Sam lay propped

  up against the brick and concrete mottled sewer wall. Her left hand felt

  broken and wouldn’t move much without searing pain. Her right leg sat

  limp on account of the bites and blood taken from it.

  Yet the day started so innocent.

  Sam's front doorbell rang. She opened the door expecting a salesman. She found a little girl. The

  little girl had dark skin, bright eyes, and dark curly hair. She looked

  up at Sam with hopeful eyes and said, "Ma'am, I heard you was a detective. Can you help me find my dog? She's been lost."

  Sam

  didn't want to find a dog. She wasn't the type. Noticing the doubt in

  Sam's eyes, the little girl almost welled up with tears, her face

  overcome with sadness.

  "Please, please, I love my dog so much. She's a good girl. I have one silver coin. I could pay."

  Sam took in a sharp breath. In this neighborhood, a silver coin was a month’s salary.

  "Little one, where did you get a silver coin?" Sam said.

  "The

  man who comes to see my mom gave it to me and said to go buy something

  nice. He said if I just left the house for a little while, I could

  have the whole silver coin. I came straight to you."

  Sam

  wondered what the girl's mother did worth the silver coin and who was

  rich enough to be giving out so much in exchange for it. A silver coin

  is a little less than what she'd charge for any job. But it was more

  than she was getting from the day drinking she had planned.

  How hard could it be to find one missing dog?

  "Okay,

  I'll make you a deal," she said. "If I find your dog, you can give me your silver.

  But until then, you keep your silver. You keep it hid. You keep it somewhere

  safe. And you don't let nobody know you got it. You hear me?"

  The little girl nodded her head.

  "Okay, little one. What's your name?"

  "My name is Missy, ma'am," the little girl said. "It's short for Mississippi on account of where I was born."

  Sam

  regretted hearing that fact. Mississippi wasn't the same after the war.

  This girl was likely a refugee from the conflict or born soon after.

  "Okay Missy, tell me what your dog looks like."

  Missy

  described a large black Doberman Pinscher with the markings above its

  eyes and cropped tail as was the custom. Despite its cruelty.

  Sam

  told the girl she'd be taking the case. Missy's eyes glittered. The little girl

  ran off to wherever a little girl goes with money burning in her

  pocket. Hopefully to a candy store. Or, more hopefully, to a grocery.

  At her age with so much money, Sam would have bought cigarettes.

  Speaking

  of which, Sam pulled out a cigarette of her own. She had a dog to find. Sam was

  many things, but a liar was seldom one of them. If she said she would

  look for the dog, she would look for the dog. But she would take the silver if she found the dog. A deal's a deal.

  Being

  a military investigator - sometimes interrogator and torturer - didn't

  preclude the military from assigning her to ridiculous jobs such as

  finding AWOL servicemen, or enemy points and persons of interest.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  She

  began her investigation near the little girl's house. She knocked on

  doors. Neighbors at this point were familiar with Sam. To them, at least

  she wasn't law. She was friendly, or at least not as mean as the

  soldiers. She kept to herself. And sometimes they needed to talk to

  someone about the bad things happening.

  She

  knocked on an unassuming brown door. The row homes in the neighborhood

  stacked next to each other and on top of each other, sometimes with

  shanty shacks on the roofs where families huddled together against the

  cold and against the poverty.

  The

  woman who answered the door had dark, smooth skin despite her age. A

  floral bonnet held up her hair aside from a few stray curls.

  "Oh, it's you. I heard you was looking for the missing pets."

  Sam perked up her ears and said, "Pets? As in more than one?" She wondered when she'd be included in the gossip chain. She resolved to start talking to her neighbors.

  "Yes,

  that's right. All people in this neighborhood have their cats go

  missing, their dogs go missing. Hell, poor Mr. Smith up on the corner

  with his parakeets had two of them gone. We don't know how it happened

  because he don't let them outside. Though we can hear the screeching and

  the hollering when we walk past on the way to the grocers."

  "When did these animals start to go missing?"

  "Oh,

  about two weeks back. We didn't think anybody would notice much less

  care, so that's why I do appreciate you asking. See, my own kitten, Mr.

  Snowball, he's gone missing too, and I do love him something fierce

  though he is pretty expensive to maintain and feed. He likes little bits

  of fish, so I go fishing on the weekends and I try and catch him a

  little something I cut up for the week. Now my ice box is fit to burst

  with all the fishes he hasn't taken. You know who you should ask? You

  should go and ask Mr. Smith, the man I said with the birds. He came

  hollerin' one night saying he saw someone take a dog over to the

  sewers."

  Happy with her suitable lead, Sam wished the woman a good day.

  "I

  hope you find them. My Mr. Snowball is white with long hair and is

  wearing a little bell around his neck. Now you please bring him back to

  me!"

  Sam

  nodded and walked off. As she approached the corner, the earthy animal

  scent too many birds cause greeted her. She heard the squawking from outside with an occasional hello done in the sing-song parrot voice they

  use to mimic us.

  Sam knocked on the door. A rough voice came from inside.

  "I'm coming, you wait, I'm coming."

  Mr.

  Smith opened the door, his wiry gray hair stuck out from the arms of

  his glasses. The gold rims of his glasses were too far down, so he had

  to lift his chin to look at who came to greet him.

  The

  man's pale, wrinkled skin looked ancient, like pink leather. He wore

  crumpled trousers, oversized loafers, and a stained white shirt.

  "Oh, it's you. We heard you was looking for the pets. Yeah, yeah, I saw 'em. I saw 'em going into the sewers. I did."

  Thus

  far, Sam had been unimpressed with her own detective skills, which

  consisted so far of her going door-to-door like a question salesman. But

  whatever worked, and in this case, she'd hit gold. "Which sewer?" she asked.

  Sam

  made her way to the sewer by the dock as the old man had indicated. The

  dock stank of salt water and old fish. The brackish water smelled as

  bad as the ocean did. Even worse some days because it sat stagnant. The

  currents didn't flow here. The entire lower part of the city stunk of

  fish, rotting meat, and whatever they were pulling off the giant cargo

  ships further down the bay.

  Several

  sewer entrances were available to her, but only one had seen foot

  traffic in recent days. This one was a large metal grate that fed

  straight into the Bay. On rainy days, the water would flood out. But

  today, it was dry enough. Sewage came out in a trickle. Little

  consolation for her shoes as she trudged through wet mud on the way to

  opening the gate.

  The

  lock was simple enough to bypass. She always carried a pick set with

  her. Inside, the tunnel went on into the darkness. There were many and

  varied footprints in the sewage both animal and human. This lead started

  to look promising.

  Sam

  walked about the equivalent of two long city blocks into the sewer.

  Ahead, the corpse of a dead rat lay in the mud. You could tell a rat was dead when it was dead. The fur doesn't sit right, too slick. The animal

  doesn't stir in any way or twitch. The rot takes it in such a way, its

  life, or lack thereof, is incontrovertible.

  So it surprised her when the rat picked up its head and stared one dead eye right at her.