Chapter: 3
Two Hero's Meet
By this time, Calleigh already dropped Austin and Patty off at school. When she gets to the lab, Eric runs outside to her and tells her about Horatio's sister. Going on to tell her that he has known for quite a while. He wanted to tell her, but H told him not to tell her.
Now that she is at work, she is mad at both Eric for not telling her and Horatio for making her boyfriend not tell her. However, she needs to call her boss. To ask him why he didn't tell her about his sister and her assault.
"I'm sorry, but you needed to get Austin and Patty to school. I didn't want to distract you or worry you unnecessarily. I knew that you would drop everything, and you'd come to help me." Horatio tells her.
Calleigh then asks her boss if he needs anything to which Horatio says, "My sister is an MDPD canine officer. Can you go talk to Benton and get my sister's password and audio file and go check on her dogs. Can you also bring her dog named "Echo" to the hospital that is my sister's current canine? I know that my sister will want to see her partner when she wakes up."
Benton gives Calleigh the instructions as to how to unlock the panic room and where it is. Before giving her an audio recording with a voice message and a number password to open it.
The panic room is simple enough to get open with Renee's detailed instructions. Calleigh pulls out the book, "Where the Red Ferns Grow." She doesn't know if it had worked since she doesn't hear anything.
Rushing to the kitchen, Calleigh looks closely at the kitchen island. Upon closer inspection, she notices a tiny pull that is out of place. When she tugs on the tiny pull, another panel comes down.
This panel has a keypad and a tiny speaker. Next to the speaker is a small, flashing red button.
When Calleigh presses the button down, the speaker roars to life-giving her step by step instructions on how to unlock it.
The speaker says, "Please input the number code." Calleigh enters the number code that Benton had handed her.
Next, she was told, "Push the red button again and speak into the speaker to confirm the voice recognition."
At this time, Calleigh presses the button and plays the audio file that Dave had also given her.
Calleigh then hears an unknown soft, but firm voice say a little poem, "Mares eat oats, and Doe's eat oats. But little lambs eat ivy."
When she presses stop on the audio recording, she clearly hears the speaker say, "Access Granted."
After the audio file was played, Calleigh hears clicking and gears turning. She clearly hears a latch open, and a portion of the island slowly swings away from the base.
Echo herself comes bounding out to greet this new person. She is a gorgeous young dog. Being only three years old, she is very excited. Calleigh being a native of Louisiana, recognized the breed immediately.
Echo is a Catahoula Leopard Dog, which is the state dog of Louisiana crossed with a Rhodesian Ridgeback. Echo has the characteristic blue, brown spots of the Catahoula, and the ridge of hair growing in the opposite direction on her back of the Ridgeback.
Calleigh can barely read the dog's ID tag with the dog bouncing around all over the place. "Echo" is written boldly across the black hand-tooled leather collar.
Slowly another dog comes out from the room since she is an older dog. "Charlie" is scrawled in a script font on the beautiful mahogany-colored hand-tooled leather collar.
Horatio had asked Calleigh specifically to bring Echo directly to the hospital since he knew that his sister would want to see her partner as soon as she woke up.
Having cleared Echo's arrival with the hospital staff is easy since she is a working police dog and is not considered a pet. The staff has already heard the dog's name before, so they are very eager to meet the canine officer.
As Calleigh walks Echo through the revolving door into the waiting room, the dog slowly and carefully smells Horatio picking up the scent of family. The canine sat perfectly at Horatio's feet.
Echo is trained to only listen to family, and she immediately obeyed Horatio when he tells her to jump up on the chair next to him. While at the hospital, Calleigh volunteers to watch Charlie, Renee's retired Customs dog.
She recently adopted the Chocolate Lab and the tiny Chihuahua that were part of the case that almost killed Horatio when he accidentally overdosed on Fentanyl.
Charlie is close to 11 years old, and she is a beautiful black Belgian Malinois. Charlie is slowing down and very gray around her muzzle. Calleigh can tell immediately that this canine has seen a lot of action and has been through a lot.
Both Charlie and Echo were cross-trained on all facets of police/military work, including drugs, firearms, explosives, search and rescue, cadaver, human smuggling, arson, patrol, and protection.
There were no dogs better at the work that they did since the canines caught 99.9% of illegal activity that they came across in their sector. Drug cartels and terrorists alike wanted both the canines and their trainer out of the way.