Detecting a Dog

While babysitting one Friday evening with Laila, I sit down at the kitchen counter to drink tea and read the newspaper like a proper gentleman, when a psychic message pops out of the page. A little old lady, Thelma, requests that I find her Saluki "sighthound" named Gazelle. This dog, she continues, is very old and valuable, for the secrets of ancient Persian and Egyptian lore it keeps in its mind. It has been stolen by the local Mafia. They plan to give it to their head honcho as a birthday pet. What they are ignorant of is the fact that the dog can unleash its terrible old secrets when frightened, and doesn't like new situations without the comfort of its master nearby. The dog, bred to catch and kill scurrying animals, will revert to killing when scared. Thelma wishes me to return the dog before it can get out and do any harm to the general public-- "For, by the time you get there," the message says, "Most of the mafia guards will probably be dead."

I race down the stairs and out the garage, launching into the air and landing minutes later in Portland. The Mafia headquarters (the old one--before I realized there is also a Lutheran Mafia in Sandy, not far from Portland) is a tall, metal office building, with no name or markings except for the leftovers of roof pigeons. I land on the rooftop, flustering those selfsame pigeons, and proceed down a stairwell to the inside of the penthouse. A trial of smeared blood shows that the dog must have taken out the sentries as soon as it arrived. They probably laid down their weapons to greet the new delivery, thinking they'd have some respite from the boredom of endless guarding. Dogs are typically nice folk to hang around... I nervously finger the amulet that was in Thelma's message. "This better subdue that dog like she said," I mutter. "Cause I certainly  am not eager to confront the whole of ancient Egyptian fighting skills..."

Shifting down the stairs and into the room, I trip over a broken lamp just as a gunshot rings out,barely scraping over my head. I immediately duck down, rolling to the floor behind a large sideways chest of drawers, and call out, "Don't shoot! I'm here to help!"

A man in a long trenchcoat peers at me from the other side of the drawer. He sighs. "I thought you were that demon dog again..."
"Where- you mean she's escaped already? Which way did she go?"
The weary man points out the window. "She took to the roof and leaped to that building across the street."
"Dang!" I mutter. "Then she's already loose in the city. Well, don't just cower there, help me go find her, or this city's Mafia operations will fall dramatically with the decrease in population!"
I jump up and run to the window, then remember. I turn back. "You can't fly, can you?" I ask. He shakes his head numbly, too astounded by the turn of events to answer. "Well, come on then," I continue impatiently, and stretch out my hand. He toddles over, his pistol clenched tightly, and lets me strap an antigrav clamp to his wrist. (Just one of the perks of reading a lot of sci-fi and fantasy before you go to sleep. You get a lot of cool technology.) Then I break the window with one deft elbow smash, and we soar out into the night to search for an innocent elderly dog.

It turns out to be far easier than I had expected. Yes, we're trying to detect a frenzied, possibly homicidal beast, but at the heart of every dog, no matter what civilization, is food. Two blocks later, screams emitting from an all-night pizza parlor, we have found our suspect. As we step inside, taking in the broken chandeliers, huddled patrons at the corners of the room, and growling, smacking dog gobbling up a large pile of commandeered pizzas, the situation becomes incredibly simple. I walk forward, speaking soothing words: "Here, Gazelle, good girl, good dogfellow," and yawning many times- the doggy signal to relax, non-confrontational like. I put my hand on the back of the dog, the small jade amulet in my palm warm against her fur. She immediately coils up into a little contented ball, and rolls over to let me stroke her slender belly. "Whew," I smile, and when Gazelle is done gobbling I pay the cashier for the pizzas and depart, the dog trotting at my side, back to the house of a little old lady who is quite overjoyed to regain her companion. I wonder, upon seeing the long wrinkles, delicately slanted eyes, and gentle fluff of a woman Thelma appears to be, if she has not lived as long as her dog or longer, and might have many more wondrous stories of her own to tell...