The Keepers

by Jeffrey B. Burton

  I then did something I’d not done at crime scenes before. I’d been concerned about my dog’s occurrences since the get-go, and increasingly so as we began to figure out what exactly they might signify. At one and a half years of age, my golden retriever was still relatively new to being an HRD dog … and then there’s this whole other thing tossed into the mix. When Vira leads me to a dead body, she has these brief episodes or spells or double takes—a moment of shakes and shudders—like a terrified puppy at the sound of thunder. So I lifted my golden retriever into my arms, all sixty pounds of her, and edged left, my back sliding against the wall. I held Vira close to my chest as I side-stepped past a kitchen island the size of a catamaran—sure enough, there were two coffee cups and a creamer carton on the side containing a row of stools—until the murder scene came into view, until I felt the trembling kick in, until I felt my dog convulse.

  A first-year law student would rip me apart if I ever attempted to explain Vira’s other thing to a jury, but let me give it a shot.

  Dogs inhale scent particles into their nasal cavities. The massive number of scent receptors in a canine’s nasal cavity allows them to identify thousands of different smells. Then, like running a software program, those odors are processed by their sensory cells, by their hundreds of millions of olfactory receptors as well as by that mystical sense of smell receptor known as the Jacobson’s organ, which is an olfactory chamber that allows dogs to both smell and taste at the same time. Some canine breeds have three hundred million scent receptors, whereas human beings, weighing in with only five million, got shafted.

  Ultimately, this is what makes for great sniffer dogs, whether it be finding survivors after a natural disaster, locating illicit drugs, discovering explosive materials … or leading the authorities to human remains.

  And Vira is an excellent sniffer dog, but—and here’s the part where I’d get all twitchy on the witness stand—I’ve observed her on several occasions take it up a notch with this other thing.

  Murder’s an intimate act, right, and killers leave behind a mountain of physical evidence and DNA for the CSI teams and medical examiners to sift through—fingerprints, footprints, skin under nails, hair, saliva, blood, semen, and so on. So why wouldn’t there be scent DNA—some kind of scent aura, I’d tell the courtroom before getting ripped to shreds on cross-examination—left at crime scenes as well? Vira—and perhaps all cadaver dogs—receive this tsunami of stimulus, this landslide of scent data, and Vira then takes the art of human remains detection to the next level … the Sherlock Holmes level. Vira discovers a body, or visits a crime scene, and then attempts to process this data, to perform some kind of forensic analysis on the various smells and odors—the scent DNA—and decipher their meaning.

  Let’s say there’s a road rage incident and, as a result, I follow some poor sap home and beat him to death with my tire iron. Perhaps I leave behind some blood or hair or fingerprints or even fibers from my clothes for the crime scene investigators to ferret through. Hell, knowing me I’d screw up a homicide six ways from Sunday—probably wind up dropping my driver’s license in the puddling blood for CSI agents to find. Anyway, all of this forensic evidence would point in my direction. Similarly, if Vira came across the body of my victim, she’d try to piece together whatever forensic scent exists at the scene … up to and including any trace of the murderer.

  In other words, Vira’d sniff out my driver’s license in the pool of blood.

  Any additional explanation to the courtroom would find me humming the theme from The Twilight Zone as the judge called a mistrial and sent the bailiff in search of orderlies and a straitjacket. How-effen-ever, the scent receptors in a dog’s nose are beyond the wildest episodes of The Twilight Zone, Your Honor. If Horton can hear a Who, my dogs can smell them. And if the jury wants to delve into the supernatural—those canine scent receptors are supernatural and they enable dogs to identify thousands and thousands of different smells and, in Vira’s case, she interprets these odors.

  Vira makes links, relationships … connections … she connects the dots.

  So, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is Vira a ghost dog?

  Hell no.

  Vira’s just Vira—a canine savant and the Tom Brady of cadaver dogs, that’s all.

  I rest my case.

  Vira’s convulsing ended as suddenly as it had begun.

  And then multiple sets of eyes turned my way, all questioning what the hell I was doing there on the edge of the kitchen, gaping at the dead rocker, and carrying a golden retriever.

  CHAPTER 5

  Frank Cappelli Sr. finished his second cup of macchiato—a strong shot of espresso with a dash of steamed milk—at the same time he finished scanning the Chicago Tribune. Nothing in the morning’s paper butted up against any of his business interests … his commerce … his concerns.

  And he liked it that way.

  Cappelli Sr. took off his new pair of bifocals—they were straining his eyes, driving him batshit—set them on the side table, leaned back in his armchair, placed his feet on the ottoman, closed his eyes, and thought for the thousandth time about the harshness of fathers.

  He’d made himself a promise—no, he’d made himself an oath—decades back, before he’d ever met his wife, that he would never raise his offspring in the manner in which he’d been brought up. A first memory—flying across the hardwood floor when he was five. Jumping up, his face a mask of tears and snot and blood, begging forgiveness from his father for having needed to be slapped. Another memory—his mother had been ailing and his father heated a can of chicken noodle soup for dinner. He’d made the mistake of asking dear old dad if they’d be having soda crackers as well. The empty soup can hit him right below his left eye. If Cappelli Sr. looked closely in the mirror, he still saw the mark where the can’s tin edge split open the skin.

  And so it went—more and more memories, year after year—right on up until that glorious day when the malicious bastard went down for the count after suffering an SCA—a sudden cardiac arrest—a week after Cappelli had turned twenty-one. As the priest prattled on at his old man’s funeral, Cappelli bit his lip to keep from leading cheers as though he were at a pep rally, cupped his hands together, and swore he’d never be like the heartless cazzo.

  It had been one of the few oaths that Cappelli Sr. ever kept.

  He’d heard tell that certain genes skip a generation. Things like cancer, alcoholism, even Alzheimer’s can be passed on down the family tree. But all these decades later and Cappelli Sr. now knew there were other things, nonmedical things … colder, harsher things that also got passed on down the tree.

  He’d seen it in his son’s blue eyes—when things weren’t spinning the kid’s way, when his boy was angry, when he was pursing his lips, and on the verge of lashing out. Cappelli Sr. knew that look all right. He knew that portrait of rage and anger. It’d been burned into his soul as a child.

  And though they’d never met, Cappelli’s son—Frank Cappelli Jr.—took after his grandfather.

  Of course, Frank Cappelli Sr. had been harsh in his business affairs. He couldn’t deny it. In his line of work, you had to be harsh. After his father’s premature demise, Cappelli Sr. had been schooled by the very best—Uncle Niccolò or, more affectionately, Uncle Nic, God rest his hard and wise soul.

  But when it came to family, when it came to his only son—Cappelli Sr. had lived up to his long-standing oath—he’d been soft. And whether it was part of the bloodline or just part of some cosmic joke, Cappelli’s son had grown into a somewhat taller version of Cappelli’s father; different looks, same demeanor. Cappelli Sr. hadn’t turned a blind eye toward the stories about his boy. Word had gotten back to him, all right—how could it not?—as well as several firsthand accounts from his men at the various scenes.

  When his son was in his early teens, they’d had him treated for ICD—impulse-control disorder. That was soon followed with treatment for ADHD—attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. And before long came
the treatment for anger management.

  But therapists and drugs like Prozac and Zoloft bounced off Cappelli Jr. like balls off a backboard.

  Like he did in all his business affairs, Cappelli Sr. collected information, and he’d once read in a medical journal that the male brain doesn’t fully develop or mature until age twenty-five. That had bought Cappelli Sr. a glimmer of hope as the years passed by; alas, his boy would be twenty-six in December. Hope springs eternal in the human breast, that English poet said, but, so far, there’d been no perceptible change in Cappelli Sr.’s kid.

  Not one iota.

  Nevertheless, Cappelli Sr. loved his son—unconditionally, as the saying goes—and though his boy was not the aptest of pupils, Cappelli Sr. did his best to mentor him in the family’s profession, to tutor him in the ways of their unique world. He tried to be to his son what Uncle Nic had been to him. It had been an exhausting uphill battle. If only Niccolò were still alive, the man had been a genius, and Cappelli Sr. could assuredly benefit from his counsel.

  One of four cell phones vibrated on the side table next to his bifocals. Cappelli Sr. had the phones arranged in such a manner that he knew immediately whom this particular phone represented. He slid the cell on, brought it up to his ear and said, “I’ve been waiting.”

  “It’s done.”

  “Any issues?” It was an essential question, one which Cappelli Sr. always made sure to ask.

  “None at all. Minneapolis is off the table.”

  “And phase two?”

  “Phase two will require a little more finesse,” the voice replied, “but it’s on track.”

  “Let me know when it’s done.”

  Cappelli Sr. tapped the cell phone off, set it back on the side table, leaned back in his armchair, and continued pondering the harshness of fathers … and sons.

  CHAPTER 6

  Two CSI agents from the Crime Scene Investigations Unit had been busy creating a photographic record of Jonny Whiting’s last stand—one with a camera while the other worked a video recorder. A third agent knelt over Whiting’s bruised and broken body, notebook and pencil in hand. Additional agents in blue booties, white coveralls, disposable gloves, and hairnets orbited the body while a couple of detectives edged ever closer.

  “Drug sniffer,” I announced to the room.

  “Not in here,” the agent on the floor said and went back to scribbling in his notebook.

  I set Vira down and we moved quickly toward the back bedrooms.

  Kippy had been right.

  It was not a pretty sight.

  Jonny Whiting’s skull seemed at one with the kitchen tile. Dented, busted, in a thick puddle of dried blood—a flash of bone, a missing eye, clumps of brain matter. Beside Whiting’s body lay the smashed remains of what I assumed to be the electric guitar missing from the dead rocker’s home studio—Tabitha—Whiting’s Gibson Les Paul Custom. Its body shattered from what had to have been repeated strikes to Whiting’s head; its neck in pieces from what must have come from the final blows; its six strings now a knot of wire, strands of hair, and blood.

  No amount of restoration would ever make Tabitha sing again.

  The stench was equally bad. Decomposing tissue releases gas, both methane and hydrogen sulfide, and lungs expel fluid through the nose and mouth. Kippy mentioned that one of the detectives had cranked up the air-conditioning although it might have made more sense to toss open the windows. Of course, it could have been worse; Whiting could have had the heat set at ninety degrees. The CSI agents also wore medical face masks, and I’d be surprised if they’d not smeared a dab or two of peppermint oil on the inside of their masks in order to hamper any pungent odors.

  I’d once quizzed a medical examiner on how he and his colleagues were able to handle working on a bad decomp. You just have to deal with it was all he told me. In my line of work, I’ve gotten used to it—to a certain degree—but am elated that once a body has been discovered, me and the kids get to step back and, in cases like these … step far back.

  Current articles I’d scanned referenced how Jonny Whiting had been spending his days composing music for film and theater, something he’d been doing in recent years. In the Rolling Stone interview, Whiting mentioned he liked to keep busy, twenty-four/seven, lest his old habits—his old demons—return. He’d missed studio work on Monday. Calls to Whiting’s iPhone and landline had not been returned; neither had text messages or emails. He was a no-show again on Tuesday and Whiting’s agent gave the rocker another night to come down off what he thought might be a bender before he contacted the company that manages the Avondale condominium building. After ten minutes of rapping on Whiting’s entryway this morning, the condominium manager unlocked the door for both her and Whiting’s agent to enter.

  Fifteen seconds later, the manager made haste tapping 911 into her cell phone while Whiting’s agent sat outside the condo, on the hallway floor, with his head in his hands.

  Kippy and Wabiszewski had arrived at the scene first, followed by Detective Ames and his partner, and soon after by a team from the CSI Unit, which itself is part of the Forensic Services Division inside the Bureau of Detectives.

  The rotting of a human corpse kicks in mere minutes after death through a process known as autolysis, or self-digestion, as enzymes begin digesting cell membranes. It starts in the liver and the brain, and ultimately works through all other tissue and organs. Body temperature drops, acclimating to the cadaver’s environment, which, in this case, was Whiting’s executive condominium.

  As for TOD—time of death—Jonny Whiting had been incommunicado for the past two days, evidently AWOL at work, and he’d last been in touch with the studio four mornings earlier via a flurry of email and text messages he’d sent Saturday. So if TOD weighs in at ninety-something hours, the rigor mortis would have subsided; of course that was impossible to distinguish from what I’d seen lying on the kitchen tiles as the blunt-force trauma to Whiting’s face and skull had run off with the entire show.

  I stood inside the master bedroom with Vira and tried to shake off the images from the kitchen. Our job here was essentially over, but it occurred to me—what if the CSI agents trip over a stash of narcotics in some hidey-hole? Vira was many things—cadaver dog extraordinaire, some kind of genius, a sweetheart—but she’d never been trained to sniff out cocaine or heroin or other illicit drugs. What if Jonny Whiting’s death truly had been a drug crime and Vira and I miss the kilogram of naughty stuff hidden in the back of a closet? Then I wondered if I should rifle through some of Whiting’s stuff? Search desk drawers? Check under beds and between mattresses?

  A thorough search would take hours, not to mention how something like that would leave my fingerprints all over the area.

  Then it struck me that Detective Ames had handed us a way out. I show up with Vira to see if there were any drugs hidden at the scene and Ames is unreceptive—hostile, in fact. Ames even takes Kippy aside to read her some kind of riot act. As a result of Ames’s antagonism, and not wanting to get Officer Gimm into trouble, Vira and I performed a half-assed walk-through in case any drugs were lying about in obvious places, and then made a hasty retreat—that is, we got the hell out of Whiting’s condo as soon as possible—in order to decrease the lead detective’s ire at our very presence.

  A minute later—and without a further glance at what lay on the floor of the condominium’s kitchen—Vira and I got the hell out.

  The street now buzzed with activity. It was bound to happen as soon as the story leaked—the media had arrived in full force. I counted news vans from three different stations. Reinforcement police officers had arrived and kept the gathering throng of reporters cordoned off the sidewalk and backed into the street. Considering who Jonny Whiting had been—and considering his song heard around the world—this would not remain only a Chicago story.

  I glanced at my watch and muttered a profanity. I had to cruise back to my two acres in Lansing, a village seven miles south of Chicago’s city limits, grab my br
ood of pups, and then bat-out-of-hell-it to an obedience class I was scheduled to lead in Schaumburg.

  And it was going to be a nightmare navigating my F-150 through this beehive.

  CHAPTER 7

  “I guarantee I’m pronouncing it wrong, but it’s Bucatini all’Amatriciana or something like that.”

  Paul Lewis stormed into my trailer—spreading dog treats in his wake—dropped the foil pan on top of my stove, and began punching preheat buttons he knew by heart from dozens of pizzas while we’d watched dozens of ball games.

  “What the hell’s in it?”

  “Bacon, tomatoes, onions, and chili peppers,” Paul replied. “And bucatini is basically fatter spaghetti.”

  In addition to being the executive director of CACC—Chicago Animal Care and Control—Paul Lewis is my best friend. Historically, Paul’s been meticulous in his attire—the only man whose job centers around animals I’ve ever seen in three-piece suits. However, Paul’s sense of fashion had of late begun to lapse as he eased into his fourth decade. The vests had all but disappeared, suit jackets remained hidden in his office closet or shrouded about the back of his desk chair, and—most surprising of all—his dress shirts were no longer tucked in.

  This was certainly not the Paul Lewis I’d met a decade back when I’d first wandered into CACC with a laundry list of questions.

  And I blame Paul’s wife.

  Sharla’s a helluva chef. It’d take death to turn down a meal at the Lewis household. Sometimes I’ll phone Paul in the mid-afternoon and let the conversation ramble onward until he inevitably invites me over for dinner just to get me the hell off the line. Last time I was there, I went Winnie-the-Pooh over a four-layer berry and custard trifle with that sponge stuff soaked in sherry that Sharla had simply tossed together at the last second.