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Taavi put his head back down on his paws, then chuffed again, blowing air through his muzzle.
“Good.” Zhou nodded his head once, sharply. “Now, Taavi, do you need more pain medication?”
A soft growl as Taavi looked up at him without bothering to lift his head.
“Can—when can I take him home?” I asked. Then felt weird about calling it home. It was my home, but Taavi’s home was an entire fucking country away.
“Not before tomorrow,” Zhou answered, his expression apologetic. “With a surgery like this, it’s better for us to keep an eye on things for twenty-four hours. We’ll set up something a bit less… confining overnight, and, assuming all goes well, you should be able to pick him up tomorrow afternoon.”
I ran my fingers over Taavi’s ears, and he looked up at me with big, puppy dog eyes. “Sorry, bud. Doctor’s orders.”
22
I put far toomuch effort into making my apartment doggie-recovery-friendly. Far, far too much. As in, there was an air mattress in my living room next to the couch so that Taavi wouldn’t have to jump up on anything—he could sleep on the mattress, and I’d bring some pillows out and crash on the couch.
If he wanted me to, of course. Just in case he needed help, since the only other way for me to know is if he started barking at like two in the morning, and, even in a pet-friendly apartment, my neighbors—not that I knew my neighbors, mind you—would hate me. So either I had to move all types of feeding and entertainment into my bedroom, or I had to move the bedding part of the bedroom into the living room, which just seemed a lot easier.
I’d also stocked the freezer with both ice cream and frozen pizzas, bought the ingredients to make cookies and/or brownies, and the makings for both grilled cheese and PB&J. All the things I always wanted when I was laid up. Oh, and crackers and canned chicken noodle, which I really hoped he’d eat, since I couldn’t. I’d also gotten some ham for Taavi’s grilled cheese because shifters need protein.
I didn’t know if that wasenoughprotein, but since I couldn’t eat it, if he didn’t want it, I wasn’t sure what I’d do with it. I supposed I could give any leftover meat to Raj, but that was… weird. So I’d just buy more if he needed it. Or ask Doc or someone to bring some over.
Before I could go pick him up from the vet, I had to drop off the creepy little device with Mays, so I pulled into the parking lot of the extremely beige crime lab, grabbing the gallon baggie—which was way too big, but it’s what Zhou had—with the thing inside, very intentionally not noticing the little reddish-brown stains on the corners and smeared slightly here and there on the plastic.
Nope. Not noticing that.
I found Mays in his usual lab and held out the baggie.
He wrinkled his nose as he reached out for it, no doubt noticing the reddish smears I was pretending I didn’t see.
“I’m guessing this is off the, uh, official books?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Are—how are you going to keep him out of it now that this is… out?” he asked. I’d called and explained what I was bringing him, so he knew it was the drug dispenser that had been keeping Taavi in dog form.
I sighed, leaning against one of the lab tables. “Fuck if I know,” I replied.
Mays nodded, his lower lip caught between those extremely, disturbingly perfect teeth. “Do you need him?” he asked, then. “To close the case?”
I knew Mays probably knew about Bettina Chisolm. “Maybe not,” I answered truthfully. “Especially not if you get something from Chisolm’s fingernails.”
“Julia’s working on those,” Mays replied. “DNA should be back any day now.”
I frowned. That seemed like an awfully long time for DNA. “There some sort of backup with the DNA?”
Mays sighed. “You hear about HB621?”
“No?” I didn’t pay attention to politics, mostly because it just made me pissed off or depressed.
“Well, the place we send DNA out to is dragging their heels because 621 went to the Senate, and they haven’t voted yet. It states that you can’t run any sort of diagnostic or identifying test that might inadvertently mix human and non-human DNA. Most labs use the same sequencer for everything that comes in, whether it’s chicken, pig, human, Nid, whatever. But this bullshit would mean that a lab would have to have dedicated equipment in sets—one set for humans, one set for non-human.”
I blinked. “They clean that shit, right?”
“They do. Because contamination would be an issue even if it were all the same species… that’s how you ID the wrong person.”
“So…”
“But if this passes, then any lab that runs human and non-human—which, mind you, is pretty much all of them—now has to get a second set of equipment if they don’t already have one. So the lab is stalling on the DNA because the victim isn’t human and there’s going to be some of her DNA involved.”
