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psychics in several of the pet magazines the store sells and discounted them. But maybe I shouldn’t have. After all, a pet psychic combines three current trends: spirituality, treating animals as humans, and lots of free spending cash. In these days of doggie day care and homemade doggie biscuits, not to mention doggie treadmills, doggie portraits, doggie albums, doggie downers, and doggie hip replacements and MRIs, it stands to reason that someone who claims to be able to tell you why your precious pooch keeps peeing on your Oriental rug would be making money.
    I was mulling over the possibility of taking our back room and offering it to a visiting pet psychic—a kind of itinerant spiritual vet—when I ran into my first roadblock of the evening.
    â€œYou can’t go in there without permission,” a nurse the size of Big Bertha barked as I started to enter the room my John Doe was in. “Can’t you read the sign?”
    The sign said Respiratory Isolation, which was new speak for quarantine. I took my hand off the door handle and held both of them up in the air.
    â€œOkay. You got me.”
    â€œThat warning is there for a reason, you know,” she huffed.
    â€œGee and I thought you just hung it on random rooms. Sorry,” I said as her frown deepened. “I was told the unidentified guy the EMTs picked up in Caz last night is in there.”
    â€œThat’s correct.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Are you family?”
    â€œI could be.”
    No response.
    â€œI have something to return to him.”
    She held out her hand. “I’ll put it with his belongings.”
    But I didn’t want to give the photograph to her. I wanted to give it to him. Suddenly, it was very important that I put the picture in his hand.
    â€œThanks, but I’d like to wait till he’s up and about.”
    â€œSuit yourself.” Her tone made it clear that she didn’t think that was going to happen any time soon.
    â€œDo you have a name on him yet?”
    â€œEven if I did, which I don’t, I can’t tell you without proper authorization.”
    â€œYou’re just a regular ray of sunshine, aren’t you?”
    â€œIf you don’t mind.” Her uniform crinkled as she folded her arms across her chest again. When I didn’t leave, she added, “Do I have to call Security?”
    â€œOnly if they’ll take me out to eat.”
    She didn’t smile. But then, if I looked like her, I probably wouldn’t be smiling, either.
    I went home and had a drink and my dinner, which consisted of two chocolate doughnuts left over from the morning, looked at the picture of the family, then tucked it back in my backpack and went to sleep.

    I spent some of the next day and most of the evening looking for Bethany. I called up her school principal and found out she’d gone from a straight-A student to someone that was barely passing. The school psychologist said she was “at risk” but wouldn’t provide me with any useful information.
    I showed Bethany’s picture at the malls and pizza parlors and handed out my business card, and when I was done with that, I cruised downtown and talked to the women working the street who would talk to me. One of them, a skinny span-dexed ghetto-talking blond, identified Bethany.
    â€œYou ain’t gonna be finding her around here parading her fat white ass up and down the street, I can tell you that,” she said while keeping her eyes open for squad cars and customers.
    â€œHow can you be so sure?”
    â€œâ€˜Cause I told her, she tried any of that shit down here, I’d put a strap to her so fast it would make her head spin. Her and those other burb bitches, thinkin’ they can just waltz in here. Now we got the cops swarmin’ all over us.”
    â€œSo I take it you haven’t seen her today?”
    â€œWhat I be telling you?”
    I handed her my card and