"It's the Schaeffer Obedience School," Sarah Walker read off the sheet. "Owned and operated by Anthony Schaeffer."
"Yeah. That was his name, though we hardly ever used it. Are you really going to tell him the truth?" Dain Hacker parked the minivan directly across the street from the building.
"He's seen an alien incursion before, Dain," Chuck Bartowski reminded him. "You were there too."
"Yeah…" Hacker sighed. "I was. I'll be here, if you need me."
"All right," Smiling, Walker turned to her husband as Dain Hacker brought out today's paper.
"Ready, Chuck?"
"Yes," Chuck Bartowski stepped out of the minivan, held the door for his wife. "Let's do this."
Inside, the offices were comfortable, neither too hot, nor too cool, the walls decorated with photos of dogs and their proud owners.
"Mr. and Mrs. Bartowski?" the receptionist had apparently been told to expect them. "Mr. Schaeffer will see you now."
…..
Chuck Bartowski's first sight of Anthony Schaeffer was as the older man finished up his current training session; the pup in question an exuberant juvenile Black and Tan Coon Hound getting it's first experience of Leash Training.
Schaeffer was pushing eighty now, full head of gray hair, slightly stooped. But Bartowski could feel the patience, and love from the man as he trained the puppy. Five minutes later, the young couple arrived to take their puppy home, Schaeffer explaining how to leash and house train their puppy…
"Be gentle, firm, and regular," Schaeffer explained in his soft-spoken, southern-accented voice. "Nothing disrupts training like irregularity. Your little guy will need to be leash-walked at least twice every day."
"We'll do that…" the husband took the leash, and the couple left, guiding the puppy to the parking lot.
That done, Schaeffer motioned his new visitors to join him in his office.
"I was told you had information some of my dogs were being misused."
"Some of the dogs you train for commercial use." Walker replied.
"Which companies, and how are they being misused?"
"Please read this file," Walker took a folder out of her purse, handed it to Schaeffer. "It seems these particular entities have been using your dogs to kill people."
Not all of those…entities…were terrestrial in origin.
Schaeffer paled upon hearing that, opened the folder, read the contents. After a while, he put the folder down.
"Shit…" he muttered. "It's…them again…isn't it?"
"You've seen them, haven't you?" Chuck leaned forward.
"Yeah…" Schaeffer nodded. "Right up close and personal, and none of the rest of us would've known if not for Tom Godfrey. Funny thing, though…He disappeared right after, and left the rest of us with the mess. Dead alien bodies and missing prisoners. Most of them fled when Godfrey unmasked the Boss. Not that I blame them. I wanted to run myself, but who would look after my dogs? Damndest thing. They bleed green, you know…"
He sighed.
"Wonder what happened to Godfrey, though," he added. "Just after he disappeared, all these suits-federal Agents, I think, came in. They weren't interested in green-blooded aliens. Not even a little bit. They wanted Godfrey. For what I couldn't tell. But the man was gone. Like the wind."
"Come with us, Mr. Schaeffer," Chuck said. "Let us help you protect your dogs."
…..
Castle
It had been an unexpectedly emotional reunion for Dain Hacker. He hadn't liked the job of Prison Work Camp Warden, hadn't liked the possibility of having to shoot inmates when they tried to run. Fortunately, that hadn't happened.
Hacker, hiding under the alias of Junior Warden Thomas M. Godfrey, had learned something very important working there, at Road Prison in Florida. That a glowering silence, enhanced by reflective shades, and a near total lack of emotional reaction translated into one very scary dude, as one of the inmates put it…
Now, all these years later, sitting over coffee with Anthony Schaeffer…Dog Boy…He felt almost at the point of tears, couldn't rightly say why…
Schaeffer had immediately recognized him.
Damn…what's it been…sixty years? My god, Tom! You haven't aged a day!
Even now, all these years later, with NSA doctors studying him, he still didn't know why he didn't age.
Born in Eighteen-twenty-five, worked as a Deputy for Matt Dillon in the Eighteen Seventies, worked as a Prison Warden in Florida in the Nineteen Fifties. Now, I'm sort of a Secret Agent. They've scanned me, read my DNA…
Nobody has a clue why I don't age…
