Beaglemania (2 page)

“She’ll be all right now, Lauren,” Efram assured me. As if he had anything to do with this rescue. Instead, the opposite was true. He was a party to the horror of this puppy mill. Even so, he said, “Isn’t this just a terrible place?” He shook his head slowly, as if he was as upset as I about the condition of this hell house and the innocent beings who lived here.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Terrible. So why do you work here?”

“I don’t.”

“Then are you one of the owners?” I demanded.

“You know better than that, Lauren.”

What I knew was that he was involved. I didn’t need to know exactly how, although I doubted he owned the place. But I’d have bet he profited from it somehow.

I glared into Efram’s doleful brown eyes as I shifted the puppy in my arms. Towel or not, that smell was getting to me. But I wasn’t about to release her till I saw she would be taken care of.

She was just one of dozens of puppies here that the ACTF and animal control officers were handling with great care and angelic concern. And I would, eventually, have to hand her over to them.

Efram was in his twenties, with dark, messy hair that hung over his forehead. He worked out a lot and favored T-shirts with torn-off sleeves to show off his muscular biceps. His jeans were worn, his sneakers new.

He did a lot of work for me at HotRescues these days—the no-kill animal shelter I had helped to open a few years ago and now ran.

Oh, yeah. Efram was an animal care apprentice tending to creatures in need. He even had a choice about it: either learn how not to abuse pets and help care for them while they waited to be adopted, or forgo the substantial amount of money that was part of the legal settlement we’d entered into a while back.

Guess which he’d chosen.

Last year, Efram had threatened to sue HotRescues and me for rehoming his dog, Killer, without attempting to find the lost pup’s real owner. I, in turn, had been furious about the condition of that poor dog, now called Quincy, who had been brought to HotRescues as an apparent rescue from a public shelter, or so I’d chosen to believe. The settlement of our dispute had been fair. It resulted in Efram’s being paid to learn how to really care for animals. I’d even thought that, after all we’d taught him, he had become genuinely contrite for having abused Quincy. He certainly had seemed to throw himself energetically into his quasi-volunteer work with HotRescues.

I wondered now if every bit of it had been an act.

“You’re Lauren Vancouver, aren’t you?” One of the uniformed animal control officers I’d glimpsed outside approached me. She was tall, her ginger hair pulled starkly back from her round face.

Efram looked relieved, as if this official, who could arrest him, was easier to deal with than me. Maybe she was.

I expected J. Gibbons—the ID on her nametag—to demand that I leave. Now. Civilians weren’t particularly welcome here, in the middle of an official investigation. I knew that.

But this wasn’t the first animal rescue that I’d crashed. Nor would it be my last.

“Yes, I am.” I mentally prepared my argument to stay here.

“Ralph told me to come get you.”

That would be Officer Ralph Alazar, who’d gotten to know me on some of my forays to the East Valley Animal Care Center. I’d seen him outside, too. He was a good guy, didn’t usually give me a hard time.

Even so, I hesitated. Should I go find out what he wanted or remain here and see how I could help more with the pup in my arms and the others?

Officer Gibbons’ next words quickly convinced me that I should head outside. “The SmART team just arrived. Ralph thought you’d want to be there.”

I absolutely would. SmART was the Small Animal Rescue Team of Los Angeles Animal Services. All animal control officers were trained to conduct some rescues, but SmART was called in for situations beyond normal, where special expertise and equipment were needed.

Like puppies trapped in storm drains.

I threw an accusatory glance at Efram as I gave the baby in my arms one more hug, then handed her to one of the rescuers.

Efram wasn’t looking at me. Instead, he was helping the uniformed ACTF members remove puppies and older dogs from the cages, check to make sure they were alive, then place them gently in cleaner crates, stacked on wheeled dollies, before taking them outside to change their lives forever. As if he’d come here, like me, to help out.

I knew better, but I’d have to let the ACTF, including its Animal Services members and LAPD cops, do their job. I was aware from the tip I’d gotten that at least some of them suspected Efram’s complicity in this situation.

Following Officer Gibbons, I hurried out of the well-insulated backyard shed that had appeared so inconsequential from the outside—a moderate-sized steel structure that looked like a rural barn’s younger brother, complete with red sides resembling painted wood. It was at the rear of a nondescript two-story commercial building that could have held anything from a bakery to an accounting firm. I suspected it contained only the office of the puppy mill owners. Could be they even lived there. The place was large enough.

It was a wonder that the nearby neighbors, even in this commercial area, hadn’t complained to authorities before about the sounds and smells emanating from here. Maybe they had. Or maybe they’d indirectly collaborated in silence because they, too, were hiding things.

At least one of them—finally—had been horrified enough to report this place. Or maybe it was a visitor. Or a curious passerby. Someone complained and that was why rescuers had converged here at last.

I hurried over the concrete-paved driveway, skirting an animal control officer confronting two people—an obviously angry man, who was gesticulating and shouting, and a crying woman. Were they the puppy mill owners? I’d heard that a married couple was at least partly to blame. Efram wasn’t in this all by himself.

I exited through the open gate in the tall picket fence that was in dire need of painting. I’d used the gate along the main avenue to enter, but this one opened onto a narrower side street, now an ER triage of activity, especially in the area of the gaping slash of a hole along the curb that led to the storm drain. Despite all the conversations, the sound of crying puppies wafted from somewhere below street level.

Poor little creatures.

They’d been down there when I’d arrived. I’d heard some Animal Services people trading shouts about it as they headed that way. At the time, I’d been single-mindedly intent on confronting Efram. But now, I wanted to know what was happening.

I excused my way through the crowd of onlookers being herded out of the way by animal control officers. On the sidewalk was a stenciled, stylized picture of a leaping dolphin, labeled, “No dumping. Drains to ocean.” But someone apparently had started dumping puppies there, hoping the current below would drain away some of the evidence of what was going on in the nearby shed. I felt my teeth clench at the very idea. Had it been Efram? The emotional couple in the driveway? Once again, my urge to do something in response surfaced. Fortunately, I’ve always had a lot of self-control. Even in situations like this.

Even more important, I’d achieved what I’d set out to do initially—confirm Efram’s inexcusable presence here. Now, I wanted to do all I could to help in this rescue.

At least whoever had done this hadn’t gotten very far before Animal Services arrived. Otherwise, there wouldn’t have been so many small canines still shoehorned into that faux barn.

Muffled puppy cries continued to rend the air. They were alive, and, somewhat luckily, the sounds emanated from a storm drain and not a sewer. If the animals were trapped in a sewer, I understood that the SmART team members would have to wait for appropriate Department of Water and Power personnel to help deal with any gases and other dangers.

At a van parked nearby, three people—two men and a woman—dressed in brown T-shirts with white letters and the round logo of Los Angeles Animal Services, Small Animal Rescue Team, pulled equipment out. The shirt worn by one of the men indicated that his name was Renz, and he was the team leader. They all wore red caps. Another man, dressed in a more standard Animal Services uniform, observed them, issuing orders.

They seemed ready to roll quite fast, as if experience and sympathy drove them. Approaching where I stood in the crowd, the two men unfastened the grate around the storm drain while the woman, the slimmest of the three, strapped on a harness and a red hard hat. Using equipment they’d carried here, they lowered her into the drain.

“I see them!” she called. “Four. There’s a small ledge down here and they’re all on it, out of the water. Were there any more?”

“Unsure,” shouted the man in charge. He looked around, his gaze alighting on the team leader.

“That’s the number Animal Services was told,” Renz replied.

In only a few minutes, small beagle puppies, much like the one I’d snuggled so briefly inside, were lifted one by one, in a collapsible and flexible cage attached to a cord, out of the drain and into the arms of waiting Animal Services people.

I couldn’t resist. I’d had a taste of hugging one subject of this imperative rescue and wanted to savor it—and these little ones would probably be even needier. When the third was extracted, I slipped over to where the action was.

Officer Ralph Alazar was one of the animal control officers helping the SmART team. He looked at me, bared sparkling white teeth as he grinned beneath his fuzzy black mustache, and interpreted my pleading expression correctly. He handed me the puppy he held. He then slid over to take possession of the last one brought to the surface.

I pulled another towel from the tote bag over my shoulder and wrapped it around the pup. Even so, the poor, small creature shivered in my arms. It was another little female, with long brown ears and soulful eyes. If she’d been in the water she’d had time, while waiting, to dry off somewhat, but she was still damp. I hugged her even closer than I had the other one, murmuring reassurances.

“Who are you?” demanded an angry voice. I looked up to see the guy apparently in charge of the SmART team glaring at me. He was over six feet tall, so he wouldn’t have fit easily into the storm drain. On the other hand, his knit shirt seemed to hug substantial muscles, so I could imagine him rappelling down a mountainside to help save an animal that had tumbled into a ravine. The ID tag clipped to his shirt identified him as Captain Kingston. A captain? From what I knew of the hierarchy of Animal Services, he was definitely the go-to guy here.

“I’m Lauren Vancouver, Captain. I run HotRescues, a local private animal shelter. I came here to help.” Never mind that I was told of what was going on, unofficially, by one of my employees who happened also to volunteer at a city shelter. He didn’t need to know that. Nor did he need to know that I’d had an additional agenda: checking out Efram’s presence.

His glare didn’t waver. I could feel him assessing me, even as I still held a puppy bundled in my arms like animal control officers did with the others nearby. I knew exactly what he saw—not that I could interpret what he thought about it. He appeared around my age, maybe a little younger, so he should respect his elders. Besides, I look okay for my age. I keep my dark hair clipped short so it doesn’t get in my way. My high cheekbones made me think I had model potential when I was younger and cared about such things. My green eyes glared into his brown ones.

Yeah, I assessed him right back. And found the guy good-looking. As the officer in charge, he had every right to give me a hard time for interfering in this rescue. But I wouldn’t admit that to him.

The puppy in my arms squirmed some more, nuzzling against my chest as if seeking to be fed, like a human infant. I looked away from the scowling captain and down at the baby beagle. I smiled and hugged her tighter. “We’ll find your mama for you soon, sweetheart.” I looked back at the man, glanced at his name badge again, and said, “Right, Captain Kingston?”

Guess he must have had a heart that melted for animals, too, since his look softened. “I’m Matt. And, yes, we’ll find this pup’s mother as soon as we can.”

Eventually, I had to yield the puppy to official care, but not before her companions from the storm drain had also been stowed away for transporting to a city shelter.

“Be good now,” I whispered to her as I slowly handed her to J. Gibbons—Janeen. She’d told me her name. “Stay out of trouble. No more swimming, got it?”

The animal control officer grinned as she took possession. “We’ll make sure she behaves.” I watched the morose little beagle eyes until Janeen turned her back.

I observed for a while as other animal control officers loaded the crates filled with dogs and puppies from inside the shed into a van. Regular cops had arrived and kept onlookers back. ACTF members appeared to be interviewing people—neighbors, maybe. Helicopters hovered overhead, and I wished I could tell them to go away. Their noise must be disturbing the rescued animals.