CROSS HER HEART

by Leigh, Melinda

  “I know.” Her voice sharpened. “I’ll deal.”

  You’ll have to, he thought with a small tinge of guilt.

  At Matt’s house, Bree waited in the SUV while he ran in for the dog. Brody jumped into the back seat and stared at Bree over the console.

  She glanced over the seat. Stiffening, she slid a few inches toward the passenger door. “I feel like he wants to ride shotgun.”

  “He’ll be fine. He rode in the back seat for his whole K-9 career.” Matt drove away from the house.

  The Fresh Beverage Company had gone out of business twenty years before. The old factory sat seven miles outside town, in the middle of nowhere. Snow-covered fields and woods lined the country road. The building was a hulking square of brick. The surrounding meadows were creeping into the parking lot, which showed more tire tracks than an abandoned building should.

  “This building was a problem when I was a deputy. Homeless squatters, drug dealers, kids. If it was illegal, someone was doing it here.” Matt stopped the truck and climbed out. After opening the rear door, Matt snapped the leash onto the dog’s collar. Brody jumped down, his nose already working the air.

  Bree kept her distance from Matt and the dog as they walked across the lot.

  “The company that owns the property has given up on keeping people out.” Matt led Brody toward the chain-link fence that surrounded the property. Across the building’s face, broken windows gaped.

  The gate listed on its hinges. Matt held it aside so Brody and Bree could enter the yard surrounding the building. They crossed the icy, cracked asphalt. Wind had blown sections of the blacktop clear. Snow drifted in other places. They stepped onto the concrete sidewalk. The front doors were solid steel and padlocked. They bypassed them to walk around to the back. Receiving and shipping docks lined the rear of the building. Several of the overhead doors were open.

  Bree led the way to the first open bay.

  Matt touched her arm, stopping her. “It’s too quiet.”

  She raised a brow.

  “I don’t like it. There’s always someone here.” Matt glanced at Brody. The dog was calm and giving no signs he sensed other human beings.

  “Maybe it’s too frigging cold for vagrants to live here.” Bree shivered. Her nose was red, and her breath fogged in front of her face. She pulled a hat and gloves from her pocket and tugged them on.

  Matt went first, letting the dog lead. They walked into a large, high-ceilinged room with a concrete floor. Barrels were stacked against one wall. Trash, cardboard boxes, used needles, and what Matt suspected was human feces littered the floor. They crossed the concrete and approached another doorway.

  Brody’s head snapped up, his nose working. Brody had been a multiuse K-9. He was trained to sniff drugs and explosives. He’d also completed building searches and tracked suspects. The dog’s intelligence and ability to adapt had always impressed Matt.

  Bree frowned at Brody. “What is it?”

  “Not sure.” But it was definitely something. “He has something in his nose.”

  Metal clanged, the sound echoing through the open space.

  The wind rattling something?

  Brody stiffened. He whined and lunged at the leash. Signaling Bree to stand back, Matt braced himself. Brody’s attention was fixed ahead, on the doorway and whatever lay beyond.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Bree pulled out her weapon and put her shoulder to the wall on one side of the doorway. Matt positioned himself on the other side. He held Brody back. The dog whined and shifted his weight back and forth. He wasn’t growling. As much as Bree avoided getting close to K-9s, she knew individual dogs had their own alert cues.

  “Threat?” she mouthed.

  Matt shrugged and mouthed back, “Not sure.”

  Great.

  Bree peered around the doorframe. A white F-150 SuperCab sat in the middle of another large, concrete-floored shipping bay.

  Her heart double-tapped. Erin’s truck. She didn’t see anyone in the vehicle through the windshield. She scanned the rest of the room but saw nothing. Giving Brody some leash, Matt let the dog lead him through the opening.

  Bree followed, sweeping the room from corner to corner with her weapon.

  She moved forward, passing the dog and approaching the side of the vehicle. As she neared the driver’s door, the dog barked once and lunged toward her. Bree startled and jumped sideways, away from the dog. Her heart continued to beat in double time.

  Matt leaned back against the leash, but he was clearly having a hard time managing his dog.

  Tension radiated through Bree.

  The dog lunged again, and she jumped even higher.

  “Can you control him?” she snapped.

  “Yes. Sorry. He’s never like this.” Matt shortened the leash and issued a few sharp commands in German. The only visible reaction in the dog was a single flick of an ear. The truck commanded all his attention. His weight was squared on all four legs and shifted forward. Matt dragged him back a few feet, but he remained 100 percent focused on the pickup.

  With one eye on the dog, Bree approached the vehicle. She pointed her weapon through the driver’s window. “Come out of the truck with your hands up.”

  Nothing moved.

  She rose onto her toes and scanned the interior of the vehicle, front and back. She expected to see a body inside, maybe Justin’s, but the cab was empty. Looking closer, she noticed dark-red stains streaking the dashboard, steering wheel, and driver’s seat.

  “What do you see?” Matt asked.

  “Blood.”

  Matt was at her side in two seconds. Brody stood on his hind legs, scratching at the truck’s door, his nose working. He huffed. His mouth opened as if he were tasting the air. On instinct, Bree moved away from the dog.

  “I’m sorry he’s freaking out.” Matt grabbed the dog’s collar and pulled him back.

  Bree moved to the other side of the vehicle. “Not your fault. I’m sorry I snapped before. I need to work through my fear of dogs.”

  With the truck between her and the dog, Bree took three deep breaths, concentrating on exhaling slowly to lower her heart rate. Her brain knew Brody was no threat to her, but her response was a reflex.

  Matt made the dog sit. “You can’t control it.”

  And that fact irritated Bree more than anything.

  She studied the gray interior of the truck. “That’s a lot of blood.”

  “There was a handprint smear on the frame of Justin’s bedroom door,” Matt said. “He could have touched Erin. Maybe he checked her pulse or tried to help her.”

  They were both quiet for a few seconds. According to the ME, she had been beyond help.

  Bree peered through the narrow rear window. She spotted a stain on the bench seat. She eyed a clear handprint on the dashboard. “Todd should be able to pull fingerprints from that.”

  Matt stepped backward, his face grim. “I don’t know what this means. Blood in the front and back seats? Was one person in the back seat while another drove? Or did the driver climb into the back to rest, and bleed, for a while?”

  “Forensics will be able to tell us if there is one source of blood or two.”

  Matt was silent.

  “There’s a piece of paper on the passenger seat.” Bree craned her neck but couldn’t read the message from her angle. Blood spattered the paper.

  Matt walked around to the passenger side of the vehicle. “I can’t read it.”

  Bree backed away from the truck and pulled out her phone. “I have to call Todd. Forensics needs to work on this truck.”

  “I know.” Matt shoved a hand through his hair.

  A minute later, Bree lowered her phone. “Todd’s on his way. ETA is ten minutes.”

  “I can’t justify opening the truck door.”

  “No,” Bree said. “We cannot contaminate the evidence.”

  She snapped pictures of the truck from as many angles as possible without touching it.

  The inside of
the factory felt colder than outside. The chill seemed to radiate from the concrete, through the soles of her sneakers, into the bones of her feet. Her toes felt like blocks of ice, and she bounced to get her blood moving.

  Matt frowned at her feet. “Why don’t you wear boots?”

  Bree lifted a sneaker. “I can run faster in these.”

  “Do you own boots?”

  “I do. They’re safely stowed in my vehicle back at the farm.” When she was on call, she kept boots and a change of clothes in her trunk, along with sanitizing wipes.

  Matt shook his head. “You’re going to freeze if we have to search the woods.”

  “Yes.” Bree stamped her feet. “That will suck.”

  Their conversation was cut short by the sound of vehicles in the parking lot. Todd and two other deputies entered the shipping bay. Todd walked up to the truck and circled it, examining the exterior and what he could see of the interior. The two deputies cleared the building. When they returned, Todd ordered one deputy to dust the door handles for prints and the other to call for a tow truck.

  Todd approached Matt and Bree. “What led you here?”

  “I’ve had some feelers out with old CIs,” Matt said. “One called me today to relay rumors about the location of a white pickup. Considering how many false sightings you’ve had, we wanted to make sure it was Erin’s before we brought you in.”

  Todd returned to the truck. After the deputy pulled one partial print from the driver’s door, Todd put on gloves and opened the door.

  Bree walked closer. Matt held the dog back. The dog sniffed the air and whined. Reacting to the scent of blood? Or does he smell Justin?

  Todd examined the inside of the door and driver’s side of the interior. “The blood here is mostly smears. DNA testing will tell us if it belongs to Erin or Justin or some other person we haven’t yet identified.”

  “What’s the turnaround time for DNA testing in your lab?” Bree asked.

  “Anywhere from two weeks to six months.” Todd opened the rear door to view the narrow bench seat in the back of the vehicle. “There’s a lot of blood on the seat.” He crouched to look closer.

  “And even more on the carpet.” Bree pointed to a frozen puddle on the floor mat. “That’s definitely too much blood volume for passive transfer. That was an actively bleeding wound.”

  Todd stood. He rounded the vehicle and opened the doors on the passenger side. Todd photographed the paper on the passenger seat, then picked it up by the corner. He tilted it to the light.

  Shaky block print spelled out two words. Bree read them aloud over his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

  Todd pursed his lips. “What does that mean? If Justin is suicidal, then he has a gun. He could have shot himself back at his own place or right here. Why leave the truck at all? It makes no sense.”

  Bree’s bones shuddered. Just like her father. Was Erin’s death a horrible case of déjà vu, like the news media had claimed? “If he’s suicidal, then he isn’t thinking straight.”

  Matt’s mouth flattened. “We don’t know when the truck was left here. We don’t know Justin was driving it. We need to start searching.”

  Bree pulled up a map of the area on her phone. “There’s nothing around here but woods and fields. Town is about seven miles away. Which way would he go?”

  Justin could be lying out in the cold, dead or dying.

  “I’ll call the state police and see if they can loan us a K-9 team.” Todd stepped away to use his radio.

  “What if the driver wasn’t Justin?” Matt suggested. “What if someone else drove while he was bleeding in the back seat? Justin could have been taken captive by whoever shot Erin.”

  “If Justin was kidnapped,” Bree said, “then the real killer is either holding him somewhere or he dumped his body before he ditched the pickup here.”

  Matt pointed at the vehicle. “Then how did the killer get home from here? Not many people would want to walk seven miles in this cold.”

  Bree thought about the man she’d chased out of Erin’s house. He hadn’t been exceptionally fit. She spit out theories, ticking them off with her fingers. “He could have used an accomplice. He could have left a vehicle here beforehand. He could have walked a mile or so, then called a friend for a ride. A rideshare app is another possibility.”

  Todd turned back to them. “I can get a K-9 unit out here first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “That’s too long,” Matt said.

  Todd gestured toward Brody. “That’s the best I can do unless you want to let Brody give it a go.”

  Matt exhaled through his nose. “We’ll try, but he’s not wearing his working harness, and it’s been years since he’s done any trailing work. Can one of the deputies run out to my vehicle for something? Don’t let Brody see it.”

  “Sure.” Todd summoned a deputy, who jogged out of the shipping bay.

  A few minutes later, the deputy returned and passed a ratty-looking stuffed animal from under his coat to Matt. He shoved it into his own pocket. Then he led the dog close to the driver’s side of the pickup and pointed to the seat. Brody stood on his hind legs and inspected the fabric. Matt let him sniff his fill, then gave him a command. They walked in a circle around the truck. The dog sniffed the air and ground as he moved. Bree was no expert, but the dog seemed to know what he was doing.

  They’d circled the vehicle three times, each circle slightly larger than the previous one, when the dog’s posture changed. His ears pricked forward, his tail jutted straight out from his body, and his direction became purposeful.

  “He has something,” Matt said.

  Brody beelined for the exit. In the doorway, he paused to sniff again, then resumed trailing. Bree and Todd followed. Brody made his way outside. In the parking lot, he appeared to lose the trail, walking in circles, sniffing the air.

  “He isn’t smelling the ground.” Bree shoved her hands into her pockets.

  “Wind dissipates scent particles.” Matt gave the dog more leash. “There won’t be a perfect track or cone of scent. He’ll have to follow whatever scent particles he can find. Think of it like connecting the dots.”

  After a few moments of seemingly aimless wandering, Brody headed away from the exit and toward a strip of woods. The dog didn’t travel in a straight, definite line the way he had done inside the building. Instead, he zigzagged.

  At the edge of the parking lot, Matt called, “Keep an eye out for tracks in the snow.”

  Bree and Todd fanned out twenty feet on either side of the working dog. Bree stepped over the curb at the edge of the lot. The snow was ankle deep and began to soak into her sneakers immediately. Just ahead, she spotted an indentation in the snow. “Hold on!”

  She trudged closer and looked down at a partial footprint. “I found a track.” She visually tracked the line between the footprint and the parking lot and saw several faint indentations. “I see more prints. Someone walked this way.” She bent over the closest track. Drifting snow had partially filled the print.

  Todd walked over and crouched next to her. “The tread isn’t clear, except for this edge right here.”

  Bree pointed to a few knobby-looking marks. “Probably a work boot of some type.”

  “That’s not clear enough to determine which brand.” Todd stood and squinted into the woods. “Let’s see where he went.”

  Brody led the way. They found more boot prints along the trail the dog followed. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, the woods opened to another road. Bree crossed the street. No more tracks. “He must have walked along the road.”

  Brody began zigzagging again. His nose went into the air and sniffed. He turned north and serpentined back and forth along the shoulder of the road.

  “There’s a farm ahead.” Todd pointed up the road. A half mile away, on the opposite side of the road, large outbuildings clustered around a white house.

  “That’s Empire Acre Farms,” Todd said. “It’s a big operation. It looks deserted now, but in the fall, the
y have Christmas trees, hay rides, and pumpkin picking.”

  A quarter mile short of the farm, Brody stopped. His tail dropped and his ears lowered to a relaxed position.

  Matt led him in a circle. The dog sniffed but didn’t alert again.

  “This is the end of the trail,” Matt said.

  Brody sat in the road and whined.

  “He sounds depressed,” Bree said.

  “He likes to find the person he’s looking for.” Matt turned to the dog, praising him in a high-pitched voice. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the toy the deputy had brought from his SUV. “You’re such a good boy!”

  The dog’s tail wagged, and his ears came forward again as Matt squeaked the toy. “Do you want Mr. Hedgehog?”

  Bree was impressed by his unabashed use of baby talk. “You brought a dog toy with you?”

  “He loves this old thing. I carry it in the truck in case he gets bored, but it used to be his reward for working.” Matt lobbed the hedgehog in a slow arc. Brody jumped for it, snatching it from the air. When his front paws hit the street, he shook the toy as if breaking its neck.

  Bree shuddered and fought a flashback. Cold, damp air. The smell of wet dog. The rattle of a chain. Teeth sinking into her flesh. The shake. Todd’s voice brought her out of it.

  “You think he left from here in a vehicle?” Todd looked up and down the road.

  “Probably.” Matt rubbed behind Brody’s ears.

  “Could the snow have impacted the scent?” Bree asked.

  “I doubt it in this case. If fresh snow falls on top of a trail, it can affect the scent. But this snow has been here for a week, and Brody didn’t have any trouble following the trail to this point.”

  Todd scanned the road in both directions. “Maybe he had a ride waiting.”

  Bree didn’t think so. “Dropping a car in the middle of nowhere or getting picked up requires another person. Even if that person isn’t an accomplice, he or she would be a witness to our suspect being here. I doubt he walked. Town is seven miles away.”

  “And Brody would have continued to follow his scent.” Matt stroked the dog’s head.

  Bree’s gaze returned to the big farm up the road. “Or he used the Empire Acres Farm as a pickup point for the Uber or Lyft we talked about earlier. That way, there would be no record of a pickup at the factory where he left the truck.”