Scent of the Missing

by Susannah

  This summer was initially quiet with regard to search call-outs, and then in late July we began to get a series of drowning calls leading into August. Summer 2006 is a season of hard drought. The lakes are low, and our area is critically short of water, but for recreational enthusiasts it is also dangerous. Since only one Texas lake is natural and the rest are reservoirs, boats are now sitting just over the remnants of trees or other rubble that make up parts of manmade lake beds. When swimmers jump from the boats, they come to grief in the trees that once would have been fifteen to twenty feet below the surface.

  This September call is a search for a middle-aged missing man who'd gone boating with his mother on a late Friday evening in the moonlight. At one point, he stood up in his boat and turned to speak to her, took a misstep, and pitched over the side of the boat and into the water. She threw him a life preserver, but she said he never reached for it. Down he went in a sort of tangle, a thrash and down out of sight, and he never came up again.

  Fifteen hours later, we are out on the boats with the dogs. We've been briefed on the accident's history by the local sheriff's department, and the story of a drowning off a boat with two life preservers in it makes me grit my teeth a little with frustration. Every drowning we've had in the last three years has been someone off a boat with a life preserver in it, but no life preserver on the victim. You want to headbang a little after weeks of lost daughters, fathers, fiancés, and best friends.

  At one point, after I've been out on a boat assisting another handler and his dog, I am walking back to the command post and stop to wipe my face next to a woman eating half a sub sandwich and gazing out to the water. I initially think she is one of the Red Cross volunteers, but she introduces herself and is, rather, the mother of the man who had drowned.

  She says, "I'm so sorry you've had to give up a Saturday." She says she's always loved boats and water, and that this outing the evening before had been inspired by good intention: an evening with her boy after she'd had a serious illness. Neither could swim.

  She speaks of a double mastectomy and a chemotherapy follow-up in May, and says her son had taken her out the night before because it was the first time she was well enough to go. The pressure of the life preserver was too painful for her to wear on her chest, so she did not, and because she couldn't, he chose not to wear his also. She is slight and pale beneath a large hat, her eyes shadowed with fatigue. But she is out in the heat, will stay out here until he's found. Her tired voice is laced with tenderness and respect as she speaks of her son—he was just trying to do something nice for her at the end of a very bad time. He said, "You need to have a little summer," and he took her out on the boat. It was a beautiful evening. The water was calm. The way he fell over the side, she says, makes her think he'd had a heart attack or something acute and unexpected. She wonders what he'd been about to say before he fell.

  We stand for a time together, watching the other search boats go out, back and forth across the area, the dogs' noses up, then down to the water. From where we stand, a hundred yards away, their alerts are absolutely clear, and I wonder what it is like to be her, watching us debride that wound. She says that when she was diagnosed with cancer earlier in the year, a friend told her, There is no bad news, only information. She says she grew up with a dad who raised Labs. Now, when a dog on the boat tenses over the edge, his bark ringing across the water, she doesn't ask me what it means. She offers me half her turkey sandwich, and though I am a vegetarian, I take it. We sit in the grass and make our separate sense of what will happen next.

  Summer's sullen heat gives way to the cooler temperatures of late autumn. By October, La Folie is painted and its window boxes planted, and most days its doors are thrown open wide for the dogs to enter and exit at will, while I sit inside reading Cadaver Dog Handbook. There are dog beds and a water bowl inside it, a white tin of dog biscuits on a little table just inside the front door. The tin has a lid that snaps tight over its contents for freshness, but one day I walk past one of La Folie's open windows and see Puzzle sitting before the table, staring earnestly upward at the tin while Fo'c'sle Jack stands on his back legs and fantasizes about height and opposable thumbs. When I call the two dogs, they come out of the cottage, Puzzle immediately and Jack more sluggishly. He glances back and forth to the tin as though weighing the hazards of disobedience or the advantages of begging. He's a good boy, but only just, and I grin watching Jack's internal debate: "You ... the treats ... you ... the treats...(sigh)...well, all right ... you." With the Golden, there's no longer any doubt.

  I feel stronger in the cool air—more up than down—able to work more training sessions with Puzzle, who at two and a half is physically changing also. I'm seeing the early shape of the mature dog. She is taller and sturdier. Her winter coat has begun to come in, a thatch of waves across her chest, her haunches deeply feathered and tail feathers thickened. On wilderness workdays, we're getting close to the 2:1 ratio Fleta used to joke about: for every hour searching, the handler of a long-coated dog spends two hours combing out the search.

  Apart from training, we walk together daily. I try to be careful. Short walks some days. Longer on others. I have a tendency to push myself hard, and it rarely works out well. We add blocks and increase speed incrementally. On bad days, which sometimes still happen, we back everything down several notches. Puzzle, who two years before was determined to set the pace of every walk ( faster! faster!) from a lead taut as a ski rope, now looks to me to set the standard. She's still showy and prideful. She is pleased to be out and about. But if I need to stop, we stop. If I want to jog a little, we jog. A little. As the holidays approach, I put on her red and white velvet jingle-bell collar, and Puzzle walks beside or ahead of me, depending on the command, the steady jing-jing-jing of her lope causing the neighbors to wave and lean over the fence to admire her. They shake their heads and smile, remembering the puppy that bucked and snorted and shot me the paw.

  On a cool, foggy morning just after Thanksgiving, I decide to try the pace test required of all team members for Senior certification with the team: a circuit around the training academy campus that must be done with a forty-five-pound pack in fifteen minutes or under. I did the circuit successfully in January 2004 and again in summer 2005, but have not attempted it this year, and certainly not since I've been sick, when stamina newly emerged as an issue.

  Puzzle stands next to me as I lean into the Jeep and rebalance the pack's contents. Something is up, and she knows it. I'm going to take her with me on the circuit, interested in what kind of time we'll make together. The sight of the pack excites her, and I briefly wonder if she'll be too wound up to keep pace beside me. It'll be a test for us both—and maybe an affirmation that things are looking up.

  I give a nod to the timekeeper, say "With me" to Puzzle, and we head onto the track. We begin the circuit with a walk that slowly escalates to a jog and from there, halfway through it, to a run for a fifth of the distance. I haven't felt like running, haven't run at all in six months, and my feet seem awkward thumping over the track in thick-soled boots. The pack is heavy too, and maybe one strap's not quite right—there's a slight galumph-galumph against my left shoulder with every step. But the balance is good.

  And this feels good and strong. For a little while.

  Puzzle canters off-lead beside me, and I'm so intent on not falling and not failing at this that for a long period I'm aware only of the muffled sound of her tags jingling in the fog. But the track widens a little, and I catch better sight of her beside me, this former Dog Who Would Not Heel, her light coat curly in the thick air, up-down-up-down ears punctuating every step. A neighboring dog rushes the fence as we pass. From another direction, a car door slams and two voices raise from some disembodied distance. I hear the clink of metal and the word "alternator," but Puzzle ignores it all.

  As the path curves down to a low point, I huff and wobble, nursing a stitch. The fog thickens, and the air through my open mouth feels thick enough to chew. We are passing a
row of fire trucks now, and ambulances, and I'm thinking wryly of collapsing behind one of them when we make a last corner to the home stretch. Puzzle looks up at me, all snort and dance and challenge. She's still fresh, and I'm somewhere in the nether between dazed and brain-dead, but we are going on just this little last way.

  The sun is moving high over us, and here in the thickest part of the fog, Puzzle is spectral in the filtered light. She is my dog but filtered somehow and unfamiliar, rendered in aquatint. We push for the end of the circuit and, at the end of it, flop down together. Now she is real again. I can smell her damp coat and her warm dog breath, and as the timekeeper calls "13:08," I hear the thump-thump-thump of Puzzle scratching a sweet spot behind her ear.

  "13:08," I say to Puzzle, who I'm sure has no clue why that's a good thing. But she rolls over onto her back and wiggles across the damp grass and exposes her belly, and from where we lie, she tilts her head to my shoulder and looks at me, grinning. It's not the hardest push we've ever done, but it's a hint of what we were.

  Good job, she seems to say of us. Fabulous.

  25. JIMMY

  IN THE HARD GLARE of headlights from a police car two houses away, Puzzle puts her nose to a single sock in a plastic bag on the ground, working thoughtfully over it a moment, then looking up for her release command.

  "Ohhhh—" says a bystander from across the street. "Look at that."

  All the dogs glow when they are backlit, and blond Puzzle shines silver in the light. Huffing frostily in the cold air, she looks like the dog angel one sees on condolence cards that come from the vet, but she's flexing her right paw a little, a characteristic gesture associated with scent and unease. Puzzle likes her space. She's a little uncertain about the ring of officers that leaned forward as she put her nose to the bag, watching her with fixed intensity. This is her let's-go-let's-go signal to me. She will flex that paw until I send her out to search. When a nearby officer drops a cup and coffee explodes across the cement, she quivers and shoots me a can-we-get-on-with-it look, and I do.

  "Find that," I say to her. That is the scent she has taken from the article in the bag. Without hesitation (and with some suggestion of relief), she makes her immediate choice of direction: east not west. She lopes, then canters easily down the residential street away from the police cars and the crowd. I follow behind her; a young officer and Jerry working FAS team walk behind me. Puzzle is easy to see in the darkness. She moves confidently, her plume tail flicking across the beam of our flashlights.

  This is her first official search, and she's running with me. Her job is clear: find him if he's in this sector or communicate absolutely that he's not—and because this search is scent-specific, ignore any other human scent you find. My job is to make sense of all she communicates.

  We have seen photographs of the missing man. We can perhaps overtake and identify him if Puzzle and the other dogs isolate the direction he's walked tonight. Jimmy is a senior citizen of diminished capabilities, who hears well but cannot speak. He is described as friendly, outgoing, and childlike in his attraction to bright lights and sweets. The photo we have of him seems to verify the description. He has a long, narrow face and a thinning swath of hair combed neatly back over the top of his head. His face is ducked slightly as he looks into the camera, as though he isn't sure whether to trust the camera, the photographer, or both. In sync with his posture is a fixed, wide smile that reminds me of the grin of a shy dog about to roll over in submission.

  Caregiver interviews describe a man who has had difficulties negotiating the everyday world from childhood, and his expression in the photograph suggests a long history of misunderstanding, coupled with a desperate, inextinguishable hope. He's a tractable man with those who know him, but he's got gumption too—an adventurous fellow with an eye to the main chance. Last night in warmer weather, he slipped out of his assisted-living residence and walked northwest a few hours before he was found by police officers, who took him to McDonald's for a milk shake before driving him home. Tonight he has walked away again after spying the unlocked front door to his house, perhaps bent on repeating the adventure of the night before.

  Tonight, however, he has walked out in striped pajama bottoms and nothing else, and though the weather was warm earlier in the evening, a cold front has pushed through the area, dropping temperatures by thirty degrees with the promise of subfreezing temperatures by morning. His caregivers and local police searched for hours after he disappeared, and when Jimmy did not turn up at his previous haunts, the dog team was called.

  The three of us move quickly behind Puzzle. We are bundled in winter jackets and hats against a bitter wind from the north. A few clouds scud across stars in the night sky, but rain is not in the forecast—a positive note. Jimmy is already at risk for hypothermia in his half-clothed state; falling precipitation would increase his risk, and quickly too. He has been out four and a half hours, and unless he's found shelter, he's been in the cold for two of those.

  There are other potential harms. An approachable man like Jimmy is an easy target. Though his neighborhood is a quiet one, gang activity has been reported at its fringes. I saw the painted tags on Dumpsters and telephone poles driving in. Tonight much of Jimmy's safety depends on the direction of his travel and whether those whose paths he crossed were kind.

  Still heading east, Puzzle elects to enter the driveway of an apartment complex. She sniffs thoughtfully at the curb, then lopes into the complex parking lot and turns left along the long row of cars beneath carports. Though it is late, there are a half-dozen residents in the lot—some getting into and out of cars, two talking with their heads bowed and their arms crossed, as though their subject is mutually uncomfortable. We pass a woman wearing scrubs and a sweater tied around her waist, carrying a sleepy child toward the door of an apartment. She has her boy on one arm and her purse slung over the other. She pauses at the sight of the search dog and the officer, but she doesn't stop to ask questions. Puzzle ignores her as she sweeps past and ignores every other person in the lot. Good girl, I think. She's working a specific find, not a general one.

  At the fifth apartment, Puzzle turns back the way she came. Though something provoked her interest here, she's dismissed the area now, trotting out the driveway and eastward again. At the intersection of the street we are on and a busy road bordering our sector, we turn south. There's a moment's pause. Puzzle pulls briefly eastward again, perhaps interested in crossing the major road that forms the edge of our sector. It is a light tug from her rather than a hard, urgent pull, as though she has a little scent she'd like to eliminate, but the busy road separates one city from another here. The officer with us confirms it: to cross the road would be to pass out of the local jurisdiction and into a separate city requiring permission for us to search. After the slight tug of interest, Puzzle heads south again, then obediently turns west at the next intersection as we continue to sweep the streets for some indication that Jimmy has passed this way or that Jimmy is here.

  A hundred places to hide in any one block of this street, and none of them warm. It could take a team of humans hours to visually search the same night sector a dog can clear in an hour. Puzzle works calmly, either unaware of her great responsibility or unafraid of it.

  The houses are mostly dark. Here and there, a lamp for a walkway, but not too many of those. These are long, flat neo-Colonials or ranch houses built in the eighties, it appears—brick and siding, vinyl-clad windows and painted shutters that were never meant to shut. Mature trees throw long shadows across doorways; the streetlight that filters through their branches turns the pale winter grass a silvery blue.

  There are vehicles parked on both sides of the street, I zigzag Puzzle back and forth as we pass along them. A single unlocked car or truck might be enough to shelter Jimmy, and from his caregivers' description, I think he might be enterprising enough to climb into an unfamiliar vehicle. I wonder also about him huddling in the darkened doorways of houses, but Jimmy's scent would be quickly apparent to Puzzle
even if we couldn't see him.

  Puzzle has no interest in any of the cars. She puts her nose to the edges of doors and beneath each one itself, but it's a trained check, not one provoked by the scent she remembers from Jimmy's sock twenty minutes ago. Behind us, the police officer flicks his flashlight into each car as we approach it, briefly revealing their interiors white-bright in sequence, as though each were caught by the flash of an intruder's camera. We see knobby seatback massagers, cardboard pine trees hanging from rearview mirrors, a stack of textbooks, and a mound of fast-food bags in a passenger seat. In one car, an adult magazine lies on the dashboard. Trotting ahead as the officer works behind us, Puzzle has already cleared the cars, and the officer also dismisses every vehicle on this street in turn.

  We move briefly south at a cross street, then turn into an alley to work our way back east. Here are private spaces and a great deal more light than we found on the street. Whether fearing break-ins or not yet down for the night, the residents on either side of the alley have their garage lights on. We walk more slowly here as Puzzle threads her way behind each house. Some have motion-sensitive security lights; our passage causes a click-click-click and a sudden blaze to warn us away.

  The cold front has thoroughly arrived; the wind is fitful and irregular around the fences and the boats, campers, and spare vehicles parked on driveways. No uninterrupted scent cones here. I try to frame this environment as Puzzle experiences it: I imagine human scent swifting between houses, slamming into the sides of campers, and parting there to wind around each side or slip underneath. I watch Puzzle raise her nose and circle slightly, maneuvering the odd spaces as she ferrets this human scent and that one—new, older, and oldest—dismissing all of them as irrelevant.