“Great. What have you done about that?”
“You might have noticed that we’re in the middle of a global recession. Environmental-policy positions aren’t exactly falling from the skies.”
“But you’ve been looking? Have you been keeping up with your schooling?”
She thought about her dissertation, sitting on her computer, collecting cyberdust. She’d opened the file once since Vegas and never looked at it again. Had environmentalism really been her life’s goal? What an uninspiring future she’d had in mind for herself. She’d dropped out of school, and her books now had dust on them. She’d also walked out on her internship at the Bay Area Clean Water Agencies. She hadn’t lasted a day after her sick leave ended. She couldn’t deal with the stares, the questions, and the assumptions her coworkers made. She could barely look herself in the mirror. How could she face them?
“No, I haven’t been looking.”
“If you need help with a job search, I can put you in touch with someone.”
She raised a hand. “I’m not sure about environmentalism anymore. I don’t think it’s for me.”
“Then what is?”
That was a really good question. One she didn’t have an answer for.
“Maybe you should brainstorm about what you’d like to do. Don’t limit yourself. Think about a career that would give you pleasure or bring you satisfaction.”
She frowned.
“Seriously think about it and we’ll discuss it next time. I don’t think you want to be a security guard at a mall for the rest of your life. You have a lot of potential. You can do anything you set your mind to.”
God, the idea sounded like an exercise a high school career counselor would ask you to do. But it was something she needed to do. Environmentalist wasn’t her, but neither was mall cop. “I’ll try.”
“Good.”
They both got to their feet and he saw her to the door.
“See you next week, and don’t be reckless.”
Recklessness was Jarocki’s little joke. Money was the root of all evil and recklessness was the root of all PTSD.
“I’ll do my best,” she said, “but no promises.”
CHAPTER THREE
Kristi Thomas popped her head through Marshall Beck’s door. “The fighting dogs are here, Marshall.”
Kristi was the founder of Urban Paws Animal Rescue, and the rescued fighting dogs were a big deal to the center. The Fremont Police had busted a professional dog-fighting operation, and the injured dogs had been destroyed. The same fate had awaited the uninjured dogs, but Urban Paws had appealed the kill order and had volunteered to take them in an attempt to rehabilitate them. The judge granted the charity their shot, but if any dog couldn’t be turned around, it would be destroyed. Urban Paws wasn’t the ASPCA, but they had a solid reputation for saving lost causes. The publicity behind the court decision had brought in a flood of donations.
Beck got up from his desk and followed her into the hallway. Rescue-center staff and cops were bundling eighteen caged pit bulls and pit-bull mixes onto dollies and then rolling them down the corridor toward the Assessment Annex. All surrendered animals went for assessment before being made available for adoption. All the preexisting animals in the annex had been fast-tracked through in order to make room for the fighting dogs, and only the fighting dogs.
He watched the animals as they rolled past him. Some fought their steel confines, scratching at the frame or biting it. Others lay still, defeated and accepting of their fate. It was a sorry state of affairs, and another example of man’s inhumanity to anything and everything around him. It would be a different case in a couple of months. With the love and support of the behavioral trainers here, most of these dogs, if not all, would be rehabilitated. It always astounded him that animals possessed the ability to forgive and forget after all they’d endured, but he’d seen it again and again in the eight months since he’d joined the charity. He knew he didn’t share that ability.
On his way out, one of the cops said, “You’re doing a good thing here.”
Not me, he thought. He didn’t work with the animals. He managed the money. He did payroll, banked the donations, wrote the grant proposals, found the tax breaks, and negotiated the contracts and discounts. The problem with charities was they were founded and run by people who operated on high emotion. That garnered donations, but passion was useless when it came to dealing with the IRS and other government agencies. That was where he came in. He spoke pure bureaucrat. His fact-and-figure sensibilities ensured these guys could keep their quest alive.
He stopped Kristi on her way by, after seeing the cops out. “How many of these dogs will you be able to save?”
“I want to say we’ll save them all. I like to be positive,” she said with a smile, then chased after a couple of trainers.
“Glass always half full?” he called to her retreating form.