Chapter 6

Dr. Patel called back at eight-forty Monday morning.

"Mrs. Sizemore? I found the implant log. It's a paper ledger. We still have the 2011 book."

Ora Dell drove over. The page was there in blue ink, in the middle of a week of entries: 06/14/2011 - SIZEMORE, ORA DELL - brown hound, male, approx. 8 mo. - chip 985141-2237 - owner paid cash, $45 - M. Odum.

Dr. Patel charged her ten dollars for the copy and didn't charge her for the second one she made.

"Whoever implanted that chip," the vet said, "registered it in your name. Not your husband's. Yours."

"He did that," Ora Dell said. "He always did that. He put everything in my name so I wouldn't have to fight about it later."

Lurlene came at noon, and she was shaking.

Marlon had called her in at seven. He'd told her the county was restructuring the kennel staff, that she could resign or be let go, and that somebody had been in the intake book, and that he knew who.

"I made a copy," Lurlene said. "The Tuesday page. Before he took the book home." She laid it on the table next to the clinic record. It was whited out and written over, and it had her initials on it, and she had never put them there. Beside it she put her own timecard for that Monday and Tuesday, which showed her at the shelter both days and showed no shift for Dalton Fray at all.

Ora Dell looked at the three pieces of paper in a row on her kitchen table.

"You don't have to come tonight," she said.

"I'm coming."

At four o'clock, Marlon Teague's county truck pulled into her driveway.

He came up on the porch and stood there with his hat in his hands like a man at a funeral, and he was as polite as she had ever seen him. He said he'd been thinking about her. He said he knew how it felt to lose something you loved. He said the county would be willing to void the neglect notice - he could do that with one phone call - and that he'd personally drive her over to the shelter in Cold Spring and let her pick out any dog she wanted, and the county would pay the vet bill for the first year.

"He's old," Marlon said. "Twelve years old. Hounds don't make the winter past that. You're seventy-one. Do you want to spend what's left of your good years in a folding chair at the annex, arguing with people?"

Ora Dell held the door with one hand.

"I want my dog," she said.

Marlon put his hat on. "Then you'd better bring a receipt."

She watched him drive off. Then she went inside and closed the door and stood in the kitchen with her hand still on it, thinking: I've got something better than a receipt.

At five-forty she went to the annex to drop the copies off with the clerk. Curtis Bane was in the hallway outside the commission office with a leather satchel and a green audit binder, and he stopped when he saw her.

"You're the appeal," he said. "Mrs. Sizemore."

"I am."

He was thin and young and wore a calculator watch, and he looked at her the way a man looks at a number that doesn't add.

"I can't discuss the review," he said. Then he said, "The county already paid a hauler for Tuesday's run. The check cleared Friday."

"How many head?"

"Twelve."

Ora Dell said, "Eleven."

Curtis Bane looked down at his binder, and then at her. "No, ma'am," he said. "Twelve."

He started to go, and then he stopped.

"Mrs. Sizemore. Do you know what the Angel Fund is?"