The Keepers

by Jeffrey B. Burton

  If I were married to Sharla, camouflaging an expanding waistline via untucked dress shirts would not suffice—I’d need stretch pants and maternity clothes.

  I took out my phone. “Let me thank Sharla.”

  “No.” Paul grabbed my iPhone and set it on the kitchen table. “She made it for my lunch all week, but if I eat this plus what she makes every night for dinner, they’ll bury me in a piano case.”

  “Well, what are you eating at lunch then?”

  Paul looked as though he were about to weep. “Leafy greens and vinaigrette.”

  “So you’re unloading these bins every Monday?”

  “I’ll heat and toss them in the break room at lunchtime and let everyone know. They’ll be empty in ten minutes.”

  “The hell with that,” I said. “I’ll pop in and grab the bins Monday morning.”

  “Don’t be greedy, Mace.” Paul opened his Coors Light—as part of his diet he’d made me promise not to pick up any more of his favored Guinness—and sat down at the kitchen table. “So, what’s the latest?”

  Paul knew all about Vira and her unique ability—he’d been there at the very beginning—and I suspect his true motivation for stopping by on his way home from CACC was to get the lowdown on Jonny Whiting because—as expected—it had led the news in the days since his body had been discovered.

  “Kippy’s having me parade Vira around at Whiting’s funeral tomorrow, but—I don’t know—several days have passed.”

  Paul stared at my golden retriever, who sat next to Sue on the family room sofa monitoring the nightly news. “I suppose, plus the poor guy had been percolating in that apartment a few days.” He took a sip of beer and switched topics. “So I got ya a roller, huh? What’s Billie Boy been into?”

  “What’s he not been into?” I replied. “Yesterday Bill was out of my sight for two seconds and he comes back a wapatui of squirrel poop and old barf. Fortunately, whenever he rolls in something and tries coming in the pet door, Sue chases him back outside.” I added, “I keep shampoo by the garden hose—Bill’s got his own private car wash.”

  Sue—my male German shepherd and our family’s patriarch—had taken early retirement and been slowly convalescing from stab wounds incurred while saving my sorry ass last year. I’d put the word on the street that I was looking for some new blood. Basically, my putting the word on the street meant I’d called Paul and promised him a case of beer if any breed showed up at his office that’d make for a good human remains detection dog.

  Bloodhounds make excellent cadaver dogs and Paul called back with a tip on young master Bill in order to forsake his beloved dark stout and lay claim to a case of light beer. After a quick meet-and-greet with the troupe at CACC, we brought the little goofball back to my glorified trailer home. I named the puppy Billie Joe after Bobbie Lee Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe,” but shortened it to Bill to make it easier to issue commands. Unlike his namesake, I can’t imagine Billie Joe chucking himself off the Tallahatchie Bridge, or any other bridge or overpass for that matter; however, if there were anything dead or rotting nearby, Bill would definitely carpe diem and roll in it.

  It’s instinctual for dogs to roll about stink piles. It harkens back to their ancestors disguising their own scent in order to sneak up on prey. I’m sure glad us humans don’t have comparable instincts. Sadly, a nearby neighbor’s husband of fifty years passed away in his sleep last month and, instead of rolling about on top of him, she dialed 911 for help.

  My brood or tribe or den of canines now consists of Vira; Maggie May and Delta Dawn—my short-haired farm collies; Sue; and now Bill, my three-month-old bloodhound. I tend to name my kids after country or country rock songs. Vira had been shortened from Elvira, a song made famous by the Oak Ridge Boys. Maggie May stemmed from the Rod Stewart gem; Delta Dawn from the huge 1970s hit for both Tanya Tucker and Helen Reddy. Sue, of course, from Johnny Cash, and now Billie Joe.

  Sue is Old Testament and spends his retirement sitting on the couch, looking all lofty and down his nose at us lesser specimens. All my German shepherd needed was a black robe to be the Supreme Court justice he always knew he was meant to be. Good old Sue would never make for much of a therapy dog—showering hospital patients with love and affection—quite the opposite, actually. He’d have a much better go of it growling at prison inmates. In fact, if home invaders had broken in prior to Sue’s injuries, I’d have sent him out to make short order of them.

  However, if the home invaders wanted to be licked to death or rolled upon, I’d send out Bill the newbie. If a newborn puppy broke in, I’d send out Maggie May and Delta Dawn to be, respectively, doting mother and know-it-all aunt just as they’d been to Vira. However, if anyone broke into my trailer home armed with an IQ test, I’d send out my golden retriever.

  While Vira and I sidekick about town, I count on Maggie to mother-slash-mentor little Bill—show him the ropes as well as the doggy door. And I count on Sue to keep the teething little goofball toeing the line.

  Paul and I shot the bull as the dinner baked before he switched topics again, this time to both his and Sharla’s pet project … me.

  “Anything new with your cop friend?”

  “Nothing’s changed—as far as I can tell, she still wants to be just friends.”

  “Kind of like what we used to say in junior high.”

  “Good point,” I replied. “Are you still friends with any girl that said they just wanted to be friends?”

  “Not a one.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Just say the word, Mace, and I’ll unleash Sharla.” He added, “There’s a bunch of single women from church who’d be up for going out.”

  “I don’t do blind dates, Paul.” We’d been over this before, but it never seemed to stick. “You know that.”

  I grabbed another beer from the fridge, but Paul waved off a second one as he had the drive home ahead of him. After he left, I cracked open a third and noticed the kids—Vira and Maggie and Delta, even Sue—were looking my way.

  “What?” I said and took a slurp. “Why would I go on blind dates? You guys are the loves of my life.”

  Billie Joe swaggered over to me and I wiped some slobber off his jowls with a cheap napkin.

  “Even you, Bill,” I said. “Even you.”

  * * *

  I’d been blindsided by Mickie—never saw the breakup coming—and spent the bulk of our separation scratching at my head. Old Mick is soon to get remarried and I fear I may have called her the night I heard the news of her engagement, but I’m consciously blocking that truncated conversation. Her fiancé runs a Mazda dealership in Oak Lawn. I wouldn’t exactly call it stalking but I did happen across his picture on the staff page of the dealership’s website. Mickie’s fiancé looks like a Ken doll, generic good-looks with every strand of hair perfectly in place. And perhaps it might be borderline stalking, but a few months back I had trouble sleeping so I spent an hour surfing the photographs on Mickie’s Facebook page.

  The two of them appeared quite happy together.

  When Kippy and I were hacking about in just-friends mode, we had a bit of fun, actually, but I dare not invade any personal proximity or reach for a hand or loop an arm around her shoulders, not only out of fear of crossing a line but, well … she is a cop. And I found myself living vicariously through the eyes of random strangers at movie theaters or restaurants or passersby who might glance our way and assume we were a couple.

  After a few months, I couldn’t do friendship mode any longer.

  I think Kippy understands.

  At least she doesn’t harp on it like Paul and Sharla and the endless stream of blind dates they try to pawn me off on.

  As dusk swept over the horizon, I ushered the tribe outside for their final sniff and pee of the evening. I sat at the picnic table, drank a last beer, and kept an eye on Billie Joe, making sure he didn’t disappear into the tree line and return smelling like a porta potty at the county fair. Every time my puppy began heading out of
view, I called his name and Bill came scampering back to me, tail spinning like a ceiling fan. The last thing I wanted to do before bed tonight was wash the rascal for the third time this week.

  Bill the bloodhound was not yet ready for training as a cadaver dog. That would begin a bit further down the road. He and I were still busy ironing out the basics.

  My clan of canines is trained to find and follow the scent of decomposing human flesh that either rises up from the soil or out from a breeze and then track it back to its point of origin … its source. Cadaver dogs can find human remains in the ruins of an earthquake or a fire or a building collapse as well as inside a shallow grave, even inside graves not so shallow. They can sniff out a complex and elusive scent, such as dry bone, to, well, let’s just say more juicy substances. Scientist are still trying to figure out which of these various compounds really matter to HRD dogs, but whatever the chemical signature, it’s present in recently deceased corpses on up to years-old skeletons.

  Eventually, I’ll be training Billie Joe to smell death, with my curriculum beginning as a game that he and I will play. I refer to my training regimen as cadaver games, and whenever the kids hear me mumble those two magic words, tails wiggle as they race out to jump into the pickup truck, ditching me to gather all the gear. I’ll teach Bill to associate the scent of death—decaying human flesh and blood and bone—with one of his favorite toys. Bill loves his tennis balls. I use artificial scent tubes in a variety of odors: from the recently departed, to the decomposed, as well as the drowned. I score hair from the Lansing beauty salon that Mickie used to frequent and teeth from my local dentist. Even the tooth fairy that visits my older sister’s kids—my niece and nephew—chips in now and again by tossing a few baby fangs my way. And don’t get weirded out—’cause a nurse at the local clinic siphons off the occasional vial—but I also use my own blood to make the hunt as genuine as possible. At this point Bill and I will play intricate games of hide-and-seek with his tennis balls, which I’ll hide in different terrains—in sunlight or under a driving rain, in snow or under leaves, in the light of day or the dark of night.

  And I’ll also teach Bill to pat the earth gently with his paw or sit down whenever he’s discovered the scent’s origin as digging or jumping up and down—or, in Bill’s case, rolling about on top of it—can destroy evidence … plus, no one likes a show-off.

  Folks often ask me how I chose this vocation. It’s a fair enough question, and I’m never quite sure how to answer, but I remember when I was a child—a few days after the terrorist attacks of 9/11—I sat sandwiched between my parents in front of the television and watched in fascination as both rescue and cadaver dogs and their handlers worked tirelessly, around the clock, in the crushed wreckage and smoldering debris and dust and smoke and death in order to locate any survivors or to recover human remains in an attempt to help families find some sense of closure.

  We’d always been a dog family, and I remember my father squeezing my hand that evening and saying, “Those dogs are heroes, Mace. Those dogs are heroes.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Kippy handed me a lanyard. “Put this on and no one will dick with you.”

  The ID had my name with CPD K-9 Handler in bold type. It was printed on cheap card stock—the kind they hand out at class reunions along with a free drink ticket. I felt like a fraud … likely because I was.

  “What if Detective Ames shows up and bites my ass?”

  “Ames and company are still chasing the drug angle and want you to note anyone who may be carrying narcotics—any attendees that trip Vira’s trigger.”

  I shook my head.

  “Don’t worry,” Kippy said. “He’s inside. We’re the flunkies doing crowd control.”

  Although Jonny Whiting had never been much in the churchgoer department, his eighty-year-old mother was a member of Concordia Lutheran Church on the corner of West Byron Street and North Seeley Avenue, south of Irving Park Road in Chicago’s North Center neighborhood. I had circled the church, found no hint of a parking lot, and settled for a residential spot three blocks out and hiked in with Vira leashed in a dog harness. Sometimes Vira can get overzealous in her detecting, especially if she locks in on any scent that may have a special meaning, scent DNA that may connect a perpetrator to a murder site. After learning that the hard way on Vira’s maiden hunt, I’d initially kept her contained via a choke collar, but it rubbed against every fiber of my being and I discovered that—in situations like these—keeping alert while having Vira tethered in a harness worked just as well and without the risk of tracheal damage.

  I, on the other hand, wore my only pair of dress shoes, black pants, and a new white dress shirt that made me itchy. The attire was a far cry from my usual pair of hiking boots, jeans, and a T-shirt. I even tamed my thatch of brown with a comb instead of fingers and set it in place with a few squirts from an antiquated can of hairspray that Mickie had abandoned in her haste to start anew.

  I wanted to look appropriate for the day’s event—Jonny Whiting’s funeral—as Vira and I stood sentry outside Concordia Lutheran’s main door through which the crowd of mourners would be ushered inside. We’d watch as friends and family and fans—and perhaps a particular attendee not quite so altruistic—came to pay their last respects to the north-side rock-and-roller.

  Even though we’d arrived early, the news media had beaten us here.

  Vira and I strolled past four separate groups huddling about the sidewalk, encroaching on the church’s front entrance—video cameras at the ready, performing mic checks—and jockeying for the best angle from which to cover today’s memorial. I recognized a few local anchors—plastic faces whose names I’d never learned—and two more reporters from a couple of the national alphabets whose names I’d never known.

  Shit.

  The last thing I wanted was to be caught on tape standing outside Concordia Lutheran, pitting out a dress shirt, face beet red, and with something unflattering dangling from my nose. Though the sky was overcast with a minor chance of rain, I slipped on a pair of sunglasses, wiped a sleeve across my snout, and headed to my post.

  * * *

  Concordia Lutheran was a mid-sized red-and-brown-brick church that, per their sign near the front entrance, had been serving Chicago’s North Center community for over 100 years. And with Jonny Whiting’s memorial, Concordia was likely hosting their largest gathering ever in their centennial of service. Not only was the church packed, but the sidewalk out front as well. I figured this was not only due to Whiting’s celebrity status and his north-side roots, but because his death had led the news since the discovery of his body six days earlier.

  Kippy alternately wandered the crowd forming about the church’s periphery—those who had come to pay their respect to their fellow north-sider but would not be entering the church—and then back to her perch on the top step of Concordia’s main entrance, the pinch point where funeral-goers were allowed to enter. At one point Kippy beelined it to a young guy in purple spandex and had him throttle back the volume at which he blared “The Was of Time” from his Bluetooth Street Blaster—quite possibly the twentieth time I’d heard Whiting’s hit single in the past week.

  Like Kippy, two other uniforms strolled among the crowd—chatting with attendees and keeping eyes wide open. Essentially, they were providing a high profile in order to deter any rebellious thoughts or wayward deeds emanating from any potentially less-upright souls hidden within the assembly.

  There would be order.

  Vira and I stood a step back on the grass in front of the sidewalk leading up to the church steps, as instructed—thankfully away from where most of the news cameras were centered—and watched as the progression of family, friends, and fans lined up to enter the church. I worried about the time delay—six days since we’d been in Whiting’s condo, six days since Vira and I bore witness to what had become of the famed rocker. All of her previous experiences had fallen within rapid succession, where we’d been at a crime scene and, a few minutes la
ter—in real time—my golden retriever had pointed us toward the perpetrator as though she were on a duck hunt retrieving some waterfowl. I worried that whatever chemical signature Vira may have gleaned at the crime scene—whatever scent might point us in the right direction—had dissipated in the flotsam and jetsam of the past week.

  I also wondered if Vira had gotten any kind of a read to begin with or if Whiting lying on the kitchen floor—and decomposing for four days—would have messed up her perception or, quite frankly, if any scent DNA linked to the perpetrator would have lingered on for several days or long since dispersed.

  I recognized Whiting’s mother from the clip of her weeping her way through an abbreviated interview the TV news seemed to air every time an update to the story was broadcast—an aged matron trying to make sense out of the death of her only child. Mother Whiting was one of the first to arrive, surrounded by her brother and his family. Next up was Whiting’s longtime agent and the man who sounded the alarm after the singer had missed two days in the studio. Vira watched silently as the mourners passed by and headed up the steps and into the church.

  I’d watched enough videos of Jonny Whiting and The U-Turns this past week to keep an eye out for Chris Bjerke on lead guitar, Mike Herriges on bass, and Greg Lukkason on the drums. Kippy had mentioned the three living U-Turns would be in attendance, sitting in the front row with Whiting’s mother and uncle. I scanned the sidewalk and spotted a man who had to be Bjerke. He was heavier set but had managed to keep his hair and broad smile in the intervening thirty years. The other two, Herriges and Lukkason, hadn’t fared as well in their battle against gravity. Herriges looked as though he’d swallowed a beach ball and Lukkason had lost his once-lengthy mullet along with the rest of his hair.