What the Dog Knows

by Cat Warren

  If all the search world’s a stage, and all the handlers merely players acting out their parts, I think some of us find ourselves in the “Zombie Handler Act.” It comes about midplay, often after a riveting dog performance. I’ve seen it in other handlers and in myself. This isn’t about handling zombies but about the danger of becoming one.

  New handlers start out as infants at first: overcontrolling, nervous, chattering, mewling, infinitely distracting, not letting dogs do their work and be independent. Good trainers gently guide novice handlers through that irritating phase. “Zip it,” Nancy Hook told me.

  “Stop hovering over your goddamned dog,” Andy Rebmann told another handler.

  I got through that phase. Now I was entering an equally problematic phase of dog handling. Because of a couple of recoveries that partly involved being in the right place at the right time, I started to idolize Solo. I knew he could do the work. He was more than five years old—smart, cheerful, fearless, independent, even able to ignore other dogs when he worked, though it was clear he was pretending. Everyone’s an actor. Mostly, Solo was becoming likable. He smiled constantly, his mouth open and relaxed, big teeth gleaming. He went into high drive during training and searches, but he cuddled with us at home. After one long difficult search, I said something to David that I will always regret. I was tired, and I shouldn’t have said it, even though at that moment, I meant it. “He’s my hero.”

  Solo’s success had made me doe-eyed and stupid. He had devoured part of my brain.

  When I looked around, I realized I wasn’t alone. Zombie handlers were everywhere, made mindless by the fantasy that their dogs were infallible—and could solve complex puzzles by themselves. Experienced working dogs may be capable of certain kinds of problem solving, but it’s not their job to strategize. Nonetheless, at seminars and in my own training, I saw people who weren’t watching their dogs. Instead of hovering over their dogs, they now had the opposite problem. They stood on the sidelines, sometimes chatting with other people while their dogs worked.

  Dogs do some things much better than humans; other things, not so well. They’re much better at scent work than we are, but we don’t hand them the car keys and ask them to report back to us at the command control center when they’ve found what they’re looking for. Humans need to set dogs up for success. Dogs need to be put in the right spot to do the job right. That means more than just being downwind. It means partnering with them. I needed to learn when to step aside and when to be helpful to Solo. We were a team. Trusting your dog and letting him do his work doesn’t mean being an unthinking chump. You have to keep your eyes and mind open. Nancy Hook snapped at me one day when I was wandering aimlessly in a large field, “You call that a pattern?” Yes. A zombie pattern. I was waiting for Solo to figure out what I wanted.

  That’s why there is no substitute for watching other people and dogs train. It’s only then you fully realize that the stupid things you see them doing, you’re doing, too. I didn’t have Solo with me when I was watching Roy and Suzie, so I got to observe. I don’t know how well we might have done. I’ve suffered from debilitating stage fright at training, though that has gotten better over time. Paul Martin, running a seminar in Western Carolina, once told me in his slow, comforting drawl, “Your dog is doing just fine, but you’re making me nervous.”

  Some months after my visit to Georgia, I got another chance to realize how much I had to learn. I was in the Mississippi Delta. It was early fall and the cypress, their toes dug deep in the water, were turning gold and crimson; monarchs were wending their way south before the first frosts. And I was getting to learn from Lisa Higgins of Pearl River, Louisiana, one of the many handlers who has trained with Andy Rebmann and gone on to become a top cadaver-dog handler and trainer herself.

  If L. Frank Baum had spent his life in Louisiana rather than New York and the Midwest, Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, might have looked like Lisa Higgins, with large hazel eyes slanting at the corners, a strong nose, round cheeks with slight freckles, and short salt-and-pepper springing hair. Her voice is soft, precise—and firm when needed. When she laughs, which is often, it’s a merry peal. Lisa has responded to more than four hundred searches across the United States and Canada since she started training her first dog, Frosty, a golden retriever, in 1990. On Frosty’s first callout, in 1991, she helped pinpoint the victim’s location, under four feet of water and three feet of sand. Lisa then went on to handle Molli, a Labrador. Now she has Dixee, a wild-child Malinois-German shepherd cross, and Maggie, an aging Australian shepherd who looks like a well-loved stuffed panda. A panda who has helped secure five federal convictions. Lisa has worked with the FBI on numerous cases.

  Lisa had set up “a little problem” in Mississippi for handlers who arrived a day early and might want to get started—a simple scenario with some buried placenta. The most basic and wonderful training material. The handlers weren’t just to release their dogs to look for scent. Instead, Lisa asked them to focus their search first using something called the “Winthrop Point.”

  No one in the group had heard of the Winthrop Point. I doubt anyone forgot once Lisa had described it. The point was named after the investigator who realized he saw a pattern in some clandestine grave sites, Lisa told me. Killers, the investigator realized, were doing the same thing that soldiers used to do when they needed to bury excess ordnance. The military needed to know how to get back to it. Murderers want to return to visit their victims but need to recognize where they have hidden their bodies; they also need to know if law enforcement is getting close. The Winthrop Point is a distinctive landmark that won’t burn, die, rot, or be covered with kudzu. Trees can’t be a Winthrop Point. Gravel roads are out, since roads come and go. A huge boulder might work. A concrete sewer drain. Some permanent fixture in the landscape.

  Lisa asked each handler to look around and try to find a nearby point in the growing darkness that might serve as a Winthrop Point. She was standing about ten yards from a large metal contraption with chains buried deep in concrete: a Frisbee golf basket. Distinct. Unmovable. Reasonably long-lasting. Yet only one or two handlers saw what was right in front of them, probably because it was such an innocuous object. Lisa pointed it out and then set them up further: Downhill from the golf basket, the trees were too open for a killer to feel comfortable getting rid of a body. Uphill, though, was wooded, hidden, private. That was where the handler should start her dog. How far back? Lisa reminded handlers that the vast majority of body disposals are less than a hundred feet from a road. These are all facts that handlers need to know. Once the handlers were properly oriented off the Winthrop Point, they could, in turn, orient their dogs.

  The next day, it was Lisa’s eleven-year-old granddaughter’s turn to work her dog. Haylee had just started to train Jayda, an evolving year-old female sable shepherd with maniacal energy. Haylee has an angelic, somber face and soft brown curls. She says “yes, ma’am” and “no, ma’am,” especially to her “MaMa,” Lisa, who helps homeschool her. It was time for some away-from-home schooling.

  “Haylee, you’ve been listening,” Lisa said. “What’s the Winthrop Point?”

  Haylee had been listening. She rattled off the answer: “Where somebody puts a body where he can find it again. He uses a landmark.”

  “Why does he do it, Haylee?”

  “So he knows when law enforcement is getting close.”

  “And what else?”

  Haylee didn’t have an immediate answer, so Lisa gently reminded her. “So he can visit the body whenever he wants. Why?”

  Lisa knew that one, too, might be beyond Haylee, so she answered her own question with emphatic precision: “Because he’s a sick little puppy, that’s why.”

  Haylee nodded soberly, considered and unafraid. Yes, ma’am. That was plenty enough detail. The human psychology lesson over for the evening, Haylee ran her dog.

  When I saw Haylee again, more than a month later, she and her MaMa were in another state. Lisa was training
more handlers. Brad Dennis, the charismatic national search director for KlaasKids Foundation, was there as a trainer as well. Haylee was sitting and getting more of an education, taking notes, this time at an evening seminar Brad was teaching, devoted to searches for abducted children and teenagers. Brad has managed search efforts for more than two hundred missing or abducted children around the country. He managed the search after Polly Klaas was abducted and murdered in 1993. He has headed searches during the Super Bowl to stop sex trafficking of boys and girls, an underground Super Bowl perversion. His group rescued six missing children at the Miami Super Bowl in 2010. Brad is one of those ebullient people who knows about the worst, but manages to find and bring out the best in people.

  Besides Haylee and her grandmother, who were listening to Brad, the room that evening was filled with tired volunteer and law enforcement handlers. They had already worked their dogs most of the day. I had worked my dog. Haylee had worked her dog. A few of us took notes but most did not. Haylee was an exception; she was writing madly. Homeschooling never ends.

  Brad gave the group a scenario from a case that would challenge us. A case he worked that ended, as many do, tragically. In every abduction case, minutes and hours count. A seventeen-year-old disappears while jogging. What should agencies do? Get tracking dogs on the ground immediately. Know exactly where to deploy them. Know how to deploy people around the immediate area of interest. Know the area. Look for trails. Triage where to search first. Separate well-meaning but inexperienced volunteers to the outer perimeter of the search area so that search veterans can concentrate on the high-probability areas.

  Brad noted that such work would have been too late for this particular victim. Her murderer had already killed once, molested and raped before. He undoubtedly would have continued. Finding the victim’s body led to her killer admitting where he buried his first victim nearly a year before. He had killed one of the girls within an hour of her abduction, the other within an hour and a half.

  Brad then cited the grim statistics from a 2006 Washington State study: In 76 percent of the missing-children homicide cases studied, the child was dead within three hours of the abduction. In 88.5 percent of the cases, the child was dead within twenty-four hours. In the majority of cases, 74 percent, the victim was female. Their average age, eleven.

  Haylee’s hand shot up. She was polite but unapologetic. “Could you go back to the last slide, please?” she asked Brad. Her head was still hunched over her notes. She hadn’t gotten down every single percentage. People shifted in their chairs. Brad cheerfully obliged and clicked to the last PowerPoint. Haylee thanked him.

  Brad continued with his lecture, talking about “the freeze moment.” He showed a grainy bank security video of a girl’s abduction that ended with her murder. The girl turned and stood stock-still as her killer approached. That hesitation was all it took; she was gone. All of us, Brad said, have this “awesome, God-given gift.” That moment when the hair stands up on the back of your neck. As soon as you feel that? Use it, he said.

  Now all the major organizations dealing with abduction have changed their tune on what potential victims should do. Brad looked at the class to see if we knew.

  Haylee’s hand shot up again. All of us were focused, no longer tired. MaMa, she said, had told her what to do. “If you let them take you someplace else, they will hurt you twice as bad, so you better bite, scratch, kick, and take all the DNA you can.”

  Lisa beamed. Brad nodded. The handlers clapped.

  Haylee is thoughtful and unafraid, smart and studious, curious about the world and all its contradictions. Seven months later, I saw her at another event. She appeared to have grown several inches. She had good news for me. Her manically energetic German shepherd, working in tandem with more experienced dogs, had helped pinpoint a drowning victim.

  Haylee is a cadaver-dog handler in training. Even with her great handler genes and the education she and her dog are receiving, she will make mistakes. Everyone does. It’s possible that she’ll go through a zombie handler phase. I expect it will be brief. Her MaMa won’t allow it to last.

  12

  The Grief of Others

  And the bones sang chirping

  With the burden of the grasshopper . . .

  —T. S. Eliot, “Ash Wednesday,” 1930

  There are only two options. Except that one of them gives rise to a third option. The one that gives me nightmares.

  The first option is as close to ideal as you can get, given that you are looking for dead people: You and the dog help find someone or part of someone. The person’s disappearance and death is usually sad, sometimes tragic, and sometimes not so sad. For me, it’s not nightmarish to find someone. It doesn’t create post-traumatic stress. It represents success. I celebrate, but quietly. I understand when people make mournful faces and suggest that it must be rewarding but certainly not enjoyable work. For me, it’s both. What Solo and I do isn’t dutiful volunteer service. I train the dog and myself because, first and foremost, it’s fun. I don’t dread getting called out. I hope we are: It’s a challenging puzzle that pushes both of us to our mental and physical and scent limits. Plus, I get outside, often in the woods, and I can watch Solo use his nose—one of the most pleasurable sights on earth. I hope we find the person we’re looking for.

  Option two is not finding someone. Speculative searches are part of the job. Most searches end with no victim found. Option two haunts me more than option one. My mind keeps poking at the possibilities, wondering about the weaknesses in our search strategy, in the dog’s work, in my work, turning over other options, seeing if they resonate, testing a theory, discarding it, picking up another and feeling its contours. Inevitably, option two involves trying to imagine what happened at the end for that victim, and where, and how.

  Option two can stretch out for years. Or longer. Nonetheless, it, too, falls within the realm of normal. Not finding someone happens all the time. It’s not just in underdeveloped countries that missing people stay that way. In the United States, the list of “endangered” people—law-enforcement-speak for highly likely dead—had nearly forty-eight thousand entries in 2012. That’s a medium-sized city filled with no resolution.

  The grief and nightmares of not finding someone belong to the missing person’s family and friends, not me. It would be presumptuous to appropriate them.

  My nightmares about searches—the ones that rightfully belong to me—rise from option three: if I ever find out that we missed someone or something in an area we were responsible for searching. I know a number of handlers feel the same way. It’s our special dread. As much as I hate an occasional false alert, I hate a false negative even more: where a dog ignores or accidentally overruns scent that’s out there. It can happen. To make option three even worse, unless the remains of the person you were searching for are found—and found at a comfortable distance from the areas you searched—you never entirely know.

  Sure, I trust the dog; I also like to verify. I don’t always trust me. Or the terrain. Or the search conditions, which are never as easy as the most difficult training you can set up.

  Each difficult search provides lessons and inevitable Monday-morning quarterbacking. Did we miss that bone? Should I have insisted on reworking the area that was already cleared with Bush Hogs and a multitude of line searchers and at least one other cadaver dog? That area where the smell of decomposition was so thick that every time a semi drove by, it would kick up a waft of sweetness that covered our clothes and got up in our nostrils. Where every dark oily spot of killed vegetation, “body burn,” was accompanied by the fur and bones of animals. What about that little bone lying next to that small animal skull? Was it something other than animal? Should I have brought Solo out of the car then and there and run him over those dozens of skeletons to let him do a preliminary sorting? I didn’t. I did what I was told. And it was only in the days after that I started stewing and rethinking each and every moment.

  I waited for our next assignment. A
nd the next, going up the road to search a barn and abandoned house. Then we searched around the pond at the top of the hill. And then we went on, following exhausted investigators up a rutted clay lane to a mobile home in a hollow, with an old SUV sitting outside. It had taken us three tries to find it. We kept backing down one-lane roads because we couldn’t turn around without falling off the verge and into trees. Finally, there it was. Finding the place felt like a small victory.

  The woman who had called the investigators, worried about a bone that one of the dogs had brought home, came out of the trailer and pulled her barking dogs inside and shut the flimsy door behind them. I could hear them snuffling on the other side. The dogs, she said, were always dragging something in. I looked at a recently dead vole just to the left of my boot, its fur matted with dog saliva. That’s what dogs do. They bring stuff home. She followed my gaze and shrugged in apology.

  You just never know, she said. She paused and went on. I kept thinking and thinking about it. You just never know. I couldn’t live with that. One investigator assured her she had done the right thing in calling. It wasn’t her job to sort out human from nonhuman. Her preadolescent daughter was standing silently behind yet alongside her. She looked like her mother but without the tiny silver rings on every finger and along the earlobes. Not yet fully pierced. Silent, fey. I knew what her mother meant. Her mind had hooked on a detail, caught in the threads of “what if?”

  The bone was sitting on a wood post. It looked to me like a vertebra from a mammal no bigger than a possum. It had a fleshy pinkness just underneath the gray whiteness. It had decomposed for a couple of days. I looked at the investigators, then used a long stick to snag the bone through the hole where a small spinal column once ran, and took it over to a dusty, clear area of the yard and liberated it from the stick. I wasn’t disturbing a crime scene; the dog had already done that by toting the bone home from wherever he’d found it. I took Solo out of the car and ran him past it. He caught the scent, hooked around when he smelled the decomposition, sniffed briefly, then moved on. Not the kind of decomposition that would garner him a reward. The investigators and I took Solo to the back area of the property, where the dog had emerged with the bone. He ran the area quickly, without changes in his body language, without looking at me, working the edges back toward the car. The woman thanked us. We thanked her. For caring.