Suspect by Robert Crais Page B

taken her through the course five times, so he knew what to expect. She was fine with the climbs, made the low jumps easily, but when she reached the last and highest barrier, a five-foot wall, she balked. The first time Leland took her through, he assumed her hips hurt because of her wounds or her strength was gone, but he stroked her and spoke with her, and when they tried again, she clawed her way over, and damn near broke his heart for trying so hard. Officer James brought her to the high barrier three times, and all three times she hit the brakes. The third time she splayed her legs, spun toward James, and snarled. To his credit, James did not jerk her lead, raise his voice, or try to force her. He backed off and talked to her until she calmed. Leland knew of a hundred other things Officer James could have done to help her over, but overall he approved of James’ response.
    Leland called out another instruction.
    “Off the line. Voice commands.”
    James led her away from the obstacle course, unclipped the lead from her collar, and ran through the basic voice commands. He told her to sit, she sat. He told her to stay, she stayed. Stay, sit, come, heel, down. She would still have to learn the LAPD situational commands, which were different from military commands, but she did these well enough. After fifteen minutes of this, Leland called out again.
    “She done good. Reward.”
    Leland had been through this with her, too, and waited to see what would happen. The best dog training was based on the reward system. You did not punish a dog for doing wrong, you rewarded the dog for doing right. The dog did something you wanted, you reinforced the behavior with a reward—pet’m, tell’m they’re a good dog, let’m play with a toy. The standard reward for a K-9 working dog was a hard plastic ball with a hole drilled through it where Leland liked to smear a little peanut butter.
    Leland watched James dig the hard plastic ball from his pocket, and wave it in front of the dog’s face. She showed no interest. James bounced it in front of her, trying to get her excited, but she moved away, and appeared to get nervous. Leland could hear James talking to her in the squeaky voice dogs associated with approval.
    “Here you go, girl. Want it? Want to go get it?”
    James tossed the ball past her, watching it bounce along the ground. The dog circled James’ legs, and sat down behind him, facing the opposite direction. Leland had made the mistake of throwing the damned ball way out into center field, and had to go get it.
    Leland called out.
    “That’s enough for today. Pack her up. Take her home. You got two weeks.”
    Leland returned to his office, where he found Mace Styrik drinking a warm Diet Coke.
    Mace frowned, just as Leland expected. He knew his men as well as his dogs.
    “Why are you wasting his time and ours, giving him a bad dog like that?”
    “That dog ain’t bad. She’s just not fit for duty. If they gave medals to dogs, she’d have so many, a sissy like you couldn’t lift’m.”
    “I heard the shot. She squirrel up again?”
    Leland dropped into his chair, leaned back, and put up his feet. He brooded about what he had seen.
    “Wasn’t just the dog squirreled up.”
    “Meaning what?”
    Leland decided to think about it. He dug a tin of smokeless tobacco from his pocket, pushed a wad of dip behind his lower lip, and worked it around. He lifted a stained Styrofoam cup from the floor beside his chair, spit into it, then put the cup on his desk and arched his eyebrows at Mace.
    “Have a sip of that Coke?”
    “Not with that nasty stuff in your mouth.”
    Leland sighed, then answered Mace’s original question.
    “His heart isn’t in it. He can do the work well enough, else I would not have passed him, but they should have made him take the medical. God knows, he earned it.”
    Mace shrugged, wordless, and had more of the Coke as Leland went on.
    “Everyone has been carrying that young man, and, Lord