by Jan Burke
“My husband and his partner made Bingle sound as if he were Super Dog.”
“Oh no. He has his limitations. Conditions have to be good for him to search, and there are things that can throw him off. But his biggest limitation is talking to you right now.”
“What do you mean?”
He smiled. “If I could understand everything he tries to say to me, we’d get better results. Lord, who knows what he could accomplish? More than once, I’ve looked back and realized that I just failed to read him; he was trying to show me where to find something, but I insisted that we do things my way. There are times when I can see he’s frustrated, trying to get things across to his dumb handler.”
“I don’t know,” I said, “you two seem to have a pretty good partnership.”
“Well, partner,” he said to Bingle, who immediately became alert, “ready to have another go at it?”
Bingle got quickly to his feet, but continued to watch David with anticipation.
“¡Búscalos!” David said, giving the same hand signal he had before. “Find ’em!” The dog immediately went back to work.
David worked him for another twenty minutes, and again provided water and rest. On the fourth round of work, the dog’s weaving pattern suddenly narrowed. He was still moving side to side, but faster and faster. He stopped and looked back at David, his ears forward, the look intent.
“That’s an alert,” David said excitedly. “Whatcha got?” he said to Bingle. “Show me where it is. Muéstrame dónde está. Sigue — keep going.”
Bingle moved off again, nearly in a straight line.
“How did you know it was an alert?” I asked.
“I know him,” David said simply, hurrying after him. “When his ears are straight forward like that, it’s as if he’s checking in with me. I’m part of his pack. He’s asking me, ‘Can’t you smell that?’ ” He kept watching the dog as he spoke, then said, “He’s got something. Look — the scent has caught on the grass.”
Bingle was rubbing his face against the grass, biting at it.
“¡Búscalo, Bingle!” David said. “Find it!”
The breeze came up again and the dog stopped, held his head high, and sniffed with a slight bobbing motion of his nose, as if trying to draw in more of a specific scent.
“Whatcha got?” David asked again. “Whatcha got, Bingle? Show me! ¡Muéstramelo! ¡Adelante!”
Bingle sang a high little note, then rushed on ahead of us. He stopped about twenty yards away — I could see him circling anxiously in one area, heard him making chuffing noises. Suddenly, he sat down on his haunches, lifted his head back so that his nose was straight up in the air, and began crooning.
“That’s his way of giving a hard alert,” David said, rushing forward.
Bingle met him halfway, and nudged at a pouch on David’s belt. “¿Dónde está? Where is it?” David said, and the dog loped back to where he had alerted and barked.
David reached the dog before I did. “Bingle,” he suddenly said, “you beautiful son of a bitch!”
Bingle gave a loud bark of agreement.
8
WEDNESDAY MORNING, MAY 17
Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains
If I hadn’t talked to Andy before following Bingle, I might not have understood why David was now enthusiastically praising his dog, pulling out a floppy toss-toy that was apparently the dog’s all-time favorite. On the ground where Bingle had indicated his find, I could clearly see the burial signs Andy had mentioned. There, in a long patch, the soil contrasted slightly in color with other nearby soil — it appeared to be less compact and there were more rocks and pebbles in it. The plants growing over it were not as tall or sturdy as their neighbors.
It was not a clearly defined grave-size rectangle with nice, neat edges. But it was not much bigger than a grave might be, and was obviously unlike the area immediately around it.
“Let’s move back from this site,” David said. “We don’t want to disturb evidence.”
We moved over to a level spot nearer to the tree, where David continued to play with Bingle and praise him. The other members of our group must have been watching us, because before David beckoned, Ben and Andy donned packs and headed our way, with Thompson and Flash Burden not far behind. Duke and Earl moved more slowly from the campsite, bringing Parrish; Merrick and Manton managed to sleep through the commotion.
“A hard alert?” Ben called as he came within earshot.
David smiled. “Yes, and my dog doesn’t lie.”
“Where?”
But Andy had already noticed the plants near the place where Bingle had alerted. “Wow. Right there.” Drawing closer, he pointed out several wildflowers and said, “You see? Most of them are shorter than others of the same species, growing right next to them. That might be happening because something’s preventing their roots from developing — the roots may be running into some type of barrier underground.”
David commanded Bingle to stay and we walked with the others to where Andy stood.
David conferred briefly with Bob Thompson and Ben, then said to me, “Would you mind keeping Bingle company while we check this out? You can watch from the shade over there — best spot in the house. You’ll be able to see and hear everything.”
“Look, I’m fond of the dog, but I have a job here, too. I don’t want to be shut out—”
“This is a crime scene—” Bob Thompson began, but Ben interrupted.
“Oh, I think Ms. Kelly should be allowed to stand as close as possible,” he said, and although he wasn’t smiling, I could hear some amusement in his voice.
“Ben—” David protested, in a way that made me all the more unsure of Ben’s motives for suddenly being so cooperative.
Ben ignored him. In quiet, considerate tones, he said to me, “Allow me to explain that we don’t just bring out our shovels and dig, Ms. Kelly. We start slowly and carefully, systematically surveying the burial area, setting up a grid system and so on. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind staying with Bingle while we do the preliminary work. I’ll let you know when we’re about to actually see the body — if there is a body here.”
“She’s there,” I heard a voice say. I turned to see Parrish looking straight at me, smiling. “Yes,” he drawled slowly, “her lovely body is right there.”
“Tranquilo,” David said to Bingle, who was standing between us. The dog had not growled or barked at Parrish’s approach, but I could see what had caused David to give the command to take it easy — Bingle’s stance was rigid.
“I’ll watch Bingle,” I said.
Parrish laughed. “Better let him watch you.”
“That’s enough out of you,” Earl said, pulling Parrish back from the group.
“Ve con ella,” David said to Bingle, and gave me a tennis ball. As he said this, he made a motion with his hand that evidently told Bingle that I was to receive all of his attention. Bingle stared at the ball with the kind of intense concentration that might have been used by a psychic to bend a fork. We played for a while, then sat together and watched as Flash videotaped and photographed the site, Thompson talked to Parrish, and David, Andy, and Ben hovered over maps and studied the ground, defining an outer perimeter several feet beyond the loosened soil.
Our place was, as David had said, the best spot in the house. We were only a few yards from the patch, we were in the shade, and the breeze had shifted toward us — both shade and breeze provided relief to Bingle, who lay panting softly, eyes closed in contentment.
Ben bent over a duffel bag, and handed out gloves. He next removed a set of metal rods, each about half an inch thick, bent at a right angle at one end — the handle. Working from different directions, the men each picked a spot, leaned on the probes — which did not go too far into the ground — then pulled them from the ground and moved them a little closer to the site of the alert. This process continued, until Ben’s probe sank easily into the earth. “Here,” he said. As he pulled it up, Bingle lifted his head, then c
ame to his feet, ears pitched forward. The dog started to move toward Ben.
“Stay,” I commanded. He ignored me, but David had heard me, and snapped the command again — in Spanish this time. Bingle obeyed, but protested with a sharp bark.
“He smells it,” David said. Then, wrinkling his nose, added, “So do I.”
David went back to the duffel bag and took a small jar from it; he dipped a finger into it and then rubbed the substance just beneath his nose, making a small, shiny mustache of it. He offered the jar to Andy, who used it. He didn’t offer it to Ben.
Ben was putting a little marker — a small yellow flag on a wire — near the spot where he had probed. They continued in this fashion until they had a few other places marked. The yellow flags formed a rough oval, about six feet long.
Bingle was agitated — fidgeting but obeying David’s command to stay. Every now and then I would get a whiff of what he was reacting to — an unmistakable smell, a smell that is sweet and pungent all at once — a smell that you instantly know the meaning of, even if you have never smelled it before. Perhaps some primal memory repulses us from this scent, tells us that this is the smell of the death and decay of one of our own.
“I’ll show you what we’re doing,” David said, coming over to calm Bingle. As he moved closer to me, I said, “Vicks VapoRub.”
He moved his hand, just stopped short of touching his upper lip. “A menthol and camphor smell compound that’s sort of similar to it, yes. I use it to mask the decomp odor. Do you need some?”
“Not yet.”
“Don’t wait too long,” he said. “Once the smell is in your nose . . .” He paused, then said again, “Don’t wait too long.”
He began to show me the scene maps they were drawing, with nearby peaks as triangulation points to mark the position of the tree. The grid lines were shown, over which the position of the grave, the outer perimeter boundary, and a cluster of boulders were drawn.
“If we need to testify about any of this in court, we’ll have a precise record of where we found any evidence or remains, how the remains were positioned — and so on.”
Bob Thompson walked up to us. “What’s taking so long? Parrish says she’s there, about two feet down. He’s already confessed. I just need a preliminary identification.”
Behind me, I heard Ben ask, “And what if this is some other victim, Detective Thompson?”
Thompson hesitated, then said, “Fine, but let’s not dawdle, all right? We aren’t going to be able to stay up here forever.”
Ben simply walked off. From one of his duffel bags, he pulled two rolls of screen, one about one-quarter-inch mesh, the other about half-inch. David helped him use these and two sets of support pieces to build two sieves.
Bingle occasionally called out to David, and in Spanish, David answered, “It’s okay, Bingle. Stay with Irene.” Invariably, I’d get a quick kiss from the dog in response.
Whenever I looked over at Parrish, he was watching me, a knowing smile on his face. I repressed the urge to quickly look away, to show how uneasy I was under his scrutiny. But I was always the first to break eye contact, and once, when an involuntary shiver went through me as I turned away, I heard him laugh softly.
With Andy’s help, the anthropologists carefully scraped the surface level of the soil inside the markers away, and put it through the two sieves. They continued in this fashion, a few centimeters at a time — over Thompson’s impatient protests. Although they didn’t seem to be getting anywhere at first, before long I saw more clearly defined edges of the oval they had marked with the flags. The smell was getting stronger.
Ben took a moment to stretch. When he came over to say hello to Bingle, I said, “You wouldn’t happen to have any of that smell compound with you?”
“I don’t use it.”
“But how can you stand—”
“For professionals who deal with it all the time — well, I suppose it’s a matter of personal preference, but I don’t recommend using any compound to cover up the smell. Try to deal with it the way nature designed you to deal with it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sooner or later, after your brain has received the message from your olfactory cells that something bad is out there — and received it again and again — the signal stops registering. There will be residual odor on your clothes and you’ll smell it again later, when you aren’t so near the grave.”
“Charming.”
“You’ll smell it later no matter what you do now. But if you use something that will open up your nasal passages, it will continue to stimulate your olfactory cells — which will keep you smelling decomp throughout the day. It may also result in your brain connecting the good smell to the bad.”
“You mean that every time I use anything with a menthol or camphor or eucalyptus odor—”
“Yes. Your brain might add decomp to the mix.”
I looked over at David. He had used the smell compound, why shouldn’t I?
“Of course,” Ben said, “I don’t expect you to be able to handle this situation at all, so do whatever you need to do.”
That settled it, of course. David obviously thought I was a fool, but didn’t say so — he just checked in with me every so often to see how I was bearing up. He offered the smell compound to the others; Ben and I were the only ones who didn’t take him up on it. As he was passing it around, he pointedly skipped Parrish. Parrish just grinned and drew a deep breath.
“Move him back to the camp,” Thompson ordered the guards.
The excavation went on, now even more slowly, as the sides of the grave were carefully uncovered. Ben focused on defining the grave’s edges with painstaking care; David gently scraped away at the inside layers; Andy sifted for objects that might have been missed, bagged certain portions of the removed soil, labeled it, and made notes as needed.
From time to time the odor from the grave would suddenly seem worse. Ben would look over at me, smirking. I smiled back, taking satisfaction in knowing that whenever he looked over at me like that, he must have just gotten a beak full of it, too.
Flash continued to videotape the process, and to take still photographs at Ben’s or David’s request. Ben and David had a second camera, and took some photos on their own.
“Why are you photographing the edges of the grave?” I asked Ben.
He hesitated, then said, “Possible tool marks.”
“From the shovel that was used to dig the grave?”
“Perhaps.”
“If you know who did this, why do you need to gather evidence?” I asked.
“We don’t necessarily know who made this grave,” he said. “We have to treat this site as we would any other. Objectively.”
“But Parrish has confessed—”
“Confessions can be recanted. Convictions are appealed. Deals fall apart, Ms. Kelly. We never know what we may need to prove, what evidence may become important. So we work carefully.” He paused, then added, “The rules of evidence are much stricter in courtrooms than in newsrooms.”
I turned away to keep him from seeing me grit my teeth.
After the first few layers of earth had been removed, a layer of large rocks appeared, scattered over the pit. When Thompson asked about them, Ben, not stopping his work, said, “My guess is that they were supposed to discourage carnivores from raiding the grave.”
“Coyotes?” Thompson asked.
Sheridan looked up. “Yes, we know he’s thought about coyotes.”
Once the rocks were removed, the slow, scraping process began again. David was working on the portion near the center of the grave when he suddenly said, “Hold up.”
Ben and Andy stopped what they were doing and began to focus on the area where David had been scraping soil away. They stepped back a little, and called Flash in to take a few photographs. After a moment, they called Thompson over.
I stood up and moved a little closer.
The object of all this scrutiny was a tuft of dark green
plastic. Soon we would all come to realize what the forensic anthropologists already suspected.
This was a shroud.
9
WEDNESDAY MORNING, MAY 17
Las Piernas
Frank Harriman hung up the phone and turned to his wife’s cousin. “The lawyer’s back — he’s in the hospital.” He drew a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Courtesy of his client.”
“What happened?” Travis asked.
“Parrish stomped on Newly’s foot. Caused multiple fractures. They had a tough time getting him back out — fainted a couple of times from the pain.”
“She’ll be all right,” Travis said, knowing where Frank’s concern lay, repeating a refrain that might have been wearying had Frank not needed to hear it.
“All the guards right there,” Frank went on. “Watching him! And he still manages to injure his own lawyer.” He paused, shook his head. “She shouldn’t have gone up there.”
“You couldn’t have stopped her.”
“She shouldn’t have gone,” he repeated, not listening, pacing now.
“Frank,” Travis said.
But he was lost in unpleasant memories. He was thinking of the day they found Kara Lane’s body, of what had been done to her. His pacing came to a halt when he thought — ever so briefly, but far, far too long — about the possibility of his wife being at Parrish’s mercy, in as much pain, as much afraid, as much alone as Kara Lane had been in her last hours. He felt his stomach pitch.
“Frank,” Travis said again.
He looked up.
“She’s still surrounded by lots of other people. You know they’d kill him before they let him harm her.”
He didn’t answer. How could he explain this kind of foreboding? He knew it to be something more than simple fear for her welfare. It was the kind of uneasiness he sometimes got out on the job — instinct, gut feeling, the heebiejeebies — call it what you will. No cop worth a damn ignored it. Right now, it was irritating the hell out of him. He believed in it, trusted it, even though he couldn’t have testified about it in a court of law . . .