My Sunshine (17 page)

Laura distinctly remembered walking up and down the center aisle, checking the gates on both sides before she left the clinic. Had something distracted her? Could she have accidentally passed by one gate without trying the latch? She'd worked out a routine while on the day shift, and now she always stuck to it. Routines were vital to someone like her, who tended to be more forgetful than other people.

“I hope you'll stay on, Laura,” Isaiah said softly. “I fought hard to give you another chance. It'll be a shame if you quit.”

She was too upset right then to discuss it further, so she just nodded her head.

“Maybe,” he went on, “you can develop a few new habits to prevent something like this from happening again.”

He went on to offer her several ideas, all safety precautions that she'd already instituted. By the time he stopped talking, she felt numb.

When she turned to let herself out of his office, all she could think to say was, “I'm sorry about the dog, Isaiah.”

“We all are.”

 

It was almost seven when Isaiah left the clinic that night. A vague ache had taken up residence behind his eyes, and his mind swam with bits and pieces of several phone conversations he'd had with respected colleagues. One of Isaiah's patients, a neutered Chesapeake, was dying of autoimmune disease, and the usual treatments, heavy doses of
antibiotics and prednisone, weren't working. It was time to go for broke and try something new: hormone replacement therapy.

It was difficult for Isaiah to believe that injections of testosterone might save the Chesapeake when the more traditional approaches had failed. But, hey, compared to Rodney Porter, head man at Eastern Oregon Veterinary Research Center, Isaiah was still a rookie. If Porter felt that the deprivation of natural hormones could weaken the immune system, Isaiah would try giving the Chesapeake injections of testosterone.

Why the hell not? Bone-deep weariness and a leaden feeling of defeat tempted Isaiah to try a testosterone cocktail himself.

As he walked through the crisp night air toward his Hummer, he pressed the switch on the remote to unlock the rear doors so he might stow some research tomes on the backseat. It was going to be another late night, he thought dismally. He wouldn't be able to sleep until he'd read everything he could get his hands on about autoimmune disease.

When the Hummer's door locks disengaged, the clearance and interior dome lights blinked on. The sudden illumination brightened the dark parking area. Isaiah was surprised to see another car on the opposite side of the hulking SUV. Someone from the cleaning company who was working overtime, maybe? As he drew closer, he was even more surprised to see that it was Laura's red Mazda.

After tossing the books inside the Hummer, he glanced at his watch, thinking it might be later than he thought. But no, it was only seven. Laura's shift
didn't begin until nine. What on earth was she doing here so early?

Retracing his steps, Isaiah reentered the building and made his way to the kennels. Instinct led him directly to the black Lab's cage. He found Laura sitting inside the enclosure on the cold cement, the dog's massive head cradled on her lap. Expression sad, shoulders slumped, she put him in mind of the little lost angel in one of his nephew Garrett's storybooks. Golden wisps of hair trailed forward over her cheeks. There was a stricken look in her large, hazel eyes.

At the sound of his footsteps she didn't even glance up. “You haven't been here ever since we talked, have you?”

“Yes,” she said hollowly.

“
Why?
You work the late shift tonight, Laura. You'll be dead on your feet by two in the morning.”
And more likely to make another mistake,
he thought.

She trailed a hand lightly over the dog's shoulder. “Dusty almost died. He's still feeling pretty bad. Sitting with him is the least I can do.”

His heart caught at her flat tone of voice, which accentuated the halting way she spoke. When he'd stood there for several seconds and she still hadn't looked up, he opened the gate and entered the cage. Bracing his back against the cement, Isaiah slid down the wall into a crouch. “Well,” he said softly, “I can see you're still upset with me.” When she continued to avoid making eye contact, he tried a chuckle to lessen the tension. “Hey, it's not
that
bad. You're still on the payroll. Dusty will recover.
Before you know it this whole mess will be nothing but a memory.”

She finally lifted her gaze to his. Her hazel eyes burned with resentment. “If I had left the gate open, I wouldn't mind being blamed for it. I wouldn't even mind being fired. Only it wasn't me who did it.”

It wasn't like Laura to so stubbornly deny responsibility for something that was so obviously her fault. From the very start she'd been uncommonly humble and uncertain of her ability to do this job.

“This cage was left open,” he said evenly. “You were the only person in the building. Who else could have done it, Laura?”

“I don't know. I only know that I
always
check the gates to be sure they're closed.” Her hand stilled on the dog's shoulder. “I'm not like other people, Isaiah.” Her voice quavered as she said his name. “I can't even keep track of the scoops when I make coffee without my counting beans.”

He cautiously circled that, not entirely sure how her coffee-making ability pertained to the situation. He was about to ask when she added, “Knowing that about myself, do you really think I'd come in here, where
all
that I do is so impor-tant, and leave
any-thing
to memory? I'm more careful than other people. I have to be.”

A sinking sensation attacked Isaiah's middle. He'd said almost exactly the same thing this morning to Tucker.

She waved her hand to encompass all the cages. “I
love
these dogs. I'd never take a chance with their
safety. I have a strict routine, and I always,
always
follow it. Other-wise I might forget something.” Her larynx bobbed as she swallowed. “I was worried about Dusty last night and checked on him right before I left.”

“Isn't it possible that you accidentally forgot to drop the latch when you exited the cage?” he suggested kindly.

“No.” She looked him dead in the eye. “This morning when we talked, I was upset and couldn't recall the details clearly, but now I can.” She jutted her small chin at him. “I checked
twice
to make sure the latch was down after I left his cage.”

Isaiah drew up his knees to create a rest for his arms. Gazing into her bruised, hurt-filled eyes, he had no choice but to believe her. She was almost ritualistic about her little routines. Over time he'd noticed that she did exactly the same things in the same order, day after day. When she left the clinic at the end of her shift, for instance, she always followed a pattern—going first to check on the snack supplies when she entered the surgery, and then going to get her coat and purse before saying good-bye. Other people might deviate, saying good-bye first and stopping by the refrigerator last, but Laura never altered the pattern, undoubtedly because she might overlook something important if she did things out of sequence.

“I want to believe you,” he confessed, his voice gravelly with regret. “And if it had happened on day shift when other people were in the kennels, I would believe you. But I'm having a problem
getting past the fact that you were the only person here last night.”

Tears shimmered in her eyes. She gazed at him for an interminably long moment, and then she looked away.

“What?” He leaned sideways to see her face. “You almost said something. What?”

“You'll think I'm crazy.”

“No, I won't. Spit it out.”

The tendons in her throat went taut. She drew in a deep breath. On the exhale, she blurted, “I think someone is sneaking in here at night.”

She was right; he thought she was crazy. “
Why?
”

“To get me fired.”

That was even crazier. So far as he knew, every-one at the clinic liked Laura.

“Why would someone want you to be fired? I'm sorry. It's not that I don't believe you, Laura, but who would want you to lose your job?”

Her lips quivered at the corners. “I don't know. I only know someone does. Maybe some-body who doesn't like me because I have brain damage, and it's easy to set me up. If the dog food gets mixed up, I must have done it. If a kennel gate is left open, I must have done it. Well, news flash: It's true that I misread numbers sometimes, but I never get my threes confused with fours.”

Again, Isaiah didn't get the connection.

“The dog in kennel f-four got the food for the d-dog in kennel three,” she explained, agitation slowing her speech even more. “A th-three is the same no matter how you turn it, and a f-four looks nothing like a three, upside down, inside out, or
s-s-sideways.” She stopped petting Dusty to gesture at the seven painted in bold black high on the back wall of the enclosure. “It's not like the numbers are small or hard to read. I'm brain-d-damaged, Isaiah, not blind.”

Isaiah stared thoughtfully at the seven, and then drew his gaze back to her pale face.

“Earli-er this week when T-Tucker chewed me out about mixing up the f-food, I wondered how I could have made such a d-dumb mistake. I'm always so careful. Now I'm almost sure that s-someone came in here and switched the bowls.”

Normally Isaiah was analytical to a fault, a man who dealt only in facts and carefully gathered data. But even though Laura's allegations made no sense to him intellectually, he found himself believing her. She wasn't a person to dream up something this wild, and for the life of him he couldn't think of anything she stood to gain. She hadn't lost her job, so this wasn't a ploy to get it back. She was also smart enough to realize that making such allegations could easily backfire, casting even more doubt on her credibility.

“I knew you'd think I'm c-crazy,” she whispered accusingly. “Well, if you th-think that's bad, you're really going to think I'm n-nuts when I tell you the rest. I don't think I s-set off the alarm Monday night.”

Isaiah slid the soles of his boots forward and plopped his rump on the cement.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
If he could believe that someone had sneaked in here to switch the feeding dishes and leave a gate open, it wasn't difficult to go a step
farther and believe someone else had tripped the alarm.

“I practiced s-setting the alarm with Val that day,” she hurried on. “She told me to watch the little light on the c-console. When it's red, the alarm is set. When it's green, the alarm is off.”

“That's right.”

“Monday night it was all still new to me,” she went on. “I thought maybe I'd done something wrong, even though the light had turned the right colors. Now I know better. I did nothing wrong. The light never turns green unless the alarm is off, and it never turns red unless the alarm has been set.”

“You're sure that the light turned green when you disarmed the system?”

She nodded emphatically. “And it was red when I left the console to go into the kennels. I was about halfway across the storage room when the siren went off.”

If the light had been red when she left the console, the alarm had indeed been set. “Have you ever seen or heard anyone in the building at night?” he asked.

She looked imploringly at him. “If I answer that qu-question, are you going to think I'm n-nuts?”

“No,” he replied, and sincerely meant it.

“After the alarm went off M-Monday night and I was talking to that lady on the ph-phone, I could have sworn I heard a crash in the one of the of-fices.”

“Which one?”

“I'm not sure. I just know I heard a loud c-crash. I never checked to see what it was. I was so upset
about everything else that I forgot about it until later.”

Isaiah could understand that. “Anything else strange?”

“At night when I've been working, I've heard sounds. Sometimes soft footsteps like you might hear if someone was in ano-ther part of the building. Sometimes it was the faint sound of things being moved—scraping noises or thumps. Until today, I kept telling myself it was all in my head. Now I'm sure it wasn't.”

“If you properly rearmed the system Monday night, opening a door or window is the only thing that would have tripped the alarm. Because of the animals, we don't have motion detectors.”

She shook her head. “I was taking off my coat. I never touched a door or window. It just went off.”

Isaiah stared thoughtfully at the wall. “There are two alarm consoles in the building, one at the front and one at the rear. If someone had been standing near the front doors, watching that console, he would have known by the indicator light when you got the system rearmed. Then he could have hurried into one of the offices to open a window. Once the alarm went off, he could have closed the window and remained in the office until after the police came and left.”

Laura's eyes went wide and filled with tears. “You believe me?”