She didn’t speak. Not even a nod. Nothing.
I shouldered my pack and headed for the door.
“Wait!”
I turned back.
“Doc Styles stopped by yesterday evening with these.” She shoved a prescription bottle toward me. “Just in case Wilco needs some this morning.”
I exhaled and smiled. “Thanks, Gran.” I leaned in to take the pills, and her hand rose slowly to my cheek.
“Lackeen?”
“Yes, Gran.”
“Be careful.”
I kissed her cheek and headed for the door.
* * *
The interior of Pusser’s Tahoe held a mixture of smells: bitter coffee, yeasty bread, and a slight undercut of stale cigarette smoke. And now hot doggie breath. I reached over my shoulder and pushed Wilco’s head back.
“Want some?” Pusser pointed at two foam cups and a greasy bag on the middle console.
I eagerly took a drink of coffee, the hot liquid searing the grit off my tongue, and pulled a chocolate doughnut from the bag.
“Hung over?”
I tossed him a sideways glance. “What all do you know so far?” I liked to know what I was walking into. And subjecting my dog to.
“Hiker’s name is Trent Stevens. Weekend warrior type. Working his way toward Greeneville on a branch of the AT. He left the trail to take a piss. Turns out he was urinating on a severed foot. Harris says he’s freaked out.”
“That’s it. Just a foot. Nothing else?”
“So far. The trail runs through a gully. The trees and shrub are pretty dense, even this time of year. It’s going to be hard searching.”
“Usually is.” Dense forests, windblown desert sands, blasted concrete and rebar . . . there was no such thing as an easy search.
I licked chocolate icing from my fingers. Good thing I’d packed a thirty-foot tracking lead. I extracted a plastic container of dog food from my pack, turned, and put it on the seat next to Wilco. Little bits of kibble peppered the seat as Wilco chomped away. Add the smell of slobbered kibble to the Tahoe’s brew.
Pusser wrinkled his nose and glanced in his review mirror. “What are you doing?”
“Feeding my dog. He’s not going to work on an empty stomach.” And he couldn’t take his meds on an empty stomach either.
Pusser grumbled but didn’t protest. He asked about the guys I’d reported seeing out in the woods the day before. I spent the next fifteen minutes bringing him up to speed. Eventually, the road wound down into a valley, and we pulled off the main road and into the trailhead parking area. Harris’s cruiser and a couple other civilian vehicles were already present. Hikers probably.
We parked, and I gathered my patrol pack and ran through a mental checklist: bug spray, nylon rope, basic first-aid supplies, water, water bag for Wilco, and a pair of gaiters, just in case, and an extra leg wrap for Wilco. I’d clipped my knife, a Smith & Wesson MP, to my belt. A good knife, but I wished it was my regular sidearm—a Beretta M9 pistol, standard issue. I’d fought it at first, the bulky grip a little too large for my smallish hands. But after hours and hours on the range, it’d grown on me. I became efficient—no, good. Damn good with it. But the Marines didn’t let us take our toys home with us. Too bad, I thought, as my eyes skimmed over the trailhead and strained against the inky depth of the woods. I missed my gun. ’Course, they didn’t always let us take our dogs home with us either. I looked toward Wilco. Thankfully, I’d won that battle.
I secured Wilco’s orange work vest, double-checked his leg wrap, and slid one of the pills down his throat under the guise of a piece of jerky. He normally fought pills, but the work vest already had him focused. His ears pricked, his whiskers twitched, and he made long, drawn-out mewling sounds. Anticipation coursed through him. He was eager for the job. Normally, I would be too. Nothing was more rewarding than working a search with my dog. But overseas, in a remote location, I could keep my emotions disengaged. This was home. And there was a personal connection to the victim. Usually, the challenge of the hunt, the promise of a find, is what kept me going. Today, the only promise I could count on was that of pain and grief for someone I knew and had grown to like. I shouldered my pack and tried for a calm, confident composure despite the dread creeping over me.
Pusser didn’t have a pack. He did have boots, though. But other than that, just khaki pants, a standard work button-down shirt, and a lightweight windbreaker. He pulled the radio hooked to his belt. “10-97. ETA twenty minutes.”
“Roger that.”
He turned to me. “Harris is about a mile and a half in. Let’s get going.”
* * *
It was easily ten degrees cooler inside the woods, and an early-morning mist still hung in the air, swirling around my head and clinging to my face like a cool mask. The familiar damp smells of the forest rose to my nostrils as I kicked up layers of decaying leaves and dry twigs. Next to me, Pusser gasped for air, the extra ten or so pounds of his utility belt adding to the already twenty-pound spare tire he carried around his midsection. He’d tossed his toothpick a quarter mile into the hike, his lips having gone slack from sucking air. Now his face was flushed, and despite the coolness, he shed his windbreaker, revealing growing sweat stains under his armpits.
“Stuff like this never goes down in town. Always out here in the middle of nowhere.” He looked around. “Where’s the dog?”
“Two o’clock.”
Pusser’s head swiveled to the right. “Doesn’t know how to heel, does he?”
“You want some pom-pomed poodle show dog prancing at our heels or a trained HRD dog?” I didn’t bother to look at Pusser. I was used to working with people who had some grasp of the job Wilco and I did. Obviously, that was not the case here. I’d kept Wilco off the lead on purpose. The trail we walked traversed a lower portion of the woods; the trees were thicker here. The ideal spot for hiding a body. A lazy murderer might have dumped the body close to the trailhead, where it could be ravaged by a bear or coyote and dragged deeper into the woods. I explained all this to Pusser. “Don’t worry,” I finished. “If there’s something out there, he’ll find it.”
“You’re awfully confident in that dog. You do know that the body’s probably been out here for weeks.”
“Wilco’s trained for a wide spectrum of decomposition. He can trace it and handle it. Better than some deputies.” That shut Pusser up.
And conditions were perfect for tracking. The sun was just beginning to heat up the ground, effecting a rise of any scent that might be present. A couple hours more and that same sunlight would be too intense, burning off scents and adding another obstacle to the search. We were working in the best possible window of discovery. If it was out there, Wilco would find it. Yes, I felt confident. Very confident.
About Wilco, that was. Not so much about me. Doogan, I figured, had probably waited for me back at his place. When I didn’t show, he most likely went looking for me at Gran’s place and learned that a body part had been found. His worst nightmare was about to come true, and I was going to be a part of it: the bearer of bad news and principal witness to his grief. That made me squirm, but I swallowed back my apprehensions and kept my emotions in check. Wilco could read me like a book.
I focused instead on my strategy. If Wilco couldn’t pick up a scent trail from the crime scene, I’d have to make a decision. Guide his search to the thick underbrush or stick alongside the trail. It depended. Did the victim come into the woods alive? Was she on the run from her attacker? In that case, she’d likely be found not far from the trail. People being chased don’t instinctively run into impenetrable woods. They want to escape. The fastest, easiest escape route was the trail. If, however, she had been killed and dumped, her body would most likely be hidden in the shrubby undergrowth or buried in a shallow grave and covered by logs and other forest debris.
Then there were external factors: vultures, crows, raccoons, and, I was guessing in this case, bears, which meant dragging. Exposure weighed in too. Dependi
ng on how long she’d been out here, we might be looking for nothing more than minimal tissue and bones. I’d know more once we got to the foot they’d found. If they had found a foot, it meant at least she wasn’t further gone, decomposed beyond recognition, and reduced to leftover acidic residue showing as nothing more than a brownish stain on the already brown forest carpet. Like soggy brown bread. Brown bread. Death was death, no matter where it happened, here or in a far-off desert. Death doesn’t discriminate between young and old, Pavee and settled. We all boiled down to the same biological matter. Putrification had no prejudices.
I shuddered. Again, I was glad that Doogan wasn’t with us.
“Up there.” Pusser pointed ahead, to where Harris and another man sat on the ground.
The hiker was the picture-perfect outdoorsman. Ruddy complexion, but still handsome, with just enough facial hair to look rugged but not sloppy. He was dressed in expensive, brand-name gear. His boots weren’t even scuffed. One of those types who carefully cultivated and maintained their image. Or at least he did before discovering a rotting appendage. As soon as he saw the sheriff, he blubbered like an idiot, pointing behind him toward the ground and near where Harris now stood. Pusser ignored him and pushed by to a clump of tree trunks wound in crime-scene tape. “Anyone move anything?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you puke this time?”
Harris’s eyes darted to me, then focused on Pusser again. “No, sir.”
“Good to hear.”
A ways down the trail, Wilco broke through the cluster of trees and came toward the crime-taped area with his nose high in the air. He’d hit on the scent of the foot, but not before coming to this site. I looked to where Pusser stood and then up the steep ravine beyond. Wilco went straight to the foot, sat down, and looked at me expectantly—his alert. I motioned for him to come to my side, to avoid stepping into the taped area myself, clipped his lead, and pulled him away before rewarding him for the find.
Dropping to my knees in front of him, I rubbed my hands back and forth along his head and placed my face alongside his. Then I worked a hand down to his chest. He rolled to the ground and onto his back for a generous belly rub—Wilco’s ultimate reward.
Harris observed our ritual of playful tussling with a hardened expression. Undoubtedly, he still held a grudge from our last encounter. His attitude worried me. A man so set in his prejudices could easily jeopardize even the most cut-and-dried cases.
Pusser was still looking at the appendage. “It looks female to me. The bones are too small to belong to a man.”
I tethered Wilco’s lead to a nearby tree trunk and joined Pusser. We squatted just outside the crime-scene tape and examined the body part. A black, thin layer of skin clung to the bones. I’d seen enough dead bodies to have a general idea about the decomposition cycle, and I knew this type of preservation of skin usually occurred in dry climates. I’d seen it a lot in the Middle East, where the hot, arid air sucks the moisture out of the skin so fast it shrink-wraps the bones. Sort of like those vacuum sealers they sell on late-night infomercials for meat and fresh food preservation. It’d been cooler since I’d arrived home. But if she was killed back when she went missing, then dumped, that would track with the typical hot, dry spells of late summer. Her skin might have lost its moisture more quickly than it could decompose, a sort of mummifying by heat. We’d know more after the pathology exam.
I stood. “This foot was probably fresh when it was dragged here.”
Pusser stuck a toothpick in his mouth. “How’s that?”
I pointed to the patch of dead vegetation outlining the foot, like a brown chalk line. “The fluids that purge from our tissues are nitrogen heavy. The nitrogen kills off plants. That happens somewhat early on, especially in an exposed corpse. Plus, there’s tissue intact. I’m just guessing, but I think whatever had ahold of it didn’t get a chance to finish it off. It must’ve been interrupted.”
“Coons?”
“No, raccoons don’t normally drag their prey. They eat at the kill spot.”
“Bear?”
“Maybe. More likely a coyote.” I glanced around. We were in a ravine, and the trail ran along a seasonal creek. It was dry now, but there was probably a small current in the spring and early summer. On either side, tree-packed hills ran upward, with craggy rocks and boulders jutting out here and there. “Bears can drag a whole body. Especially a smaller female frame. A coyote would be more likely to carry a single limb.”
Pusser rocked back on his heels, shifting a fresh toothpick from cheek to cheek and nodding. “That so?”
I pointed upward. “There’s probably a coyote den or two in those rocks up there.”
“Okay. Let’s say you’re right. A coyote dragged it here. All good to know, but where’s the rest of the body?”
I frowned. “A typical male coyote’s territory can extend up to thirty square miles.”
“You got any good news for me?”
Wilco whined, his leash taut against the tree as he pulled, pushing the edge of his boundary, ready to go again. There was a chance he would pick up on a scent trail leading from the severed foot. Still, it was a long shot, further complicated by the tree density in this area. “Afraid not. But we’ll get started.” I checked my phone. No service. “I need to get word to Johnny Drake, my boss. Looks like I won’t be in to work today.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll see to it.” Pusser walked over to Harris, giving him various instructions.
I refocused on my task, squatting down for a closer look at the forest floor, searching for any signs of tracks or disturbances. A man on the run in the woods leaves behind telltale traces. Obvious things like shoe prints, broken twigs, and disturbed leaves. And less noticeable signs like slightly depressed stones and pebbles that have been trampled upon, or shoe rubs left behind on fallen trees that the person climbed over, and something called transfers: material that has been moved, usually in the tread of a boot, from one area to the next.
I looked for anything that didn’t belong, anything that didn’t fit, but saw nothing.
Pusser had finished giving Harris instructions, so I unclipped Wilco’s leash and gave him the go-ahead. In an instant, he was off, moving up the ravine at a good clip. He was lower to the ground and agile despite having only three legs and recouping from a minor injury. The ascent was effortless for him. His head bobbed excitedly from side to side, and his fur bristled. By the time I caught up, he was already on the ridge, holding his nose low, scooping up scents here and there. I maintained a disengaged distance, observing, but keeping my emotions neutral. I held a hand up to Pusser, signaling him to do the same. Another fifty yards later, Wilco jerked and flipped back on himself, bending over a low spot on the ground where leaves had drifted and piled. He sniffed, spun a circle, sniffed some more, but didn’t look my way. An area of interest, or perhaps a spot where scent had wafted and accumulated, but not actual human remains.
On we went, for a couple of hours, Wilco relentless in his quest.
Pusser had been following about twenty yards behind me, but now he fell even farther back. I too slowed down. My legs, unaccustomed to physical exertion, grew wearier by the minute. My body vacillated between hot and cold as the terrain changed from the cool shelter of dense tree trunks to the more open grassy areas washed in the late-morning sun. I worried that we’d already missed our window of opportunity. Odor rises and moves on currents of air, but too much sun will burn off the scent, confusing even the best canine nose. I’d been so confident earlier; at this point, I wondered if we weren’t on a bit of a wild goose chase.
I needed a break. And although he’d go until he dropped, Wilco needed a break too. I was just getting ready to call a temporary halt, time to cool down and get some fluids into both me and my dog, when I saw Wilco lift his head and straighten his tail. He’d hit on a positive scent. Something stronger, denser, more telling than what he’d smelled so far. He quickly moved across to the far side of the meadow and along the dista
nt tree line. His tail grew even more rigid, like a pipe cleaner, but with a little hitch at the end.
He’d hit on a cadaver scent.
Jogging, I crossed the grassy patch, cockleburs and thistles clinging to my boot laces and the outer edges of my pants, somehow working their tiny claws into my bare skin underneath. Pusser was way behind us now, I wasn’t even sure where. I’d lost track of him a while back. I didn’t care. I was intent on catching up to my dog and finishing the task. Whatever that finish might bring.
I pushed into the woods. My eyes adjusted, and I caught sight of him to my left, pawing at the trunk of a tall hemlock. He scratched viciously at the bark for a second, then dropped down again on all threes, and pressed his nose back to the forest floor. He zigzagged for another thirty yards, tunneling through the leaves, his snout pressed into the ground like an aardvark. I followed, my heart rate kicked up, my eyes zeroed in, my breath came in quick spurts—all signs of my own adrenaline rush in anticipation of the pending discovery.
Everything around me blurred and faded into the background, except my single focus: my dog and his every move.
Then he stopped and sat down.
A body lay in front of him. He turned his head, his eyes bright and alert, bored into mine, as he barked.
“Found her!” I yelled. My voice echoed through the woods. I yelled out a few more times as I ran to Wilco. I clipped his lead and pulled him away from the body, all the while smiling and flailing my spare arm animatedly. He’d done his job. The promise of a reward lured him to a place a safe and unobtrusive distance from the crime scene.
Some twenty yards away, I dropped to the ground, rubbed my face alongside his, and brushed my hand rapidly up and down his back. He lifted his face, rocked back on his haunches, and lifted his front paws onto my shoulders. “Good boy! Good boy!” I pushed forward, tumbling down to the ground, where we rolled like a couple of playful puppies. Then the tummy rub. Wilco flipped, opened his legs, playfully growling while I scratched the soft underfur of his belly. Pure delight.
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