Scent of Murder

by James O. Born

  Junior had used some of the skills he’d developed over the years to find the perfect surveillance point and spotted Michelle Swirsky almost immediately as she walked out of the Health Science Building with her bright red backpack.

  He already realized she’d be much more of a challenge than the other girls. She actually went to school when she was supposed to, and it appeared that her mother kept a very close eye on her. Maybe her home life wasn’t as bad as it looked on paper. His research made him think the family was a train wreck. He’d have to reassess after he watched her a few times. His concern was that if he spent the time watching her, he’d become fixated and not be able to move on to a more reasonable and safe target. That’s what had happened every time in the past. Besides, he had a time frame. He didn’t know how long he could keep flying under the radar, but if he acted quickly, Michelle couldn’t be connected to him. And no matter how he looked at Michelle, he knew he couldn’t go back to just letting the girls go without seeing him.

  He’d finally seen a flyer for Tina Tictin. It was on the bulletin board of the county courthouse, and it was clear that no one thought she’d been abducted. He noted the line at the bottom of the flyer that said, Last seen possibly in a late model brown Ford F-150 pickup truck. He didn’t own a pickup truck, so once again no one would ever connect the two of them.

  Michelle hopped into a new blue Honda CRV driven by a nice-looking woman with flowing brown hair. Junior recognized her as Mrs. Swirsky, although her photograph didn’t do her justice. He followed the blue Honda, which drove away from the school and out Sixth Avenue South in Lake Worth. It was easy to stay five cars back and still keep the Honda in sight. He was starting to understand how cops were able to follow people without being noticed. After a couple more turns, the Honda pulled into the parking lot of a Publix grocery store. He was shocked to see the cute Michelle pop out of the car wearing a Publix uniform shirt. Her mother had driven her to work. She kept a schedule.

  Perfect.

  19

  Tim Hallett watched John Fusco and Claire Perkins as they walked toward him. The two looked more and more like partners, and he felt a pang of jealousy. But the surprise at seeing John Fusco at the K-9 training facility off Forest Hill Boulevard was nothing compared to the shock Hallett felt when he learned the detective came specifically to ask for help. He grudgingly admitted that Fusco had swallowed a lot of pride and come up with a creative theory about the missing teen Hallett had made the initial report on.

  They had waited until Sergeant Greene and Darren Mori joined them at the training facility. Ten minutes later, they stood in the classroom with a gigantic map of central Palm Beach County spread out on the floor. Hallett could see that it was a South Florida Water Management District map and showed more detail than anything he had ever seen before.

  Hallett didn’t comment about Claire wearing plainclothes instead of her CAT shirt and fatigues. She didn’t say a word as Fusco explained the situation.

  Fusco said, “The F-150 was photographed running the red light at U.S. 441 here.” He jabbed at the map with his index finger pointing to Lake Worth Road and U.S. Highway 441. “That was about ten minutes after the clerk saw Tina get into a similar-looking truck here.” He moved the same finger across the map to a store on Military Trail just north of Lake Worth Road.

  Fusco looked up but stayed on his knees so he could point at different spots on the map. “The garden shop manager at Home Depot didn’t leave the store all afternoon and found evidence of a break-in that evening, but never reported it. The kidnapper in this case has used a different vehicle each time he grabbed a girl. I now think he might borrow them. It makes perfect sense if he knows how to hot-wire a vehicle. It also means he’s very smart.”

  Hallett had caught on and appreciated the detective’s leap of faith. This was the kind of thinking that solved complex cases, but it was becoming less and less common as people expected scientific means to be used to gain convictions. Goddamn CSI. Hallett said, “So the kidnapper, using a stolen truck, grabbed Tina and headed west, past U.S. 441 on Lake Worth Road.”

  Fusco said, “That’s the theory. We’re taking the truck into evidence and processing it just in case.”

  Hallett smiled and said, “Not bad, who helped you? Is Claire getting you to open your mind to new things?”

  All Fusco said was, “Funny.”

  Darren Mori spoke up. “But where was he headed? He could cut through Wellington, end up on Southern Boulevard, and be out in Belle Glade in forty minutes.”

  “That is a definite possibility. But it is also possible, if not more likely, that he was looking for an open area like this.” He brought his finger down hard on a wide area of undeveloped land. “This old farmland was bought up but hasn’t been developed yet because of the real estate crash. There’s no reason for anyone to be out that way. It’s isolated and fits in with where he took the girls before.”

  Claire Perkins said, “So what’s the plan?”

  “We use cadaver dogs to search as much of the fields as possible. We have Mori and his dog, plus three other certified K-9 units from other local police departments. If we need more, we can call FEMA and they’ll have some registered in the area that they can recommend. For now, it’s just a search. Who knows, we may get lucky.”

  Hallett recognized that lucky breaks were responsible for about half of the big cases solved by any police agency. TV shows never wanted to take that into account. Of course, even he realized that often the luck was a result of extremely hard detective work. But in this case, having a red-light camera take a photograph of the truck no one reported stolen was nothing but pure, freakish luck.

  * * *

  Out in the field, Tim Hallett kept his mouth shut. This was not Rocky’s area of expertise. If they were looking for drugs like cocaine or marijuana or some type of explosive chemical like TNT or ammonium nitrate, Rocky would be all over it. Cadavers were an entirely different specialty, and Brutus showed unbelievable ability in the area. He found everything from a single human tooth to a few strands of hair during training, and Ruben Vasquez had commented that he had never seen any dog with as strong a drive as Brutus.

  Now Sergeant Greene stepped over to the group of three deputies, holding their dogs as they talked about the plan to search the area. The sergeant said in a low voice, “It’s been more than a week since the girl disappeared. Obviously if she’s still here we’re looking for a body.”

  They all nodded.

  After the sergeant had walked away, Hallett turned to his partners and said, “We conduct the search as a unit. Brutus may be the one sniffing, but there’s nothing to say we all can’t help. This is a long shot, but it’s exactly the sort of thing we were designed to handle.” He looked over at Darren and clapped him on the shoulder. “Keep it light and fun for Brutus, and he’ll keep going and going. We’ve got a few hours of daylight left, and the other dogs are gonna conk out long before the sun sets.” He looked at several dog handlers who were not assigned to the CAT unit. They milled around their vehicles, not organizing like a team. Each was used to working individually.

  Hallett had known the area when it was farmland, before the town of Wellington was developed. Now sprawling minimansions and horse farms had laid waste to the area that was once a wildlife sanctuary. He knew it was tough on the farmers to resist the big payouts on land that wasn’t providing them much profit, but he hated to see the county jammed with so many northern transplants in hastily constructed houses.

  John Fusco was walking from his black Crown Vic toward the K-9 officers. Hallett was surprised to see him wearing something much less formal than his usual suit and tie. He had on a pair of black tactical pants and a white shirt with a badge embroidered on it and the words DETECTIVE FUSCO under the badge.

  Hallett caught the smile Fusco threw Claire as he approached.

  Fusco said, “I thought we could start by covering the perimeter of the fields, then work our way in as we have to. We’ll do as much
as we can today and pick it up again tomorrow.”

  Hallett listened, but his mind started to drift as he realized Tina Tictin didn’t live too far from Arnold Ludner’s house. He knew something was keeping the sheriff’s office from going after Ludner. It was probably some restraining order the shithead son had filed with the court. He wished there was a way to get to the former financial adviser.

  Then an idea popped into his head. No one had looked at the other two sons. The two that had been involved in the drug trade for many years. They could be the key to finding and questioning Arnold Ludner.

  And sniffing out narcotics was part of Rocky’s area of expertise.

  * * *

  Darren Mori and Brutus had only found one other body in almost two years of working together. And that one barely counted. It was an elderly woman who had fallen in her bathroom and died. Darren happened to be on patrol that day and got the “suspicious activity” called in by a neighbor. The neighbor was concerned because she hadn’t seen the old woman in three days and she wouldn’t answer the door or her phone. As soon as they had stepped onto the porch by the front door, Brutus started acting funny, almost as if alerting to narcotics. He paced back and forth in front of the door and scratched at it. Usually Brutus would sit down by the area where he’d smelled a cadaver or body part. He wanted to get to that area. With the neighbor standing right behind him, Darren decided that was enough to enter the house forcibly. After knocking several times, he broke a small frame of glass with the back of his flashlight, then reached in and opened the door.

  Brutus dragged him through the house directly to the decomposing woman on the floor of the tiny bathroom attached to her bedroom. Two cats hissed at Brutus from the far side of the body. The big gray tabbies looked like they were keeping watch. Darren realized it was more likely they were hungry and preparing to start gnawing on their former master.

  It wasn’t exactly a mystery or even anything to brag about, but at least he could claim that he and Brutus weren’t virgins when it came to finding cadavers.

  This was an entirely different circumstance. Darren was nervous, but he couldn’t let anyone know, especially Brutus. He had to stay calm and upbeat to keep the playful Golden Retriever from getting bored or worn-out. Not only was the rest of the squad counting on him, there were detectives, other K-9 units, and uniformed deputies milling around the scene as well. Darren knew most of them and didn’t want anyone to have any ammunition for jokes about him later. He didn’t mind the names like Kato. He no longer explained himself to the rednecks who couldn’t tell the difference between a fictional Chinese character and someone whose grandparents emigrated from Japan. In one sense, it was politically correct to call all people from the Far East “Asian,” but in another sense, it lumped everyone together. Europeans and Americans no longer made an effort to distinguish between people from China, Korea, or Japan—even though the culture and language of Japan were as different from China’s as from America’s.

  Darren realized he was building this search up in his mind to mean more than it really did. Whether Brutus found a body or not, it wouldn’t really affect racial stereotypes across two continents. But it would mean something to him. He took a deep breath and looked out over the area they expected Brutus to search. The field was substantial. He could see where someone had tried to grow different crops and apparently just abandoned them after selling the land. One area held corn; another looked like it was growing wild tomatoes that used to be in some kind of order. There were the usual scrub-brush windbreaks between the fields and the seemingly never-ending maze of canals. The canal system in South Florida was complex and allowed the South Florida Water Management District to prepare for an oncoming hurricane by dumping water before it arrived. It was also a means by which to manage the gigantic Lake Okeechobee. Here it was just another impediment that Brutus would have to overcome while he searched for a dead teenage girl.

  * * *

  Junior couldn’t believe he’d given in to his urge to enter the Publix where Michelle Swirsky was working. Usually he’d fantasize about things like this, but he rarely took the extra step of actually risking contact with the girl before he was ready to consummate their relationship.

  Like most Publix supermarkets, this one was a bustling, crowded montage of noises and people. It reflected South Florida with accents of every flavor and no two faces the same color. As soon as he stepped in the door he risked being caught on camera. He panicked for a moment and wasn’t sure what to do. He didn’t want to appear too nervous or do anything to attract the attention of anyone who might review the footage from the security cameras later. He stepped on into the store and down the pasta aisle, pretending to inspect a bottle of Ragu spaghetti sauce. Once he was safely in the middle of the aisle he looked up to see if he could notice any video cameras. There were none obvious, but there were several large domes with blacked-out glass bulging from the ceiling at strategic locations. He knew those were cameras that could be moved in any direction. Staying close to the shelf, he inched toward the end of the aisle, glancing each direction until he could see the cash registers.

  His heart skipped a beat when he saw her bagging groceries on register five. Michelle had a bright smile as she chatted with the elderly man while he paid for his groceries. He watched her push the full cart as the man followed her slowly, using a cane in his left hand. Her long dark hair was tied in a ponytail and bounced when she walked. She didn’t seem to be anything at all like the girls he had dealt with in the past.

  That didn’t really matter as her image burned onto his brain and he knew that she would be his next choice. He didn’t have much time to waste and wondered if it would be too much to grab her this evening.

  He loved when his mind had so much to occupy it.

  20

  Tim Hallett stayed at the dirt-road entrance to the field with Rocky next to him. There wasn’t a lot for Rocky or Smarty to do during the cadaver search, but Hallett realized he could learn a lot by watching how things were organized. He’d seen the training that Ruben put Darren and Brutus through. Using just a few strands of hair or a tooth or a bone fragment obtained from the medical examiner’s office, Brutus had been taught to search out the decaying material and human scent. At first, Darren had tried to make it a rigid exercise for the dog, but it was Ruben who knew Brutus’s true nature and turned it into a game with rewards and incentives. They had all been shocked how much progress Brutus had made from his first day trying to locate a pair of human teeth in a small area. After the intricate training Ruben put him through, now just a few strands of hair could attract the dog’s attention.

  But this was different. This was real. And it wasn’t a guarantee. A crime scene team had set up a loose grid marked by wooden stakes in the ground, in case the search went on for more than just today. Darren would take Brutus through each section until the dog tired; then when he searched again he wouldn’t search the same area twice. There were also crime scene photographers and a lieutenant who looked nervous. He knew the tall, skinny lieutenant of the detective bureau didn’t have the balls to call out this many people on a hunch. This was all Sergeant Greene’s doing. That was one of the things he respected about Helen Greene: She called out a tremendous amount of manpower and resources to follow up on what some would call a far-fetched lead, but she never flinched in making these decisions.

  Rocky panted as his eyes followed Brutus’s progress. Hallett ran his fingers through Rocky’s coat and tried to move him completely into the shade. Out of habit, he picked burrs out of Rocky’s fur. It calmed him to watch this with his partner. His friend.

  Hallett wanted to be out here supporting his other good friend, Darren, but his mind was now stuck on the idea of going after Ludner’s sons as a way to get to the man. The sergeant still hadn’t assigned him leads like that, and she would shoot down his idea if he suggested it. He’d have to do it quietly. That’s why he had called one of the crime intelligence analysts and asked her to come up with some
addresses and phone numbers for Arnold Ludner’s sons. She kept him on the phone chatting for a few moments. He was trying to place her face and match it to the pleasant voice. Just as he was about to give her a clever comment, he looked up and saw Lori Tate standing next to him. He thanked the crime analyst and hung up.

  He smiled and said, “Hey, Lori.” For some reason he felt guilty flirting on the phone with the analyst.

  She returned the smile with her white, straight teeth. “Looks like you guys have been busy.”

  “Now it’s all up to Darren and Brutus.”

  “How late do you think you’ll be out here?”

  He caught the hint that she was looking ahead to the evening. “I have no idea. If we find something, my guess is you’ll be out a lot later than us.”

  “You’re probably right,” she said as she leaned over and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “That’s for luck.” She trotted over to the group of investigators and crime scene technicians on the other side of the field.

  * * *

  This place really reminded Rocky of home. It was wide open and filled with all kinds of animals. Rocky could smell a dozen different scent tracks that crossed in every direction. He didn’t notice any water close by, so he wasn’t scared. But the place did remind him of the low, wet lands where he was born.

  Rocky sat and sniffed the air. Just that morning, as he was starting to wake up, he remembered that day when his mom fought the animal in the water. He had seen more of them and heard Tim say over and over the word “gator.” Rocky was sure Tim didn’t understand that now just the word “gator” startled him. He remembered the gator trying to come up from the water into the puppy pens and the way his mother raced down to the water to stop it. He had never heard barks like that, and the gator simply made low grunts. Its long tail whipped the water, and it snapped its wide mouth filled with teeth toward his mother.