No Passengers Beyond This Point(45)

“What’s this for?” I ask.

“Which president is on there?”

I look closely at the dime. Eisenhower maybe? But wait. Could it be Franklin Roosevelt?

I inspect the mechanism under the handle again. This time my fingernail detects a small silver slot just dime-size.

I slip her dime into the slot. The coin hits the money box and the lock clicks open. “You’re brilliant, Mouse,” I tell her as a mechanical arm opens the door tchk, tchk, tchk.

Inside is an enormous room full of dogs in traveling cages—one on top of the other five pallets high. The pallets are stacked next to a series of ramps so the dogs can go up to their cages. Some crates are empty, but most have one dog inside. There are all kinds of dogs: German shepherds, golden retrievers, Great Danes, poodles, Yorkies, corgies, and some breeds I’ve never even seen before.

The dogs aren’t locked into their traveling crates, the doors are open. Each dog is free to go. There’s even a doggy door in the back wall of the room where they could leave if they wanted, but every dog stays in its crate. The dogs sniff, their tails wag hesitantly. They’re eager to check us out like people scanning the crowd for familiar faces. Once they’ve seen us, they settle back down again. We are not who they’re waiting for.

“Look.” Mouse points to a photo of a kid clipped to the front of one cage. Pictures of one kid, sometimes two or three are attached with metal clips to each crate.

“The owners . . .” I say. “That must be who they’re waiting for.”

Mouse surveys the great stack of dog cages. “War-rantine?” she asks.

“What?”

“What you said Henry would have to do if she flew with us.”

“Oh, quarantine.... Maybe. Maybe they need their owners to release them.”

Mouse walks from one end of the pallet to the other, inspecting the dogs. “Is anybody feeding them?”

“Must be. They seem well cared for.”

Mouse points to a crate on the first tier. “What about this one?” The door is wide open, like the others, but there’s no photo clipped to the front, and the big dog inside has clean bandages—like white high-top booties—on all four feet. The center of each bandage has a strip of tape decorated with a string of pink hearts. The dog—tan and black, a long-haired German shepherd with strange blue eyes and a bitten-up ear—huddles in the corner.

Mouse digs a Milk-Bone out of her pocket and breaks it in two.

“Where’d you get that?” I ask.

“From home.”

“When we were trying to get Henry back in the house?”

She nods.

When was that, I wonder. Two days ago? Three?

Mouse holds up the Milk-Bone, but the blue-eyed dog continues to cower in the back, as if she can’t get far enough away from us.

“How do you think she got hurt?” Mouse asks.

I shake my head.

Mouse takes a step closer. The dog doesn’t move a muscle except for her blue eyes that track every move we make.

Mouse throws half the Milk-Bone into the crate and we walk up and down the pallets, wondering how we can convince a dog to come with us.

The blue-eyed dog waits until Mouse has moved to the other side of the pallet, then she swoops down on the Milk-Bone, and dashes back to the dark corner of her crate. She watches us, her black lips holding the unchewed bone while drips of drool slide out of her mouth.

She keeps waiting, until she can’t stand it anymore and crunches down on the bone. When she has licked up every crumb, she lies down again, her eyes trained on us.

Now Mouse tosses her the other half of the Milk-Bone and the dog goes through the same ritual again.

These are the tunnel dogs? How are they ever going to help us find the black box? They can’t even leave their crates.

“We’ll never get them to come with us.”

“This one will,” Mouse announces.

“She’s all bandaged up, Mouse.”

Mouse pushes her hair back. Her face is filthy, her hair is wildly uncombed on one side and matted down on the other. She looks even crazier than normal. “So? My arm is hurt and you don’t leave me.”

“The bandages are clean. Somebody’s taking good care of her.” The dog’s ears are cocked forward like she’s listening intently.

Mouse whispers to the blue-eyed dog. She appears to be explaining our situation in detail and then suddenly from the other side of the Franklin door we hear people approaching.

“They couldn’t have made it this far.” Manny’s voice. “We would have seen them.”

Uh-oh. Manny and Francine.

“Mouse,” I whisper, “we’ve got to get out of here.”

“No harm in checking.” Francine booms. “Only costs a dime.”