Err on the Side of Violence: Terribly Acronymed Detective Club Series (Book 3)

Chapter Nine: Joe, Summer, 1978

"Hey, what's that there?"

The voice startled Joe because he didn't know there was another kid on the street. His world had been the four of them since he was five, and he was content with that; three friends seemed to be the right amount. The four of them were looking down at the dead dog, so he didn't notice the new person approach because his back was turned.

He turned with the others and saw the kid, who was dressed in bib overalls over a green t-shirt, with brown hair cut in a bowl-shaped bob. Was the kid a boy or a girl? Joe couldn't really tell. The kid was small, though, smaller than Al, and Joe thought nobody was smaller than Al.

"You're the new kid," Rachel said. "You live in the unit above us." 

Now Joe knew who this was. Dad had just rented out the upper unit of the two-unit apartment house in which they used to live. Rachel and her dad lived in the one below. Joe's family used to live above them before they'd bought the building from the previous owner and become their landlord, and then bought the house next to it, moving into the house and leaving the upper floor vacant for this kid and the kid's family.

"My name is Lauren Hasegawa," the girl, apparently, said. "My father, Toshiro, was interned with his family by the Government of Canada in World War Two. My mother, Ellen, is an English-born Canadian who fell in love with him and married him against the wishes of both their families." She recited this as if it had been drilled into her by her parents, but also with a certain amount of pride. Her voice was so different from Rachel's even though they were both girls, and this fact fascinated Joe for a reason he couldn't explain.

"Oh. Okay," Rachel said. "I'm Rachel McWilliam. My dad, Henry, works at the Queen's Hotel down the street. I don't know where my mom is. She left when I was five."

She pointed to Al. "He's Alistair Mackenzie. He lives at the dead end of the street with his mom and dad and two Dobermans that I'm afraid of, Hunter and Duchess."

Joe and Sunny cracked up. "Alistair," they said, as if the name were a joke.

Al's cheeks reddened, and he spun on them furiously. "You should talk, Jee-you-sep-pee! Soon-eel!"

Joe sniffed in disdain. "I go by Joe. My family's Italian, so my given name is Giuseppe. It just means Joseph in Italian."

"And Sunil is a fine name in India," Sunny said, grinning, "but there's no English equivalent, so I just went with something that sounded closest to it. Call me Sunny."

Lauren took all this in with no emotion. "My uncle on my mother's side is named Alistair," she said. "My mom hasn't talked to him in a long time."

"See? Not so crazy a name after all," Al said. 

Lauren turned her attention from them to the dog. "Is that dog dead?"

"Yeah, hit by a car," Rachel said.

Lauren stepped over and squatted down beside it. "It has a collar," she said, "so, not a stray."

Then she touched it.

"Ewwwwww!" Joe said, and Al and Sunny also voiced their disgust. It was so revolting, so unclean, it reminded him of Rachel eating those dirty carrots when he was five. There were just certain things you didn't do. Dirty things. He didn't mind getting dirty, necessarily, but only when he did things that normally made him dirty, like working in the fields. It didn't mean you ate the carrots right out of the ground; you brought them in and washed them, just like Mom taught him. And you definitely, definitely, did not touch a dead dog that might have been oozing blood and who knew what other fluids. 

Untroubled by something Joe found so repellent, Lauren manipulated the collar with surprisingly delicate fingers to reveal something round and metal. "It has tags," she said. "Somebody owns this dog. Or owned it. Maybe someone is looking for it."