Hero
Hero
Detective Sergeant Lawrence, a cougar whose physique had seen better days, sat down and picked up the vegetable wrap his mate forced him to take to the station for lunch. He threw it back in the paper bag with disgust and reached for the large black coffee his partner, the young coonhound Marty McDowell, had put on his desk a moment ago. He sipped at the strong brew while reaching for the first file in his in basket.
It was a report from an assault in Bruce Conservation Area the previous night. Lawrence thought that they might catch that one. From what he had heard on the news this morning the victims were going to be okay, although the younger one was still hospitalized. The collie that had saved them was released with only a few scratches, and was being hailed as a hero. The perpetrator, alleged perpetrator he reminded himself, was not so fortunate. He had been killed in the struggle to rescue the victims.
Let's see what the officers on the scene have to say, he mused, and opened the file. It contained the standard forms and reports, all phrased in the terms they taught at the police college. On or about this, in the vicinity of that, cop talk ... boring. The victim statements were short. The youngster had seen little before being hit on the head from behind, and nothing afterwards. The older one had seen the perp, and the hero, in the playground earlier, but had only caught a glimpse of a masked attacker before the bag was put over her head. The fight to save her had been a series of grunts, gasps and cries of pain, ending in a thud and silence. Not much to go on.
He found the hero's statement. Officially, the collie was a subject of the investigation, having killed the perp, but Lawrence doubted that he would ever go to trial for it. He shuffled the papers to find his statement. It was thicker than the rest, and written in his own words. It was bound to be more interesting than the officer's reports. Lawrence settled back and began to read.
Date of Statement: 2009 07 10
Person making statement: Michael Shawn Collins
Species: Collie
DOB: 1987 09 10
Location of Statement: Ottawa Central Station
Location of Incident: Bruce Conservation Area
Date/Time of incident: 2009 07 10/2000 hours (approx)
Case #: 09-12875
Reporting Officer/badge #: Cnst Wiggins, T.C. -34256
Statement:
I was walking on the trails through the woods, like I do several nights a week. I heard a cry and a stifled scream. I went to check it out. I had seen the blonde and her little brother go that way earlier and I figured something had happened to them. I had heard some shuffling noises in the woods earlier that sort of scared me so I picked up a large broken branch I found beside the trail.
I should tell you that I see her and her brother in the park a lot. I've never talked to them though. I see the frog around there a lot recently too, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
There was a sticky note on the statement in Marty's writing. It said that the blonde was the victim of the sexual assault (attempted); a golden retriever, female, aged 18. The brother was the victim of the physical assault; same species, age six. The frog was the perpetrator, an amphibian, male, aged thirty-one. Lawrence went back to the statement.
I ran through the woods toward the sound and the first thing I saw was the pup, lying face down about ten metres off the trail, with blood coming out of a cut on the back of his head. I took first aid so I checked to see if he was okay. He had a pulse and was breathing, and the bleeding was not so bad. I was going to turn him over but I heard a whining and a smacking sound further in. So I left him and ran forward a bit more.
There was a rise with one of those old sand-filled depressions behind it, from when the place used to be a gravel pit. The frog had her in there. She had a bag over her head and he was slapping her through it. Her arms were behind her, tied with plastic straps I found out later. Her purple top was torn open. There was a bra and a pair of jeans on the ground at their feet. He was tugging at her panties and she was fighting back. Trying to anyways.
The frog saw me and he threw the blonde to the ground. He was wearing a plastic mask, the main character from the movie 'V', but I could tell it was him. Same clothes. He turned toward me, that's when I saw the hunting knife in his paw. He came towards me with the knife. I lifted the branch like a baseball bat. He kept coming. He lunged at me when he got close but I swung the branch and knocked his arm away. He tried again. I brought the branch down on his wrist and he dropped the knife. It disappeared into the long grass. He grabbed the branch and we wrestled with it. I hit him a few times with it and he hit me. He tried to jerk it from my paws but his grip slipped and it was all mine. I told him to run while he could, but he dropped to the ground and started feeling around frantically. I couldn't bring myself to hit him while he was unarmed and I kept telling him to get the hell out but he wouldn't leave.
Another sticky note. Marty had checked with the victim before she was released from the hospital. She recalled hearing a voice shout "get the hell out" while she was down. She thought that it had been the collie shouting.
Then he came up off the ground with the knife. I jumped back and swung the branch as hard as I could. I didn't really see it connect, but I heard the smack. When I recovered my balance he was on the ground. The left side of his head was caved in and there was just a trickle of blood. I was going to hit him again, I was that worked up, but he was so still.
I went over to the blonde and asked if she was okay. I pulled the bag off her head and took my shirt off to cover her with. She said she had a cell phone in her jeans so I called 911. I didn't want to touch anything else, so not to contaminate the evidence, but I did pick up the knife and move it out of his reach, in case he came to.
I stayed with her, branch at the ready, until the police showed up about ten minutes later. The paramedics were right behind them. I showed them where her brother was. She was so distraught that she had forgotten he was there, she never mentioned him at all. They examined the frog and pronounced him dead. I guess I got a lucky shot in with that branch. Then they took us to the hospital. That's about it.
The statement was followed by the standard legal disclaimer. It was dated and signed.
Lawrence sighed and reached for a doughnut. His paw came back clutching the veggie wrap. He took a bite and pretended that it tasted good. He saw Marty watching him from his desk and he waved him over.
* * * * * * * *
From the stalker's diary, dated 10 July, 2009:
Beautiful blonde fur and a perfect ass, that's what first attracted me to her. I saw her from behind, as she walked beside her little brother. Her butt was like two globes in those painted-on jeans. Her golden blond fur was cut short but swinging to match the roll of her hips as she walked. I fell in love instantly. But then again, don't I always?
I put a lot of effort into our 'romance'. I followed her home from the park, keeping my distance of course. I did a reverse lookup on her address and got the telephone number and family name. They had a face book site, how convenient. The whole family was there, Anne Marie, her little brother Marc, their parents. I set up an account in a false name with a comical avatar, posing as a cousin of theirs from Winnipeg. I used their blog to get the information. Within a week I knew her interests, her likes and dislikes, what school she went to, her schedule, everything.
I probably could have lured her to a hotel by the airport but these electronic communications can be traced after the fact. Better to take her outside. These things must be done delicately, or you hurt the spell, but I digress.
I needed to know a little more about her. More than I could find out on line. I scouted their house. It was close to the park, and the woods came up to one side of the property. The power lines, TV cable, and the phone lines all came in off a common pole from that side. They had built a tall wooden privacy fence between them and the woods, a perfect place to hide behind while I worked.
I spliced into their phone line, using a handset with call display features. I could monitor their calls and intercept them at will. I waited until her mother was home alone and snipped the cable line. In less than five minutes the number of the cable company emergency line showed up in the display window of my handset. I answered, and told her mother that I would be right over.
Wearing coveralls similar to the cable company's, I checked the house over, turning various TVs on and off and pretending to examine the junction boxes while I cased the place. I sent the mother to the basement to find a fictitious 'cable hub'. Meanwhile, I unlatched the one window that was not connected to the alarm system, the bathroom window. I told her that the problem must be outside, and that there would be no charge for the service call. I left then, repaired the line that I had cut and removed my equipment from their phone line.
A couple of nights later I was able to enter the house through the unprotected window while they were out at the movies, their schedule courtesy of face book once more. I went straight to her collection of books, and her laptop computer. The books were expensive collector's editions of popular fairy tales, and the computer, whose password was her name, held journals detailing her longing to be like the heroines of those fairy tales. Her computer desktop was a morph of her and Little Red Riding Hood. I wonder if she has read the original version?
So I know what I have to do now, how to set this up. She and I will be together very, very, soon.
* * * * * * * *
The last item in the file was a profile of the alleged perp. The frog had a record and was on the sex offender's list. Vice had even been keeping an eye on him since he started hanging around Bruce Park, questioning the regulars about him. They had even talked to the collie about him.
The frog was a perv. A repeat offender. He had attacked two little girls, aged eight and ten. If he was caught touching another child he was going away for life. Lawrence read the description of the victims again before he addressed Marty.
"What is wrong with this picture?" Lawrence asked, tapping the cover of the file containing the reports of the attempted rape and subsequent rescue.
"What are you talking about boss?"
"I appreciate the fact that you tried to follow up on the statements." Lawrence flicked one of the sticky notes with a claw. "But there are a lot of holes still to fill in. Claims to crosscheck, backgrounds to verify. Did you send the mask to fur and fibres?"
"Oh, come on Sarge." The dog complained. "This is an open and shut case."
Lawrence knew that the caseload was light this week. He had been hoping for a case like this to come along, one with classic themes but no time pressure. He wanted to use it as a training vehicle for his new partner.
"Think about it Marty. What do we have here?"
"A sex crime boss."
And what is the constant feature of sexual predators?"
"They prey on their own species." Marty said humbly.
"And our perp is...?"
"Amphibian."
"But the vic is...?"
"Canine."
"Riggght. What else do we know about the perp?"
"He's a hetro pedophile, eight to ten age bracket."
"So what is he doing attacking an eighteen year old?"
"Maybe he was following the pup."
"He attacks little girls, not boys. There's a difference Marty." Lawrence frowned. He suddenly realized that there were more problems with this case than he had anticipated.
"We have a known sexual offender beaten to death at the scene of an attempted sexual assault; but the profile is all wrong." He mumbled aloud. "Why would he change his target group?"
"He would be suspect if any young amphibian females were attacked. Maybe in his warped logic he thought that going out of his species and age range would be safer."
Lawrence picked up the reports of the frog's previous convictions and reread them.
"This guy may not be another Moriarty," he admitted, "but he isn't stupid either. He had to know any sexual assault within ten kilometres of him would bring police attention, no matter what the species, sex or age."
Marty shrugged. "So what do you want me to do?"
Lawrence's brain was ticking over at high speed as he processed the new input.
"I want you to check with his employer, if he had one, his neighbours and any friends he had. Talk to his parole officer and whoever did his psych evaluation the last time he was arrested. We need to understand what was going through his head and be able to answer any question in case this goes to trial."
"It won't go to trial." Marty said with confidence. He turned away and took a step toward his desk.
There was something about the collie's statement that was bothering Lawrence. Something that his insatiable curiosity demanded an explanation for.
"One more thing." He called to Marty, stopping him in his tracks. "The collie refers to the pup as her brother, yet he says that he has never talked to them before and she never mentioned him while he was there." He looked at the photo of her from the file. She could have been in her mid twenties. "How did he know that she was his sister and not his mother?"
"A lucky guess?" Marty called over his shoulder.
Lawrence bit his lip and shook his head. "Something about this just doesn't jibe."
* * * * * * * *
Michael knocked softly on the side door to her house, the one to the kitchen. Yesterday she might have flung it open instantly, exuberantly, but today she checked the visitor through the peep hole before unlatching the chain. When she saw who it was she unlocked the door and held it open for him to come in.
"I'm sorry if I'm intruding." He started, as he stood in the doorway. "But I wanted to see if you were okay. They took you away so quickly I didn't have a chance to introduce myself." He gave her a shy grin.
"Anne-Marie." She said, holding out her paw. "And my brother's name is Marc. I did not have the chance to thank you for saving us."
"It was the least that I could do for a damsel in distress." He looked around awkwardly. "Where are your parents? They did not leave you all alone, did they?"
"They went to the hospital to visit my brother a few minutes ago. Honestly," she said tossing her short blonde hair, "I'm old enough to take care of myself, most days." It was her turn to smile shyly.
"I should go now." He said. "It would not be right to stay with you alone like ... I mean after what ... so soon and all."
* * * * * * * *
Still seated at his desk, Detective Sergeant Lawrence was sipping his coffee, now gone cold, and rereading all of the case reports related to the attack at Bruce. He was going through the frog's file meticulously, looking for something that would explain why he would attack a fully grown female canine.
The frog had a perfect record for attending his parole office and the court-ordered treatment sessions. He was taking his medication to suppress the sexual urges that had made him attack little girls in the past. He had a need to atone, the shrink on his case noted. He was not allowed to be alone with children but he hung around playgrounds, trying to spot other pedophiles so he could report them, or so he claimed. While there, he would confess his crimes to anyone who engaged him in conversation. He had been reported to the police by several mothers and beaten by a couple of fathers. He had to change parks every couple of weeks.
Vice checked up on him regularly. Whenever he reported hanging around a new playground they sent the surveillance unit over. So far, they had only seen him associating with adults. There were several contact sheets of miniature photos showing him on benches in various parks. Lawrence picked up the latest one and examined it. Something caught his eye. He pulled a magnifying glass out of his desk drawer and examined the last few in the series, taken just two days before the attack.
In the first, the frog was sitting forward on a bench, staring at something out of the scene. The photographer had zoomed out for the next shot to include the creature that the frog was staring at. Lawrence recognized the collie. The young dog was not aware of the frog's stare, he was looking at something in the other direction. Lawrence took another sip of coffee. The third shot was zoomed out even more, showing the frog, the collie and what the collie was looking at.
Coffee erupted from his mouth as Lawrence recognized the blonde. He wiped the droplets off the print and checked it again. The collie was staring intently at her backside as she strolled past him, licking his chops. The frog was staring at him, suspicion etched on his face.
Lawrence dropped the half-filled coffee cup into the waste basket and reached for the phone.
* * * * * * * *
"I should go now." Michael said. "It would not be right to stay with you alone like ... I mean after what ... so soon and all." He turned to leave.
"Nonsense." She exclaimed. "You must come in. It is your right after saving us." She pulled him forward until the door closed behind him. He leaned back against it as she turned to check to fridge to see what she had to offer her hero.
"Yes." He said, as he reached behind him to turn the latch and lock the door. "The hero always gets to come inside, no questions asked." He fingered the plastic straps that he had pulled out of his sleeves.
"What did you say?" She asked, her head still inside the fridge.
He stepped up behind her and admired her perfect ass in the skin tight shorts for an instant as he looped the cord that he would slip over her neck around his paws.
"I said, did you ever wonder what happened to Little Red Riding Hood after the woodsman killed the wolf?"