Bending the Paw

by Diane Kelly

  The detective held out her hand for a set of protective gear. As the tech handed it to her, she asked, “Is there a body inside?”

  “Not in the cab,” the female tech said.

  She turned to the bicyclist. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I was coming down the trail pretty fast,” the woman said. “It was my first trail of the day. I came around the curve, saw the car, and hit my brakes, but I couldn’t stop in time. I plowed right into the back of the car.”

  “Did you touch anything?”

  “I put my hands on the trunk to pull myself up after I crashed,” she said. “I peeked in the windows, too, to see if anyone was inside. When I realized there was nobody in the car, I hollered to see if whoever had driven it back here was still around. I was really pissed, to be honest. I could’ve broken my neck, and I’m going to need a new wheel and tire and major repairs to my frame. This bike set me back nearly two grand. It’s going to cost several hundred to fix it. Anyway, nobody responded when I called out. That’s when I took a closer look through the window and saw what looks like blood smeared on the seats. I used my cell phone to call nine-one-one.”

  “So you haven’t moved anything?” Jackson asked. “Picked anything up? Removed anything from the car or the vicinity?”

  “No,” the woman said. “I just waited here. This is the car that’s been missing, isn’t it? The one they’ve been talking about on the news?”

  “It is.”

  The woman’s face brightened and grew wary at the same time. She seemed excited she’d discovered critical evidence in a pending missing-person’s case, but also wary to realize that violent activity might have taken place right here, where she had been mountain biking all alone this morning. My guess was the car had been ditched here shortly after Greg disappeared, but I could be wrong. It could have been dumped here as late as this morning.

  “Mind if we get your prints?” Jackson asked the woman. “We need to be able to distinguish them from any others we might find.”

  “No problem.”

  The tech pulled a fingerprint card and ink pad out of his plastic tool kit and proceeded to take the woman’s fingerprints, handing her a wet wipe when he was done so she could clean the ink off her fingers.

  Jackson gave the woman a pointed look. “Have you told anyone else about finding the car?”

  “Only my boyfriend. I called him after I called emergency services.”

  “Tell him to keep the information to himself and don’t tell anyone else. Okay?” Jackson jotted down the woman’s name and phone number, and told her she was free to leave. “I’ll give you a call if I have any more questions.”

  The woman lifted her bicycle by the handlebars, keeping the flat front tire and bent frame off the ground and rolling the bike away on the back tire only.

  After donning a pair of booties, gloves, and a disposable cap over her hair, Jackson approached the vehicle and waved the tech over. “Dust this door and handle for prints before I open it.”

  The tech did as he’d been told, applying dust along the edges of the door, paying special attention to the area just below the windowsill and along the outer door, where a person would have been most likely to touch it. He leaned down and looked closer. “Nothing’s sticking. The door and handle have been wiped clean.”

  Jackson exhaled a huff of frustration. The attackers had kept their wits about them and covered their tracks. That told us they’d probably planned ahead.

  Now that she knew she could pull on the handle without disturbing any prints, Jackson tried the door. It had been left unlocked and came open. At the detective’s direction, the tech dusted for prints on the inside door handle, the lock, the steering wheel, and the gearshift. All had been wiped clean. So had the trunk release lever under the dashboard.

  “Damn,” Jackson muttered. “These guys were thorough.”

  Jackson cast a glance back at me before bending down next to the driver’s seat to activate the trunk release. With a pop, the trunk latch let go and the top lifted an inch or two, not enough to give me a look inside the bay, but enough to make my heart race and my stomach turn a back flip like an extreme BMX biker coming off a ramp. Jackson gestured for the tech to check the trunk for prints.

  He ran his powdery brush along the edge of the trunk and over it. “There’s some prints on top,” he said. “Two hands. Probably where the biker pulled herself up. But the edge has been wiped.”

  Jackson nodded and put her fingers under the lip, pausing just a second before lifting it. When a flash of bright yellow caught my eyes, I gasped and took a step back, my hand reflexively cupping my mouth. Jackson cut me some side-eye before waving me forward. “Buck up, Officer Luz. You want to be a detective? This is what a detective does.”

  Biting my lip, I stepped to the trunk and forced myself to look inside. Although Greg’s bloodied yellow blazer lay balled up in the trunk, Greg himself did not. The gray carpet that lined the trunk was smeared with blood, though. Soaked in it, in fact. The blood formed a large, roughly rectangular shape, like a human torso. A sound came involuntarily from me, something that sounded a lot like Brigit’s whimper.

  Jackson glanced over at Brigit and me. “You two do your thing. See if you can figure out where the killers took Greg’s body when they pulled it out of the trunk.”

  Though I knew my partner had a skilled snout, superior even to most of the other K-9s, it was asking a lot for her to be able to pick up a trail that was several days old, especially when it had rained in the interim. Still, if any dog could do it, it was my Brigit.

  While the crime scene techs began a more detailed inspection of the vehicle, I led Brigit to the trunk and issued the order for her to trail. She sniffed around the space, leaving wet nose-prints on the cold metal of the car. She lowered her head, sniffing along the edge of the car and the brush along the trail. It took her much longer than usual to pick up a scent, and several times during the process she looked up at me as if to ask whether she could give up yet. I signaled her to keep trying. When she’d finally managed to lock on to some small scent remnant, she led us past the car and farther down the trail. Signs posted along the way warned bikers of the unprotected bluff and to stay on the path. Here and there along the way the detective and I spotted dried bloody smears the rain hadn’t managed to completely wash away and areas where something heavy appeared to have been dragged. That something had likely been Greg Olsen’s body.

  Eventually, we reached a rocky outcropping that overlooked the lake and sat directly above the dam. The sound of rushing water came from below us.

  Jackson issued a somber sigh as she pointed to another thick blood smear on the edge of the rock. “This must be where they pushed Greg’s corpse over the edge.”

  Lest Brigit accidentally fall over, I order her to sit and stay while Jackson and I carefully eased forward to peer over the edge of the precipice. Below, water from the lake rushed over the dam’s spillway. Over the days since Greg disappeared, the storm and subsequent runoff had filled Lake Worth to capacity and then some.

  Jackson turned her head to stare off downriver and vertical lines of anxiety formed on the inside edge of each of her brows. I could virtually read her mind. Unless they were weighted down, dead bodies tended to float. The process of decomposition released gases inside the body that gave it buoyancy. With all the water pouring over the spillway, Greg’s body could have been caught up in a current and carried over the dam and downstream. Or, if he’d floated off before the rains hit, he might have been caught in the flow that churned on the lake side of the dam. Then again, for all we knew, his body might have floated to shore somewhere or out to Goat Island, a small brushy land mass in the middle of the large lake. It was too bad he was no longer wearing his bright yellow jacket. The vivid cloth would have made him easier to spot.

  Jackson gestured to Brigit. “See if she can tell us where they went after here.”

  Again, I issued Brigit the order to trail. She sniffed around for a f
ew seconds before heading back the way we’d come. She didn’t stop at the car, though. She kept on going back down the trail and into the parking lot. She seemed to lose the trail there, sniffing around in circles, unable to pick it back up. Of course, it was possible that whoever had ditched Greg’s car here had been picked up in this parking lot by someone else, or had left a car here as part of a well-orchestrated escape plan. We couldn’t know for certain at this point whether the attack on Greg had been premeditated and planned out, or was simply an impulsive crime of opportunity.

  Jackson reached down and ruffled Brigit’s ears. “Good job, girl. I know we’ve been asking a lot of you.”

  Brigit wagged her tail. I pulled a couple of liver treats from my pocket and fed them to her.

  “I’m going to get some divers out here,” Jackson said. “A bloodhound, too. With any luck, maybe they’ll find some new evidence. You’re free to go if you want.”

  I wanted to see how things played out here, and Brigit was enjoying being outdoors, keeping an eye on the squirrels and birds. “We’ll stick around.”

  “I had a feeling you’d say that. You are nothing if not dedicated.” But while she offered her support, she couldn’t offer remuneration. “Our overtime budget’s nearly used up,” she said. “If you stay, it’s on your own time.”

  “Understood.”

  We waited around for nearly an hour, chatting and talking in circles about the investigation, before two male divers arrived. One was African American and the other Caucasian. Both had short hair and the same swimmer’s build as Seth, a lean body with muscular thighs and strong, broad shoulders. The detective showed them the spot where we presumed the attackers had tossed Greg’s body off the cliff. She pointed to the water below. “There could be some evidence down there, too.”

  One of the divers eyed the other. “That water’s moving fast.”

  “Don’t take any chances,” Jackson said. “If we need to wait, we can wait.”

  “We’ll just need to take some precautions,” he said. “Tie ourselves to a tree. Use some lights and DPVs.” Noting the question on my face, he clarified. “Diver propulsion vehicles. They’re like motors we can use to help us get around down there. DPVs allow us to stay down for a longer time, too. We use less oxygen than we would swimming on our own, so our tanks last longer.”

  Jackson tied a stretch of yellow cordon tape to a tree so the divers could us it as a point of reference. After consulting a trail map, they gathered up their gear and we followed them down the trail until we reached a lower point where they could enter the water with ease. Fortunately, the spot was on a small peninsula from which we could see the yellow tape fluttering up above to our left forty yards away.

  Moving as quickly as they could to combat the cold weather, the men stripped down to form-fitting swimsuits before pulling on their wetsuits, diving gloves, and boots. They donned harnesses and air tanks, affixed sturdy cables to two trees approximately ten feet apart, and attached the ends to their harnesses. They put on their full-face masks, which included a communication system so they could speak to each other while down in the depths. After sliding into their flippers, they picked up their waterproof lights and torpedo-like DPVs, and duck-walked into the murky water, stirring up silt in their wake. They appeared to be melting as they disappeared into the lake, until they could be seen no more. Only the cable, the red-and-white flag-topped buoy marking their location, and a few bubbles rising to the surface provided proof they were there.

  “Gotta say,” Jackson said quietly, “those two didn’t look too bad in those tiny bathing suits. The white guy could use some sun, but you can’t really blame him for looking a little pale this time of year.” She shot me a knowing glance. “Saw you checking them out, too.”

  Just because I was engaged didn’t mean I’d gone blind. “Shame on us,” I said, feeling no shame at all. “But, yeah, I totally agree. Not bad.”

  Brigit lapped at the water and sniffed around the bank while Detective Jackson and I stood in wait, rapt and anxious. A minute later, we saw the men’s heads surface as they looked for the yellow tape to ensure they were searching in the right area. Their heads disappeared again as they dived.

  The minutes ticked by, flowing far slower than the current. What were the men finding down there? Had they found any evidence the killers had thrown over the cliff? Had they located Greg’s body, tied to heavy cinder blocks or kettle-bells?

  Finding it impossible to stand still any longer, I paced back and forth along a twenty-foot stretch of muddy, rocky bank. Detective Jackson, on the other hand, improvised a seat on the trunk of a downed tree. Finally, the dive buoy moved in our direction and the water came to life, as if it were boiling. The two men rose from the water like sea creatures. One of them held a black garbage bag in his hand. The other held up a set of keys. Yes!

  Jackson stood and the two of us met them onshore.

  The diver handed the keys over to the detective. They were on a colorful souvenir keychain from Destin, Florida that was shaped like a sea turtle.

  The diver with the garbage bag plunked it down in front of us. “This is all I found. Don’t know what’s in it. Could just be trash.”

  “So no body?” Jackson asked, looking from one of them to the other. “No weapon?”

  “Not that we could see or feel. It’s dark and cloudy down there right now. It’s possible we missed something. It might be worth a second look once the lake level stabilizes and the silt settles.”

  “I appreciate you making the effort,” the detective said, “especially in these conditions.”

  Jackson crouched down to untie the garbage bag. After ordering Brigit to sit and stay a few feet away, I crouched down beside the detective. The bottom of the bag bore remnants of lake-bottom muck and smelled like sewage. Ick.

  While the men slipped out of their wet suits and back into warm, dry clothing, Jackson wrestled with the tight knot. Not easy to do with latex gloves on. When the knot finally came loose, she opened the bag and pushed the sides apart to reveal the contents. We bumped heads as we both leaned in to take a closer look.

  “Sorry,” I said, backing off a bit in deference.

  Inside the bag was an assortment of clothing. Jackson pulled the garments out, piece by piece, and held them up. A man’s extra-large zippered blue athletic jacket. A man’s flannel shirt in red-and-black plaid, also in XL. A man’s medium gray sweatshirt bearing the blue Dallas Cowboys star logo. None of the items was especially unique or distinctive.

  Jackson checked the front and back of each tag and inspected the collars closely. “I suppose it’s too much to ask that the killers’ names be written here in permanent laundry marker, huh?”

  “It was worth a shot.” After all, most criminals weren’t the smartest people. They often acted on impulse and didn’t think things through. Some had even committed crimes on their way to or from work while they were wearing uniforms or name badges.

  The next items the detective pulled from the bag were two pairs of men’s tennis shoes. She lifted the tongues and took a peek. “Twelve and nine-and-a-half.”

  The same sizes as the footprints left in the Olsen’s kitchen. Jackson turned one of the larger shoes over so we could look at the sole. As she did, a steak knife slid out of the shoe and fell with a tinny clink to the rocky shore. Like the car on the cliff above us, the knife appeared to have been wiped clean. There was no evidence of blood or tissue residue on it.

  I pointed to the sole. “Mild supination. Just like the footprints we saw in the kitchen.” We might not have caught Greg Olsen’s killers, but we had their shoes. That was a step in the right direction, no pun intended.

  The bag had a few small holes where it had likely snagged on tree limbs as the killers carried it to the bluff to toss it over. Although the moving water in the lake had surely washed away some of the blood, light stains remained on the clothing and shoes.

  Fully dressed now, the divers stepped over. “Anything useful in the trash ba
g?”

  “Only the murder weapon and the clothing the attackers wore during the incident.” Detective Jackson gave them a broad, grateful smile and raised her hand for a high five. After palm slaps were exchanged, she said, “I can’t thank you two enough. This gives us a new lead.”

  The only question now was, would this lead actually lead to anything?

  EIGHTEEN

  DO YOUR EARS HANG LOW?

  Brigit

  She heard a jinglejangle and looked down the trail to see a handler coming their way with a dog on a leash. It was a funny-looking dog. His ears hung down past his jowls rather than standing up tall and proud like Brigit’s. How could the dog hear with its ear flaps dangling down like that? His skin was floppy, too. There were wrinkles all around his face.

  When his handler held the bloody jacket to the dog’s face and gave it an order, Brigit realized the dog had been trained to track a particular scent. Maybe those floppy ears and wrinkled skin helped trap the smells. Brigit had been trained to sniff out illegal drugs and to trail the disturbance left behind by a fleeing suspect, but she hadn’t been trained to track a particular person by scent. She supposed it might be interesting to know how to do that, but she figured trailing a disturbance was more fun because it was more likely to lead to a chase.

  As the dog walked past her, she gave a small tail wag in greeting and stepped back to give him room to work. Respect, pal.

  NINETEEN

  IS NO NEWS GOOD NEWS?

  The Slasher

  He glanced out the window for what had to be the hundredth time already that day. A Fort Worth police cruiser had rolled slowly by earlier, and he’d nearly wet himself. Luckily, the car had continued on, the cop at the wheel merely cruising his beat.