Favors
#22 of It's been a quiet week in Cannon Shoals...
Danny Hayes advances the plot by being his usual self, and teaches us some lessons in Meaningful Relationships. As you do when you're a stoat whose first name is 'asshole'. Wait for the stunning twist :P
Danny Hayes advances the plot by being his usual self, and teaches us some lessons in Meaningful Relationships. As you do, when you're a stoat. Wait for the stunning twist :P
Oh, well look who's back. Danny expands his mutual understanding with Jackie Cormier, from "All Along the Watchtower," and we move a bit further along with the union. Thanks to Spudz for his help with everything, and to
Golden Fox for letting me use Jackie again. So to speak *cough*.
The character Jackie Cormier belongs to her creator, Golden Fox. This story itself is released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Share, modify, and redistribute -- as long as it's attributed and noncommercial, anything goes.
"Stickin' with the Union" cycle:
"Favors," by Rob Baird
hey do you mind stopping by after you get off?
The text message was only twenty minutes old when Danny saw it. Not a whole lot of context; on the other hand, he knew the sender, and he didn't really have evening plans anyway. They'd timed it well -- he'd already finished his shift, stripped himself of his gear, and slipped into the mindset of being off the clock.
The stoat tapped out a quick reply before getting into his car. Jackie didn't live all that far away by any measure, even considering that no place in Cannon Shoals was especially distant from any other. The drive wouldn't have taken that long, except that as soon as he pulled off Highway 101 he found himself following another car.
They were the only other traffic, and somehow he wound up behind them: a blue Kia Rio managing all of ten miles an hour. They tried to compensate by drifting lazily through the stop sign at Jefferson and Bay Street, in front of the old high school.
As a cop, it was probably his job to care about such things. As an impatient man, Danny felt that he was being tested, instead. Sighing, the stoat flashed the lights atop his car quickly.
The other driver ignored them, although it was dark enough that they must've seen. Dan followed them through an unsignaled turn onto 6th Street, growled, and turned the lights back on. He caught a brief flash of brakes, but it didn't last -- the Kia kept going for another two blocks before finally pulling to the side of the road.
6th wasn't well-trafficked on the best of days, and it was getting late, so to avoid drawing any pointless attention he killed the light bar and left only the hazards going before stepping out of his car and stomping his way forward to the idling subcompact.
The driver was a dark, spotty-furred dog with sharp eyes. Those eyes -- one blue, one brown -- were fixed on him inquisitively as he made his approach. Jackie Cormier could be pushy sometimes, when she was in the mood, but for the moment she found the good manners to let him speak first.
"The fuck was that about?"
The Catahoula dog shrugged. "Wanted to pull off the road to a safe spot, you know? What's up, officer?"
"You know 'what's up.' That was a stop sign back there."
She furrowed her brow, like she had to think it over. "Which one? On Wilson?"
"Bay," he said, narrowing his eyes. "You know that, too, Coastie. Don't play dumb."
"I... I'm pretty sure I stopped there. Are you sure I didn't stop?"
"Yeah. I'm sure. I got places to go too, you know? Least I can find the fuckin' brake pedal."
"The left one, right? Or... maybe that's the clutch. I get confused."
"Bet you do. Alright, let's get this over with. License and registration."
Jackie flattened her ears. "What do you mean?"
"Forgot where those are, too? Hand 'em over."
"Danny, come on, don't be like that. I'm sure we can find another way to settle this."
"Yeah?"
She nodded her sincerity. "Definitely. You don't want to get me into trouble, do you?"
He rolled his eyes. People had a weird way of figuring it was his problem if they 'got in trouble' on account of being idiots. "I look like I care? License and registration."
Jackie's shoulders drooped, and with her ears flattening out she reached into the bag on the passenger seat, pulling out her license. Then she got the registration card from the glovebox.
The stoat didn't even bother looking before he stuffed both of the documents into the back pocket of his pants. The dog was being awfully sulky for his liking, what with it being her own goddamned fault and all.
The sulkiness didn't improve. "What was that about?"
"What?"
"Are you gonna write me a ticket or not?"
"Not yet. First you're learn some manners. Open the door."
"What?"
He worked his thumb slowly over the tips of his fingers, letting it click against every claw in turn. "Only three words. Which one didn't you understand?"
"I'm just asking if you want me to get out here or --"
Since the bitch appeared to have developed an acute case of stupidity, Danny pulled the door handle himself. At least it stopped her from talking. Jackie took a deep breath, unbuckled her seatbelt, and waited.
"So are you going to cuff me? Or..."
He looked her over, weighing his options. Jackie wasn't half-bad; not curvy enough, but maybe you burned that off as a rescue swimmer. Also, her eerie, heterochromic eyes were a little too sharp for his liking. "I don't think I like ya at eye level."
"Sorry?"
"Not good enough. Means stay down there."
"And..."
"You're the one who wanted to settle," he reminded her.
Jackie glanced around, although there wasn't any traffic to distract them -- one of the advantages of living in a small town. "So you want me to just, what, blow you right here on the street?"
He shrugged. "That'll get you out of the ticket. You want your license back, that's another story."
"You know my apartment is, like... three blocks from here, right?"
"Sure. And with how dumb you been actin', it'd take like twenty minutes for you to get there, runnin' your mouth the whole fuckin' way. Here works fine."
The Catahoula looked a little less than convinced.
There wasn't much more irritating than having to do other people's work for them, but with Jackie fixated on her apartment it was clear she needed some motivation. Danny rolled his eyes, loosened his belt, and unzipped his pants, hoping she'd get the idea.
She had the idea, clearly; she was watching. Just not acting, even though her ability to keep up the charade was starting to fray.
"What," he said. "You need a goddamn IKEA manual for it?"
"It's just --"
"The more I have to talk, the less you're gonna like this."
Jackie flattened her ears and reached out her paw to open his trousers further and pull at the fabric of his boxers. The sulkiness was back. She knew how to draw what she wanted out of him.
"Hey. Look at me, bitch." She hesitated. "Yeah, I fuckin' mean you."
With her fingers still tangled in his underwear, she finally glanced up. "Hm?"
"This was your idea. Don't forget that."
"My idea --"
"Shut up. Your idea was you'd get a cock in that slutty muzz of yours. Right?"
"Well..."
"Right?" Jackie shrugged, rather than telling the truth. He pulled her paw away from his crotch to tug his stiffening length free without any interference. "Fine, we'll do it your way. Open your mouth, bitch."
"Don't call me --" When she protested, he took the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone and shut her up by sliding his cock between her parted lips. "Mrf!"
Just in case she got any dumb ideas, he put a paw behind the Catahoula's head to keep her in place, closing his fingers around one ear. "Call you what I want, bitch, how's that?"
She growled, sending a little rumble down his shaft that vibrated it in the wet cavern of her canine maw and left him throbbing harder against the silky warmth of her tongue.
"Thought so. S'okay, slut. We'll keep it simple so you don't get confused. Close your lips and suck."
Jackie growled again instead, testing the strength of his grip at her ear. The growl bubbled a little bit of saliva around his cock, and when she tried to lick herself clean her tongue dragged along the underside of the stoat's shaft in a way he felt sure was intentional.
Even still, an order was an order. "No," he told her, pressing his hips forward to shove another inch into the Catahoula's mouth. "Don't need you actin' all wild. Ain't in the mood to tame ya right now. Right now you just need to suck."
Put in small words, at least she got the message. She suckled on him firmly, pulling him in deeper, and as the heat of her mouth slowly engulfed him Danny let up on her ear so she could do her job properly.
Course it wasn't like she'd needed that much encouragement. When she pulled away, it was only to tease him -- slurping at him with her tongue, lapping hungrily before diving in again to force him back into her muzzle.
Half a minute in and she'd dropped the act completely. He looked down to grin approvingly, and ruffle the Catahoula's ears as she crammed her muzzle greedily full of his thick meat. Even over the wet, sloppy sound of her quick bobbing he could hear her tail thumping against the seat.
"Good girl," he groaned, watching her cheeks bulge as she took every bit of him she could get. She'd earned the compliment, anyhow. "That's my good little bitch."
Jackie's tail wagged faster.
Dogs. Fuck, wasn't anything like getting sucked off by an eager mutt, and they all got slutty enough if you treated 'em right. He wanted to give the spotty-furred whore her treat right then and there -- but there was that tail, and she had been difficult.
Owed him, really.
"That's enough," Danny told her -- had to manage it between teeth gritted as he fought his peak back. She slowed down; he had to reach down and catch her by the throat to get her to stop all the way. "Enough."
Jackie leaned away and his prick fell heavily from her muzzle. She licked at her lips to clean them -- badly. "Huh?"
"Geddout. Outta the car."
He stepped back to let her do so and, a bit hesitantly, she got to her feet. "Now what?" She tilted her head, and Dan foresaw a fairly pointless argument over what was obviously coming, none of which would get him off.
Instead he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled the Catahoula to the back of her car. She stumbled, and he used the opportunity -- and the solidly built dog's momentum -- to shove her against the trunk of her car.
His paws were tugging open her belt by the time she figured it out. "Wait up, Dan," he heard her hiss. He undid the button over the tailhole of her jeans and pushed them down roughly. "Danny!"
"What?" he grunted, already sliding her panties down and off the dog's firm, sleek rump.
"We're in public."
"Yeah?"
"What if somebody sees?"
With the dark laugh he'd honed over many years, he stepped up behind her to let the bitch feel the pressure of his length nudging her toned thigh. "Give 'em somethin' worth watching."
"I don't think this is --"
He reached around and pushed her muzzle shut. "You don't think, period. Do what I tell you." When that didn't satisfy her, the stoat dropped his voice to a low hiss and put his nose right up at her ear. "Spread your legs and bend over. Simple enough, bitch?"
She wriggled her muzzle free of his paw and did as she was told, like she'd ever really thought otherwise, leaning forward over the trunk and sliding her stance a bit wider. At the same time, he caught her glancing around, trying to see if anybody was watching.
Probably not -- it was a small town. All the same, he didn't want to take any chances in letting them down. "Tail up, bitch." When that didn't work, he brought his paw down in a quick swat to her rear. "Tail. Up."
Jackie bit her lip but lifted her tail up, her hips giving a little wriggle as she got comfortable. Danny grinned at the sight of her -- nice, lean legs, and that perfect fuckin' ass, and her tail hiked so obligingly.
He used one paw to keep it up as the other guided his cock between her sopping wet lips. Then he pushed forward, drawing a sharp gasp from her as he sank himself deep into the dog's cunt.
One strong thrust was enough to seat him halfway inside -- the next rammed him all the way in, and with her needy snatch stuffed full of stoat prick the dog finally let out the moan she'd been holding back. "Jesus, Danny..."
He let her tail go, putting both paws on her rear to hold her in place while he tugged back against the resistance of her clenching pussy. He kept her pinned, with just the tip of his shaft inside, twitching a teasing spurt of precum. "What's that, bitch?"
"Fuck me, Dan!" Her hips squirmed in his grasp, desperately trying to push back to meet him. "Just fuck me already, you asshole!"
He drove forward sharply, watching her back arch and her ears splay as their hips slammed together and the thick, throbbing heat of his cock plunged back into her. He followed it up with a firm, jerking grind and she stiffened, her fingers scrabbling against the metal of the trunk.
He started to fuck her in earnest and the moans came more frequently -- lust-slurred, panting accompaniment to the squelch of her dripping cunt taking him and the useless protest of the car's springs.
Jackie squirmed, her trembling leg thudding and kicking at the ground. Her moans became husky grunts and then outright yelps driven from her at each reaming thrust. She was losing herself fast to the stoat pounding into her, her muzzle clenched and her words slurring. "Ohfuck -- fucksoclose, dannyi'msoclose --"
But she hit it like it was a surprise anyway, seizing up the next time he bucked forward and clamping down on every inch of fat weasel dick stuffing her. Danny snarled as pleasure shot through him, groping her roughly in both paws and letting his instincts take over.
She yelped again as his last heavy thrusts rammed him unsteadily into her spasming pussy. They both groaned as he finally hilted himself, and from the way she twisted her paws into pleasure-tense fists he had a good sense she could feel every hot spurt of his seed lashing her.
Ever the gentleman, Danny waited until the bitch seemed to have most of her wits about her before pulling out. She mumbled and slumped against the Kia, temporarily heedless of the cum spilling from her well-used folds. "Gawdalmighty..."
"Lot of work to get out of a ticket."
Jackie rolled herself unsteadily around to face him. "For you or for me? Mmf. After the day I had... oof, I needed that. Tell you what, though -- next time we're switching roles again."
"Yeah? You're gonna rescue me? Save me from drowning?"
"You don't really look like you can swim, weasel."
He could, if nothing else, appreciate an honest assessment. "Fair enough."
"'Least you're good for something, eh Danny?" She pushed herself off the car, glancing over her shoulder and frowning. "Probably not great for the clearcoat, though."
"You'll manage." He handed Jackie her papers back, and the sight of them seemed to remind the Catahoula of where she was, and her condition. Dan was already back to being as presentable as he ever was.
She tugged her pants up, shuffling into them a little awkwardly. Once she had them on again, she reached into her jacket and pulled out her phone to remind him. "You'll delete that message, right?"
"Oh, right. Forgot, yer the fuckin' model of discretion. Yeah, yeah. Already done. Secret's safe with me."
"Thanks. See ya next time, weasel."
At that point, it wasn't even worth a dumb joke about protect and serve. There wasn't a whole lot to do in Cannon Shoals. Fooling around with the Coastie was as good as anything else.
Didn't mean anything, anyhow.
But then, what did? He waited until Jackie had driven off before starting his car again. Their relationship, such as it was, tended to be transactional. She was from Seattle; she'd probably head back eventually, or wherever else the Coast Guard sent her.
Cannon Shoals wasn't a place that rewarded particularly deep relationships. Like an exhausted mine or an overfished lake, it couldn't pay back the investment a relationship took. Danny was used to it. Most days he didn't even mind.
Just meant you couldn't expect to find gold, and he did not. He wasn't actually expecting to find anything, but there was an unfamiliar car in the parking lot of his apartment, and someone standing next to it.
When he killed the engine and got out, the interloper tilted her head, attention flicking between the cop car and the uniformed stoat emerging from it. "Er, are you Sergeant Hayes?"
He was on a first name basis with most people -- that, or just 'asshole.' Even Jackie knew that much. "Yeah?"
He didn't immediately recognize the girl. She looked vaguely familiar, like they might've been in the same class once or something, but other than that she was just some mixed-breed dog. Nondescript: there were a lot of dogs in Cannon Shoals. Could stand to lose a couple pounds -- lot of that in the Shoals, too -- but cute enough, anyhow. In a dog way. "Can we talk?"
Unlike Jackie, this interruption to his routine was unplanned and somewhat unwelcome. We are talking. That's what all these noises are. But just in case she was somebody important, he bit his tongue -- mostly. "What do you want?"
She'd been unlocking her car, getting ready to leave. The car was a Dodge Neon with a partly crumpled rear panel and all the gloss worn off its hood. On the Oregon Coast, the elements weren't particularly kind to clearcoat either. "Uh. One of your coworkers said I should talk to you. Coworkers? Is that what you call them? One of the other cops --"
"Which one?" Nobody important drove a piece of shit car like that, and he decided some curtness might help hurry the point along.
"I wrote his name down. It started with a 'c,' or, uh..." She reached her hand swiftly into her purse, feeling around for a notebook or a business card or whatever the fuck scatterbrained mutts kept track of their thoughts on.
"Sweet Jesus. Forget the Yellow Pages, lady. Was he a mountain lion?"
"No. No, a wolf. A black wolf. He said he -- well. Okay, let me start from the beginning. I was at the IGA and --"
"Don't." Please. Black wolf meant Cutter Kendrick, and Lieutenant Kendrick had very few reasons for sending people to Danny. None of them were especially noble. "Keep it short."
She swallowed. "Okay. I need a favor."
"You told that to Lieutenant Kendrick?"
"Yes."
"And he told you to find me?"
The dog nodded. "He said you might be able to help."
Cutter probably figured he was helping Danny out -- take care of the bitch's speeding ticket or whatever and extract a quick fuck as payment. Sort of like he had with Jackie. He'd owe Cutter for the privilege, at some point, that was all.
Dan wasn't exactly in the mood, even if opportunities like that were a limited-time offer. On the other hand, maybe he could turn that around on the wolf. You know what I took care of for you? Too bad you don't play nice with others, Cutter.
Really, it was possible -- with Kendrick's short temper and all -- that he'd just pawned the nervous dog off on Danny to be rid of her. The stoat sighed, and gestured to the second floor of the complex. "Sure, whatever. Let's talk."
"Thanks." She fell in next to him quickly. "I appreciate it. Mr. Kendrick wasn't exactly, um... responsive? Or sympathetic."
"Sounds about right." He stopped at the door to his apartment, slipping the key into the lock and then pausing. "You do know he sent you over expecting you'd repay that favor, right?"
"Yeah."
Dan nudged the door open, thumping the switch to bring his lights up. "Know or understand?"
"You do have a reputation, Sergeant Hayes."
Wasn't the kind of thing worth arguing: the truth rarely was. "Just 'Danny.'"
"Sure. I'm Melissa. I, um. I was hoping we could, uh..." The mutt's ears flicked at the sound of the door closing. "Was hoping we could negotiate. The, uh... the payment thing."
Oh, I just bet you were. This, also, wasn't the kind of thing worth arguing. Didn't take that much to make a bitch see reason. "Uh huh," he said. "Anyway, what's up? You want a drink?"
"Water? Lemonade?"
He rolled his eyes and retrieved a pair of beers from the fridge. The dog frowned when he held the open bottle of Rogue Stout out to her, but took it -- for a prop, if nothing else. She was still fidgety. "Siddown. Start talking."
She looked at the sofa, and her ears splayed a bit at the shape it was in. It could've used a good cleaning; then again, that had been true when he'd bought the damned thing, and he wasn't about to start.
"Hey. Dog. Sit."
At last she did, resting her paw hesitantly on the arm of the sofa. Like she was expecting it to rub off on her, or something. Danny sat on the far side, crossed one leg over the other, and tilted his beer towards her.
"Told you to talk. If you ain't in the mood, open yer muzzle anyway and we'll find something else to do."
Melissa shut her eyes, flinching. "Okay. Do you know Bob Dean?"
"Works at the mill up in Oak Valley? Yeah. I saw him a couple weeks ago. Ain't like we're friends or nothing."
"No, no, I know. I'm his daughter."
Dan paused for a bit before finishing the next swallow of beer. Bobby Dean -- by his own reputation, at least -- wasn't exactly the kind of person who went around asking cops for favors, and it was an odd habit for his daughter to have picked up on. "Alright..."
"There was some... some stuff that went on, with dad and one of his employees, Harlan Crow. And the Rourkes, I guess?"
"Oh, fuck you."
The story was what had passed for summer drama in Cannon Shoals. Harlan Crow had fucked Lisa Rourke's kid sister, Jenna -- with or without Jenna's approval, depending on who was narrating. Certainly it was without Lisa's approval, and that seemed to have been the larger problem. Danny couldn't have cared less.
Some dumb-as-shit rivalry had kept the Crows and the Rourkes at each other's throats since the '50s, at least, and probably longer. He couldn't have cared less about that, either. He had better things to do than put up with petty small-town squabbling.
Melissa flattened the velvet-fuzzed triangles of her ears. "Excuse me?"
"Ain't draggin' me in to that one. I look like I give a fuck about that soap opera? Hell, I look like the kinda retard who wants to give a fuck? Look at my goddamn shoes -- they got velcro on 'em? No. So take your Crow-Rourke bullshit and get the fuck out."
"No, I mean... I don't -- I don't care about it either."
He arched an eyebrow and stared her down until she flinched again. "Then why did you bring it up?"
"I'm worried about my dad."
Danny kept his brow raised, and took a long pull on his stout. "What the hell for?" Bobby could take care of himself. He'd done it so many times he no longer had to prove it; the scars on his paws did the dingo's talking for him.
"Lisa Rourke. Do you know her?"
The oldest of the Rourke kids -- and there were a few. Seventeen years separated Lisa from her sister Jenna. Rourkes liked to think they were better than trailer trash, but come the fuck on: 'better than trailer trash' would've found a different hobby besides having children.
Lisa showed up on Danny's radar more often than he wanted, which was to say that she showed up at all. She liked to meddle. She was the one to call the cops on Harlan Crow. Of course, she'd also called in half a dozen noise complaints on neighbors she didn't fancy.
"Mouthy cunt; dresses like an extra in a cheap porn flick? Like maybe she's the gal the cabbie passes over on banging so you know he ain't easy or nothing?"
"Um."
"Works at the IGA stockin' shelves 'cause shelves ain't figured out a way to slap somebody yet?"
"Yes. I think so. I mean I think that's her -- not that I... the rest, uh... well. No comment."
Danny grinned, baring fangs behind his beer. "We've talked, yeah."
"She's upset at dad, because of how he handled the whole thing with Harlan. I don't know all the details -- I don't want to know, trust me, Danny. It seems like a lot of stupid gossip."
Well, at least she'd gotten that part right. "Your dad didn't 'handle' shit, though. Wasn't anything to charge on -- then Harlan skipped town, which... I mean, the dumb bastard's got a warrant on him, but ain't exactly like the chief's gonna hire a bounty hunter on it."
Melissa nodded, and finally took a drink. Not one of those hesitant, might-as-well-try drinks, either; a decent swallow. "But she doesn't see it that way... she thinks my dad paid him to go away, or something... I think."
"That's 'cause she's a goddamn idiot, though."
"Maybe."
He shrugged lightly. "No 'maybe' to it. Chief said when we told him Harlan'd run off he sounded surprised. Not too pissed, 'cause I mean, kinda convenient to get that fuck out of your hair and all -- but surprised, sure."
"I think he was. But, so, uh... so..." She took a few deep breaths, swiveling her ears back.
"Take a drink," Dan suggested. "Ain't goin' nowhere. Good beer, too."
"Yeah, it's... it's not bad." And she was smart enough to listen to his advice, after a second or two to ponder. "Okay. I was picking up some groceries this morning, at the IGA, and Lisa was there. And when she saw me, she told me she was going to, uh, 'get my dad back' for what he 'did for his friend Harlan.'"
"She said that?"
Melissa took another drink. "Technically, she said: 'I'm gonna get your dad back. That favor he did for his... fucking deadbeat friend... Harlan... was a load of bullshit.'"
"That sounds a little more like it. You tell her to pound sand?"
The dog shook her head. "I didn't say anything, I just kept walking. People like that aren't worth fighting. But she said there was going to be 'consequences' and he should 'watch out.' Oh, and that I should tell him she said that."
"Did you?"
"He'd just get upset. But I... I wanted to make sure there wasn't any trouble. I didn't want to do anything official in case... well... dad's been really stressing about everything this summer."
Bobby Dean had bigger problems than either his daughter or Dan Hayes, the stoat knew. He kept track of the union up at Martin-Barlow's mill, and they were a quarrelsome bunch.
Rumor, to the extent that Danny cared about rumor, said that getting the mill reopened took a lot of work and a few favors at the statehouse. Probably that was why the old dingo didn't care too much when Harlan ran off -- it kept things quiet.
If Lisa was willing to let it stay that way and, of course, being a temperamental asshole she wasn't likely to do that. "I see your problem," Danny said. He polished off the last of his beer, and tried to decide if another was in order. When was it not?
He pulled two more bottles from the fridge and set one in front of Melissa. "I'm... I'm like a third of the way done with this one..."
"So drink faster. Here's the deal, anyway." He dropped back onto the sofa, and got himself comfortable. "Normally the way this works is like, you need a favor, and I fuck you, and everybody goes home happy."
"So I hear."
He snorted. "Yeah, well. See, though, you're Dean's kid. And you're cute and all, but not cute enough to get hit by a log truck over. So you see where the, uh, the quid pro quo kinda falls down."
"Yeah."
"And you want me to get messed up in this Rourke crap. Which is a pretty big-ass favor."
Silence. It was her turn to answer, but she didn't seem to know what to say. "If it's any consolation, my dad doesn't run the log trucks. It would be a woodchipper."
"How the fuck is that a consolation?"
"Well... you'd be biodegradable?" He stared at her. At last she smiled, and matched the self-deprecating look to another sip of beer. "Hey, it was worth a shot."
"Sure. What were you gonna offer, anyway?"
"Pie."
"What?"
Melissa shrugged. "Apparently I'm good at baking. I was going to make you a pie or something. I have a new recipe for rhubarb cake, too."
"Did Kendrick realize you were a time-traveler? Did he give you the impression I also lived in the 1950s?"
"I figured you had to eat. That was before I saw you. But I guess you've always been kinda skinny. Even back at Rex."
Danny closed one eye, and thought back to high school. It was not so terribly long ago, and it wasn't like the graduating class had been all that big. Was she in it? "Did we go to school together?"
"Yeah. I was part of Peter's circle. Pete Springer and Jim Haygood and the Mikkelson twins and all. You were always hanging out with that... cat lady."
Haygood? Yeah, now that he thought of it, he remembered Spotty Haygood dating some mixed-breed dog for a bit -- they hadn't been friends then, though. He hadn't started talking to the coonhound until after Spotty came back from Iraq. "Genet," he corrected. "Astrid's a genet."
"Dunno what that even is."
"I didn't either. She's from Morocco. Made it in before we got around to building a wall, yanno?" He took another drink of his beer, still dwelling on high school. It had been almost a decade; the reunion would be next year, if anybody gave a shit. Danny did not.
"What's she up to these days?"
"Moved to Portland a couple years back. Designs shit or somethin', I ain't smart enough to understand. She came back for the Fourth so we could blow shit up on the beach." Being a cop had some advantages, when it came to things like fireworks bans.
"I guess you're not still dating."
Danny's laugh caught him by surprise. "Never were, not even then. I ain't got the right equipment."
"Oh. You mean she's... uh. Gay?"
He opened both eyes, staring drily at the dog. "Naw, she wouldn't marry anybody without a fuckin' CNC machine. Some kinda dowry thing. Yes, I mean she's gay. Her an' her girl went to art school together. We ain't met. You know, 'cause I got a reputation and all."
"Oh," she said again. Melissa looked like she was trying to decide whether or not she'd said something to make the conversation awkward, and took a long drink to make up for it either way. "I... wasn't trying to be... I wasn't accusing you of anything. I mean, just..."
"Hey, here's a question."
"Oh?"
"Your dad teach you to apologize every time you open your mouth?"
"No." She held the bottle tightly, rolling it a few degrees between her fingers. "I just didn't want to say something offensive. Because I was going to ask you for a favor. Or maybe I already did. I don't know. I guess I did."
Jesus Christ. Even if he'd been in dire need of getting his dick sucked again, and even if she hadn't been Dean's kid, it would've been an uphill battle. "It's kinda cute you think I get offended. 'Nother question, then. Yer mom's a Border Collie, right? Findlay?"
Something about Cannon Shoals was a magnet for collies. There were a few families; Dan mostly managed to keep them straight based on how often he had to deal with them doing something stupid and neurotic. The Findlays were the worst of them; Melissa shook her head. "Rogers."
"Huh. Alright. Your turn."
"My turn?"
"Askin' dumb questions."
Blinking, she tilted her head a degree or two while her ears contemplated flattening. "Oh. Um. How... long have you lived here?"
"Not that dumb. Finish the bottle if it helps. Ya got another, anyhow."
She held it up to the light to see how much was left, and did as she was told. "Why do you drink this?"
Better. If just barely. "Picked it up from Spotty Haygood."
"Jim?"
"Thought I needed to do better than Olympia. Then he got into homebrewin' and shit, but I ain't gonna go down that road. Rogue makes some okay stuff. Why, what do you drink? Other than lemonade."
"You don't want to know," she said.
"Probably. But I asked."
"Um. Whatever wine mom has, generally. I don't buy it on my own. Dad says I'm closer to him, and he doesn't drink much these days."
The poor bastard. "The hell does he do, then? Just that fuckin' union?"
"No, he does things for fun, too. He works on his truck. Shoots things."
"Shoots things on the truck? Shit, that explains a bit." Unlike many of his friends, Danny didn't care about cars. Just the kind of thing where he'd picked up on enough random trivia to hassle them over. Didn't take being a gearhead to notice Bobby's forty year old F-150, though. The kind of truck that was designed to be shot at, and probably not to mind too much.
"No. Oh. No, no. He works on the truck, I mean. Like, keeping it running; I try to help him with that. He shoots other things, just cans and stuff -- used to go hunting with my uncle, but now it's just cans. I do that with him, too."
"Yeah? Anything good?"
The girl's head tilted, like she was trying to figure out if his interest was genuine. Wasn't like it mattered one way or the other, though: she picked up the second bottle, took a drink, and gave another of the shrugs he was beginning to pick up on as a self-deprecating defense mechanism.
"Hell does that mean?"
"It means... mm. I can almost always manage three inches at a hundred yards. That's with my 700, if I feel like shooting .223."
"You got others?"
"That and a 10/22. Oh, and my .38. Dad has a bunch, though... mostly rifles. I think his favorite is an old French one from the 19th century, but he doesn't shoot that. He doesn't shoot his Mosin-Nagant, either, 'cause it's such a pain."
Guns were not, ipso facto, a particular interest either, but he was required to be conversant. "Literally, right? I heard they ain't exactly good handlin'." By heard he meant that he'd read about it on the Internet, or maybe on the loading screen of a video game.
Melissa, evidently more informed, shook her head. "It's bad, but not awful; I think that's just reputation. The cheap old ammo you can buy is corrosive, though, so you either have to spend a bunch of time cleaning it, or you have to hand-load. That's more expensive, so you're spending all this effort and money for a gun that's kinda mean-spirited if it isn't as bad as they say. Dad said he had better things to waste time on. It could be worse. His friend has an MG-42 -- a real one, apparently, 'cause they built them under license, too. That's kind of fun, but, uh, 7.92 Mauser is expensive at a thousand rounds a minute."
"Your dad's friend has a machine gun? And you shoot it? At a thousand rounds a minute?"
"He has the stamp for it. And the mill land is technically private property."
"Wasn't askin' if it's legal. Don't give a fuck about that anyhow." She looked at him questioningly. "Kinda figure anybody goin' through the trouble to get an MG-42 isn't gonna use it to rob a bank, they just think it's cool. Is it cool? Guess it must be. First time I heard you say more'n ten words at once without half of them being 'um.'"
The dog laughed quietly. "Oh. I guess I did ramble. Do you shoot?"
"I'm a cop. They make me."
"Well, but besides that?"
"Not really."
"Weird. What do you do for fun?" She took another drink, swallowed too much, and tried to recover with an awkward lick to her muzzle. "Besides, um. Making deals like this."
"Not much. Video games. Television. Marital counseling."
"Really?" Seeing his reaction, Melissa averted her eyes and focused on the beer. "Oh. Got it."
"Just part time."
"Well, you have a real job, though. You started here out of high school, right?"
Danny shook his head. "Got my degree first."
"You have a degree?"
"Didn't have to look so surprised," he drawled. "Yeah, Chemeketa. Started out figuring I'd go to Eugene, become a professor and all that, but the girls weren't cute enough to be worth it."
Also, college had bored him tremendously. The way Melissa smiled, softly, he thought she might've seen through that. "You studied marital counseling, I suppose?"
"How'd you guess? Nah, buncha psychology and shit. Ain't anything you don't learn better just talking to people."
"Like at the video store, right? You had a summer job there for a couple years. I worked at Sports Shack next door."
"Closed now, right?"
"That's why I said 'worked.' I was trying to save up money for school, but it's harder now. Now I just babysit and do stuff like that..."
"For me, it was mom's idea. She told me I wouldn't amount to anything without a degree. But, ya know. I got one and managed not to amount to anything anyway."
He'd grinned, but Melissa either didn't notice or didn't see the humor. "Well, it's tough these days. There's no guarantees, right? A lot of us... I mean..."
"You mean?"
"Doesn't it bother you?"
"What?"
"My dad worked really hard his whole life. I bet yours did, too. Your parents."
"Nah. Dad fucked off east when I was a kid. Never saw him."
The mutt's ears splayed for a few seconds, like she was trying to figure out if she'd touched a nerve. "Okay... Your mom, though. Our parents worked really hard, I know that, but I don't think they worked that much harder than us. But it's like it doesn't matter. It didn't matter how hard I worked at Sports Shack. You know?"
The complaint, or something like it, played out pretty much every night at Annie's. The dive bar was the haunt of Cannon Shoals' fishermen, who could always be counted on to ramble longingly about the 'good old days.' "I guess," he said.
"That's why I..." She trailed off, her shoulders slumping and her brow furrowing as she tried to gather up whatever it took to put the words together. "Oh, hell, I don't know."
"Might as well talk. Not doin' anything better."
She ran her thumb unsteadily over the neck of her beer, and tossed her other paw up in a helpless half-shrug. "I told you I didn't care about Lisa. It's not exactly true."
"Not really the kinda bitch worth caring about."
"That's my point. Sort of. It's sort of my point."
"Is the rest of your point just mumbling, too, or are you gonna get to it?"
"I feel like we're all equal in a... a fake way. Um. You and me, and my dad, and Mayor Vogel, we all take up one line in the phone book. Or, uh, we all need to eat, and breathe, and sleep. But in another way, we aren't. Like... like if it was tug of war, we each take up the same amount of room, but some of us pull harder than others. You know?"
"Sure?"
"What I mean is... is we all take up one seat at the table, but... but the table doesn't have enough room for everyone. I... I think my dad is a good person, Danny. I don't think Lisa is. I'm sorry."
"What the hell for?"
"Being judgmental, I guess. Maybe it's because I don't know her all that well, and I do know dad? Maybe because the further away someone is from you, the less you know, and... and you get judgmental. Like I did."
That wasn't anything he'd ever felt guilt over. "So what? I get you want to empathize and shit. The alternative is some solipsistic bullshit. Fine. But look, okay?"
"At?"
"Just... look. 'They're people too' is table stakes. We've been jacking off about that since Hannah fucking Arendt. Doesn't mean you gotta wait to get inside someone's skull to judge 'em. My skull ain't a good place. You don't want to be there."
"Maybe not?"
"Lisa's either."
Melissa stared at her paws for ten or fifteen seconds, like maybe she hadn't understood him. At last she looked up. "Can I have another drink?"
He finished his off and grabbed two more. If his microwave clock was accurate -- dicey proposition, but he vaguely remembered setting the damn thing -- it was almost 11 at night. "Doing okay?"
She took the beer and nursed it for a few thoughtful swallows. "I care about Lisa because she knows that there isn't enough space at the table, just like I do. I don't know how to make more space. People like my dad, they look at it and they want to -- they want to... to cut more boards and build a new table, you know? They see how to. My dad's always been like that. I'm not. Are you?"
"Not really. I'm shit with a circular saw."
"Me too," Melissa said, with a melancholy smile. "Dad says nobody in this country builds stuff anymore. Stick with my dumb metaphor for a second. I think it's frustrating that you can't find a spot at the table or make a new one. Maybe you get frustrated and you just ignore everything. I get frustrated and it makes me want to help people like my dad. I think... I think maybe Lisa gets frustrated and she wants to burn the table down."
The alcohol had loosened her up enough that she was speaking in complete sentences rather than awkward pauses, so even if he wasn't sure the metaphor was completely watertight Danny went along with it. "Maybe."
"That's why I wanted your help. Because maybe you could... maybe even if you don't care about me or dad or whatever, you could at least... take the gasoline away, right?" She was no longer looking away: her eyes were fixed on his. Waiting.
"I'll talk to her tomorrow."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Ask her to come in for a chat, at least."
Melissa smiled. "Thanks."
"Ain't like I need my job to be more exciting, right? Probably don't need yer dad's blood pressure any higher, either." Even if it did mean trading it for his own.
She thanked him again, and did her best to steer the conversation to other topics -- the Xbox controller on his coffee table, and where the coffee table had come from, and wasn't that nice of his mom to let him have it. Did she still work for the Forestry department?
The dog had become awfully chatty, and was scrupulously trying to avoid the topic of paying him back. Maybe she even thought she was being subtle. Danny wasn't really in the mood, and didn't have the energy to rib her for it. "Pretty late," he finally cut her off.
"Yeah. I guess. Midnight?"
"Little past. You probably shouldn't drive, huh?"
She tilted her head, though as soon as she opened her muzzle to answer his meaning seemed to hit her square in the sense of equilibrium. Her ears twitched. "Oh. Maybe not."
"'S fine. I gotta get to bed, though. Sleep here if you want. Drink plenty of water."
"I mean I can... I can leave..."
"Give it a bit," he told her, and pushed himself to his feet. "Don't want to see that woodchipper close up, you know?"
By the time he'd brushed his teeth, the mutt was already starting to fade. She wasn't that bad off -- tired, he guessed, and a bit of a lightweight. Not a danger to herself.
She'd be gone in the morning, anyhow. Wasn't much point in sticking around. He switched off the lights, and watched the silhouette of her head droop sleepily.
The alarm on his phone woke him up more or less on schedule, at a quarter of 8 in the morning. He batted the phone until the alarm shut up, growled his displeasure at consciousness, and shut his eyes to summon up the resolve it would take to contend with the lightening day outside his window.
"Hey, uh, Danny?"
The dog. For some reason she had stuck around and was now nervously occupying the doorframe. He rolled himself to sit upright. "Yeah? You're still here?"
"I was gonna make breakfast for you. But, um. The only things in your refrigerator are beer and takeout Chinese. And eggs."
"Yeah?" he asked again. The dog had a hard time getting to the point. He got to his feet and padded past her to his bathroom. When he emerged again she was back in the kitchen, and resumed the conversation as though it was entirely normal.
"I smelled the Chinese and really wished I hadn't. Probably it's not good."
In actuality the stoat had forgotten about it completely. He shrugged. "Yeah? Probably. I'll chuck it sooner or later."
"The eggs seemed to be okay. They didn't float. Um. You have a lot of them."
"I like eggs." It was awfully early in the morning to be getting the third degree from some random dog. Who the fuck riffled through somebody's fridge like they owned the goddamned place?
"I can tell." Melissa opened a few cupboard doors, searching for spices, and the mutt's cheeks puffed out with a sigh. For a moment she gave up, and turned to him. "Hey, ah. Hey, Danny?"
Sober, she was back to thinking his first name was stammering. "What?"
"I. Hm. So I, ah... I woke up on your couch this morning. And, um. Like. Nothing happened last night, right? I don't remember anything happening."
Danny lifted an eyebrow. "It's a couch, not the gateway to fuckin' Narnia. Ain't shit happened 'cept you crashed."
"No, I... I know. Mm. Thank you. Uh, for letting me sleep here," she added hastily, in case he might've thought she was thanking him for something else. "I appreciate it."
"Eh. It's whatever. Look, appreciate the offer on breakfast and all, but I should get going. Have stuff to take care of. Lock up when you head out, okay?"
Melissa nodded, and left him alone as he got dressed.
He probably could've gotten something more than an offer of breakfast out of the dog, but there wasn't a whole lot of point in it. Not like there had to be, but...
It was kinda funny when people believed in things. Not just demons, or horoscopes, or magic. Melissa believed in her dad. Her dad believed in the union. The union believed in the town, which was -- against every inclination of a rational god -- sort of starting to wake up.
Danny had a hard time buying it. He could believe in beer, and the new Battlefield game coming out. The inherent goodness of people, though, that was a big ask. Most people weren't good. At best they were fun to hang out with.
His partner was one of them, at least. The coyote was waiting out front of his apartment when Danny pulled up. He reached over and pushed the door open. "Hey, Scout."
"Yo." Scout buckled himself in and checked his whiskers in the mirror once before giving up. "So I have a question for you. I was thinking about this election and all, right?"
"You can vote?"
Scout flipped him off. "My family was one of the good ones Mexico sent over, Dan."
"You ain't ever been one of the good ones."
The grin he got in answer flashed a mouthful of teeth. "I said my family was. I'm just an anchor baby. Anyway. This is important, Dan."
Danny swung the car out onto Kydonia Street. "What is?"
"So you know how the US has a Senate, right? What is it about senates that make them so evil? I mean, think about it. Who ran the Galactic Empire? The Imperial Senate. Earth Alliance? Senate. The Romulans had a senate, too."
"Parliaments ain't much better," Dan pointed out.
"Maybe it's because in our world, actual empires have had senates and parliaments rubber-stamping them. Like the British Empire and stuff."
The stoat grunted. "Yeah, or maybe it's 'cause in fiction, ain't such a thing as a good government."
"How do you figure? The Federation had a good government."
"Sure, as long as it stayed out of the way. Can't have superheroes and shit if you've got congressional subcommittees meddling all the goddamned time. Protagonists don't like following the rules."
"I hope you're not saying you're a protagonist."
Danny laughed at the thought. "Christ, Scout, be a fuckin' wreck of a universe that had us for heroes."
His partner grinned. "Or shitty writers. Like on Walking Dead. Hey -- we not heading to the station?" Danny had skipped turning onto the right street.
"Not right away."
Scout shrugged. "Sure. Man, can you imagine if we were written by the Walking Dead guys? Maybe you'd do okay. Me, I'm too cute to be anything but a side character. Best I can hope for is I actually get killed on-screen."
"Cute?" Dan asked.
"Aren't I?" The coyote perked his ears forward. Danny couldn't tell if he was trying to make his eyes look sympathetic or not. 'Yotes had a hard time with that. "C'mon, you know if I had a sister..."
"If you had a sister you'd call shotgun, Scout."
"Well..."
He pulled the car to a stop, leaving it idling. "Be right back, yeah? Gotta take care of something." Scout shrugged again, since it didn't really matter, and Dan left the coyote to entertain himself on his phone. Probably trying to figure out what his sister would've looked like.
Lisa Rourke's place was a small, older house, with peeling paint and irregularly faded drapes behind dingy windows. Nobody would've called it quaint -- not even someone fucked up enough to think of Dan and his partner as heroes.
The doorbell didn't work. He knocked instead, and got no answer. Wasn't exactly like he was looking forward to the conversation; maybe the universe was finally giving him a break.
On his way back down to the sidewalk, he ran into a deliveryman. The tiger's broad shoulders had just barely been squeezed into the uniform; he looked a little ridiculous and sounded even more so -- Chinese accent, maybe. Broken English. "You neighbor?"
"Nah. I look like I live here? Just stoppin' by, that's all."
"You not Mr. Rourke?"
The tiger must've been from out of town. Danny rolled his eyes. "No. Pretty sure there ain't a 'Mr. Rourke.'"
"I have package for Lisa Rourke. You sign for package, yes? Yes?" He had a tracking computer in his right paw, which was comically oversized for the battered machine.
"No? I ain't signing for a goddamn package. I gotta get to work."
His face fell, and he looked over his shoulder to his own idling truck. Not that it was Danny's problem that he'd had to drive out from wherever the warehouse was. Corvallis? Salem? The truck was unmarked -- just some generic cheap delivery van. "You know who sign?"
"Try a neighbor. Look, I just came out to talk to her about some stuff, okay? I'm a cop. See? Badge?" He pointed to it, in case the tiger really was as slow on the uptake as he seemed.
"Talk about?" The deliveryman held up his handheld computer hopefully.
Dan shook his head. "Huh-uh, man. You don't want to know what I need to talk to her about. Ain't no Amazon Prime shit, trust me. Count yerself lucky."
"She in trouble?" Danny had a hard time thinking the tiger actually cared. Lisa wasn't the kind of bitch anyone mustered up much care for. She in trouble? probably meant he was worried about being stuck with his package.
"Sure. Been a bad girl, you know? Left us both hanging. Hey, when she gets her ass down to the station I'll tell her you stopped by, how's that? It'll be okay. Just come back later."
"But..."
"What? Don't want to do that? Then c'mon, fuckin' leave it on the back porch or somethin'. Ain't like she's gonna care. I sure as fuck ain't got time to."
He slipped past the tiger, who looked to be on the verge of protesting again, and got back in the car. Scout looked up from his phone. "Back already? She must be good."
"Blow me, Scout. Fuckin'... Christ, you steered clear of all the Rourke bullshit, right?"
The coyote nodded. "Mostly. Skimmed the logs."
Danny spun the wheel hard over to turn their car around. Even on tiny streets like Cannon Shoals had, he'd done it often enough to know just how much clearance they had. It was all second nature. "Lucky," he said for the second time in as many minutes.
The deliveryman had abandoned Lisa's house and was sitting in the driver's seat of his van, a phone up to his ear. He frowned disappointedly at Danny when they passed him.
"Sometimes, Scout," the stoat muttered.
"Yeah?"
"Sometimes this town is bullshit."
"Ain't that the truth?" Scout spun his smartphone around in his fingers, idly, and then turned off the screen and pocketed it. "So I was thinking that parliaments can be evil, but it's a special kind of evil..."
Thing of it was that even though he said 'ain't that the truth,' Scout wasn't from Cannon Shoals. His family didn't live there, either -- they were still out in Arizona or New Mexico or some shit like that. He'd just assimilated, that was all.
Wasn't just that he'd assimilated into putting up with the weather and the shitty beer at Annie's dive bar. He'd also assimilated into realizing that none of it was worth a damn. The best you could hope for was having a little fun along the way.
That had to be why they didn't talk politics. Not real politics, no delusional bullshit about republicans and democrats. The Imperial Senate, though. The Quorum of Twelve. By the time they knocked off work, Scout had decided that senates were for evil empires and parliaments were for evil bureaucracies.
We'd be senators, Scout opined.
Whatever. When he got back home, there was a cardboard box sitting in front of his door. Inside he found a pie, and a handwritten note that just said thanks.
Might as well have added: at least you're good for something. Danny put the pie into his refrigerator -- Melissa had also thrown out his Chinese food, he noticed -- and dropped into his sofa to see what might be interesting out in the world beyond the Shoals.
A rattling buzz from his counter drew the stoat's attention half an hour later. His pager. The fuck? Wasn't often that it went off -- the last time had been during a big storm the year before, and the weather outside was decent.
The message was just the callback number for the police station. He got his phone and dialed. Better be a test. Don't need one more goddamn thing going on. Sergeant Lopez picked up. "Danny?"
"Yeah? I'm off. What the fuck's up?"
"You need to get down here. You wanted to talk to a Rourke lady, right? Lisa? File's got your name on it."
"Yeah? So what?"
"So Chief Pacheco wants a briefing on who she was before the press gets here."
Danny frowned. I'm off wasn't exactly hard to understand. In the quiet before he said it, though, he caught another sound tickling the higher ranges of his hearing. "What happened?"
The sirens were getting louder. They had to be coming down 101.
"Gus?"
"Just get down here."