Page 1 of Hoofin’ It

Chapter One

The next time I took a vacation, I’d just stay home. While there were cozier places than my apartment in Chicago, it beat being covered head to toe in blood spatter on a busy sidewalk in Times Square. I’d seen a lot of crazy shit during my short stint as a cop, but I’d never seen a body plummet from a skyscraper and crash through the windshield of a car stuck in traffic before.

One body was bad enough, but the victim had landed on the driver and passenger. Maybe if they’d used a real windshield instead of a substitute, the glass wouldn’t have broken into razor-sharp chunks and killed them. I’d seen it in Chicago once, when an enterprising idiot had purchased window glass, ground it down, and forced it to fit in his vehicle. I’d heard about it happening back home in Lincoln, Nebraska, too.

Both drivers had died after rear-ending someone, breaking their makeshift windshields, and slitting their throats.

What stopped me in my tracks was the furry head sticking out of the back window, its white fur stained with crimson and its long, fluffy ears pinned back. My mouth dropped open, and I rubbed my eye, blinked, and looked again.

Nothing changed.

A rather angry looking miniature llama glared at me as though I’d somehow been responsible for the corpse falling through the windshield of its car which, by some miracle, hadn’t accelerated following the accident. First, I needed to make sure the car stayed put. Second, I needed to call the cops. Since I could do both at the same time, I grabbed my cell, dialed 911, and held it to my ear while I circled the vehicle.

Fortunately, the driver’s side window was down, offering me a good look inside. Not only had the driver ended up with a face full of glass, the angle of his head suggested the falling body had broken his neck on impact.

“911, please state the nature of your emergency,” a woman answered.

“I’m on the corner of Broadway and West 42nd in Times Square. A body has fallen from a skyscraper and landed on a vehicle. There are two people inside the car, and I’m fairly certain they’re dead. The driver’s neck appears to be broken. The passenger has severe lacerations to the face and neck and is non-responsive.”

“I’m sending officers and EMT to your location, sir. Please stay on the line.”

I heard the tell-tale click of the operator putting me on hold. Knowing she’d try to stop me if I told her my intention, I reached in, contorted around the tangle of bodies and steering wheel, and put the vehicle into park, grateful the shifter wasn’t part of the center console.

“Officers are on their way, sir. Does it appear there are any survivors in the vehicle?”

“There’s an animal in the back.” With the car secured from taking off and rampaging through Times Square, I focused my attention on the miniature llama, which had swiveled its head around to glare at me. It snorted, then it spit in my face through the open back window. Green goo smeared over my right eye and dripped from my face.

For the first time since the accident that had sent me into early retirement, I was grateful for my glass eye, a solid blue sphere. My insurance company had been far too cheap to pay for a realistic one.

“An animal, sir?”

I could handle a body falling from the sky and killing two men in front of me. A miniature llama with an attitude, however, crossed every last one of my lines. Lifting my hand, I wiped the gunk off my face. “It just spit on me. It’s some sort of demented miniature llama, and the fucking thing just spit on me.”

“Please remain calm, sir. What’s your name? Do you know anyone involved in the accident?”

“My name’s Shane Gibson. I don’t know anyone involved in the accident, ma’am.” Sighing, I stepped out of the alpaca’s range, returning to the sidewalk to wait for the cavalry to arrive, bracing for the wave of questions the woman would ask to get a handle on the situation and keep me calm. I played along more for her sake than mine. I’d seen enough bodies during my three years on the force to last me a lifetime.

Three more and a pissed-off miniature llama meant little in the grand scheme of things.

Sometimes I really hated people. The majority of the passersby decided they wanted nothing to do with the trashed car and trio of bodies. Their unnatural lack of curiosity left me as the only viable witness, which I considered absolutely ludicrous. Times Square in the mid-afternoon was a bustle, and I was the one with the full attention of the six cops dispatched to the scene to deal with me and the angry miniature llama.

The animal spit on three officers before the youngest one got tired of its existence. He drew his gun and pointed it at the animal’s head. There was only one thing stupider than shooting an animal for being an animal, and that was standing in front of the gun to stop the shooting from happening.

If he decided to pull the trigger, I deserved to get shot.

“Killing the animal isn’t necessary, sir. I’d be spitting angry, too, if someone hogtied my legs together with duct tape and dumped me in a car. It has no other way to defend itself.”

Did the young idiot, who couldn’t have been more than a few months over twenty-one, really think he could open fire on a busy street because an animal had spit on him?

Apparently.

The young cop spluttered but holstered his weapon. Once I was satisfied he wasn’t going to kill the animal, I turned my attention to one of the older cops, a man with gray-touched hair and steely eyes. “What’s the procedure for animals under these circumstances?”

In Chicago, I would have been drawn and quartered for even thinking hurting the damned thing, no matter how many times it spit on me. Unless a sentient was at risk of fatal injury, killing an animal without just cause would result in a suspense and potential loss of badge.

A glob of spit smacked into the back of my head, and I stuffed my hands into my pockets so I wouldn’t turn around and throttle the ungrateful animal after standing in the line of fire to keep an idiot from killing it.

The older cop sighed. “Animal control will be by to pick it up and either dispose of it or take it to a shelter. We don’t have the facilities for animals like this unless they’re sentients or exotics, which this animal is not, so they’ll likely euthanize it and dispose of the body.”