Christmas K-9 Protectors
Author
Maggie K. Black
Reads
19.8K
Chapters
34
ONE
As forensic scientist Tala Ekho reached for her gingerbread latte at the busy Anchorage mall coffee kiosk, she had the unsettling suspicion that the person standing at the counter beside her was trying to get away with a crime. Even though it had been over an hour since she had clocked out of work, traded in her white lab coat for a festive Christmas sweater and even braided a red ribbon through her long black hair, her keen mind continued to analyze the data around her as if it was still inspecting clues at the Alaska State Crime Lab.
Tala’s nose detected the pungent smell of isopropyl alcohol wafting off the slender woman’s form, despite her obvious attempt to drown it out with a rather flowery perfume. Her long and puffy green coat was zipped all the way up and an oversize, furry hood hid her face. This was despite the fact that the mall had decided to turn up both the heat and Christmas carols to full blast. Slight burn marks on the woman’s fingers implied she’d recently tried to use a cigarette lighter to melt something, while bright splashes of yellow and red dye trapped in the creases of her fingernails meant it had likely been an ink-filled clothing security tag.
She felt the clues come together to create a complete picture. Analysis: the woman had tried to melt a security tag, it had exploded and so she’d doused herself with a heavy-duty cleaning alcohol to remove the evidence. There was no way someone would just bring a pungent cleanser like that to a mall in their purse without a very good reason.
Conclusion: she was a thief who’d come to the mall prepared to shoplift.
Just this morning, Tala had been briefing the Alaska K-9 Unit via video chat on evidence found at the recent armed robberies of two jewelry stores and a pawnshop. One of the elderly men working at the pawnshop the night of the robbery had disappeared, too, and still hadn’t been found. Although the brazen perpetrator of the robberies had been identified by witnesses as a man—dubbed the Golden Bandit by local press—and armed robberies were a very different type of theft, one of the troopers had mentioned in passing that the Anchorage police were also on the lookout for a very pernicious shoplifter. The team had debated the possibility that the shoplifter and Golden Bandit were linked somehow but discarded it as unlikely.
Was the woman beside her the shoplifter her colleagues had been talking about? If so, what should Tala do about it?
The suspect moved away from the counter and over to the wall. Tala hesitated awkwardly, then sat at the closest empty table and dropped her purse on top, where it toppled over, spilling out a stack of green flyers for a donation drive at the hospice where her grandmother had died. She shoveled the flyers back in. For all the years Tala had spent in the lab poring over case evidence sent to her by the Alaska K-9 Unit, she’d never actually done any fieldwork—let alone tried to stop a criminal. She knew the law well enough to know she could hardly call security just because someone looked and smelled funny, and if she called her colleagues, the woman might be long gone by the time they arrived.
Help me, Lord. I need Your wisdom.
Tala pushed her silver-rimmed glasses up higher on her nose with one finger in the same motion she’d used countless times when examining evidence at the crime lab. The suspect appeared to be texting someone now, and there wasn’t a security guard in sight.
Then a flash of periwinkle blue caught Tala’s eye, and her heart leaped. There was a uniformed state trooper in the jewelry store talking to someone behind the engagement ring counter. She’d have assumed it was about the Golden Bandit case if he also hadn’t been holding up a rather large ring. Well, it looked like someone was planning on proposing this Christmas. Judging by the young, long-haired and exceedingly fluffy German shepherd at his feet, the man was a rookie and not someone she’d worked with before. That said, she usually only saw the team through phone calls and video chats. She stood up to get a better look and saw he was tall, with a strong set of shoulders and a shock of short red hair. The trooper turned as if sensing her gaze and it was like the busy world around her froze.
It was Ian McCaffrey.
He’d aged over fifteen years and grown a tidy beard since she’d last seen his face at the disastrous high school party that had finally ended their friendship once and for all. That night they’d been arguing about the fact that she thought his hockey friends were bullies, then somehow she’d ended up blurting out that she liked him and they’d almost kissed before he turned tail and ran. They hadn’t spoken since. But it was most definitely him—the guy who’d been her best friend from kindergarten and whom she used to think she’d one day marry.
Wow. Ian was a K-9 trooper now? His eyebrows rose as he scanned her face. But there was no time to begin to analyze this unexpected complication, because the suspected shoplifter was on the move again. The woman wove through the tables with her, unzipped her coat with one hand and then tripped, sending her phone clattering to the floor behind a crowded table of teenage boys in high school hockey jerseys. Tala noted the boys had name-brand electronics bags crowded around their feet. The woman bent down, scooped up her phone with one hand and slid something Tala couldn’t quite make out into her open coat with the other. Then she straightened up and kept moving toward the exit, doing up her zipper as she went.
The shoplifter had just stolen something from one of the boys! Tala was convinced of it.
Lord...what do I do? I’m not a cop, but I have to do something. She’s getting away!
If Tala was wrong, she was about to make a gigantic fool out of herself. But if she was right and didn’t intervene, she’d never forgive herself. She leaped to her feet.
“Hey! Ma’am!” Tala yelled. “I think you just took something that isn’t yours!”
The woman didn’t stop moving, but her shoulders twitched as if she’d heard her. Tala glanced toward Ian, pointed at the shoplifter and hollered, “That woman just stole something!”
Ian’s brows furrowed. Tala didn’t wait for him to act. She scooped up her purse and jogged after her, feeling her boots slide on the wet floor.
“Excuse me!” She reached out and touched the woman’s sleeve. “Ma’am! I saw you rob those boys!”
The suspect spun and yanked her arm back so suddenly Tala lost her footing and wiped out on the floor. Snorts of laughter rose from the table of teenage boys.
The woman’s hood fell back, showing the immaculate makeup and pale blond pixie cut of an attractive woman probably in her late thirties. She was impeccably dressed and wearing a voluminous scarf worth at least what Tala earned as a month’s salary.
“Hey, you! Officer!” the woman shouted and Tala turned to see both Ian and his K-9 partner running toward them. Heat rose to Tala’s face. “This lady attacked me! Arrest her! Now!”
Of the dozens of things that Ian McCaffrey had never forgotten about his beautiful and brilliant former best friend was that Tala absolutely hated being the center of attention. So, as he watched her spring to her feet, defiance flashing in her dark eyes, he found himself silently praying that she wouldn’t notice the crowd of people gawking at her now.
Then he added a second prayer for wisdom.
Give me strength, Lord. I barely feel prepared to face Tala again in the best of circumstances, let alone like this.
His late grandmother had always joked that the red-haired McCaffrey men were all heart and no brains. There was enough of a kernel of truth in it that he’d secretly debated whether he’d really be cut out for a job in law enforcement. Right now, his heart was pounding a mile a minute and his mind didn’t know what to think.
He crossed the floor toward the two women, oddly thankful for the reassuring bulk of his K-9 partner, Aurora, by his side.
“Ian McCaffrey, Alaska State Trooper.” His voice rose as he raised his badge aloft before sliding it back in his jacket. “What seems to be the problem?”
“She’s a thief.” Tala spoke first. “I’m sure of it. She smells like isopropyl alcohol, and she has burn marks on her fingertips and ink splatter on her cuticles.”
She said the words with such confidence it was like Tala expected him to know what all that meant. A ferocity filled her gaze, radiating a confidence that somehow made her even more attractive than she had been when her mere smile had knocked his socks off back in high school.
Ever since he’d joined the Alaska K-9 Unit, he’d heard person after person tell him about the incredible forensic scientist who’d been an invaluable part of so many investigations. While he’d been steeling himself to face her again, he’d never imagined it would be in a moment like this.
“She just crouched down behind that table,” Tala added, pointing with an outstretched arm to a group of teenagers who were both watching and recording the unfolding scene like it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. “I think she stole something from one of those guys.”
Ian fought the urge to roll his eyes as the hockey-jersey-clad teens patted themselves theatrically as if Tala’s claim was all some big joke instead of actually looking through their bags to see if she was right. It was bravado, he guessed, the kind that made adolescent boys all join in on doing something dumb together instead of being smart and doing what was in their own best interest. He’d been the goalie of the same team in high school and some of his fellow teammates had practically competed to see who could act like the bigger idiot.
The well-dressed woman snorted.
“Is it true? Miss...” Ian dragged out the last word, hoping she’d supply him with her name.
“Claudia Mailer,” she said. “And no, of course it’s not. It’s ludicrous and she’s a menace.” She fired off two rapid texts to someone Ian noticed was listed in her phone as “Boyfriend.” Then she turned to Tala. “There’s something seriously wrong with your brain, lady. You had no right to harass me like this. My boyfriend’s got the money to hire a good lawyer. You should be glad I don’t have time to stick around and press charges.”
“Trust me, Ian,” Tala countered. “She tried to melt a security tag, it exploded and she cleaned the ink off her hands with the alcohol. You can smell it. You can see it.” Her dark and earnest eyes fixed on his face, through her glasses with round-wired frames. “And if she took off her jacket right now, I’m sure you’d see the ink splattered all over her.”
His heart told him to believe her, but he also knew better than to trust it even as Claudia shoved her hands deep into her pockets.
“Did you actually see her steal something?” Ian asked.
“No,” Tala admitted. “But all the data indicates it.”
A ripple of whispers went through the watching crowd. Almost everyone had their cell phones out, either typing on them or—even worse—filming the altercation. The situation was deteriorating rapidly and it definitely sounded like the crowd was not on Tala’s side. Ian heard a voice shout his name and looked over to see the jewelry store saleswoman he’d been talking to, jogging down the hall with a middle-aged security guard.
I could really use some help here.
Ian looked at Aurora. The long-haired German shepherd sat beside Tala and Aurora’s shaggy face looked up into hers. Hmm. Apparently his K-9 partner had already chosen sides.
“Please, Ian,” Tala said. “Remember how my brain gets? It’s always analyzing every little thing. I can’t shut it off. But it’s almost always right.”
He wrenched his eyes away from her and breathed a silent prayer. Then he remembered he already had all the information he actually needed. It didn’t make any difference what had happened when they were teenagers. Tala was his colleague now and she was very well respected by his new team. That was all that mattered.
Ian pulled his badge to show the approaching security guard.
“Trooper Ian McCaffrey,” he said. “K-9 unit. This is Tala Ekho of the Alaska State Crime Lab. She has reason to believe this woman has been shoplifting. I realize this whole thing is a bit unusual, but Miss Ekho is an extremely skilled forensic scientist. Her expertise is valued by the Alaska K-9 Unit, and if she believes this woman here has been stealing, that’s reason enough to detain her for questioning.”
He blew out a hard breath, feeling like he’d oddly dodged a bullet. It wasn’t personal; it was professional. No matter what weird twisting and turning his gut might be doing.
Claudia’s eyes widened, and she sputtered a string of curses under her breath, as if she was completely and utterly shocked that Ian hadn’t taken her side. Then she turned on her heel and strode quickly toward the exit. In an instant, the security guard was in hot pursuit, shouting at her to stop. The guard grabbed for her shoulder, and she spun back.
A bright yellow electronics-store bag slipped from inside her voluminous jacket and clattered to the floor, followed by a hot pink one from a cosmetics shop and a gauzy scarf that still had an anti-theft security tag on it.
“Hey! That’s mine!” One of the hockey teens shouted and leaped to his feet. “She stole my new phone!”
His friends laughed and some other shoppers started clapping. Ian turned away. He’d never liked watching people celebrate somebody else’s misfortune. It was too much like high school.
“Thank you.” Tala turned to him.
“Colonel Lorenza Gallo told me personally how much she values your opinion,” he said. “Several other Alaska K-9 Unit team members have, too. It was nothing personal. Any one of my fellow troopers would’ve done the same. Plus, you know, my dog, Aurora, totally believed you.”
He meant the last bit as an awkward joke. But something dimmed behind Tala’s eyes.
“Right, nothing personal,” she repeated softly. But while the exact same words had sounded positive in his head, they now seemed completely different coming from her lips.
“Hey, officer lady, that was amazing!” shouted one of the teenager boys who’d been snickering at her just moments earlier. “How did you learn to solve crimes by guessing? Are you like Sherlock Holmes or something?”
“No,” Tala told him. “Just studying plus experience.”
There was an odd edge to her voice that reminded him of the way she’d reacted whenever any of his friends made fun of how hard she’d worked in high school. Back then she’d been so dedicated to learning she’d stay up all night hitting the books. All the while, he’d been completely focused on hockey and involved in playing for the team. Sure, some of the other guys had gotten caught up in stupid stuff. But he’d never been a part of it and didn’t understand why it had bothered Tala as much as it did. It had grown even worse when the coach, who was a friend of his father’s, had taken Ian under his wing and helped him apply for sports scholarships. He’d hoped she’d be happy for him. But after a while she wouldn’t even come to the games.
Kicker was, he hadn’t even gotten a scholarship.
“Why didn’t you sic your dog on her?” another teenager asked.
“Aurora is a cadaver dog,” Ian explained. At least until he convinced his boss she should be cross-trained. He ran his hand over the dog’s shaggy head. “She only tracks dead people.”
He’d been nineteen when a college classmate had gone missing on a winter camping trip. Despite the tragedy of her death, he’d never forgotten the peace and closure it had brought to her parents when a K-9 cadaver dog had found her body in one of Alaska’s abandoned gold mines. That memory had left a lasting impression on his heart and given him a calling to the sometimes-underappreciated K-9 work of finding those who’d died and bringing them home. But while Aurora had excelled at her training, Ian had been wondering whether he should ask his boss if Aurora could be cross-trained in another specialty.
“Excuse me, Officers!” A tall, blond man in his midforties, with a condescending frown on his brow, shouldered his way through the crowd. “Are either of you working on the Golden Bandit case? Because you’d like to think if the police are just arresting people on magic guesswork now, they’d actually be doing something about Anchorage’s real criminals.” He glanced around the crowd as if he was more interested in having an audience than talking to anyone in particular. “Did you know that the Golden Bandit has hit both a pawnshop and two jewelry stores in the past month? He stole a rather expensive golden necklace I’d purchased from one store and had left there to have engraved as a Christmas gift for a special friend. Surely the Alaska troopers would agree that a thief who’d stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars of merchandise is a higher priority than a petty mall shoplifter?”
Ian’s back stiffened. That wasn’t a question, it was an indictment. It frustrated him to no end that a local newspaper had given a serious criminal such a ridiculous nickname. And, unfortunately, it had stuck. This man had no idea how deeply Ian cared about stopping the string of violent break-ins, especially as a spate of similar unsolved crimes in Juneau last year had led to the disappearance of two pawnshop workers, on top of the elderly pawnshop employee who’d vanished in Anchorage recently. As much as he wanted all three found alive, he couldn’t shake the fear that he and Aurora might one day find their corpses.
He had grown up in Alaska’s gold-finding community. Anchorage was one of the few places so dedicated to it that their police department had a pawn detective, who’d been coordinating with Ian on this case. Both his father and late grandfather were metal detection enthusiasts and had close connections with pawn and jewelry shops across the state—who were usually the ones that both verified and bought the coins, rings, necklaces and lumps of raw gold people found. This man, however, with his furrowed brow and disapproving tone, had no idea how personally Ian took this case.
While a lot of people he knew still scoured Alaska’s abandoned mines for forgotten gold, Ian loved searching for recently lost treasures and returning them to their rightful owners. In fact, the whole reason he’d popped into the mall before his night shift began was to see if any of the jewelers could help him return a rather large emerald engagement ring that he and Aurora had found while hiking in the woods.
“So, are you assisting Trooper McCaffrey on the Golden Bandit case?” the jewelry store clerk asked Tala.
Ian half expected Tala to bristle at the subtle implication she was some kind of sidekick. But instead her chin rose.
“Obviously we can’t give out specifics about ongoing cases,” Tala said. “But yes, the Alaska State Crime Lab has been analyzing the evidence found at the scenes of the crimes while the state troopers chase investigative leads. It’s a team effort.”
A smile that was confident in a very reassuring way crossed her lips. It was the kind of expression that said there wasn’t a doubt in her mind this case would be solved. It was really attractive.
The security guard still had the shoplifter standing off to the side. He waved Ian over. Ian glanced at his watch. It was just past six thirty and his shift started at seven. He turned to Tala and lowered his voice.
“I’ve got to go talk to the security guard and also call Lorenza to let her know that I’ll be late logging into my shift tonight,” he said. “But please, wait for me and maybe we can grab a quick bite and catch up. It’s been way too long since we talked, and I know that’s probably my fault. But the Golden Bandit case is incredibly important to me and I want to clear the air if we’re going to work together.”
If he was honest, he also wanted to at least try to fix their friendship. But the way Tala pressed her lips together had Ian wondering if it was too little too late. Then Aurora licked his fingers, as if his K-9 partner sensed something was wrong and wanted to help but wasn’t sure what to do. He wasn’t sure, either.
“I should go. I just worked a ten-hour day in the lab,” Tala said. “I only came here on my way home to pick up some flyers from a copy shop for a donation drive I’m helping with at the hospice that Grams passed away in. If I have time, I’m hoping to drop some off to them tonight on my way home.”
Ian sucked in a painful breath. Tala had lost her mom when she was twelve and she’d never known her dad. Her grams had been like a second grandmother to Ian when they were growing up, and was all the family Tala had.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “My grandparents both passed two years ago, actually. They were in their home together until the very end.”
“I’m sure they loved that,” Tala said. “Your grandfather built a really amazing house.”
“He did,” Ian said. He’d also secretly mortgaged it late in life and left a lot of debt behind. “Do you still live at your grandmother’s house?”
“Yup,” she said. “Anyway, I really had enough of the mall for one day, I’m exhausted and I’m sure we’ll see each other on a team meeting video chat soon.”
The security guard was signaling him again. Ian raised a finger to say he’d be a minute. The man sighed and started escorting Claudia down the hall.
“Please, Tala,” Ian said. “Give me fifteen minutes.”
“I’ve got a bus to catch.”
“I can give you a ride.” His phone began to ring. “Please, wait here for me.”
She didn’t answer right away. He called Aurora to his side, then turned and strode down the hall after the security guard, in the hope Tala might be there when he got back. He answered the phone. It was his mom, triple-checking that he definitely wasn’t bringing a surprise date to his parents’ annual catered Christmas party fundraiser. He assured her he’d be coming solo. Then he ended the call, called his boss and quickly filled her in on what had happened at the mall.
Unfortunately, his visit to the security office wasn’t settled as quickly or as easily. Claudia had resorted to loudly threatening to sue the security guard personally and the mall itself for a dozen ridiculous reasons and Ian felt obliged to stick around to make sure everything was okay until Anchorage police showed up to take over.
By the time he made it back to the food court, Tala was gone. His heart sank. Aurora butted her head against his leg.
“Thanks, girl,” he said, looking down at his partner. “See, Tala and I were best friends once, a long time ago, and I ruined it.” The German shepherd’s ears perked as if she understood his emotions, if not his words. “We were at this party at my grandparents’ house when we were seventeen and she said something really unexpected.” That she liked me and then we almost kissed. “I panicked and she took it personally. I should’ve stepped up and tried to fix our friendship. But I didn’t, because everything was just really awkward. She wanted me to quit the hockey team and hated my teammates. I was still hoping if I kept playing I’d get a scholarship. It was a mess and I still kick myself over it.”
And now here he was, explaining the situation in hushed tones to his K-9 partner in a shopping mall. But to be fair, Aurora was a really good listener and talking to her helped somehow. Knowing Tala, he figured she would probably cut through the back parking lot and go through the industrial park to reach the express bus stop and knock half an hour off her journey. If he was right, they might be able to catch up with her.
“Come on,” he told his K-9, “let’s give it a try.”
Ian and Aurora stepped out the back door into the snow. Thick flakes swirled around them. Although it wasn’t yet seven at night, the sun had set hours ago. The mall’s back parking lot was mostly just used for deliveries and was now completely deserted, with just a few dim pools of yellow lamplight against the blackness. He pulled his scarf up over his face against the cold.
A deep warning growl rumbled from Aurora’s throat.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Is it Tala?”
His footsteps quickened as they rushed around the back of the building and toward the adjacent lot. Bright green flyers for the Christmas drive were spread out across the ground ahead of them, in between fresh gashes that tire tracks had left in the snow. Her bag and its contents were also scattered haphazardly nearby. And, even worse, two pairs of footprints marked the clear sign of a struggle.
“Tala!” he shouted. “Tala, where are you?”
Something silver glinted on the ground in a pool of light. It was her glasses. Aurora whined.
“Ian!” Tala’s faint and desperate voice floated through the snowy night. “Help me!”
