S0WE29 - The Wrong Mammal

"The Wrong Mammal" is the twenty-ninth episode of the W-Series. On his walk from ZRS to the train, Pawbert is pulled into a service alley by a bobcat with a knife who wants his wallet and gets a badge with his name on it and a photograph of the wolf he is married to. It is a bottle drama set almost entirely in one forgotten room, with the pack's search for him running across the city at the same time, and self-harm is on the page.

Synopsis

Pawbert closes his last case note at ZRS, texts Luther that he is twenty minutes out, and is grabbed off the sidewalk by a bobcat with a knife who marches him to a forgotten ground-floor room and bars the door with rebar. The bobcat empties his bag for twenty-three dollars and finds a ZRS badge and a photograph of the pack: the youngest Lynxley, married to the ZSI liaison from the news. His company ran on Lynxley contracts and lost its dock in the years after the money went dark, and the name on the badge cost him his job, his apartment and his ID. Racing the clock he knows Luther is running, Pawbert asks about the cuts on the bobcat's forearms too early, and the knife opens his own arm. He hands the wound to the mammal who made it to press, and slowly gets a name, Rufus, and the eight months that put him in the room. At home Luther opens the laptop and the camera grid, and the pack splits between the street and dispatch. They find the building, and through a grimy window Luther sees two calm shapes and holds the breach. Inside, Pawbert takes the knife, leaves the money, writes his desk number on the back of Luther's grocery list, and walks out first into drawn sidearms with a story about a fence. Luther reads the blood on the sleeve and takes him home. The next morning Rufus keeps the appointment at ZRS, still refusing to forgive the Lynxleys, and Pawbert opens the intake.

Plot

Pawbert closes his last case note at ZRS a little after half past five, texts Luther that he is twenty minutes out, and gets a sticker back, a cartoon wolf with its thumb up, from a pack Luther refused for years and has lately started using without a word from either of them. The walk to the station goes past the civic center and a sandwich shop, and a bobcat is on him before he sees one.

A paw closes on his arm from a service alley and a knife finds his ribs through his jacket. The voice behind his ear is terrified. It walks him through a chain-link fence with its wire bent aside, across a lot of weeds and broken pallets, into a ground-floor room in a building the city has forgotten, and a length of rebar goes through the door handle. The room holds a sleeping bag, a backpack and a third of a jug of water. The bobcat is close to a lynx in build, a little smaller, in clothes washed in sinks, with healed and fresh cuts up both forearms. Pawbert knows the pattern from across a desk and keeps his face level. He sits where he is told and gives up his bag.

The bag yields twenty-three dollars, a transit pass, a ZRS badge printed with his married name, a grocery list in Luther's penmanship, and a wallet-sized photograph of the pack on a porch with rings on every paw. The first name on the badge catches; the face in the photograph confirms it, and the wolf standing behind him is the ZSI liaison from the news. Pawbert tells him that is his husband. The bobcat's company ran on Lynxley contracts and limped along for years after the freeze until its dock closed, and the name on the badge cost him his job and then his apartment, and he has just cubnapped that name's husband. He paces, his sentences coming apart, from a life sentence to the wolf who will come through the door.

Pawbert counts the clock he knows Luther is running: a quarter of an hour's grace on the twenty he promised, then the laptop, then the camera grid, Nick on the street and Judy on dispatch, ninety minutes at the outside. What he needs to do with the mammal in front of him takes weeks and a desk. When the bobcat shoves him into the wall hard enough to ring his skull, he goes early and asks about the arms. The bobcat comes at him to make him stop looking, and the knife opens Pawbert's forearm from the wrist halfway to the elbow. The bobcat backs off, appalled at his own paw. Pawbert holds the arm out to him and tells him to press his sleeve to it, hard, and he does, far too hard, for minutes, until the bleeding slows. Then he picks the knife back up, returns to his wall, and draws it across his own forearm. Pawbert stops measuring the door.

The name comes sideways. Asked for it, the bobcat asks why it matters; asked where the knife came from, he says Den Depot on Tujunga, twenty dollars, and hears himself add that it was twenty dollars he should have spent on food. Then he gives the name: Rufus. Pawbert asks when he last ate. Yesterday, from a dumpster behind a noodle place. Pawbert tells him his blood sugar is making the room worse than it is, and that the badge on the floor is for exactly this, because the second thing he asks anyone across his desk is when they last ate. The first is their name.

At the mansion Luther pulls in at a quarter past six with Nick and Judy and finds the house as they left it. Pawbert's twenty minutes are thirty-four minutes old. The call goes to voicemail and a plain text, no sticker, hangs at sent. Luther gives the late train the margin he gives every late arrival, with a minute left on it, and then the laptop is open. The handset stopped reporting somewhere between ZRS and the station. By twenty past he is inside the Downtown camera grid, working it the way Judy has watched him work operations with buildings and hostage counts at stake. Nick gives it the name welfare check while Luther is already calling Precinct 1 dispatch, and the pack separates: Nick to the street and the counters along Pawbert's walk, Judy to dispatch and the mobile feeds, Luther to the screen. Nick closes the fridge on his way out.

In the failing light Rufus tells the eight months in pieces. A warehouse in the Canal District, nineteen mammals on a dock that ran on Lynxley accounts; the freeze, two restructurings, the dock closing; applications with no references to give; a landlord who deferred twice before the locks changed; shelters full; a six-page housing form that wanted the ID that was still in the apartment. Pawbert gives it back to him in order and does not argue when Rufus tells him nobody fixed it for him and nobody showed up. Then he says the thing he has never said to anyone: others have sat across his desk because of his name, and Rufus is the first who knew it. He served two years for what his own paws did, and nobody was ever charged for a dock closing in the Canal District. He tells Rufus what Luther will actually do tonight, and that the sentence Rufus has been handing himself all evening is invented, the way everyone's is. He asks to see the arm, is refused, and lets it go. Later he asks one question, whether Rufus is trying to stop being alive or to stop feeling it, and Rufus answers that it is the second, then holds the arm out. Pawbert reads it in the window light and can do nothing for it in a room with no clean water or cloth. Rufus has a sister in Chestnut Hills whose bell he could not make himself ring. Nothing about that happens tonight; whether he calls her is a question for tomorrow. What happens to Rufus depends on what Pawbert says happened, and what Pawbert says is that he caught his arm on the fence. Rufus will not say any of it is fine, and Pawbert would think less of him if he did.

The last camera puts Pawbert and a second feline into the alley mouth at 5:49pm, the sandwich shop counter gives Nick a direction, and Judy's units find the bent fence. Luther stands at the grimy window and reads two shapes on a floor, one talking and one listening, neither of them moving quickly, the talking one in a posture Luther has seen his husband take at kitchen tables and in clinics. He knows what a breach does inside a room that size. With three uniforms waiting on his signal, he brings his raised paw down flat: hold. Inside, Pawbert hears the block go quiet, asks Rufus for thirty seconds, puts his paw over Rufus's on the knife, takes it, and folds it into his back pocket. He gathers his badge, pass and photograph and leaves the money where it fell. He writes his desk number on the back of the grocery list and tells Rufus what to do with it if the night gets bad after he leaves. Then he takes the rebar off the door.

The door opens on three drawn sidearms. Pawbert walks out first with his paws visible, Rufus a step behind, and offers the street a dead phone, a friend he lost track of time with, and a fence. Luther's eyes find the sleeve soaked through to the cuff, and he knows a blade from a fence; his anger has nowhere to go, and then he reads Pawbert's face and says they are going home. The sidearms lower, and the antelope radios it in as a welfare check. Pawbert tells Rufus ZRS, tomorrow, nine o'clock. In the sedan Judy says the mammal needed something and got it, and that the night has a version in which his next victim is not Pawbert. Pawbert thought about that for about a second and would rather be the mammal Rufus calls than the one he ran from. She lets it go for tonight. Nick enters a third consecutive evening of soup into the record.

Dinner runs the way it always does, and the other three give Pawbert room when his attention drifts. In the bedroom he sets the knife on the dresser. Luther looks at it and leaves it there, fetches the first-aid kit from the bathroom, works the dried sleeve loose, cleans the wound he already read on the street, and presses the tape flat a second time it does not need. Pawbert leans into his shoulder, and the knife stays on the dresser. At 8:45 the next morning Pawbert is at his ZRS desk with two referrals flagged, one marked urgent. At 8:58 Rufus is in the doorway in a clean shirt too big for him. Pawbert texts Luther that he came and gets the wolf sticker back. Rufus says before they start that he will take whatever Pawbert can get him and that none of it changes what the Lynxleys did. It was never going to. Pawbert pulls up the form.

Key Moments

• Luther answers Pawbert's text with a sticker, a cartoon wolf with its thumb up
• A bobcat pulls Pawbert into a service alley at knifepoint and bars the door of a forgotten room with rebar
• The badge and the pack photograph tell the bobcat whose husband he has taken
• Pawbert counts the clock Luther is running and goes early on the cuts up the bobcat's arms
• The knife opens Pawbert's forearm, and he hands the wound to the mammal who made it to press
• The bobcat draws the blade across his own arm, and Pawbert stops watching the door
• The name comes after the knife's price: twenty dollars that should have gone on food
• Luther gives the late train its margin, then opens the laptop and the Downtown camera grid
• Nick takes the street and Judy takes dispatch
• Rufus tells the eight months, and Pawbert gives them back to him in order
• Pawbert admits for the first time that others have sat across his desk because of his name, and that Rufus is the first who knew it
• Rufus answers the one question, that he is trying to stop feeling it and not to stop being alive, and then holds his arm out for Pawbert to read
• Pawbert decides what he will say happened, and it is a fence
• Luther reads two calm shapes through a grimy window and holds the breach
• Pawbert takes the knife, leaves the money, and writes his desk number on the back of Luther's grocery list
• The door opens on three drawn sidearms, and Luther reads the soaked sleeve and takes his husband home
• Judy says the thing nobody else will in the car, and lets it go for tonight
• Nick puts a third consecutive evening of soup on the record
• Pawbert sets the knife on the dresser, and Luther dresses the arm without asking
• Rufus keeps the nine o'clock appointment and refuses, again, to say any of it is fine

Key Lines

Characters Introduced

Locations

• ZRS — The lobby at closing; Pawbert's intake office the next morning
• Downtown — Pawbert's walk to the ZTA station by way of the civic center and a sandwich shop; the service alley, the bent fence and the lot; the forgotten ground-floor room; the camera grid Luther searches
• Pawthorne Mansion — The kitchen where Luther runs his margin and opens the laptop; the master bedroom where the knife goes on the dresser
• Meadowlands — The long road home

Items

• Rufus's knife — A cheap folding blade from Den Depot on Tujunga, nicked where it was sharpened badly; opens Pawbert's forearm and Rufus's own; taken by Pawbert and set on the master-bedroom dresser, where Luther leaves it untouched (first appearance)
• The grocery list — Milk, flour and ginger in Luther's penmanship, written in shelf order; Pawbert writes his ZRS desk number on the back and Rufus keeps it in his shirt pocket
• Luther's sticker — A thumbs-up cartoon wolf from a pack Luther would not touch for years; sent when the news is good and withheld when it is not (first appearance)
• The pack photograph — Wallet-sized and loose, four mammals on a porch with rings on every paw; the face that identifies Pawbert; recovered from the concrete
• Pawbert's ZRS badge — Printed PAWBERT PAWTHORNE, LSW; the first thing to catch on Rufus
• Twenty-three dollars — The whole of Pawbert's wallet, left on the floor for Rufus's dinner
• The rebar — Through the door handle from inside all evening; leaned against the wall on the way out
• The forearm dressing — Luther's kit from under the bathroom sink, the tape smoothed down twice; under a buttoned sleeve at ZRS the next morning

End Credit Song

"You'll Never Walk Alone" (From 'Carousel'), Josh Groban

Rodgers and Hammerstein's hymn of company through the worst of it, sung in Carousel to a widow at the lowest hour of her life. It is keyed to what Rufus says in the room, that nobody showed up for him, and to the answer the episode gives: a lynx who walks out of the door first and is at his desk at nine the next morning. The song promises company, not forgiveness, and that is the distance the episode keeps. Rufus takes the help and gives the Lynxleys nothing, and the cue does not ask him to.

Notes

• Pawbert's handling of Rufus in the room follows the Johns Hopkins RAPID model of Psychological First Aid (Everly & Lating): rapport and reflective listening, assessment, prioritization, intervention, disposition.
• Den Depot, where Rufus bought the knife on Tujunga, is a reference to Home Depot.