarra had found for him somewhere. When he saw me he did not bark or jump; he was too old and too dignified for that. He walked to me, a little crooked, and leaned the whole of his weight against my legs, the way he used to lean against Royce's when Royce came home from a long shift, and he made a low sound in his chest, and he stayed there.
I knelt down on the lobby linoleum, which my knees would make me pay for, and held on to him.