Scent of the Missing

by Susannah

  "What's she got?" asks the officer, watching the movement of her nose. He has never seen a dog work before.

  "Looks like a lot of human scent. All of it old at this point. And none of it Jimmy."

  Though the area is more brightly lit, the houses here seem more vulnerable from the alley. Not just vulnerable to theft, naked in the display of owners' private lives: the rusted car up on blocks over dark spots of old grease beside the speedboat carefully cocooned in its tarp. An open garage door reveals an aging Honda motorcycle next to an empty playpen and a set of four upside-down wooden chairs in various stages of sand and stain. Would any of these spaces appeal to Jimmy? Puzzle poises, nods in the direction of them all, but turns away. Behind one house, she bobs her head but also turns away from an elderly man in a bathrobe who sits in the lit doorway of a pop-up trailer, smoking a cigarette. His legs and feet are bare. He sits easily, as though he cannot feel the cold.

  "Evening," he says to the officer.

  "Sir," the officer responds. "Any chance you've seen a man about this tall"—he gestures—"wearing blue and white pajama pants?"

  The man shakes his head and thumbs the filter of his cigarette. Ash falls, sparks bright on the cement, and slides away in the breeze.

  We move on. Puzzle sets the pace, a quick trot in some places and a thoughtful walk in others, but I do not see the canter or the low stir of wuff-wuffling excitement I've come to recognize from her when desired scent is close on the wind. She is not difficult to follow on this urban search, and her light color makes her easy to read in the shadows. Jimmy isn't in this alley, and from what I can make of Puzzle's signals, he hasn't been here tonight.

  From some dark place against a house, a pair of dogs rush a fence she passes, barking furiously, startling us all. Puzzle shudders and is about to spring away when she recognizes there's a barrier between them. She stands still, her tail waving faintly and her ears pushed forward, ready to pass them, but wary. Two mixed-breeds, both bigger than she is, one white, the other blotchy with liver-colored spots and a mouth so wide it would have a great grin if the dog weren't so busy savaging Puzzle through the fence three feet away.

  Whether they are pissed at her for her proximity or pissed at her because she's with three unfamiliar humans in the night, I have no idea, but they are glad to make noise about it. The spotted dog is the shorter one, and he leaps up at the fence in a sort of competitive besting of the other, landing on the bigger dog's back a couple of times before the white dog shudders him free, no offense taken. We can hear the ting-ting of their nails catching on chain link. This looks like a ritual. There's a raw spot in the dirt where they've done it before. The dogs are territorial and maybe a little jealous of her freedom of the alley. Certain now about the fence that separates them from her, Puzzle turns away pointedly, like a snub.

  We pass out of the alley at the easternmost point, turning southward again. Puzzle seems more interested in this side of the sector, something I noticed before and, on the next sweep, will notice again. It is no more than slight interest, though, a small, subtle intensifying of body and quickening of step, but that's it. The more westward we move, the less interested she is in the sector. She has remained true to the designated scent. When a man gets out of a car upwind of us on a fourth street, Puzzle lifts her head in acknowledgment but doesn't quicken her pace. His is human scent, sure, but it is not the scent we want.

  At the southernmost end of the sector, we find a bridge over a small creek bordered by a ravine and an elementary school. The school is surrounded by a wide, fenced yard with a playground, bare of trees, the turf immaculate. There is a long curl of black hose lying at the edge of a student garden. Puzzle steps over it without a hitch in her step.

  Jimmy, like most victims, does not fall neatly into a lost-person classification, which means he also does not precisely fit one of the many lost-person behavior categories suggested by research. He does not have Alzheimer's or another diagnosed dementia. He is a senior citizen, but on the hardy end of that spectrum. He can hear, but he cannot speak. He isn't manic; he isn't depressed. He's not despondent or aggressive or angry. One of his caregivers suggests he is like a curious five-year-old with a toddler's emotional maturity in the body of a sixty-eight-year-old man.

  Lost-person theory suggests that a majority of people, when wandering without a specific goal in mind, will turn right when they first set out to walk. Right-turnedness is linked to right-handedness, and right-handed Jimmy had, in fact, turned right when he headed out the night before. When he disappeared tonight, caregivers and officers searched the area he'd explored on Saturday, but he was not in those locations, nor had he been seen there again. The dogs confirmed this. Every dog scenting Jimmy's sock headed left—east—not right and westerly tonight.

  Where Alzheimer's patients will follow travel aids like sidewalks or paths until they run out, or "go until they get stuck," Jimmy is less likely to have done so. His feet are bare, and he may well have chosen what surface to walk simply by what was most comfortable underfoot, but his processing capabilities are sound enough that when a sidewalk ran out, he could have easily crossed a street to find another.

  Some walk aways, whether influenced by Alzheimer's or other dementias, will walk with a memory-driven goal in mind. They walk to pick up now-grown children from school; they head for a bus that would have taken them to work in another city forty years before. Jimmy is likely more aware of chronology than this. If he has a goal in mind, it may be similar to the goal a child would have—a high-value attraction frequently passed by car—a playground, creek, restaurant, video arcade, or store. Or something else he has seen and stored and wants badly to connect with that searchers might not recognize: a piñata hanging from the limb of a tree. A friendly cat with a bell sitting on a porch stoop. Because he does not speak, caregivers have not heard repeated themes from him: Want this. Go there. If Jimmy has given nonverbal clues about his interests, they have not passed them on to us.

  As I pause to give Puzzle a drink, I look at Jimmy's photo again, aware that we work across two terrains here: the physical one and the unknowable territory of Jimmy's impulses. Where in the Venn diagram of his wandering would those two conditions intersect? I wonder how his priorities have shifted, if at all, in the almost five hours he's been gone. Would staying warm replace Jimmy's urge for a candy bar? Would he know not to approach unfriendly strangers for money or would he overlook risk in the pursuit of bubblegum?

  Potential hypothermia adds another layer of question. Irrational behavior often occurs with severe hypothermias, including a condition called paradoxical undressing, where the victim receives false signals from the hypothalamus, believes he is warm, and sheds his clothes. Keep your clothes on, Jimmy, I think. Get out of the wind.

  Puzzle finishes her water and I shake out the collapsible bowl, then fold and tuck it into a pocket. We are off again, across the bridge and into the ravine. The creek below is a shallow one, sparkling occasionally from a corner streetlight. Water is always relevant on missing persons searches: a perpetual fascination, a potential hotspot for children—even in the cold—and though Jimmy might also be attracted, Puzzle is into the creek bed and out of it in less than a minute. She loves water too, but she is clear about it. Nothing there.

  We head into the schoolyard to begin sweeps across it. The school itself is perpendicular to the wind here, and because I can't know how scent might be distorted around its edges and deep side-door pockets, our sweeps are closer together than they need to be, perhaps. It's Puzzle's first formal search, and this new environment has made me cautious. We work across the schoolyard as the officer flashes light into its empty doorways.

  When we move to the side of the school, Jerry suggests that I circle Puzzle around a Dumpster as we pass. She has little interest in the area, and when we circle the Dumpster, no interest at all, but there is precedent for Jerry's suggestion: Dumpsters are often the sad endpoint of searches, and scent there can be muddled through their heavy lids
and slide-hatches or muffled when a victim has been wrapped in garbage bags. Puzzle moves away from the Dumpster as the officer verifies by peeking in, and I feel a little twitch of relief that Jimmy hasn't been discarded there. Whether he'd climb in one to keep warm is anyone's guess, but clearly he hasn't made that choice, either.

  The schoolyard marks the end of our assigned area, and we return to the command post along the easternmost side of the sector. Puzzle has indicated interest, mild interest, only on the eastern side. I want to return the same way to see if that interest intensifies or goes away altogether. We move quickly north along the street we had previously used to head south, and twice Puzzle twitches eastward. Again, it's only a twitch, not the body shiver I've felt from her when desired scent was hot and close, nor the gathering to run that I associate with a very near alert. Jerry has reported this repeated interest to the search manager, and we move quietly back to the command post in the early hours of the morning.

  We arrive to find the search manager bent over a map and in conference with the police officer coordinating the search. Fleta has tallied all indications from the responding dogs, and when asked what the next sectors might be, indicates that the wisest move would be new sectors to the east. Several dogs had interest that direction. She begins to mark the map while the officer in charge discusses the situation with police in the neighboring town.

  Handlers full of hot coffee and the dogs now warm from a rehab period in cars, we are ready to go out again, waiting for authorization to head east. We've now been on-scene for a couple of hours. Jimmy has been missing for almost seven. Most of us have added a layer or two of clothing as night has deepened and the temperature has continued to drop. Even so, it doesn't take much exposure to the wind to feel cold again. An officer raises the question we all carry: would Jimmy be aware enough to seek shelter and come in from the cold, or would he regress as hypothermia advanced, losing the ability to walk, in time unable to stay awake as his brain and body began to shut down? If Jimmy made all the wrong choices three hours ago, he could have died soon after the front had passed.

  I look down the line of teammates already in packs and ready to head out again. They stand queued and ready to receive second sectors, gloved hands in pockets, shoulders up and heads retracted into the collars of jackets. Quiet. Conserving energy. Most of them are due at work in a few hours. Those who can stay will stay until Jimmy is found, then go on to work second or third shift. This is not the first time any of us will have searched most of the night and gone straight to work afterward, a little punchy and disembodied. I can see the puffs of exhale that mark each of my colleagues—the slow, steady thought bubbles above those who have learned to rest standing, waiting; the erratic steam-engine puffs above those whose conversations I cannot hear.

  Puzzle's little exhales are also visible as she stands knitting scent. I have draped one of my down vests over her back as we wait. She doesn't whine or bark or strain at the lead, but I can see the steam of deep breaths and small ones, the occasional round huff of her mouth as some new Not Jimmy person steps onto the scene. When I touch the back of her neck, I can feel the tension of her readiness for Next, whatever it is, whenever it comes.

  We hear a burst of static and unintelligible words over a distant radio, and suddenly there is a rush of feet and a huddle of officers, and Fleta is eclipsed within a ring of taller men. The dogs pick up the changed energy and transmit it, dog to dog and rapidly, their ears perked and tails in new motion. We humans lean forward where we stand. We strain for a single clarifying word. "Found" would be a good one. "Alive" would be even better.

  The word I think I hear is "chips," and I'm trying to make sense of that when information crackles down the line that Jimmy has been found, alive, and just a few blocks east of the road that separated his neighborhood from the next town. "East" a few murmur and look down at their dogs. Alerted to the search, police officers in the adjoining town quickly began to sweep nearby streets and had located Jimmy in an all-night fast-food restaurant.

  For the second time in two nights, Jimmy returns in a police cruiser with lights blazing. His forehead presses against the window, and his eyes widen at the sight of the luminous, frosty dogs pacing beneath the street lamps. Jimmy is cold. He is small and huddled when he gets out of the car, barefoot still. His feet curl and he hops a little when he steps onto the chilly sidewalk. He is staccato there in the flash of emergency lights, pop-pop-pop, looking gleeful and impossibly young. He points to the dogs and smiles wide.

  There have been some good Samaritans and possibly some scavenging in tonight's history. Jimmy wears a worn blanket like a shawl and struggles to hold it closed across his chest while managing his armful of prizes: a martial arts videotape, a half-empty bag of corn chips, a Twinkie, and what's left of a soda in a supersize cup. He seems a little chastened by tonight's experience, but as a huddle of people move him to the front door, he appears genuinely delighted over the light show, the gathered crowd, and the atmosphere of victory over his return.

  Though Lassie and Rin Tin Tin have schooled the world to Hollywood dogs and Hollywood victories, Puzzle and I celebrate a much quieter one. Jimmy is alive. Puzzle did her job thoroughly. She did it well—no distractions, no abandonment, no false alerts. We ran pace for pace on this first official search of our partnership. She never once stopped, and I never once had to.

  We return home wide awake, hungry, and renewed. Oatmeal and Milk Bones at three in the morning, e-mail at four, and at five I'm still up playing Tug-o-war with the Golden, who by now would gladly wind down if I would. The Poms have grumbled themselves off into deeper rooms of the house, their sleep disturbed by our late, late entrance that will not resolve. But Puzzle, who is also tired, is generous. She has shared a bit of the oatmeal, which she doesn't like much, and put her head on my boots while I read e-mail, and now she will tug as often as I drop the Booda rope before her, though I notice more and more often that she's tugging recumbent—giving me a little deadweight game while she hints that it might be time to let go of the search.

  Which is one of her many gifts, this moving forward, this letting go.

  I bend down to Puzzle and kiss her street-worn paws. These are early days in our career together, and there will be more stumbling places ahead, few easy lessons. "Good girl," I say without a referent, a generic thank you for the partnership and the history, for the anarchy, the instruction, and the solace of her. We go to bed at first light, and we leave the pager on.

  * * *

  EPILOGUE

  Despite the amazing capabilities of new technology in the search field—the pinpoint GPS units, sidescan sonar, tiny cameras, and hypersensitive microphones—canine search-and-rescue continues. Law enforcement agencies recognize that for some search scenarios, there is no substitute for a well-trained dog with a gift of nose and a handler who can translate even the most subtle cues. Canine SAR teams exist worldwide, partnering other rescue resources, serving communities ravaged by natural or manmade disaster, and deploying with the same commitment to search for a single person gone lost. Many dogs and handlers give the best years of their lives to this service, retiring only when injury demands it, or when age and strength begin to fail. It is a quiet message in the long dialogue between partners: enough.

  The dogs of MARK-9 remain beside us even after they retire, much-loved family members after their partnership days in the search sector are done. German Shepherd Hunter, a second-chance dog rescued himselfjust days before scheduled euthanasia, worked a long and distinguished career. Hunter retired in 2004 and died at home in 2007, his handler, Max, beside him. Roughcoat Collie Saber, another of MARK-9's foundation dogs and an AKC ACE Award recipient in 2004, took on the gentler job of bringing in the mail after retiring from the search field. Saber died at home just three weeks short of his sixteenth birthday in 2008. An off-duty injury forced brilliant Shadow into retirement from SAR, though she participated in the occasional training search and helped instruct the team's youngest dogs fo
r as long as she was able. Shadow's heart surrendered in 2008. She was the last of the team's foundation dogs, whose ashes are jointly scattered across their favorite training spot.

  At the time of this writing, Buster, Belle, and Hoss continue in the field, still driven, focused, successful—and opinionated. High-energy Valkyrei remains full of dash and go beside Rob. Max and Fleta continue to work beside their talented second partners, Mercy and Misty. Puzzle is no longer the puppy upstart: Jerry's second partner, the clever Aussie Shepherd Gypsy, certified in 2008. And youngsters have joined the team: Border Collie Pete recently certified with his partner, Sara, and Border Collie Scout is training hard with new handler Michele now.

  Puzzle and I are still partners in the field. Puz is happy to be a part of any search, period, but wildly happy to bust brush in the wilderness. With her dog and human colleagues, Puzzle has participated in urban, wilderness, and weather-related disaster searches, once surprising a reporter hidden deep in a search sector with an unexpected wroo! In 2006, Puzzle and many of her canine teammates trained for and successfully challenged the certification test for Texas Task Force 2, a state disaster-response unit.

  At home, Scuppy, Sophie, and Whisky died in successive years, rescues themselves who learned love and shared joy. The cats thrive. Fo'c'sle Jack and Mr. Sprits'l are very much alive and happy to tell you about it. And tell you about it. And tell you about it. The puppy discord when Puzzle first arrived is gone. Her affinity for fragile senior dogs continues. I'm aware how much we owe all the little dogs that came through the house in those early years, who taught and challenged Puzzle, from whom she learned the ways of canine compassion. She also learned how to insist. In 2007, Puzzle met an abandoned calico kitten she was determined to bring home. Enter: Thistle. Cat and Golden are inseparable playmates.