Chapter 8

The commission chamber was in the old courthouse, upstairs, with a wooden dais and a ceiling fan that turned too slow and a window unit that hummed like a hive. By seven o'clock there were twenty-two people in the folding chairs, which was eleven more than usual, and Ora Dell knew every one of them by name.

She sat on the front row with the shoebox on her lap and her pocketbook on top of it.

They did the roads first, and the jail report, and then Chairman Dean Cardwell said, "Item six, animal control annual review," and Marlon Teague came up to the dais in his navy blazer with his clipboard and his county badge, and talked for nine minutes about intake numbers and euthanasia rates and kennel capacity.

"And the Angel Fund," Cardwell said. "Where do we stand?"

"Fund's healthy," Marlon said. "Vaccines and spay vouchers. All accounted for."

At the clerk's table, behind Marlon, a slim man in a gray suit and reading glasses turned a page in a ledger and did not look up. Ora Dell didn't know him. Curtis Bane, somebody whispered. County auditor. Down for the review.

"Item seven," Cardwell said. "Appeal of impoundment. Ora Dell Sizemore."

She stood up.

She had written it out on a piece of notebook paper that morning, and she read it in a steady voice, because she'd driven a bus for twenty-six years and she'd never once been afraid of a microphone.

She said her dog was taken off her property on a Monday. She said the director told her he'd been euthanized. She said a man named Delbert Yancey bought that same dog out of the back door the next morning for seventy-five dollars. She said the intake sheet was in the director's own handwriting and said no chip, and that her husband had paid to have a chip put in that dog in 2011 at Barlow Animal Clinic in Marlow.

Then she said, "I'm asking the clerk to run the shelter's scanner on the animal, here in this room."

Chairman Cardwell looked at Marlon.

"That thing's broken," Marlon said. Loud enough for the back row. "Been broken six months."

"Then it won't beep," Ora Dell said.

Somebody in the back laughed, one short bark of it, and then stopped.

Cardwell looked at the clerk. The clerk looked at the sheriff's deputy by the door, who had Duke on a short leash - thin, ribs showing, standing with his nose up and his whole body trembling, because he had smelled her the minute she walked in.

"Bring the dog up," Cardwell said.

Marlon's jaw worked. "Mr. Chairman, this is a waste of -"

"Bring the dog up, Marlon. And hand the lady the scanner."

Nadine Purvis walked the scanner down off the counter and put it in Ora Dell's hands. It was warm from the room. The battery cover was taped on. She turned it over once, and found the button, and looked at Marlon Teague, and then she looked at Duke.

The deputy brought him forward. Duke lunged, and the leash snapped taut, and the deputy braced his boots.

Ora Dell ran the scanner down his back, along the shoulder where Raymond had always scratched him.

It beeped.

Once. Sharp. The whole room heard it.

She turned the screen toward the dais, and the clerk read it out loud because Ora Dell's hands had started to shake:

"SIZEMORE, ORA DELL - implanted 06/14/2011 - Barlow Animal Clinic."

The ceiling fan turned. Nobody said anything at all.

"Equipment error," Marlon said.

And behind him, the man in the gray suit finally looked up from the ledger.