What they found was not what the street had imagined.
There were no bodies on the floor. There was no hidden tenant, no barrel, no scene from the kind of program people watched after supper and then checked their own locks. There were rows of rusted cages, some stacked, some set directly on the stained concrete, and in nearly every cage there was a dog.
Dozens of them. Thin. Some marked with old scars that had nothing to do with thorns or fences. Some too weak to stand when the light changed. They whimpered the way animals whimper when they have learned that noise can bring either food or a boot and they can no longer tell which. Their eyes followed the officers with a hollow attention that was, unbearably, still hopeful.
Harris said, “Jesus Christ,” not as a prayer and not as an insult, but as the sound a person makes when the story in their head has to be thrown out all at once.
