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“A deposit is a record. Two thousand dollars in cash, no invoice, no client, after a night with a hole in the controlled log. That is a straight line somebody can draw with a ruler. And if I don’t deposit it, then I’ve got two thousand dollars in cash in an apartment over a dry cleaner and no explanation for it either. There’s no version of this where that money helps me.”

He stood there and worked through it. I watched him do it. Not his thoughts, I couldn’t see those, but his face. The tightening at the corner of his mouth. The shift of weight from one boot to the other.

Then he picked the stack up again.

“Patch.”

He set it down. Squared it with the edge of the counter.

“You already know I’m right,” I said.

“I do.”

“Then why is it still on my counter?”

“Because I don’t have another one.”

That stopped me. “Another what?”

“Tool.” He said it like a man reading off an inventory. “Somebody helps this club, we pay them, or we owe them, or we bring them in. Those are the three options. You just took the first one off the table. You’d take the second one off if I offered it, and the third one isn’t mine to offer.”

“So you’re stuck.”

“So I’m stuck.”

“Welcome to it,” I said. “It’s crowded as hell in here.”

Freak made a small sound from the exam table. I looked over. He had his good arm folded across his chest, his mouth shut, and an expression I couldn’t read at all.

Patch picked the money up and put it in his cut.

“Pulse ox,” I said to the room.

I clipped it on Freak’s index finger. Ninety-seven, steady, waveform clean.

“Good,” I said, and unclipped it, and hung it back on the hook.

* * *

I took the card out of my scrubs pocket and put it on the counter between us, face up. “Dana Whitlock,” I said. “Investigator, State Veterinary Licensing Board. I’ve got two weeks to call her back.”

Patch didn’t touch it. He read it where it lay.

“That’s an audit notice,” I said. “Controlled substance discrepancy. And before you ask me any of the four questions I can see you deciding between, let me save you the time.”

“Go ahead.”

“I can’t lie to her. She counts vials and compares numbers, and the numbers don’t match, and they don’t match because they shouldn’t match. There is one vial missing from a log with my initials on it, on a night when nothing was scheduled and no animal was treated.”

“Could somebody have miscounted?”

“That’s question one, and hell no. I did the count. My handwriting’s on the page. It’s clean and it’s legible and I’ve never in six years written a number anybody had to squint at.” I put a finger on the card. “Question two is whether I can get ahead of it by calling her first and explaining. I can’t, because the explanation is a felony.”

He went very still at that.

“Practicing medicine on a human being without a license,” I said. “That’s the one under the licensing problem. The board can take my certification. The other thing has a different kind of ceiling on it, and I have been trying like hell not to look straight at it for days.”

“Maren.”