Touching Evil

by Kylie Brant

  In concise words he brought the other man up to speed. Roberts nodded. “Dispatch said you had a small search area, so it shouldn’t take long. Where do you want us to start?”

  Cam pointed toward the path into the woods. “Through the trees and down a bluff there’s a clearing. That’s where the corpse was found. Another unrelated bone was discovered in a cave down there.”

  Roberts called to the dog and it reluctantly left Sophie to return to its owner. He snapped a leash on its harness.

  “They brought the body out on the path that way,” Sophie ventured. “Won’t she alert to the scent?”

  “She’ll definitely pick it up. But I won’t give her the command until we’re at the search area. Once she’s working nothing can disturb her focus.” The handler started off and Sophie followed, Cam falling into step behind her.

  George and Veyda led the way toward the path that would take them to the ridge above the clearing. Roberts was the chatty type, and he kept up a constant monologue as they walked. He had a fascinated audience in Sophie. “Dogs can identify smells at least a thousand times better than humans. They’ve even been known to alert to thirty-year-old body dumps.”

  “Does she work from air scent or ground?” Cam reached out to steady Sophie as she stumbled on the uneven terrain. If she fell with her injured wrist she’d have difficulty breaking her fall.

  “Both,” Roberts informed her as they walked through the dense trees. “You’ll see her working nose up and then once she gets a scent she’ll have it down, trying to find the source. These dogs search specifically for human remains, and they alert to the gases decomposing bodies release into the air. Where we’ve got about five million olfactory receptors in our noses, dogs have nearly fifty times as many.” As if in demonstration of her handler’s words, Veyda turned her head first in one direction then another as her entire body quivered with the act of sorting out the scents. Occasionally she’d look back at her owner, as if questioning why she hadn’t been given the start command when there were clearly so many target scents in the area.

  When they came to the clearing, Cam hung back to help Sophie maneuver the descent. “By the time I’m done with this I should be able to find the place in my sleep.” He reached out to catch her around the waist when one of her feet skidded out from under her on the treacherous incline.

  “Let’s hope that’s never required. Although I’m beginning to think we may be spending far more time in this place than either of us had intended.”

  He shot her a look, noting her grim expression. He felt a similar feeling of foreboding. It was hard to hope for a positive outcome in this search, given what they knew about this UNSUB’s connection to Vance.

  Cam showed George the spots where the body had been found, and the cave where it had been kept.

  Roberts looked pensive as he scanned the area. “If someone disposed of a body he’d want to do so with the least amount of physical labor. Here that means dumping it in the river or digging a shallow grave somewhere in this clearing, so the body doesn’t have to be hauled off site through those woods. Can’t see him dumping in the river around here, though.”

  Sophie looked at Cam for confirmation. “Why not?”

  “The Raccoon is heavily fished. According to DNR, this area is a fairly popular spot. And that means increased chances of discovery. Fishing lines getting snagged on the body.” He was deeply regretting his decision to re-don the jacket. Although the morning temperature had been mild, it had to be at least mid-eighties right now. He plucked a pair of mirrored sunglasses from his inside coat pocket and donned them.

  George re-folded the map, tucked it away. “They’ve pulled more than one car chassis and washing machine out of this river in places, though. If it was me I’d haul the body by boat further down the river. Closer to West Des Moines the Raccoon gets a lot deeper.”

  “That’s what you’d do, huh?” Cam’s voice was dry. Roberts grinned.

  “You don’t know how lucky you are that I didn’t turn to a life of crime.” The handler returned his attention to the dog, which was straining at the leash, clearly anxious to begin. “How recent do you think the dump occurred?”

  “We don’t know. We can’t even be sure there is a dump here,” Cam said, as much to remind Sophie as himself. “The gurney would have enabled the UNSUB to transport the box and body from the vehicle on the road to the cave. It could have just as easily been used to cart it back to the vehicle.” The words were true, but lacked conviction. Maybe the offender had planned that this corpse would find a home in a rural cemetery like the first six of Vance’s victims had. If that were the case, this site had been selected solely on the seclusion it afforded the UNSUB to act out his perversions in secret.

  It’d be easier to believe that scenario if not for that human bone they’d found.

  As if plucking the thought from his head, Sophie murmured, “It would help if we could age the bone. I know Lucy has some expertise in the area, but she’s swamped right now. It’s too bad Gavin Connerly’s not still consulting.”

  “He’s on a plane back.” Her head swiveled toward his, surprise in her expression. “Got a text from Gonzalez earlier. He had called her concerning your…article in the paper.” Meaning her obit, but there was no reason to let the handler in on the secret. Too many people knew the truth already. “The SAC filled him in and he volunteered to come back immediately and consult, free of charge.”

  There was a slight smile on her lips he didn’t quite trust. “How very altruistic of Gavin.”

  He grunted at that. The forensic anthropologist from Berkley had been a huge help aging the human remains they’d excavated from the rural cemeteries. Cam didn’t know what was bringing the man back, and he didn’t care. He’d welcome any insight the man could offer.

  A side benefit was that he’d be stationed once again at the Medical Examiner’s suites and that he seemed to drive Benally crazy. That was a talent Cam could appreciate.

  “Start with the clearing then?”

  Cam nodded at the handler. “Fine by me.”

  Roberts shrugged out of his backpack to take out a well-worn tug toy. He told Sophie, “The dogs are trained using positive reinforcement. The breeds we use will do anything to play. So we start them with play, and reward them the same way.”

  He turned to the dog. “C’mere, girl. Come tug.” Veyda launched herself at the other end of the toy and grabbed on with a show of teeth. Bracing her feet, she pulled mightily, letting out a mock ferocious growl. The two played for a minute or two before Grady replaced the toy in the pack and re-shouldered it. He led the dog to the furthermost corner of the clearing where they could work downwind, reached down to unleash the dog and said, “Game on.”

  The dog shifted from play to work with an alacrity Cam didn’t always see in humans. It tested the air carefully and then put its head down to scent the ground. Over and over it performed the same act, moving in a pattern discernible only to the handler. Roberts stood a slight distance away, subtly keeping the dog to a grid that Cam knew the man had mapped in his mind upon his first sighting of the scene.

  “Why did he take the leash off her?” Sophie’s gaze was riveted on the pair.

  “Some of the handlers I’ve worked with leave the animals off leash. George tends to keep the dogs leashed unless he’s working an area where he can see it at all times. It’s too easy for the animal to get hurt by something unseen in tall grasses, or to fall down unused cisterns or wells. With this small an area, the dog can be unleashed without risk. When we’re working a big scene there will be dozens of personnel on site and an entire team of handlers and dogs. Leashes are used then, and everyone wears high visibility clothing for identification purposes. It can get confusing.”

  Criminalist Seth Dietz headed over. “Did you want us to check the woods before we leave the scene? We examined the path and either side, but didn’t spread out any further than a few yards on both sides of it.” The rest of his team was hauling equipmen
t up the ridge and through the woods to the waiting vehicle on the road.

  Cam considered. “Take soil samples from a few areas to go with the others.” Seth had painstakingly collected samples from above and below the bluff. They’d managed to narrow down Vance’s location from sediment he’d left behind in Sophie’s apartment. Maybe they’d get lucky again and connect these surroundings with Vance’s accomplice, once they caught him. An enterprising defense attorney would argue that the kids were too far away to make a positive ID. That they’d collaborated on the description.

  It was harder to argue away trace evidence.

  The criminalist didn’t seem in any hurry to leave, although none of his colleagues were in sight. Together they watched the dog for another quarter hour. Every passing minute that the dog didn’t alert should have had the knot in Cam’s gut unclenching a bit more.

  But he couldn’t forget that solitary bone in the cave. Under the circumstances it was hard to think of a credible explanation for its presence there. So he watched with the others, not with the fascination shown by Seth and Sophie, but with a sense of dread that increased with each passing moment.

  The dog had its nose to the ground, occasionally lifting its snout to test the air before it was lowered again. It had paused in a six-foot wide area, testing and retesting the scent. When it dropped to the ground, Cam’s gut dropped with it.

  Veyda barked to alert her owner, never moving from place, her sides trembling from the excitement of her discovery. George looked up to the group and called, “I think you’re going to want to get an excavation team in here to check this area out.”

  * * * *

  Lucy Benally pulled into her drive, temper still simmering. She’d intended to finish up a few outstanding details and then focus on the crime victim discovered last night. After only a few more hours she’d be ready to start the autopsy first thing in the morning. No matter that she wasn’t slated to work the next day. No one else would be allowed to autopsy that victim. Once she started a case, she saw it through to the end.

  Unfortunately a family of four was at the head of the line. All had died in a house fire that had been deemed suspicious. Her day had been consumed with those victims. Two still required autopsies. And Steven Benson, the Chief Medical Examiner, had sent her home early, citing her late night as his reason. No amount of arguing had swayed him.

  Her ire was such that she was unusually unobservant when she pulled into the long drive to park the car in the detached garage. But she had taken only a few steps toward the house before she saw the figure seated on the back deck. Watching her.

  Her steps faltered. Even at this distance the man was instantly recognizable. There was a curl of something weak and cowardly deep in the pit in her stomach. Infuriated by it, she shoved it aside and strolled up the deck to confront the devil head-on.

  “They have this thing these days,” she said conversationally. “GPS. Marvelous invention. Helps people with directions. For instance, west is that way.” She jabbed a finger in the appropriate direction.

  Gavin Connerly hooked the chair next to him with one foot and dragged it closer so he could stretch his legs out on it. “I’ve heard of it,” he agreed mildly. “Plane I was on probably even has a similar instrument. But Iowa is east of California, so that’s why I’m here. The plane I boarded was headed east.”

  Grinding her teeth, Lucy ducked her head to dig in her bag for her house key. The man got under her skin like a needle-sharp splinter and took up residence there with the determination of a tick. “Sort of a long way to travel for a booty call.”

  He threw his head back and laughed, genuine amusement in the sound. Lucy had decided long ago that his affability was one of his most annoying attributes. That and the fact that he seemed to find humor in her. In her world, life—and death—was serious business. No one had ever been amused by her before.

  Quite the opposite.

  Finding the key, her fingers closed around it, tightly enough for it to dig into her palm. “So. I don’t see a car.” She made a point to look in both directions. “Either you parachuted out over my property or had a taxi drop you off. In either case you’re out of luck. You aren’t staying here.”

  “No, I’m not,” he surprised her by saying. “I’ve got a place at the Marriott in Ankeny. There was a problem with my car rental. They’re going to deliver it.” His voice lowered. Became intimate. “You didn’t answer my calls. How are you, Luce?”

  His expression was guileless. But she didn’t spend more than a second looking at his face. Staring at Gavin Connerly could be entirely too pleasurable, and pleasure made a woman weak. Lucy knew that from experience. She’d spent her teenage years parenting her siblings while her mother chased booze and men with the kind of single-minded devotion she’d never shown her kids. Stacy Benally had been prone to forget minutiae like food, bills and schoolwork. She couldn’t even be trusted to take the medication needed to control her mood swings and depression. Lucy had shouldered all those responsibilities.

  But like the pest he was, Conner’s image imprinted on her mind as she fitted the key into the lock of the back door. His blonde hair was pulled back as usual in the ponytail he favored, but she’d once seen it loose around his shoulders. Ran her fingers through it and felt the fall of it over her skin when his mouth had been wickedly busy. His face was sharp and intelligent, with a narrowed jaw and cheekbones that could have been etched in ice. An earring dangled from one lobe. Topped with shrewd green eyes that saw entirely too much, the entire package was encased in one long lounging specimen of manhood. He was entirely too comfortable in his own skin.

  Like her Navajo forefathers, Lucy had a firm grasp on who and what she was. She’d risen above circumstance, charted her own course and navigated around the obstacles that life had strewn in her path. But nothing in her experience had prepared her for a man like Gavin Connerly.

  “Knowing your work habits, I figured I’d have to wait here longer.”

  “The Chief examiner has views that parallel yours when it comes to hours spent on work,” she said shortly. The door open, she chanced another look at him. “Better get that taxi out here to take you back to the hotel.”

  His eyes, damn them, were alight with amusement. “Been a long trip. I’m sort of parched. Got a bottle of water in there?”

  She surveyed him for a moment. Lucy knew the man well enough to know that there’d be no moving him until he’d said whatever it was he’d come here to say. She moved resignedly into the kitchen, and snatched a bottle of water from the frig and went back to the porch. Set it on the table before him with slightly more force than was necessary.

  Moving to the next chair she dumped his feet from it so she could sit down. “Why are you here, Connerly?”

  Screwing off the cap of the bottle, he tipped it to his lips and took a long drink. “To talk to you, obviously.” When her eyes narrowed he smiled. “Actually I called Gonzalez when I saw the Des Moines Register’s obituary for Sophia online. Got sort of panicked.”

  Ice filtered through her system, freezing her organs from the inside. “Obituary? What are you talking about? I spoke to Sophia a couple days ago.” He simply had to be wrong. There was no way something had happened to her friend without her having heard about it. Was there?

  He reached a hand over to cover one of hers. “Relax. She’s fine. Gonzalez wouldn’t tell me what the deal was, but did tell me there was nothing to worry about. She also filled me in on the case I was consulting on until a few days ago. Looks like it isn’t over.”

  Relief had her insides thawing. Lucy didn’t have any close friends and that was by design. But Sophia Channing was closer than most, simply because she was adept at slipping through defenses. Whether through training or personality, Lucy didn’t know, but the woman was harder to keep at a distance than most.

  A trait she shared with the man sitting next to her.

  “So again, I’ll ask. Why are you here?” She didn’t flatter herself by believing i
t had anything to do with her. Lucy had used every tool in her not inconsiderable arsenal to make it clear that his help with the last six victims in Prescott’s case was unnecessary and unwelcome. His presence had been solely at the behest of the DCI.

  Of course, she mentally squirmed, that message might have been muddied a bit when she’d slept with him the night before he flew back to California. She’d thought they’d never see each other again.

  Which just went to prove that fates always, always extracted a payment for indulging any weakness.

  The man drank again. Took his time screwing the cap back on the bottle. “The bone, of course.”

  “The bone.”

  “The one Gonzalez said was found with the corpse in Prescott’s case. Apparently there isn’t a body to go along with it.” With his thumb he traced a line in the condensation collected on the bottle. “I have vacation time accrued. I offered to come back and do what I could to age it for them.”

  She didn’t believe him. The office of the medical examiner was perfectly capable of extracting whatever information could be gotten from a lone finger bone. But the only other answer that made sense was that he’d returned to see her, and that was just as unbelievable. They’d hooked up for one night.

  Lucy might keep her intimate experience with men limited, but she knew it was illogical to believe a man who looked like this one would fly across the country to see a woman he’d slept with one time. A woman who didn’t even like him. Much.

  Whatever game he was playing, she was abruptly tired of participating. “Great. Maybe I’ll see you at work then.” Or maybe, out of a strong sense of self-preservation she could arrange to work nights for the duration of his visit and avoid him completely. “I’m going in. You’re going to want to call a…”

  His cell rang then, and he answered it with an ease that shattered her airy dismissal. She should go inside and leave the man to his own devices. Curiosity kept her rooted to her chair. Especially when Connerly kept glancing at her as he listened.