by David Kersey
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
“Have a seat, Marlene.” John said as they entered the den. “This is my wife Beverly,” he continued while looking at the portrait behind the desk, “and I look at her every day, sometimes several times per day, and often speak with her here. I miss her with every part of my being, and I’ll never stop loving her. I have had no desire to think of being with another woman, though like you have said about your own situation, there have been seekers. I simply have not had an interest. You see, seven years ago Bev was killed in a tragic auto accident just a mile from here. Just one more mile and she would have been home safe. It was a single car incident, not a fault of her own, and she was riding alone. She was killed instantly.
I at that time was the CEO of the Agrapest Chemical Company, which we call ACC, and as I’ve said, that’s my current position. Upon Bev’s death, my personal life was so extremely devastated that I resigned the position that I’d held for seventeen years. I left the Company altogether and lived as a hermit within the walls of this house for weeks on end. I even thought about selling and moving to Florida.
It took a while, but in time I realized that she wouldn’t have wanted me to live my life in a funk. It still hurts, but life goes on, as they say. In that period of my awakening I discovered that the animals, led by Buck, had learned to assemble and somehow had miraculously begun to communicate. They had no idea I knew and I was careful not to disrupt their progress. I told no one, not even my house staff.
During the ant attack, ACC was implicated as a party to terrorism, as you may remember. My successor, Phil Wright, along with the comptroller there, were arrested on suspicions of being complicit with the attackers. The investigation of wrong-doing and identification of the terrorist group responsible is still ongoing. I’m not sure who it was yet, but I work on it constantly. And as the current CEO I am regularly questioned about just what went on and if I was instrumental in developing connections during my tenure. I can assure you I had nothing to do with being complicit with terrorism. In fact, I was the one who blew the whistle. ACC had never sold nearly as much insecticide in one week as the Company did in just one day, and that was before the formula proved effective against the ants. I smelled a rat and notified authorities to investigate. It’s plain to me that some think I did that to cover up my own involvement. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
“John, why would terrorists introduce a threat like they did with the ants and then join forces with a company like yours to kill the ants? That’s what I never understood during the news coverage that was at fever pitch for a while. That doesn’t make sense.”
“You’re right, that wouldn’t make sense. The issue was the stock price of ACC. It skyrocketed. When it did I knew something was fishy. Insecticide companies don’t have wild swings in stock prices. ACC did. And it was the timing of it. No other competitor’s stock price moved an inch, whereas ACC’s went straight through the roof, up 22 percent in one day, and continued rising in the next few days. Marlene, that occurred when the mandate from the U.S. government, namely the DHS, was top secret, so who would have known to buy the stock? It stood to reason that the buyer also knew how to kill the ants and was working with someone inside ACC, so it had some similarities to a classic Ponzi scheme. Within a week whoever bought the stock, and who had kept bidding the price up in a straight line, sold the entire holding at a huge profit for themselves to the tune of somewhere around twenty million dollars. What’s more, Wright and Senen, the comptroller, each sold a substantial amount of their own ACC stock during the astronomic rise in price. That’s how Wright and Senen got busted on a number of charges, but it was insider trading that had the teeth to lock them up immediately.
I hope you understand why I pulled your arm back from taking the animal’s picture. There is enough heat already without adding an incendiary. Plus I wanted you to see the small animals that could be in danger with a Mal on the site.”
“Are you saying you don’t want the Malinois here?”
“No, not saying that. Buck will tell his troupe to be cautious. They hid away from me for years before I discovered their group. They are very good at not being seen. Besides, the mule can take care of himself and would be a deterrent toward aggression. I hope that you reconsider about taking Buck on assignments. That’s why I showed you the animals in their circle meeting. They could be of assistance if handled in the right way.”
“Wait, John, do you know who it was that bought the stock?”
The question presented a yellow flag, the one that says proceed with caution. He had already said he was still working on it. “I’d prefer not to say much, Marlene. The quick answer is I don’t know, but I’m up to my neck with what is known and it doesn’t look like it’s going to turn out pretty. And to be honest with you, I have been curious as to how you knew about Buck’s skills? Until I know more about that I am frankly suspicious that I’ve been spied upon here at my homestead, and that doesn’t set well with me.”
“John, I don’t know. I mean my C.O. ordered me to check it out. It was my understanding that order filtered down from Homeland Security, but John, trust me, I have no ulterior purpose here.”
Marlene rose from her chair, and to John’s utter shock, she approached and hugged him. She broke the embrace yet still held onto each of his arms. “What a wonderfully weird day so far. Can we leave this room, I am terribly saddened yet so moved by your story? I can see why you loved her, she is beautiful, and John, so are you. I may want to rethink my purpose in being here on a number of different fronts. But I want you to know that what you’ve told me in confidence is strictly between you and me.” John wondered about the truth of that statement. He sensed something was amiss.
“I think you should stay. We are adults and can behave accordingly. I have a job to do at ACC and you have yours to do. Let’s go downstairs and then you can freshen up after we talk this out a little more.”
John was leading Marlene down to the basement at the same moment Sylvester let Cassie and I inside the front door. We followed them down the stairs.
“Marlene, I’d like to know more about the training of canines. I’m sure it’s interesting and rewarding work. And I want you to know that Buck and Cassie will understand your words unless you are going to use military vernacular. So you’ll be instructing them as well as me.”
“I love working with them. Some take to the instruction quickly, others not so fast. We proceed slowly and need to implement regular reinforcement of instruction already learned. For instance, in EDCs, which stands for Explosive Detection Canines, we repeat exercises daily. We don’t want to overtax their mental capacity by introducing the many different disciplines at once. So bomb dogs, or EDCs, are taught the scents of explosive devices and not drugs, for instance. They can learn both or even more disciplines, but it’s best not to confuse them, at least not too soon. Some canines can handle more tasks than others.
For the EDCs, we arrange a series of number ten cans containing different explosive chemicals, such as dynamite, TNT, gun powders, gels, RDX, we even introduce them to hydrogen peroxide and some of the nitrates used in home-made explosives. Each chemical has its own unique scent. During prelims, we make sure the trainees can not only identify one scent, but search it out. Then we move on to more explosives scents.”
Marlene looked at me and continued. “Dogs, like Buck, have the ability to break down scents into categories. For instance, John, if you and I had a cheeseburger here on the bar, we would smell an aroma, the singular aroma of a cheeseburger. Buck would smell the meat, the onion, the cheese, the tomato, the mayo, and whatever else garnished the burger, all separate odors, wouldn’t you Buck?”
I barked in agreement. Cassie rolled her eyes at me.
“Dogs are smelling machines. For instance, if one drop of blood were dropped into an Olympic sized swimming pool, dogs can still smell the blood. There’s a dog in the Seattle area that can track the movements of killer whales by smelling the fish’s exc
rement. They have in their long nostrils over 300 million olfactory receptor cells, whereas we as humans only have about six million. And dog’s brains are wired so that 35 percent of their brain capacity is devoted to olfactory purposes. In humans it’s five percent. Beyond that, if you’ll notice on Buck’s snout there are tiny slits at each side of his nose. Those slits are used to exhale his breath. That mean his nostrils are only used for incoming air and smells. So a dog’s sense of smell is not interrupted by exhales like you and I experience. They can wiggle each nostril independently to better locate a scent.”
I tried that with crossed eyes and by golly she was right. I had never paid much attention to that. I saw Cassie doing the same.
“We’ve found the Malinois and other Shepherd breeds are the best to use, not because they can smell the best, but because they can accept criticism and chastisement better. They rebound as if nothing bad had happened, whereas a Retriever like Buck, who can smell better than the Shepherds, cower down and let the criticism get in the way because the Retrievers are so sensitive. They have been known to just refuse to continue when they are told they are bad. But we have used Goldens and Labs. Both have tremendous olfactory capacity.
“We make it fun for the dogs. Like the Pavlov Dog, we reward them. For example, dogs love to play tug of war. We, in one our prelim exercises, start with a basic towel and play tug of war. Then we’ll introduce, in our drug dogs, some marijuana rolled up in the towel. The dog will smell that and identify its unique scent. We reward them with “happy talk”, a scratch on the head, and sometimes a treat. And the dogs love it. Every day they are eager to start with the training. I guess you could say they love their jobs.”
“What will you do with Buck?”
“Some of the same initial techniques. I have some vials of volatiles, another word we us for scents, with me. I may use those, I may not. I want to see how far we get tomorrow with the identification of letters. I have flash cards I will lay on the floor, each with a single letter of the alphabet. On voice command, I want to see if Buck can determine the letter I’m saying and associate it with the proper card. Do you think you can do that, Buck?”
Same bark, although I was bluffing. Yeah, I know words when I hear them. How to spell them? I don’t know about that. We’ll just have to see. But maybe she doesn’t want me to spell. I think I could get down the identification of a letter easily enough.
“Well, ok, Einstein, point out something in this room that begins with the letter C.”
I looked around the room and took a wild guess. I pointed to my eye. Made perfect sense to me, it’s what I use to see.
Marlene and John both laughed. Talk about embarrassment. Guess I flunked the first pop quiz. Marlene stepped over to me and rubbed my ears, then gently turned my head toward Cassie. “That’s Cassie, the cat. The name Cassie, and the word cat both start with the letter C. And what does John drive? A car. Another word that starts with a C.”
I looked at Cassie and said, “I knew that, just wanted to see if she knew.” Cassie’s slap across by shank served as my Pavlovian reward.
“While I’m up, I think I’ll go ahead and get cleaned up. Do you mind, John?”
“I think you’ll find the things you need in the bath. While you’re doing that, I need to feed these two. So I’ll see you after a bit.” After Marlene disappeared around the stairwell, John motioned for Cassie and me to climb the stairs with him, but only after he had placed a small plastic box, smaller than a sugar packet, somewhere under the bar in the vicinity of the sink, and then sent a text on his cell phone.
Marlene heard the basement door shut and peeked up the stairwell. Once satisfied she was alone, she retrieved her cell phone and began taking pictures of the basement. She opened cabinet doors and shot the contents. She moved around the room clicking, even behind the bar. She pressed on the secret chamber wall but couldn’t get it to budge despite testing several areas of the surface. So far there had only been run of the mill electronics discovered. She was searching for the high tech snooping items she was instructed to find. She kept pressing the wall, they had to be in there. A noise from upstairs caused her to scurry back to her gear in the television room. She would have to convince John that the chamber be used for Buck’s instruction. The only problem would be the darned dog, who was definitely smarter than she had hoped.
John closed the basement door, walked to the front door, and told Cassie and I to go outside and wait a couple of minutes for him to join us. He then went to his den and dialed his cell phone. His premonition was spot on, she was moving about in the basement area and the AU 046 listening device picked up the clicking of her cell phone. She was taking pictures. He heard the cabinet doors being opened and closed. This is going to be interesting, he thought. She is the one who needs to fall into a trap. Whoever sent her is probably the one or ones he had been searching for. That’s why he would encourage her to stay. He reached into his desk drawer and grabbed another cell phone. It would be the one he would use to make contact with one person he knew he could trust. His every day cell phone was probably already bugged, and that is a problem, for the listening device’s activation code he texted would be known. The tables could be turned on him but it was a chance he would have to take. He sat at his desk and thought a moment. At ACC tomorrow he would use some Avery business card makers to construct his own letters of the alphabet. Maybe what she would teach Buck, if successful, could also work against her? Yes, it is going to be very interesting.
“So what do you think, Cassie? Is her being here a good or bad thing?”
“Buck, it should be obvious to you. Anyone or anything that has the potential to take you away from me has to be considered a bad thing. At least for me it is. On the other paw, she seems to want your services for a noble cause. But bottom line…..bad thing.”
John walked out the front door and motioned us to follow him into the garage. He opened the passenger door of the Mercedes and instructed us to jump in. From the driver’s seat he said, “Listen up, you two, I am ninety percent sure that Marlene is bad news. For one, and you didn’t witness this, she approached me much too quickly in the way men and women do when there’s a love interest. My experience in studying body language when interviewing potential hires tells me so. She’s trying too hard to gain my confidence and not enough time with you Buck, and you are the reason for her stated purpose of being here. I think she has an agenda separate from working with you. I want her to stay here for reasons you wouldn’t fully understand, but they are very important reasons. So what I want you two to do is act like she’s the greatest thing since Kibbles and Bits, and go along with what she wants you to do and be agreeable. Got it?”
I barked the affirmative and Cassie and I high-fived each other. “We’re going to be on a covert mission, Cassie! Booyah!”
He dialed a speed number. “Hello Sheriff Chip,” John said while using the secure phone, “she’s here and she’s snooping around, and asking the kind of questions we thought she might, like if I knew who bought the stock. I noticed a couple of other things too. Just giving you notice that I’ll be playing the game right along with her.” He hung up and turned to us.
“Ok, now let’s go get you two fed.”