by Alex Kava
Despite all the gadgets, he had yet to find a pair of shoes. He had found bottles of alcohol and cleaned his bruised and bloodied feet by pouring stinging amounts of the liquid over them. Then he carefully wrapped them with ACE bandages. If he couldn’t walk—and if necessary, run—it wouldn’t matter what weapons he had.
Now if only he could shut down the prickly feeling that stabbed at his skin like a thousand tiny needles. His nose kept bleeding even after he had stuffed wads of tissue up his nostrils. And his heart raced in his chest so fast and so hard it felt as if it would crack his ribs open at any moment.
Enough time had gone by that Tate suspected these things were probably side effects of the drug that Dr. Shaw had given him. He tried to tell himself that they would wear off.
He heard a noise and stood stock-still. Cocked his head and listened to see if he could identify it. By now he knew the sound of pipes belching or walls cracking. There was something different about this sound. He didn’t have to wait long. He heard it again.
It came from somewhere in the tunnel ahead of him. A rhythmic clack-clack, then the crunch of glass.
Footsteps!
27.
They stopped after they pulled out the first body and realized it could be a crime scene because of the gunshot wound,” the National Guardsman explained. He looked back over his shoulder as he led O’Dell and the medical examiner through the mud. “We’ve had someone securing the area since last night. The only problem is that some of it’s underwater now.”
His long legs made it an effort for him to slow his pace to keep close to theirs. He maneuvered around the debris sticking out of the ground. The slight incline didn’t seem to affect him. O’Dell, however, found herself slipping just when she thought she had her balance. And still, she put out her arm to help the older woman beside her.
She guessed that the woman’s slight limp made her look frailer than she actually was. She swatted away at O’Dell’s offer and continued marching in big rubber boots that swallowed her feet all the way up to her knees.
When O’Dell first met Dr. Gunther she found herself thinking they had reached the bottom of their barrel—so to speak—and that all the more capable law enforcement officials must already have been overwhelmed in rescue efforts. The dead—or at least the dead not associated with the landslide—would have to settle for whoever was left.
Ben had made it sound like this was a top secret mission. Yet from the moment O’Dell arrived, she couldn’t help thinking the government had pieced together a slapdash team. She was told that Peter Logan was held up in D.C. and that his assistant, Isabel Klein, was supposed to meet her. But instead, a young National Guardsman named Ross showed up in her place.
Dr. Gunther looked as if she herself had been through the landslide. Her long gray hair was tied back and tucked into a headscarf, but strands waved across her face. One end of her scarf wrapped tightly around her neck and into the collar of her baggy jacket, as if she were prepared for deathly cold temperatures. The rain had stopped for the moment, leaving a gray sky masked behind a thick cloud of fog. The breeze brought a damp chill, but nothing that warranted Dr. Gunther’s wardrobe.
The top of the woman’s head came to O’Dell’s chin, and the oversized clothing made her thin frame look even smaller. And though she didn’t use a cane or a walking stick, she moved with a pronounced limp. Even when it slowed them down she made no excuse or explanation for the handicap.
“And where is that first body being kept?” the medical examiner asked.
That surprised O’Dell. She had presumed Dr. Gunther had already been involved.
“It’s my understanding a temporary morgue has been set up a couple blocks from the high school.”
“A couple blocks from the high school?” The woman’s brow furrowed as she tried to retrieve what must have been familiar territory. “You don’t mean Ralph’s Meat Locker, do you?”
The guardsman’s ears flushed with his answer before he said, “I wouldn’t know, ma’am. I haven’t been involved in that aspect of the recovery.”
By now they were at the top of the incline and O’Dell could see three guardsmen setting up equipment. They already had two tents, one most likely being used to shelter the remains. O’Dell could hear rushing water. Not more than a couple of feet away a muddy stream raced over rocks and debris.
Guardsman Ross pointed at the water and said, “The last slide broke that free. Someplace underneath is where they left at least one body buried.”
“Is this where the research facility was located?” O’Dell asked, knowing that one of the bodies had already been identified as one of the scientists.
“It’s my understanding that the facility was located about a half mile up.” He pointed in the direction, but there was nothing that looked remotely like a brick building—only debris and mud.
“We’re still trying to find it,” Ross added when he noticed O’Dell still searching. “Landslides can dismantle buildings and relocate objects—vehicles, furniture, bodies—miles from where they originated. That body we think is under the water might not even be there anymore. We’re waiting on the K9 unit to relocate it. Hopefully it didn’t get washed farther downhill.”
“I thought the K9 unit was already here?” O’Dell asked, expecting to see Ryder Creed and trying not to sound disappointed.
“Actually, he and his dog found the bodies yesterday. Then all hell broke loose. It’s my understanding he was buried under that last slide. If it wasn’t for his dog, they might not have found him in time.”
“Is he okay?”
“Must be.” He checked his cell phone. “Sounds like they’re sending him back up here.”
28.
Creed had to take several detours to get to the Hillcrest area. Vance had warned him that some roads and bridges might be ripped up a bit. That proved to be an understatement. Thick layers of fog replaced the rain, making it difficult to see chunks of the road missing until he was practically on top of them. But still, he was glad to be back in the driver’s seat of his own Jeep Grand Cherokee. Even more glad to have Grace sitting in the back watching the road through the space between the front seats, where she could also see and catch her owner’s eye every now and then. The girl was excited to be getting back to work.
He had packed what he needed for himself as well as for Grace. Though Jason had insisted that Hannah hadn’t meant for Grace to work the disaster area, she had still loaded a duffel bag with all of the dog’s gear, including two extra pink squeaky elephant toys that Grace loved as her reward.
Vance had promised they’d do this quietly. He’d have his back if Logan had a problem with it. Creed had to admit he was surprised Logan still hadn’t shown up in Haywood County. So it seemed possible that they might be able to offer this family some help with little attention. Possible until Creed saw a local TV van and camera crew waiting at the curb in front of the two-story house that belonged to the missing woman and her daughter.
He parked around the corner, making sure that the neighbor’s house blocked them from view. He wanted to put Grace’s vest on and slide on his own gear before drawing any attention.
Hannah always told him that publicity was a good thing. Over the summer she had even convinced him that it could help to locate his sister, Brodie. That’s if Brodie was still alive. Creed couldn’t hide the fact that the small possibility of that being true was one of the things that helped him get out of bed each day. But he and Grace had had their fill of publicity over the past months.
Okay, he’d had his fill. Grace was already prancing and wagging in the direction of the TV van. He ignored the camera crew even as they came at him. He ignored the female anchor, too, as she shoved a microphone in his face.
“What exactly will you and your dog be doing to help find Mrs. Hamlet?”
When he didn’t answer and kept walking she continued a barrage of questions.
“She’s been gone for almost forty hours. Is this a cadaver dog? Does that mean you think she might be dead?”
He saw Vance in a group on the front lawn. When he noticed Creed and Grace he hurried up the sidewalk.
“Your dog seems so small,” the anchor said, still walking in front of him. Creed was trying to be polite and not shove her or the cameraman out of his way. “Will you be bringing in other dogs?”
“Folks, please let the man and his dog through so they can get to work.” Vance stepped between Creed and the woman, opening his long arms to create a path, but more important, blocking the TV crew.
He led Creed up over the mud-slick lawn. Debris was scattered where the receding floodwaters had left the heavier items, like rocks and branches, pieces of siding, and a few shingles. Already Creed kept an eye on what Grace might step on. Grace was straining at her leash to greet the group that waited and stared at them.
Before Vance even introduced them, Creed had picked out the grieving daughter. The entire group looked exhausted. Clothes wet and mud-stained. Shoulders sagging. But the daughter, Charlene, was in the center. Her short blond hair was windblown, damp strands stuck to her forehead. Her eyes were bloodshot with swollen bags underneath. She was biting at a fingernail as Vance introduced them, and then she absently presented Creed with the same hand to shake.
“We’ve looked everywhere,” she told Creed. “My fear is,” and she stopped as tears began to choke her words. A man standing behind her moved up and squeezed her shoulders. “This is my brother, Lonnie.”
But the man didn’t offer Creed his hand. Instead he eyed him and Grace suspiciously, keeping his hands on Charlene, more protective than comforting.
“I keep imagining that she’s hurt,” Charlene continued. “That she’s stuck under some branches. She’s just a little bitty thing. Barely a hundred pounds.” She dragged a sleeve over her runny nose. The fingernail found its way between her teeth again.
“I need to ask a few questions,” Creed told her, waiting for her eyes to quit flickering to Grace, then to her friends and her brother. They darted back to the woods that started at the edge of the cul-de-sac.
“Miss Hamlet?”
Finally she looked at him and offered a hint of a smile as she said, “Call me Charlene.”
“Charlene, how advanced is your mother’s dementia? Are we talking Alzheimer’s?”
“Early stages. She gets confused very easily. Can’t remember things. She doesn’t recognize anyone except me.” She looked down at her finger. It was bleeding now. “Some days I’m not sure she even recognizes me or if she’s just pretending to.”
“What does she do when she’s confused?”
Charlene had to think about this and her nose scrunched up as she did. “Sometimes she sits down. Other times she paces, almost like she’s looking for the correct answer.”
“Does she ever go outside the house alone?”
“No, never.” She shook her head to ward off more tears. “She was probably worried about me. I tried calling, but sometimes she doesn’t remember what the phone is.” She looked back at her brother as if she needed to convince him. “Sometimes she doesn’t know where the ringing is coming from. You know how hard of hearing she is.” Her eyes trailed back to the woods. “I don’t know if she can even hear us calling for her.”
Grace sat patiently at Creed’s feet. He glanced down to find her looking at Charlene Hamlet, tilting her head from side to side, ears pitched forward, listening as though she were taking in all the information, too. She would definitely be focused on the woman’s emotional state.
He’d already explained to Vance that Grace was an air-scent dog. She found dead people by the particular smells of decomposition that every human being gives off after death. She was also trained in rescue, just like Bolo. Live humans emitted particles of scent, millions that go airborne and are carried by the wind or get caught on items in the environment.
Most lost or trapped people ended up in remote areas where there were no other people, so it didn’t matter whether Grace could distinguish one person’s individual scent from another. She was trained to simply find human scent. But in this case there had been dozens of people roaming through the woods already looking for Mrs. Hamlet. They would have left human scent everywhere. And unlike trailing dogs or tracking dogs, Grace had never been trained specifically to take in an individual’s scent off a personal item and then go find that same person.
However, she was trained for scent discrimination. That’s how she had become a celebrity over the summer when she was able to track down illegal drugs hidden in anything from jars of peanut butter to a drug mule’s stomach. And recently Creed had been working with her to recognize the scents of different illnesses, including viruses and cancer.
Still, he warned Vance that he wasn’t sure she’d be able to do what they were asking here. In order to specifically find Mrs. Hamlet, Grace would need to know definitively what the woman smelled like, independent of everyone else around her, and then understand that she needed to go find that scent despite the downpours, fog, and wind that could have taken Mrs. Hamlet’s scent far away from where the woman ended up.
When he glanced back at Charlene she was staring at him. So was the rest of the group, waiting, expecting, hoping.
“Is your mother right- or left-handed?”
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” Lonnie asked.
Charlene looked back and forth between the two men.
“When a person’s lost”—Creed kept his tone calm—“they tend to move in the same direction of whichever hand is dominant. Right-handed people usually go to the right. Left-handed to the left.”
“Even if they don’t know their right from their left?” Lonnie questioned him, and Creed could tell the man had already decided this was a waste of time.
“It’s an involuntary reaction, so memory or thought doesn’t necessarily affect it. Because they’re always going in the same direction, sometimes they end up going in circles.”
“She’s right-handed,” Charlene said.
Everyone continued to stare at Creed, periodically looking down at Grace or glancing at Lonnie. Creed was used to it. People were either skeptical, like Lonnie, or they expected to see a magic act and were waiting for it to begin.
“I’ll need to take Grace inside your house. Is there a chair or perhaps even your mother’s bed that hasn’t been disturbed since she was last in it?”
“Sure thing.”
Charlene started to walk toward the house, but Creed reached out and stopped her.
“I’m sorry, but you won’t be able to go with us.”
“What the hell?” Lonnie asked again, and this time he stepped in front of his sister, as if challenging Creed.
Now Creed could feel the others’ suspicions, too. Even Vance shot him a look.
He tried to explain to Charlene. “I’m afraid if you come with us, it’ll confuse her. You live in the house, too. Your scent is all over the place. I need Grace to be focused on your mother’s scent only.”
“Right,” Lonnie said. “How do we know to trust this guy?”
“Lonnie!” Charlene’s cheeks flushed. “Mr. Creed is here because I asked Mr. Vance to bring him here.” To Creed she said, “I am so sorry.”
“I can’t promise this is going to work,” Creed told her. “But Grace has made some amazing finds.”
Charlene looked down at the Jack Russell as if seeing her for the first time. She squatted down and offered Grace her hand, then petted her.
When she stood back up she said, “The recliner in the living room is Mother’s. The quilt that she uses to cover her legs is still bunched up in the seat. Upstairs, her bedroom is the first on the right.”
He nodded, then called to Grace. The entire distance to the front door he could feel their eyes on hi
m. Grace pranced beside him, happy to find a couple of puddles to splash through.
Creed’s head began to throb and his chest ached, reminding him of his tumble not even twenty-four hours earlier. He hated when families were on-site. Fifty percent of the time he would disappoint them. He hoped this wasn’t one of those times.
29.
This is a totally inappropriate process for recovering a body,” Dr. Gunther scolded the four guardsmen who stood towering over her, heads bowed though they had no control over those details.
O’Dell was impressed and mildly amused that this small woman—the word “elfish” came to mind—could reduce these lean, tough soldiers with the command of her voice and her presence, despite her lack of physical stature.
“Even if Mr. Creed’s dog alerts to the exact spot,” Dr. Gunther continued, “how are Agent O’Dell and I supposed to retrieve the remains? Surely we’re not expected to wade into those floodwaters and fish them out?”
O’Dell was thinking the same thing and could only imagine the force of the water knocking both of them off their feet. Although she had helped recover bodies from stranger places. This landscape reminded her of a past crime scene with dissected bodies stuffed into fifty-five-gallon drums, then buried in a rock quarry.
There were no manuals that dictated recovery instructions for many of the scenes she had helped process, so Dr. Gunther’s complaint about “inappropriate” seemed a bit silly to O’Dell. But she also knew that coroners and medical examiners were oftentimes precise and detail-minded, with more experience in the laboratory than in the field.
“We were instructed to secure and assist,” Ross defended his team.
“Of course you were.” The woman’s irritation bit through her stoic demeanor.
She glanced up at O’Dell. “Well, Mr. Logan’s boss told me that you are in charge of this recovery operation. How would you suggest we proceed?”
O’Dell looked out over the rushing water. In several areas it had carved deep crevices in the mud. Downhill it widened and she could see debris riding on the surface. Branches tangled with electrical wire passed by.
