Marie Ferrarella - Mission - Cavanaugh Baby

Leaving, Ashley paused to lock the front door. Not that she really had to. For its size, Aurora was deemed to be one of the safer cities in the country, but even if it wasn’t, she was confident that the sound of Dakota barking up a storm would be more than enough to convince any would-be burglar that it would be a lot smarter to break into another house instead of this one.

Still, it was a habit she’d developed years ago, making sure that whatever was hers—though at the time her possessions had been less than meager—remained hers.

Back then, the only thing she’d had of any worth, really, was the watch she still wore. The old Timex was the only link she had to her past—the only thing she had to prove she even had a past. The woman who’d run the home that she’d continuously been sent back to from the time she was four had told her that they’d thought the watch belonged to her father, but that they weren’t certain. The only thing they’d known was that when they’d found her, she was playing with it.

She’d been discovered sitting on the ground, near the charred remains of a vehicle that had gone off the road, killing the other two occupants of the car, presumably before the car burst into flames. The only reason she had survived was that she’d been thrown clear of the vehicle, sustaining a head injury that had knocked her out for the worst of the fire.

Another couple had called the police to report the accident. The responding officers had taken her to social services. She actually thought she had a vague recollection of a tall officer picking her up and carrying her to the squad car. She recalled the scent of something that smelled like mint.

Since she’d obviously survived the fire untouched, someone at social services had thought it might be clever to call her Ashley—Ash for short. She had no real surname because no ID of any kind had been found on either of the two victims in the car, both of whom had been burned beyond recognition. Consequently, social services had whimsically bestowed a surname on her. She’d been discovered on the last day of March, so she’d become Ashley March.

The moment she’d turned eighteen—or what someone at social services believed might be her eighteenth birthday—she’d left the system, and her surname, behind. Having grown accustomed to her first name, she’d christened herself Ashley St. James, James from the name engraved on the back of the oversize watch she was never without.

Squaring her shoulders, Ashley hurried to her used car, ready to face her day.

* * *

There were days when she did nothing but drive up and down the peaceful streets of Aurora, searching for strays, birds that had fallen out of nests and couldn’t fly and the occasional unlucky animal that had discovered it didn’t pay to cross the road when a car was coming.

This morning, however, right after she’d consumed her first cup of tea, her superior, Lieutenant Rener, summoned her into his office.

Wondering if she was about to be given a lecture on the virtues of arriving on time—she had made it by the skin of her teeth, but it was close and the lieutenant was a stickler for discipline—Ashley crossed the threshold with a warm, friendly smile on her face. She’d learned a long time ago to mask every thought, every feeling she had with a smile.

“Officer St. James reporting, sir,” she announced the moment she stepped into the lieutenant’s rather small office.

Lieutenant Rener barely looked in her direction, acknowledging her presence with a curt nod. He held out an address for her. When she took it, he told her, “Someone called in a disturbance.”

That seemed like it should be more under the jurisdiction of the police department that dealt with people, not animals. But for the time being, Ashley held her peace, confident that if an explanation for rerouting this to animal services was in the offing, she would hear it soon enough.

“A woman called to complain about a barking dog,” Rener told her.

She glanced at the address. It was for an apartment complex nearby. They were garden apartments, if she recalled correctly. Garden or not, it was still people living on top of each other, she thought, suppressing a shiver. She’d had all she could stand of close quarters during her foster family days—which was why every penny she’d earned had gone toward buying a house. She’d lived on ketchup soup and mustard sandwiches until she could finally afford to put down a down payment on a place of her own. Her house was tiny—a forty-five-year-old house with three small bedrooms and a postage-stamp-size backyard. It was clear that the place needed work. But it was all hers.

“How long has it been barking?” she asked her supervisor.

“According to the woman who called in with the complaint, all morning.” He looked up from the report he was going over. “Go see what you can find out. If the owner’s there and the dog’s been abused or looks like he’s been badly neglected, put the fear of God into them. Tell the owner if you have to come out again, the dog comes back with you,” he told her as if she was a rookie and didn’t know the drill by heart. “Can’t have the good citizens of Aurora listening to nonstop barking.”

Ashley couldn’t tell if the lieutenant was being sarcastic, droll or was actually on the level with his comment.

“Yes, sir,” she said, beginning to ease out of the office. “Anything else?”

She said it for form’s sake. She really didn’t expect the man to say anything more. But he did and it was equally as unnecessary as what he’d just told her.

“Yeah. If the owner’s not around, have the complex manager unlock the apartment for you and bring the animal in with you.”

Ashley resisted the very real temptation to roll her eyes at the instruction, which she found to be rather insulting. At the very least, it told her that the lieutenant was not paying any attention to her as an employee. She was good at her job, needed next to no instructions and animals seemed to respond to her because she got along better with them than she did the people she had to work with.

People had secrets, they had petty jealousies, they had agendas. With animals, what she saw was what she got. She liked that a lot better.

“Yes, sir,” she murmured as she left Rener’s office and closed the door behind her.

* * *

Ashley could hear the barking even before she parked the small Animal Control van near the apartment and got out.

Rather than aggression, what she heard in the barking was more along the lines of pathetic whining. It was as if the animal was calling to get someone’s attention.

Ashley’s jaw tightened as anger swept through her. More than likely, the animal had been abused. It was probably chained, starved and beaten, as well. There was nothing she hated more than an animal being the scapegoat for its owner’s inadequacies and frustrations. Not to mention that in some cases, abusing and torturing small animals was also the starting point for a budding serial killer.

The dog’s pathetic barking felt as if it was reverberating in her chest.

A slender redhead of medium height, Ashley lengthened her stride as she quickened her pace, cutting across the parking lot.

The barking sounded increasingly more pathetic the closer she came to the apartment. She could feel her heart twisting in her chest. That poor dog, she couldn’t help thinking. It sounded as if it was in real pain.

The apartment the sound was coming from was located on the ground floor. Its kitchen window was facing the parking lot. Rather than knock on the door, Ashley decided to look through the window first to see what she might be up against. Though she loved all breeds of dogs, she wasn’t naive about the way some responded to strangers, no matter how well-meaning that stranger might be.