by Alex Kava
Charlotte didn’t recognize the room, and she thought she knew every single room and closet in the Big House. The wallpaper was peeling, a long swatch flapped free. Iris would never allow that.
So this wasn’t the Big House.
A glint of silver caught her eyes close to the ceiling. A strand of glittery tinsel with bright green and red balls was strung up along the archway between the two rooms.
Two rooms?
Her pulse started racing, and she strained to listen.
Was there anyone else here? Were they watching her?
She considered calling out, but instead, she swallowed hard only to find that it hurt to swallow. That’s when she remembered Iris’ beefy fingers clamped around her throat. Charlotte ran her own fingers over the bruised area to make certain nothing was protruding and there were no gaping wounds.
Satisfied that her neck was okay, she turned her head with much effort and some pain, to investigate in the other direction. Her entire body jerked when she saw the man sitting in the corner. He didn’t move or respond to her. He just sat there.
She blinked and tried to refocus. Then she wanted to laugh.
Sitting in a rocking chair was a life-sized Santa, dressed in a red suit, complete with belt and boots. His glassy eyes looked very real underneath the Santa hat and full beard.
The Christmas house.
Iris had told someone to take her to the Christmas house.
In Charlotte’s fevered delusion, she thought it was some strange metaphor for something sinister. But now she realized Iris’ words were literal. She glanced at the tinsel and glass balls. There were more over the boarded windows.
Windows!
But boarded up from the outside. Still, slivers of light streamed in.
She could glimpse the top of a Christmas tree with more glass balls and tinsel and a star on top.
It must have been decorated years ago because Charlotte could see the dust and spider webs. Whoever lived here, whoever had decorated this house, was long gone.
Chapter 27
Omaha, Nebraska
“Grace and I are going with you,” Creed said after Maggie explained what she had planned.
“That’s not a good idea.”
“Finding Brodie is one of the reasons I started a K9 business.”
“This is different.”
“It’s not different. Every time I search for a missing girl or a young woman or whenever we’ve recovered remains, I’ve always been thinking about Brodie. That it could be her.”
“Ryder, I know—”
“No, you don’t know.” He wiped a hand over his jaw as if checking for remnants of the cheeseburger, but he really wanted to rub the emotion from his face. But it was too late, and he could feel his pulse already racing.
“People don’t understand when I say this,” he tried to choose the right words. “It probably sounds heartless, but it would be better to find her remains than to find nothing. Not knowing whether she’s alive or dead, that’s the toughest part. Hanging onto a thread of hope when you have no idea whether there’s anything to hope for. Everyone tells you to move on. Find closure. But there is no closure without finding her. If she’s dead, so be it. I just want to bring her home. Then I’ll know there’s nothing more I can do for her.”
When he looked over at Maggie he caught her wiping at her eyes. The tough-as-nails agent didn’t easily show her emotion. But he didn’t say any of this to play to her emotions.
“My mother agreed to send me some of Brodie’s personal items. I brought a DNA swab from her.”
“Sounds like you came prepared.”
“It’d be a relief if this was the end of the line.”
“Ryder, I know you’re a professional. You wouldn’t purposely risk a search and recovery. You think you’ve handled this in the past because you’re always thinking the next victim you find might be Brodie. But this is different. It’s very likely one of these bodies is Brodie. You have no idea how that will affect you. And how much it might affect the entire search effort.”
He looked away and shook his head. He couldn’t believe she didn’t get it.
“So you’re simply worried that I might screw up your expedition,” he said.
“That’s not fair.”
He could hear the hurt in her voice, but he didn’t glance back. Instead, he stayed by the window and looked down at the street below.
“You know having a family member along isn’t a good idea,” she continued. “You know that probably better than anyone. You shouldn’t have come here presuming that you could insert yourself into this investigation.”
He stared out the window, giving her his back. He didn’t dare look down at Grace. He could feel her eyes on him as she stood at his feet. He was beyond exhausted, and maybe Maggie was right. Maybe it was wrong for him to think he could drive all this way and automatically be included.
Creed and Hannah had taken on hundreds of cases over the last seven years. In many of those, Creed had put the missing and the lost ahead of himself—and in some instances—ahead of his dogs. The explosion site he’d just worked was a prime example. He’d pushed Bolo at the risk of cutting the dog’s pads. He’d pushed himself to exhaustion. And he’d done so because as long as there might be just one person alive in the rubble, he couldn’t leave. At least not, until another dog and handler team arrived to replace them.
He turned slowly around then waited for Maggie to meet his eyes, though he could see she wasn’t comfortable doing so.
“Last spring you asked me for a favor. I agreed even when I realized my dogs might be at risk of catching a deadly virus. I’ve never been the type to call in favors, but if that’s what it takes then I will. I’m asking you as a favor, Maggie. I want to be a part of this search. I need to be a part of it. Don’t deny me the opportunity to bring my sister home.”
He felt his heart banging in his chest, but he held her eyes. She could send him home. She might even deny him access to any and all information. It wouldn’t be the first time someone he cared about and respected would betray him. He’d lived with the simple fact that his own mother would rather pretend he didn’t exist than deal with losing him. If this cost him his friendship with Maggie then perhaps there was no friendship to begin with.
She was the first to break eye contact, rubbing her hands over her face in a gesture of pure exasperation. Then suddenly, she began stacking items back in their place, folding the map and slipping it into a portfolio. She resealed Brodie’s book and used a Sharpie to mark the evidence label. She picked up their empty food wrappers, stuffing them into the greasy paper bag and tossing it into the trash.
Then finally, she looked back at him, now glancing down at Grace as well.
“Okay,” she said. “But if it gets to be too much for you, you need to be straight with me. You need to tell me. That’s the deal breaker.”
“Absolutely,” he said with a nod, all the while realizing that she still didn’t understand. It had nothing to do with how difficult it was for him. This wasn’t about him. But rather than argue, he accepted her terms.
“So where are you and Grace staying?”
“I guess I hadn’t thought that far in advance.”
She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and started scrolling for a number.
“I’m down in the Old Market at the Embassy Suites. I’m pretty sure they allow service dogs. Their suites have refrigerators, a wet bar, and microwaves.”
Before he could remind her that he and Grace had slept on a cot or even a sleeping bag on the floor at disaster sites, she was on the line making sure they had a room for him and Grace, including extra bottles of water.
Maggie O’Dell was definitely an enigma. He wondered, and not for the first time, if he’d ever figure the woman out.
Chapter 28
Santa Rosa Count
y, Florida
Jason was told the trail Raelyn used to go to her friend’s house started in back of the Woodson’s property, but he and Scout barely stepped into the backyard when Scout started chasing his tail. The dog had been cooped up too long. He was bored.
“Scout,” Jason tried to keep the embarrassment out of his voice. Sheriff Norwich and Mrs. Woodson were only ten feet behind them.
He gave a tug at the leash and tapped his left fist against his chest. Scout stopped in mid spin and his eyes flew to Jason’s fist, now watching to see if the hand went anywhere near his rope toy. But instead of the toy, Jason pulled out the teenager’s worn sneaker and offered it for Scout to sniff.
“Raelyn,” Jason said while the dog dipped his twitching nose into the shoe. When Jason didn’t take it away, Scout shoved his nose even deeper into the toe area.
Jason knew he could call the scent just about anything as long as he communicated to Scout it was what he wanted him to find. Creed had them use the word “fish” for drugs. It made it easier calling out, “go find fish,” in a busy airport than alerting drug dealers by using the word “drugs.” But Creed had also taught Jason it was best to call the scent of a missing person by the person’s name. Especially a child. That way if there was even the slightest chance that Raelyn was within earshot, but was lost or injured, she might hear Jason calling her name whenever he asked Scout to find her.
“Raelyn. Find Raelyn,” he told Scout as he showed the dog the shoe.
This time, Scout started out with his nose poking the air. Jason kept him restrained. After the bear incident he wasn’t letting the dog go off leash into the forest. But instead of running to the tree line and the trampled area where the trail began, Scout headed for a small shed at the corner of the yard. The dog stopped and bobbed his head then double-backed to a tree. Jason accommodated him, keeping pace. He was spending too much time sniffing the base of the tree, and Jason worried his dog was more interested in another dog’s piss than he was in Raelyn.
“Scout,” he reminded him. “Find Raelyn.”
The dog gave what sounded to Jason like a resentful snort. Then he peed on the tree and continued on to the shed. His nose was twitching, his breathing growing more rapid. He barreled to the shed door, stopped and pawed at it.
“What’s in here?” Jason asked glancing over his shoulder and disappointed to see just how close Mrs. Woodson and Norwich were following.
“Nothing really,” Mrs. Woodson told him, her arms crossed over her chest as though she was chilled. Even with the sun dipping toward the horizon, the air was still warm and clammy.
“Raelyn ever come out here?” Jason was watching Scout. The dog was tugging at the end of the leash. He looked back at Jason then tapped his paw against the door like he didn’t think Jason was paying attention.
“I guess I’ve caught her out here, sneaking a smoke.”
“Mind if I take a look?”
“There’s nothing there. My ex-husband used this old shed for his tools and the mower. Oh, and there’s an old deep freezer with packages of fish. That man loved to fish but he didn’t like eating it much.”
Jason twirled the nylon leash around his wrist, cinching Scout close to his side as he opened the door.
Immediately, he heard the hum of the freezer, an old beat-up chest that took up one side of the shed. There was a padlock on the latch. In front of the freezer was a rusted out mower and a wheelbarrow with dirt still in it. On the wooden bench along the other side was mostly discarded fishing equipment.
“I’ve been meaning to get rid of that old thing,” Mrs. Woodson said, meaning the freezer, but Jason thought it sounded like she might still be talking about the ex-husband. “I made him put a lock on it. We have little kids in this neighborhood.”
“I need you both to move back at least twenty feet,” Jason told the pair. He didn’t want them distracting Scout. When he didn’t hear any retreating steps behind him, he shot a look at Norwich.
“We need to give the dog some room to work,” the sheriff told Mrs. Woodson.
Jason still waited a minute then let out some of Scout’s leash, letting the dog bound into the shed. It was a small area with a low ceiling and unfinished beamed walls. Scout’s nails clicked on the concrete floor. His nose was going crazy, surfing over the wheelbarrow and under the old mower. He pawed at the side of the freezer.
“Come on. There’s nothing here.”
Jason pulled on Scout’s leash. When the dog didn’t budge, Jason reached down and grabbed the handle on Scout’s harness and gave a tug. Scout was still sniffing, but now he eye-rolled back to see if Jason had his rope toy for him.
“Come on,” Jason told him, leading him out the door.
They hadn’t even started, and Jason was already regretting using those stupid treats for rewards. He should have listened to Creed the first time, and he could hear his mentor clearly.
“If you use food as a reward, don’t be surprised when your dog alerts to spoiled scraps or discarded food containers along the trail.”
Or even a chest freezer filled with frozen fish.
Chapter 29
The breeze ruffled Jason’s hair. It was coming towards them. A lucky break. Those scent rafts he was trying to tell Mrs. Woodson about would be riding on the air currents. He imagined them as millions of fluffy dandelion seeds. The light wind would bring them to Scout’s nose. The heavier rafts would have already fallen to the ground, catching on the shrubs and settling into the pine needles. The temperature started to cool and that was good, too. Cool air falls like water flowing downhill. It’d bring the scent closer to Scout.
All the conditions were in their favor and yet, twenty minutes into the search they hadn’t found anything but a few cigarette butts. Scout wasn’t interested in any of those. Instead, the dog shifted from side to side, impatiently waiting for Jason to bag them.
As soon as he was finished, Scout darted off again, hot-dogging in between the trees and straining at the end of the leash. Jason could barely keep up with him. Finally, he slowed to a more manageable trot. He was still throwing his head one way then another. His nose poked the air then dipped down into the shrubs.
Jason checked his watch. Scenting dogs would breathe 140 to 200 times a minute compared to thirty times a minute when the dog was on a regular walk. And all that sniffing wasn’t just breathing. The dog would take in air and send it in different directions, filtering and separating to identify the variety of scents.
“Time to take a break, Scout.”
The dog was still yanking to go forward until he saw the water bottle Jason pulled from the daypack. Jason weaved the handle of the leash up over his boot and wrapped the nylon tightly around his ankle. He didn’t trust his prosthetic hand to hold on to the dog while he used his other hand to get Scout’s collapsible bowl out of the pack.
While Scout lapped water, Jason let his eyes skim over the surrounding woods. Only now, did he notice that his jaw had been clamped tight and all his nerves seemed to be dancing on high alert. Shadows were growing longer and he found himself searching each of them for another bear. He hadn’t thought about it until now, but what if Raelyn had run into a bear on this trail? Creed said they rarely attacked people, but rarely certainly didn’t mean never.
He cast aside the thought. If anything like that had happened, Scout would have bee-lined to the attack site. As it was, the dog seemed to be having a tough time getting a bead on anything that could be remotely Raelyn’s scent. Which was strange if the girl had been on this path in the last day or even two days.
Inside the forest, the last of the sunlight squeezed between the tree trunks, coming in at a slant. Jason estimated they had another thirty minutes. He pulled out Raelyn’s shoe, again, and watched Scout’s reaction. The dog sat down and kept his eyes on the sneaker. For a brief moment, Jason’s stomach did a flip when he thought Scout was looking at the sh
oe like he expected Jason to toss it for a game of fetch.
“Scout, find Raelyn,” he told the dog in a steady, calm voice despite tamping down the acid creeping up from his stomach.
Scout got to his feet, but he wasn’t in a hurry. In fact, he stayed put and his paws shuffled like he was marching in place while he looked around. There were no head jerks. No pokes or ducks. His movements looked measured and thoughtful. None of his usual jackass motions. Then he tilted his head and did his signature eye-roll to look back and up at Jason. His nose twitched, but with less enthusiasm. It was as if the dog was trying to tell him there was nothing here.
Jason scanned the surrounding woods, again, searching to see if the ground foliage had been disturbed or the lower hanging twigs broken. If Raelyn ventured off the trail, her scent cone would be a much larger swatch. And if she left the trail early on, they may have passed over and out of the targeted area.
Now, he was second-guessing himself. Was it possible he’d guided Scout down the trail and missed the dog trying to steer him into the woods? Ideally, he’d let the dog off the leash, but he couldn’t risk it. No way did he want to even think about Scout coming up on a bear, again.
He looked down at Scout and the dog was watching him, waiting for more instructions. The working relationship of dog and handler was complicated to Jason. They were expected to be a team, yet the dog’s nose worked independently. For the dog, it was one big game of fetch that they played together, but it was up to the handler to make sure they were communicating and staying on track. Jason had learned that a dog could be trained to find just about any scent, but the handler needed to queue the dog with hand signals, choice words and even different harnesses or leashes.
But Jason was also aware that a handler could easily get in the way by showing too much interest in something that wasn’t important. No matter how well trained the dog was, he still wanted to please his handler.
Jason held up the shoe, but now he turned around to face the trail where they’d just come from.