“Somebody’s been sitting on that log, whittling wood,” Nate said, gesturing toward the little pile of wood shavings on the ground.
“Why would they do that?”
Nate shook his head. “To make a fire?”
“Do you have an evidence bag?” Scott said to the detective. His voice sounded sharp.
The detective checked his pockets. Clearly, he didn’t think this morning’s expedition would amount to anything and he wasn’t prepared. And I knew Scott had brought his personal vehicle, not the Bucar.
But Scott apparently had had high hopes. He pulled a plastic evidence bag out of the pocket of his 5.11 khakis. “I’ll take pictures,” he said, “then you collect it. It’s your case.”
Once Nate was convinced Sprite had found everything she was going to find, we left, walking out of the woods under a bright blue sky. “Be good to let the dogs run a bit,” Nate said. “Let ‘em relax.”
I waited, though, for five more minutes, until we were well out of the cadaver zone. I didn’t want Luke running back there. Thankfully, he only had eyes for Sprite. I let him loose and the two of them raced around, chasing each other, while we four humans walked out silently, our minds fixed on the terrible fate of the young woman whose death had brought us to this place.
Questions whirled in my head. One prompted me to move ahead, next to Nate. “I don’t understand,” I said to him. “Sprite’s an HRD dog. Why’d she alert on those wood shavings?”
“I don’t rightly know,” Nate said.
I dropped back again. We made it to the cars. I saw Scott hand the detective a business card and then he took off. I got Luke’s water bowl out of my Jeep and poured water in it. Sprite trotted over, and the two of them lapped it up noisily. I could hear Nate and Scott talking about ten feet away next to Nate’s Tahoe.
“Why’d the dog alert on the shavings?” Scott asked, echoing my question.
Nate took out a toothpick and started chewing on it. “Not sure.”
I looked over at them. “What if the guy was handling the body with gloves on, and he didn’t take them off before picking up wood and whittling it?”
Both men looked at me.
“Wouldn’t the smell transfer?”
Nate nodded. “That’s a possibility.”
I continued. “No fingerprints were found on the body, right? So that implies he was wearing gloves.”
“Be odd to whittle with gloves on,” Nate said.
I frowned. “Why else would you cut wood shavings like that? Start a fire?”
“Clean the knife?” Scott said. “There weren’t any knife wounds.”
I wished I could shut up. But I kept going, like an overanxious first-grader. “Maybe he’d tied her with ropes. Maybe he had to cut the ropes to pose her. Maybe he wanted all the fibers of the ropes off the knife.” My heart pounded.
“Maybe he just wanted to sit with her a while,” Nate said softly, “and whittlin’s what he did.” He looked at me. “Like pullin’ out my pipe. A nervous habit.”
Luke came over and nudged me. He sat next to me and leaned on my leg. I rubbed his head, aware that Nate was observing the dog’s reaction to my own display of nerves.
Nate whistled for Sprite, put her in her crate, and shook hands with Scott. “Let us know if you find something.”
Scott said he would. He looked like he would like to stay and talk longer. I wondered what he had ahead of him this Saturday with no family around. Would he go into work? To the gym? Or would he end up in some bar?
Nate looked at me. “See you tonight?”
“Yes. Eight o’clock.” Battlefield SAR had a night training exercise scheduled. It would be a long day.
14
I went home to get some rest, but I couldn’t resist updating my murder board with the wood shavings Sprite had found. While I wrote, though, I debated erasing the whole thing. Why was I feeding my obsession?
In the end, I left it. I tucked the board behind the couch. Maybe I’d just forget about it. Out of sight, out of mind.
Luke crashed on the floor in the sun, stretching out in his favorite spot. Soon I could hear him snoring. I laid down and covered myself with a quilt, but my mind would not let me rest.
Instead, I got up, stepped over Luke, and opened my laptop. Maybe I could get some work done before tonight.
Four divorces and one child-custody case later, I had done all the stuff online that I could. I’d have to burn some shoe leather to develop more information, but that could wait ‘til next week.
Just as I was getting up from my desk, my phone rang. My sister Brooke. What now? “Hey, what’s up?” I answered and paced over to my only window.
“Well,” Brooke said, “I was just thinking about you and your cool dog, and I was wondering if I could come out with you on a search? Or watch you practice?”
“What? What brought this up?” I crossed my right arm across my chest and pressed the phone against my left ear.
“Well, you know, seeing you, and then hearing about you guys finding that boy, I don’t know, it just got me interested.”
“In what? Search and rescue?”
“In all the things dogs can do, you know, like guiding the blind, sniffing out drugs, and finding bedbugs. I’ve got a term paper due soon, and I’ve been having trouble finding a subject.”
“And you thought dogs would be a good subject.”
“Well, yes, and then I thought of you, and so, can I come?”
“When’s your paper due?”
“Monday.”
“Monday?” I admit I exploded.
“You guys have a practice tonight, right? I could be there about the time you start.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s on the website.” She could have added, “you dummy” and it would have been appropriate. “So can I meet you there?”
“I … I’m not going,” I lied. “So, no. You’ll have to do your research some other way.”
There was a pause as Brooke regrouped. “Well, could I go anyway? Could you call somebody, like that Nate guy, and ask him if I can come?”
“Brooke, no!”
“My paper’s due on Monday!”
“Well, that’s your problem, isn’t it? You shouldn’t wait ‘til the last minute. You should know that by now.” The edge in my voice sounded like condemnation. It wasn’t. It was fear. The last thing I needed was my family intruding in my life.
“I know, I know.” Brooke sighed. “Okay, I’ll figure something else out.”
I clicked off her call, a heavy wave of guilt washing over me. She was my sister. I could help her. But that would mean her being closer than arm’s length. I just couldn’t do that.
I moped around my apartment after Brooke’s call, mindlessly straightening things and putting laundry away. At six-thirty, I got my SAR pack out. Luke opened one eye, then raised his head. “Yes, you’re going too,” I told him, and he jumped up and started his happy dance. I checked that I had everything—emergency blanket, first-aid kit, maps, GPS, rain gear, food for him, food for me, water, a long leash, multi-tool …
The location of the training was half an hour away in an industrial park off a main road. We loaded up at quarter ‘til seven and drove off. Clouds overhead had thickened, and the forecast predicted rain, but not until ten or so. I did my best to forget Brooke and get excited about this training.
The location turned out to be more urban than I expected. There was a lot of traffic on that four-lane road, even at eight o’clock on a Saturday night, and the front part of the industrial park was an unfenced parking lot. I pulled up next to Emily’s SUV. She had Flash on a leash. I wanted to scope out the place before I let Luke out.
“Hey, Em!”
“Jess! Glad you could make it.”
I looked around. “So what’s the deal? Have you worked here before?”
“No. First time. There are some specific challenges Nate wanted to address.”
“Like …”
> “There’s an array of culvert pipes behind the building and a rubble pile. There’s also a shed with a ladder. Behind the property is a wooded area with a dense bramble patch, a stream, and a small bridge.”
“Okay.” Around me, I could see four other trainers preparing their dogs. “We’re doing live finds, right?”
“Yes, trailing and air scent. We’ll work in teams, one dog plus handler, one walker, and a victim. It’ll be hard in the dark.” Emily smiled at me. “But then, you’ve proven yourself there!”
“Luke did, anyway.”
“Oh, Nate was very complimentary of you. He said you showed true grit, searching for that little boy.”
A warm feeling spread through me. But why did I care what Nate thought? Maybe I was still looking for my father’s approval. My mother had accused me of that once.
Emily looked at her watch. “I’ll get things started. Nate said he’d be about fifteen minutes late.”
I raised my eyebrows. Nate was never late.
“He’s with Beth.”
Beth? “Who’s Beth?”
Emily hesitated. “Oh, that’s right, you joined last fall, right? I’m surprised he hasn’t told you about her.”
I shook my head. What else didn’t I know about Nate? “A date?”
“Oh, no!” Emily glanced down and patted Flash, who wagged his tail. She took a deep breath and looked at me. “Beth is a longtime member of Battlefield. She’s in her late fifties. Last summer, she was diagnosed with cancer, colon cancer. Stage IV.
“About two months into her treatments, her husband left her. Twenty-four years of marriage. He said he found her cancer depressing. Just walked out.” Emily paused. Her words sunk into me like weights. “Some of us tried to pick up the slack, Nate most of all. He’s taken her to appointments, brought her meals, sat with her when she’s gotten scared.” Emily had tears in her eyes. “He’s been amazing.”
“I had no idea.” I frowned. “But there’s no … relationship?”
Emily smiled. “He’s just a good guy.” She checked her watch again. “He asked me to get things started. So, five minutes ‘til kickoff, okay?”
“Sure.” I turned toward my car and let Luke out of his crate. Everyone seemed to be keeping their dogs on leash, so I did, too, walking him over to some bushes and letting him make his mark. All the while, I was thinking about Nate knowingly walking into that cancer situation. It occurred to me he was a glutton for punishment.
“All right, let’s meet up, people!” Emily called. While Emily explained the format for the evening, my mind mulled over my conversation with Brooke. I found myself looking for her. As impulsive as she was, I half expected her to show up, unannounced and uninvited. Was I going to be angry when she did!
I’d be paired up with Micah, a handler with another German shepherd, for the first exercise. Luke was disappointed when I put him back in the crate. He laid down with a thump. “Deal with it,” I said to him, “and don’t chew anything.”
“Anybody watching the cars?” I asked Emily, who affirmed that was the case. Good, I could leave the liftgate up. The temperature was seventy-two and falling. Luke would get a nice breeze the way I was parked.
Micah’s dog, a small female named Gem, worked differently than Luke. Whereas Luke was all flash and flair, Gem was quiet and methodical.
Our first challenge required navigating through a series of culvert pipes to find a search subject hidden behind a brick pile. The dog had to navigate through the pipes on her own; they were too small for the handler to follow. I found out later the “victim” had to work hard to get to her hiding place.
Luke would have screamed through those pipes like a subway train, leaving me scrambling to keep up. But Gem went through carefully, sniffing the seams and noting who knows what as she went. Still, she kept at it, and ten minutes later had found her victim.
Next, we worked the shed with a ladder and then the rubble pile. But she must have caught a sharp object on the rubble pile because she came out limping and began licking the pad of her left forefoot. Micah pulled her then before we got to the woods and took her to a grassy area to clean and dress her foot.
Nate had joined us by the time it was Luke’s turn. “Everything okay?” I asked him.
“Yeah,” he said, then turned to direct a team to another challenge.
Luke handled the challenges as I expected, with energy and strength, even if he did tend to overrun his victim. I was off my game though. Was it because of Brooke? Nate? I stumbled, literally, when we searched the rubble pile and fell flat on my face, bruising my arms and one knee. I hesitated in front of the pipes. Luke stopped and looked at me, confused. He refused to climb the ladder, something he’d never done before. Was he sensing something in me?
Coming back from the exercise in the woods at about ten o’clock, a hard rain began to fall. My knee hurt, and I felt defeated and almost teary. Even I recognized that was an overreaction. But I cared about SAR, and here I was messing things up for my awesome dog. The thing I had worried about, my sister showing up, hadn’t even happened. I shook my head at my own paranoia.
Despite the rain, Nate wanted to hold a quick debriefing. A few handlers popped open umbrellas, but most of us just put our dogs up and stood there in our rain gear, letting the water run off us onto the asphalt parking lot.
I had my back to the road. Nate was facing me, and the other handlers were spread around in a crescent. Suddenly, I heard a horrible noise, brakes screeching and tires screaming. I instantly tensed. I saw Nate’s eyes widen. A lightning bolt of fear flashed through me. I turned, my heart in my throat, just in time to see a huge tractor-trailer truck and several cars sliding off the road and toward us in an avalanche of metal, glass, and rubber, with sparks flying.
“Look out!” I screamed. I grabbed Emily and pulled her out of the way.
The screeching seemed to go on forever. When it stopped, the vehicles had plowed into three of our cars.
Handlers scrambled to check on their dogs. I saw Nate, moving toward the truck. “Call 911,” I yelled, turning to grab my first-aid kit. I knew it was easy to miss the obvious in the aftermath of an accident.
Dazed drivers and passengers slowly climbed out of smashed cars. I headed for a family in a crushed SUV. I was moving as if in a dream, hardly aware of my actions, strictly on autopilot. “Who’s hurt?” I asked.
A man collapsed onto the ground holding his head. A woman screamed, “My babies, my babies!”
I looked in the SUV, which had rolled but landed back on its tires. Two little kids were belted securely in their car seats. The baby was crying; the older one looked stunned. But as far as I could tell, they weren’t hurt.
I had never extricated a little kid from a modern car seat before, especially in the dark. All those straps! But I used my lighted visor, and after a few choice words, I got the toddler out, then the baby.
“Ma’am, ma’am,” I said to the hysterical mother. “Look, they’re all right.” She was bleeding, so I said, “Come, sit here, and let me help you.”
By this time, the scream of sirens filled the air. I had just managed to get the woman seated near her kids and was applying pressure to the cut on her head when the EMTs came and took over.
I stood and looked around. I picked up my first-aid kit and walked slowly back toward my Jeep, the lights of the emergency vehicles and the sounds of their radios playing with my mind. I had trouble breathing. It felt like I was sucking air through a straw. Then suddenly, I was in another place, another time.
What would have happened if I’d pulled further off the road? If I’d reacted more quickly to the odd sound I’d heard?
I felt for my gun on my hip. Of course, it wasn’t there. My head began to spin.
I needed Luke. I needed my dog.
The emergency lights bounced off the metal of Luke’s crate and reflected in his eyes, which were fixed on mine. He whined. I tried to make out voices, tried to understand what was happening. I looked down at my
wrist, expecting to see a splintered bone protruding from it, but it was whole, healed.
Numb, I opened Luke’s crate. He jumped down, and I leashed him up. I had to get away from those lights and the harsh radio squawks. I needed to run.
I heard a voice calling me as I walked behind the building, but I kept going. I heard my feet crunching on gravel, heard my own breath coming hard, felt my heart pounding, throbbing like a bass drummer beating inside my chest. I felt the adrenaline screaming through me like a banshee.
Just beyond the culvert pipes, I collapsed to the ground and curled up, sobbing and shaking. I felt like a train was bearing down on me, or a truck. I was going to die! My mouth felt dry.
Luke pressed himself against me, his hot breath in my ear. I wrapped my arms around him, burying my face in his wet coat, hanging on to him like the lifesaver he was.
I don’t know how long I was there—fifteen minutes, maybe? Twenty?—before Nate found me.
“Hey, hey, girl, you all right?” he said.
I looked at him through eyes full of tears and rain, sorrow and pain, and I shook my head.
15
Nate helped me to my Jeep, loaded up Luke, and drove me home. He got me inside and pushed me toward the shower, where my tears mixed with the hot water.
By the time I stepped out and dressed, he had towel-dried Luke and Sprite, and had a cup of hot tea waiting for me. I sat on the couch and tried to calm down.
Once he saw I was taken care of, he showered, dressing himself in the spare clothes he always had with him. Such a Boy Scout.
“You did good with that family. Thank you,” he said, finally sitting on the floor across from the couch.
I just shook my head. I couldn’t look him in the eye.
“All our people are okay. Dogs and all. The trucker, he didn’t make it.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, imagining the scene inside the cab, so thankful I had gone toward the car. “That’s sad,” I managed to say, but I felt guilty for my selfish attitude, my cowardice. Then I opened my eyes. “Did you see my sister? Brooke? Was she there? Did she see me? Behind the culvert pipes?”
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