Traces of Guilt

by Dee Henderson

  “How will you know if they locate something?” Grace asked.

  He knelt and whistled. “They will lie down,” he told her as he lavished affection on the dogs, “or if the ground is too uneven, sit down. They’ll put their paws and nose where the scent is strongest. They can mostly tell whether it’s animal remains to be ignored, but when it gets to a certain age, it’s just remains to them. If I don’t set a dozen red flags in the next three hours, I’ll be surprised.” She looked startled at the number, but nodded.

  “The dogs and I work with basic voice commands, unique to each dog. They search best as a team, crossing back and forth over a section of land, working scents together.”

  Josh gave the dogs the forward-search command, and they turned from playful Labradors to focused trackers, tails wagging, eager to please, on-task animals. They trotted out ahead, noses down. He’d take them from here to the clothesline post in the first pass. “See how the dogs are moving? That’s work mode. See the difference in their attention?”

  “It’s noticeable,” she said, shaking her head in wonder.

  “The key thing is to stay behind them, downwind if possible, and not distract them.” He soon whistled to terminate the current search pattern, and the dogs came loping back. He dug out treats, lavished praise on the two again. He let them go exploring on their own for a while. “When they’re roaming in search mode, I’m going to be directing them a bit with my voice, watching the ground ahead of them. My job is to keep the dogs out of trouble and on task. I sure don’t want to run them into a nest of skunks if I can avoid it.”

  Grace made a face, then smiled.

  “I need you to be the record keeper while I direct the dogs. The GPS reader tells you where you’re standing.” He turned the small piece of equipment on, called up a reading. Numbers lit the screen in soft blue. “The topology maps”—he handed her one—“are indexed on the sides by the last two digits of these readings.” He traced the coordinates on the map to where they crossed and pointed to the spot. “See? We’re standing right here.”

  She nodded, looking at the map she was holding.

  “What I’d like you to do is mark an X when we start a search pattern, then approximately every football field in length, do another GPS reading and put a line on the map. Do that until I call ‘Search string ended,’ and then you mark an X where we stop. We won’t walk straight lines—it’s more the contours you’re tracking. When we’re back tomorrow, that map will be my starting plan. I won’t repeat ground we’ve already covered, or I’ll intentionally crisscross the ground from another direction. Any questions?”

  “So just tick lines along the route with final X’s?”

  “You got it.”

  “I can do that.”

  He appreciated her confidence. “Just to warn you, it’s not as easy as you might think after we’ve been walking for a while. You’ll be watching for obstacles in your path, holding tree branches aside, keeping an eye on the dogs, getting distracted by wildlife and poison ivy. It’s not a simple task being on a search. If you find your attention drifting, speak up. We’ll take a ten-minute break, drink some water. I can’t monitor the dogs, watch where I’m going myself, and correctly judge how you’re doing.”

  Grace smiled. “I won’t be a wimp—I’ll speak up.”

  “Good. What did you bring for food?”

  “Sandwiches. Peanut butter and jelly.”

  “Nice. I’ll take one to get started.”

  Grace walked back to the truck and the cooler, and he used the time to send a text to Ann, letting her know they were starting. He had a gut feeling the Dayton child was going to be found near the house, or at a location the uncle could easily see, rather than in an obscure corner of the woods. If his fervent prayer was answered, they’d locate the little girl’s body in the first few days, and Grace’s parents—if they were here—within days after that.

  He could keep Grace occupied while they searched the fields and woods, but he’d already seen her quick glances toward the house. He wanted it out of their sight just as rapidly as he could make that happen.

  He slid his phone back in his pocket, took the sandwich she offered, smiled his thanks. “Ready?” He whistled for the dogs. “Let’s cover some ground.”

  He called out the search-forward command again, using the clothesline post to steer a straight course. He watched Grace make the starting X on the map, nodded his approval, and set his pace to one comfortable for her. The dogs would surge ahead in the first twenty minutes, overeager to be on the job, but would settle back to a more normal pace after they were on task for a while.

  Ten minutes into the walk, one of the dogs dropped to the ground. The other ran over to check it out, dropping immediately to the ground as well. Josh planted a flag, handed out treats and praise, gave the search-forward command again. He caught the motion as Grace sniffed, wiped her eyes. He dug out a package of tissues he’d stuffed in his jacket pocket, offered them to her.

  “Thanks,” she whispered. “Probably just my cat. I had a few burial ceremonies out here.”

  He reached over to lightly touch her hand. “I do this for a living, Grace. If you can agree with me that you should be curled up on that couch in the motor home or at Evie’s while this gets done by a couple of the Thane brothers, I’m not going to think less of you for it.”

  “I can’t, Josh. I can’t leave this question for others.”

  “Did you look for them . . . your parents, when you lived here?”

  “Not consciously, no.”

  “Good. You were way too young to be doing it then.”

  She reached for his hand in return, squeezed it and let go. He directed the dogs to the left. At least once their painful search was done, it would be over one way or another, and she wouldn’t have to think about this property any longer.

  Before long, the dogs dropped to the ground again, and Josh set another flag marking the spot.

  Evie Blackwell

  The Florist family crime wall was holding any further secrets to itself. Evie rolled her shoulders, thought about pacing a while. She glanced over at her friend, wondering how long to let the silence go before she interrupted. “You okay, Ann?”

  “Just tired.”

  Evie pushed the last of the breadsticks her way, since Ann hadn’t eaten much of her spaghetti. “Did you call Paul?”

  She nodded. “One of the better things about being married, Evie, is that there’s always someone to call on bad days.” Ann picked up the last breadstick, but just nibbled at it.

  “We could go out to the farm, search with Grace and Josh.”

  Ann shook her head. “Tonight is soon enough. Grace has two ways of coping: bury it inside and do the work in front of her, and the more chaotic kind of coping where she relaxes her guard and the memories come roaring back. The evenings are by far the hardest for Grace. She’ll take some company tonight—the kind who don’t feel the need to talk, who can just hang out.”

  Evie nodded. “That’s the kind of friend I can be, if she’ll let me.” She looked at the case wall once more but couldn’t generate further interest in it. “I could be out there helping with the flags . . .”

  “No,” Ann said, “the guys are better at the shovel work. They’ll recognize animal remains at a glance, while you and I would have to take a photo and ask an expert for an opinion. Besides, you can’t be two places at once, and the Florist case desperately needs solving. What are you doing now? I’ll help. It’ll give me something else to think about.”

  “The Florist family finances,” she replied. “Their banker relative thinks money’s missing from the estate.”

  Ann pointed to the open files. “Send some of them my way. I can give myself a new kind of headache thinking about money.”

  Evie passed over the checkbook registry pages. “I’m trying to figure out how they might have siphoned money to cash without it being obvious.”

  “How far back? The month they disappeared? The year it happened?�
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  “I don’t know. And I don’t know which of them was doing it or why. I’m not reading this as a couple heading to a divorce, one of them secretly stashing away funds. And I don’t think we’ve got someone who was simply a worrier, setting aside a rainy-day fund. But the banker’s pretty insistent that the estate’s assets are lighter than they should have been. So maybe it’s there, like the counseling was there, hidden away behind other items.”

  Ann started going through the papers in front of her. “How would you siphon cash from your own income, be able to hide it for any length of time?” she asked idly.

  Evie had to think about it. “I shop at a number of flea markets. I could make it look as though I paid more for something than I did, then pocket the cash difference.”

  “Small amounts, but do that often enough, it adds up,” Ann agreed. “Or stop buying that five-dollar cup of coffee every morning and pocket a thousand dollars in a year. I suppose there are dozens of ways to come up with cash. Which one of them handled the family finances, paid the bills?”

  “Susan did. Her bank job suggests she liked numbers and was good at accounting.”

  “Start with her. Things she bought for herself, not Joe or Scott.”

  Evie pulled over files she’d pored over the day before, but it was like trying to walk through setting concrete. Her mind wasn’t absorbing any of the details. After thirty minutes, she shook her head. “We’d be better off going to see a movie this afternoon, clear Grace out of our heads.”

  “I’d like to simply go cry,” Ann said. “Are there any good teary movies playing right now?”

  One of the numbers on Gabriel’s phone list was a movie theater in town. Evie pulled out her phone. “You want to go see Mrs. Rushville? PG-13, and reviews say it’s guaranteed to make you cry. Let’s see . . . it starts in twenty minutes.”

  Ann pushed away the file. “I’ll need Milk Duds or something to go with it.”

  Evie smiled. “I can deliver on that. Come on, I’ll drive.”

  “I’m going to freeze in that car of yours.”

  “It’s got a heater that could melt a glacier. You’ll be fine.”

  Evie sent a text to Gabriel that she and Ann would be at the movies, hoped he wouldn’t think it entirely frivolous. “You want to split a large popcorn too?”

  “Sure. Maybe I’ll eat more of it than the lunch.”

  Evie nodded. She was on vacation. She wasn’t going to feel guilty for helping a friend. If ever someone needed a break, it was Ann. And I wouldn’t mind one either, she thought as they climbed into the convertible.

  Gabriel Thane

  Gabriel saw that Josh had brought his camper out to the farm—a place to stretch out, a table for eating, a bathroom and shower if needed. Josh could impose a break on the search when he thought it warranted. A very smart move. No need for Grace to step foot in that house.

  Gabriel parked beside Josh’s truck. He could see Josh and Grace walking a ways behind the house, the dogs roaming ahead of them. It looked like they’d covered the east side of the house. Red flags marked where the dogs had gone on alert. Not many, but enough that the ground was going to be yielding something. If any secrets, that was another question.

  Gabriel took a shovel to the first flag and began to turn over the dirt. He found bones down about a foot, cleared aside soil with a gloved hand and recognized a raccoon, surprised it was buried so near the house. He dug another foot around it and two feet further down to confirm it wasn’t simply a deceptive covering over something else, then refilled the hole, picked up the flag, and moved to the next one.

  He listened as Josh occasionally called out to his dogs, changed their search path, but Gabe didn’t disturb their progress, working flags well back of where the dogs were searching. If he found something that might be human, he would quietly refill and back off the location until Grace was no longer on the scene. Then he’d call in the specialists who would carry out the crime-scene work.

  He turned over four holes, finding only chicken bones, wiped dirt off the end of the stakes, and took them back to Josh’s truck. Before the search was finished, he figured he’d dig up a few hundred spots. He moved toward the garage and the next flag. He needed a long-handled shovel if he was going to be doing a lot of this. He’d stop at Will’s for one before he came out again tomorrow.

  His phone chimed with a message. Evie and Ann were going to a movie. He smiled. Evie’s idea rather than Ann’s, he guessed, and a very good one. Someone needed to be able to pull them back from the quicksand they were in. Evie was about the only one still able to stand without being swamped by it all. He sent a text back: Good. Next time it’s you and me. GT.

  Within the hour, he was done with the marked flags. He settled in the passenger seat of his truck to read a book, forcing his mind to disengage from the recent activity while Josh and Grace continued to search. He needed the distraction of a novel to take him out of this place and the weight of the day—his version of a movie.

  He didn’t remember much of what he read, but it did feel as if the tension came down a notch by the time he heard Josh whistle the dogs in for the day.

  Gabriel thought about joining them as Grace and Josh toweled the dogs off and brushed their coats free of accumulated burrs. But he saw they were having a conversation, and Grace looked visibly stressed. The best end of this day was to get it over with and leave.

  Once Josh had loaded the dogs in the truck and Grace took the passenger seat, Gabriel walked over. Josh came to meet him. “Any change to the plans?”

  “No.” Josh glanced back at his truck, offered a low, “She’s stubborn about doing this herself. We’ll be out tomorrow morning, start sweeping the pasture.”

  “She knows her own mind on how she feels about everything, what she needs to do.”

  Josh grimaced. “Yeah. Anyway, I’ll try to convince her to get some dinner with me, but at the moment she just wants to go back to the motor home. So that’s where we’re heading. Then I’ll take the dogs back to the house, get them settled.”

  “The day’s over. Consider that a win, Josh.”

  “Not much of one, but I hear you.”

  Josh headed back to his truck, and Gabriel waited until they had left before taking a final walk around the search area. He wanted to see if anything in the terrain caught his attention—sometimes a faint depression might have been overlooked.

  Satisfied, Gabriel looked at the time, determined he would be back in town shortly after six p.m. He’d find Ann later for a conversation, but for now assumed she would be meeting up with Grace. He’d get himself something to eat, confirm the rest of the county was quiet. Something always needed his attention, but if it was critical, the dispatcher or a deputy would’ve called. He’d stop by the office, clear away what couldn’t wait until morning, leave the rest.

  He took a final glance around the farm. A monster had lived here. That terrible truth hurt deep inside him. He’d deal with it because it was what being sheriff required. But it would never fade entirely, this ache for a different history for Grace, her parents, for what might have been.

  EIGHT

  Joshua Thane

  Josh walked up to Grace’s motor home shortly after seven p.m. The evening light was rapidly fading, but he didn’t need the flashlight in his pocket yet. He found folding chairs set out, a decent fire going in the ring. Evie and Ann were there. Grace was sitting in the chair nearest the motor home, her feet stretched out in front of her, a brown bottle dangling from her fingers. Root beer, he was relieved to see.

  “Grace.”

  She tipped her head his direction. “That would indeed be me.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her tone as much as her words, scanned the bottles on the ground under her chair, realized she must have started with a beer before Ann and Evie arrived to shift that choice to something else. Such a slight woman, with not much of a meal today . . . she’d be feeling it. Given he’d watched her tense up as they walked around that house, knew
her memories were running dark, he wasn’t entirely surprised. He’d had an inkling the day would end badly, and he could sympathize with her reaching for some way to forget. He’d hoped Ann and Evie would be the answer, but it looked as though they were simply cushioning Grace’s tumble. He so wanted to help with the pain she was in, yet he didn’t know how. “Come watch a movie with me, Grace, share some popcorn.”

  “I’m good here. Join us, Josh.”

  “I’m thinking you maybe need some dinner too.”

  “Marshmallows are around here somewhere.”

  He hunkered down beside her to be at eye level, smiled. “Maybe not so much the puffed sugar,” he replied gently. “How about chicken pasta, with garlic bread?”

  Ann, sitting in a folding chair across from Grace, watched them, drinking from a tall insulated cup what likely was coffee. Evie was resting on a blanket on the ground beside the fire, her feet up on a log, staring at the stars beginning to appear. Whatever the ladies had been talking about, Grace still had traces of tears. Grace’s friends are doing what only they can do, crawl inside the pain with her . . . as much as she will let them.

  “Which movie?” Grace said.

  “I’ve got a few dozen of them on the shelf—you’ll find something you like.”

  “Are you feeling sorry for me?”

  Grace didn’t know Ann had told him about her childhood, so it would take some careful stepping around the question, but this one seemed easy enough. “Yeah.”

  “That at least makes you an honest man.” She tried to tap his chest with her finger and mostly sloshed root beer on him.

  He rescued the bottle, mostly full, and set it on the ground with the empties. One beer, he saw in the line of bottles, little food, and a lot of tears added up to a miserable night. “Up, honey. You’ve been thinking enough, I’m thinking.”

  She half laughed, half hiccupped, and pushed herself out of the chair. Josh settled his jacket over hers, added crushing fatigue to his guess about what was going on. “The change of scenery will do you good, Grace,” he said as he led her toward his truck. Ann tipped her cup his direction in thanks.