[MD3, 8:30 AM, outside the café]
>Sharlyn had been staring at something outside the café. After a moment,
>Dinah joined her in staring. Kate was about to ask them what they were
>looking at when a honking horn from outside drew her attention, and
>everyone else's, and they all turned to look out the front window. A
>smallish golden lab was walking down the middle of main street, oblivious
>to the car that was following it and honking at it to get out of the way.
>The dog's tail was wagging in a slow arc and something about it's movements
>reminded the team of the actions of Agent Cohen.
The dog offered no resistance when Kate and Newt walked up to it. It stopped in the middle of the street and looked up at them as though faintly curious. Kate held out a hand to the dog, although it didn’t seem particularly interested. It wasn’t wearing a collar, so Kate tried the simplest tactic she could think of. "Come on, puppy," she said and took a couple steps back toward the sidewalk.
The dog showed no sign of following, so Newt tried giving it a push from behind. It glanced back over it’s shoulder as if the attempt to get it moving was terribly interesting, but didn’t budge. Newt tried a second time, then shook his head. "This isn’t working."
"I noticed." Kate shrugged and scooped up the dog. Either it was a lot heavier than it looked or she needed to spend a little more time at the gym working with weights. The dog had no objection to being carried over to the sidewalk, being much more interested in watching a bird flying overhead. "There must be a vet in town," she said to the rest of the team as they gathered on the sidewalk near the cars. "I want to get the dog checked out before someone tries to put the poor thing in the canine equivalent of a psychiatric ward."
*****
The team split up in order to cover more ground, with September accompanying Kate and the dog. They located the address of a vet in Laporte.
"Why would two FBI agents transporting a prisoner have a dog with them," Kate wondered aloud halfway through the trip.
September gave her a strange look. "What?"
"Just something that’s been bothering me. Any thoughts?"
"I can’t think of a reason. Are you talking about Cohen and Lundgren? I wasn’t aware of anything in the file about a dog."
Kate shook her head. "It’s not in the file. More of a .. theory." She wasn’t sure she wanted to admit formulating a theory based on the word of an unknown informant, but more and more it was looking like the information was accurate.
September nodded. "Well, I suppose it’s possible. Maybe they picked up a stray somewhere along the way."
"Maybe." Kate glanced into the back seat where the dog was placidly watching the scenery go by. "Assuming that Charlie here is associated with in some way with Cohen. He doesn’t look like a stray."
"Charlie?"
Kate shrugged. "He reminds me of a dog I used to know."
"Okay. Maybe one of them couldn’t find anyone to leave him with on short notice and had to take him along."
"Someone in their office should know if either of them had a dog. Worth checking."
*****
The vet’s office was in a converted garage attached to his house. Dr. Perkins lifted the dog onto the exam table, and Charlie’s demeanor changed as if a switch had been thrown somewhere in his brain. The dog began to growl and look around, wild-eyed and in a panic. Finally, he had to be sedated before the vet could examine him. Perkins spent about an hour with the dog before he called the agents back into the exam room. Charlie was still asleep on the exam table.
Perkins shook his head even before he started talking. "Frankly, I don’t know what to tell you," he said. "First of all, the dog weighs about twice what he should."
Kate smiled, feeling slightly vindicated for having had trouble carrying the dog. "What could account for that?"
Perkins sighed. "I drew some blood. There’s some sort of metallic element in it.. That’s not quite right. There’s something metallic in the dog’s blood. I can’t identify it, and I can’t explain it."
"We should have a sample sent to the FBI lab," September suggested.
"By all means," the vet said. "If anyone can figure it out, I’d like to know about it. That alone wouldn’t account for his weight, though, so I took an x-ray." He picked up the film and held it up to the light.
It didn’t take an expert to see that there was something foreign located in Charlie’s shoulder. Whatever it was, it was roughly cube shaped.
"Again, it seems to be metallic. And I can’t identify it from the x-ray. It should be possible to remove it without any complications, if you want me to."
Kate and September exchanged a glance, then looked at Charlie. "Go ahead," Kate said. She patted Charlie’s head sympathetically. "Let’s find out what it is."
Back to mission logs.