Chase

Twelve

Daggert was in The Institute’s main control room, where three men and three women were seated at a bank of computers. All wore headsets. Some monitors displayed maps, others lines of data.

“Come on, people, I need something, anything!”

Everyone continued clicking and tapping.

“Why can we not get the tracker activated?” Daggert asked of everyone.

A man raised his hand. “Working on that, sir.”

“Watson?” Daggert said, moving to the man’s workstation.

“Wilkins,” he said. “Trying to reboot remotely is presenting some problems. For a while there, when I thought I was almost about to lock on, I lost the signal. It was almost like the animal had gone into a steel cage or something.”

“A steel cage?” Daggert said. “What do you mean, a steel cage? What kind of cage?”

“Not a cage, necessarily. But some kind of enclosure with metal walls that inhibited the signal. I totally lost him, and now I’m having to try again from scratch.”

“Well stop wasting time talking to me then, and do it!”

“Yes, sir, of course. I was only—”

From across the room, a woman removed her headset and shouted, “I’ve got something!”

All eyes turned on her.

“What is it?” Daggert demanded.

“Some emergency chatter,” she said. “Someone made a call to nine-one-one.”

Daggert knew The Institute’s sophisticated equipment could listen in on police, fire and ambulance transmissions. They could even intercept cell phone calls. They had instructed their surveillance program to listen for key words. Today, there was only one word they had their ears open for.

Dog.

“What was the call about?” Daggert demanded.

“Hang on,” she said. “I’m pulling it up on my screen.”

She tapped a few buttons until what looked like a small set of controls appeared on her screen. Across the bottom, buttons for play, stop, fast forward, reverse. “What you’re going to hear is an emergency operator, and a woman calling in.” She clicked on play.

Squiggly lines, representing voices, began to move across the screen.

OPERATOR: How may I direct your call?

WOMAN: The dog isn’t breathing!

OPERATOR: A dog, ma’am?

WOMAN: (bringing her voice down to a whisper) The bus driver’s giving him mouth-to-mouth right now! I’ve never seen anything like it.

OPERATOR: What is your location?

WOMAN: The bus station.

OPERATOR: Which bus station?

WOMAN: Canfield!

OPERATOR: And what exactly happened?

WOMAN: This dog somehow got trapped in the place under the bus where the luggage goes? And when the driver opened it up, the dog looked like it was dead.

OPERATOR: And the driver’s trying to revive him now?

WOMAN: That’s right!

OPERATOR: I’ll dispatch someone right away.

The clip ended.

Daggert said, “That would explain it. The steel cage. The dog was in that cargo hold.” He smiled. He entered a number into the cell phone already in his hand, put the phone to his ear.

“Bailey?” he said. “Get Crawford and bring the car around.”

The woman who’d intercepted the emergency call had her headset back on, and was waving her hand in the air. Daggert approached.

“What?”

“They’ve arrived on the scene,” she said.

“Yes?”

“The dog’s gone.”

Daggert’s teeth ground together. “Find me that bus driver.”