TRAINING DAYS
Every dog must have his day.
—Jonathan Swift
CHAPTER 4
TEN MONTHS LATER
I thought she was having a seizure. She stood atop the heap of busted cement, tumbled bricks, and other rubble, her body quivering. Her eyes squeezed shut, and the trembling intensified. She shook as though caught in the clutch of a nightmare.
“Vira?” I said, taking a knee and stroking her brow, which felt both warm and damp.
Trance broken, her head jerked sideways toward me. Her eyes flashed open, and then she sat down—like I’d taught her to do whenever a discovery is made—and commenced to paw at the broken concrete beneath her feet.
Though formally christened Elvira, I’d informally shortened her name to Vira to make it easier for me to issue commands. Cream-yellow fur and round, inquisitive eyes that missed nothing—Vira was now nearly two feet tall at the shoulders and almost sixty pounds of untiring enthusiasm.
Dogs, in general, live in a world of scent and hearing, and cadaver dogs are trained to detect human remains via the scent of compounds—unique odors—given off by decomposing bodies. Decomposing human remains release nearly five hundred different chemical compounds. Scientists are still trying to decipher which of the numerous compounds really matter to human remains detection dogs, but whatever the chemical signature, it’s present in fresh corpses from shortly after death to several-years-old skeletons. It’s also present in a variety of tissue, such as fat, blood, and bone.
Vira has been trained to find and follow the scent of decomposing human flesh that rises up from the soil. She’s been trained as both a trailing dog that can follow a scent that has fallen on the ground as well as an air-scenting dog, which can pick the scent of decomposition out of a breeze and track it to its point of origin. A good cadaver dog can find human remains in the ruins of an earthquake or a fire, as well as inside a shallow grave. They can sniff out a complex and elusive scent, such as dry bone, to, well, let’s just say more moist substances.
Vira, like most golden retrievers, is as smart as Einstein. She took to finding smells not unlike my ex took to remarrying—with passion and speed. But today was Vira’s first hunt—her maiden voyage in search of the departed. Some would say I started Vira too young, but she’s had extensive training, and has proved to be a prize pupil in chasing down the unusual scents, no matter where I’ve placed them, aboveground or below.
“What have you found, kiddo?” I said, pulling on my leather gloves.
Vira continued patting her paw against a chunk of concrete.
“Yes, I’m coming.”
I spray a protective film on all of my dogs’ feet in order to protect and toughen their pads. I like to think the damned stuff works. In the places we frequent, I’m always concerned with any debris or wreckage—sharp, ragged, or scorching—that my dogs might step on.
I bent down and rolled the broken piece of concrete forward, like a snowball in winter … and that’s when I saw the woman’s ankle.
* * *
They call him the Velvet Choker Killer because he kidnaps young women, keeps them captive—having his way with them for months—until, inevitably, they displease him in some way, shape, or form. Then he strangles them with a thin piece of rope or laundry cord, places a black velvet choker necklace over the asphyxiation marks, and leaves their bodies for us to find as part of his warped game.
I’m not sure if I should include “us” in reference to the Chicago Police Department as my cadaver crew and I inhabit the private sector, not government, and we assist CPD upon request. Now and again—I wish more often because the pay is good—I get a gig at the CPD’s Canine Training Center in Des Plaines. At the center, I spend most days training their German shepherds on the art of locating missing persons or tracking suspects who’ve fled the scene of their crimes. When it comes to the CPD’s K-9 units, the dogs can accompany officers on patrol or are used to sniff out drugs or explosives. They can also be utilized to assist SWAT units.
Cadaver dogs, however, are a wholly different species. They’re trained to smell death. And unlike the more common patrol dogs, cadaver dogs are not in daily use. Vira and I only come into play in cases of tragedy, such as today.
I call my pack of human remains detection dogs The Finders, and would order T-shirts emblazoned with that were we to compete in softball tournaments or get invited to a company picnic.
My canine curriculum starts out as a game. In fact, I refer to my training regimen as cadaver games, and whenever the kids hear me mumble those words aloud, tails wag as they race out to jump into the pickup while I grab the gear. I teach my dogs to associate the scent of death—decaying human flesh, blood, and bone—with one of their tennis balls or other favorite toy. To accomplish this, I utilize artificial scent tubes in a variety of odors: the recently dead, the decomposed, and the drowned. I also use my own blood, but, before you start thinking I’m weird or twisted and ghoul-like, it’s not as though I slash my wrist, squirt a quarter cup onto the ground, and then kick a rock over it. A nurse at the local clinic helps me siphon the occasional vial—I hardly feel a thing. Many dog handlers use their own blood in order to make the hunt as authentic as possible, how it’ll play out in the real world. At this point the dogs and I essentially play hide-and-seek with their scented toys on different terrains, in the light of day or dark of night, in sunlight or under a driving rain. And I teach my dogs to pat gently with a paw or sit down whenever they locate a scent’s origin.
In this line of work, jumping up and down or digging can destroy evidence … plus, there’s really no need to spike the ball in the end zone.
An old sausage shop a half dozen blocks north of Polish Village was demolished earlier in the week, taken down for a hair salon whose grand opening was scheduled for next spring. The lot had been fenced off by the construction crew so that neighborhood kids wouldn’t get injured playing in the wreckage or thieves wouldn’t misappropriate the crew’s equipment. When the site foreman arrived at work this morning, he noticed two items that had not been present when he’d departed the evening before.
The less startling of the two items the foreman discovered was that somebody had cut through the chain-link fence in back, the secluded side of the site, shrouded by woods and a steep ravine. The more startling item was that a summer dress—blue chiffon and lace—had been tied to the front gate and left for all to see.
For those following the news about the Velvet Choker Killer, which included most Chicagoans, a blue summer dress was the last thing Kari Jo Brockman was seen wearing on the day of her disappearance, the day of her abduction fourteen weeks earlier. And, to make matters worse, a sixteen-year-old by the name of Becky Grohl had gone shopping for makeup after school this past Monday and never returned home. Her parents’ rusted Saturn, which Becky had driven that afternoon, was found abandoned in the mall’s parking lot. The physical description of Becky Grohl fit the Velvet Choker Killer’s M.O., which did not bode well for the missing Kari Jo Brockman.
The foreman had immediately called Chicago PD. An hour later, CPD called me, and Vira and I came running.
* * *
We sat on the curb beside my pickup, an eight-year-old Ford F-150 with a supercab for the dogs as well as four-wheel drive to get us in and out of some of the crazier spots we’ve been asked to search. I gave Vira a playful yank on the tail and, when she looked my way, I scratched behind her ears and kept repeating, “Good girl. Vira is a good girl.”
Quite frankly, I’d been bowled over by my young dog’s performance. Vira had all but run to the spot where Kari Jo’s body was concealed and then, outside of that initial quaking episode—probably when she realized the odor didn’t stem from a tennis ball this time round—Vira began speaking to me, sitting and patting the ground, letting me know that this was most definitely the spot. We sat curbside and waited in case the investigators wanted what would be the world’s briefest statement on how my brand-new cadaver dog had d
iscovered her first body in an astonishing two minutes—record time.
I shouldn’t have been so surprised. A week or two after bringing Vira home, I had a newbie class in Schaumburg and took her along with the rest of the gang. I switched between Maggie May and Delta Dawn as we walked through some basic commands that dog owners should know. Sue stood nearby and stared into the auditorium of people and pets as though he was with the Secret Service—all he needed was a pair of sunglasses. As Maggie and Delta demonstrated a handful of commands—come, sit, lie down, drop it, wait—a string of chuckles drifted across the room. Instinctively, I ran a sleeve across my nose in case I had anything repugnant hanging there, but as Maggie demonstrated how to roll over, the amusement grew louder. I glanced about and, sure enough, there was Vira rolling over. Evidently, and behind my back, she’d been mimicking the exact commands Maggie and Delta had been performing.
“Looks like we’ve got us a show-off,” I said to the class, but bent down next to Vira, gave her a small snack, and scratched under her chin. “That’s amazing, Vira.” At that point I’d not even begun working with her; I was still giving her time to acclimate to her new family. “Pretty darned amazing.”
* * *
Vira gave a half bark.
“Hush, Vi,” I said, scratching at her neck, lost in thought. I was teaching an obedience training class in Buffalo Grove in the early afternoon, and I didn’t have the roster of who’d already paid versus who’d registered to attend and hadn’t yet paid. Business matters like that were forgotten in our haste—Vira and I had jumped into my pickup as soon as I’d gotten off the phone with CPD—so now we’d need to haul ass back to my home in the small village of Lansing before heading out to the Buffalo Grove location. I was doing mental gymnastics over the quickest route to take.
Vira began growling. I snapped out of my internal deliberations and looked up. There were five police cars, a couple of unmarked ones in the mix, and an ambulance. I suspected they would shortly be bringing Kari Jo Brockman out in a body bag. Across the street, a crowd had formed, restrained by a police line, and it was the crowd that appeared to be the focus of Vira’s mounting discontent.
“What’s up, girl?” I asked, unsure exactly what was happening. I looked about the faces across the street, their attention now leveled back our way.
Her growl evolved into a series of snarls.
“What am I missing, Vira?”
She stared question marks at me a long second, then flipped her attention back to the crowd of gawkers. She lifted herself up from the curb, full height, her body taut, the fur on her back rising, now barking continuously at the gathered horde. I looked again at the throng of people, searching for movement, wondering what the hell had set her off. Then, as though shot from a cannon, Vira flew across the street, tearing her leash from my hand. The crowd split in half, a Red Sea of pedestrians parting and running from the crazed dog coming for them. But Vira’s attention was centered on one particular man, a guy in dark jeans and a blue denim shirt, a guy who tripped backward over his own feet and brought up an arm as Vira leapt for his throat.
“Stop, Vira! Stop!” I screamed, racing across the street. I latched onto her leash with one hand, her collar in my other, and stumbled backward myself, using all my strength to pull her from the carnage. Paramedics spilled out from the fenced lot and rushed toward me, past me, to render first aid to the young man writhing on the pavement in a deepening puddle of his own blood.
I had my dog in a bear hug and began backing toward my pickup truck, trying to digest the horror I’d just witnessed.
My golden retriever had torn a man’s eye from his socket.
CHAPTER 5
“I got the kill order.”
“Get me a day, Paul,” I said. “One day.”
“If an ambulance wasn’t already on the scene, Mace, that guy could have died.”
“She’s not an attack dog, you know that. No aggressive temperament, no predatory instincts, no territorial bullshit. She’s up to date on rabies.” I shook my head. “Something’s going on here, Paul. She saw something.”
He stared across his desk at me. “You and I both know about her past.”
I tossed up a hand. “She was only nine weeks old back then.”
“But she mauled the living shit out of that guy today.”
“Just give me twenty-four hours,” I pleaded.
Vira and I had been inseparable since that first day at Paul’s CACC kennels. In retrospect, that’s probably why he initially contacted me about Vira. Paul knew what I was going through back then; he knew I needed a new project to distract me. Vira not only helped me get through Amie’s premature death, a devastating blow, but, you see, earlier that very week I’d finally given in, called the whole thing quits, signed the divorce papers and returned them to my wife. My ex, Mickie, had pushed for a separation and—after a few months of floating that trial balloon—decided it might be best to separate on a more permanent basis. I felt like a fish who’d been filleted alive and tossed in the gut bucket—still breathing, but not really—and suddenly there was this poor little kid that desperately needed my help.
As it turned out, I needed hers, too.
Together we climbed out of a dark spot.
And now the poor kid was back in a cage.
“Look, Paul, if I can’t figure this out, I’ll come back and…” My voice broke. “I’ll come back and put her down myself.”
* * *
“You know these freaks like to stand in the crowd and watch their work,” I said. “That’s like Serial Killer 101.”
I was at Chicago PD on South Michigan talking to the lead homicide investigator on the Velvet Choker case, a black detective named Hanson.
“We already looked into him. No record. The kid drives a school bus and delivers pizza part-time while saving for college.” Hanson looked haggard, likely catching hell from all sides on Homicide’s lack of progress in the Velvet Choker case. “We’ve got video of the looky-loos from each of the other crime scenes and the kid’s not in them. We’ve been hoping for repeats in the different crowds, but no such luck.”
“But that’s just the immediate crowd. At the other scenes, this guy could have been sitting at a bus stop half a block away or in a parked car using binoculars.”
“Your time would be better spent contacting your insurance company.” The investigator shook his head. “Your dog maimed that kid for life and, as the owner, you’re liable for the kid’s injuries. What with medical bills, rehab, mental anguish, and all that other lawyery bullshit, that kid’s going to own your ass.”
It was obvious Detective Hanson didn’t enjoy the dog handler telling him how to do his job. I looked at the detective a long instant, taking in the round face on the thin body, and would have bet two bits it was the result of recent dieting. Hanson leaned forward, expecting a response, likely hoping that, like the average Joe, this would be the time where I’d thank him for his time and head toward the exit.
“If he delivers pizza and drives a school bus, what business did he have hanging out at the construction site, especially at that time of the morning?” I said. “That’s way the hell off his beaten path.”
Detective Hanson leaned back in his chair and turned a frustrated sigh into a Broadway production.
“Are you checking his clothes for any DNA?”
“Clothes? You mean the clothes drenched in his own blood?”
“Then how about his car?” I asked. “Did you check the trunk?”
“Right, top of my list,” Hanson replied. “Hey, kid, I know you’re missing one of your peepers and the use of an arm, but we need to validate your parking.”
“Why do you keep calling him ‘kid’? The guy looks like he’s pushing thirty.”
“That kid,” Hanson said, in a tone that didn’t bode well for me, “has had a hell of a tough life. His parents died in a car crash when he was four, and he’s lived with his grandmother ever since. He’s got a sister—two years younger—wh
o we’ve been trying to contact. Quite frankly, it looks like she took off after high school and just kept going.”
“What about his grandmother?”
“We’ve left a message, but haven’t heard back.”
“No one’s at the house?”
“We sent a car there and no one answered. Granny’s seventy, so she’s probably out and about shopping or visiting friends, or at church or on one of those bus expeditions for seniors. Hell,” Hanson said, waving a hand in the air, “maybe she still works, but we don’t know that because the poor bastard keeps going in and out of it at Mercy Hospital on account of your goddamned dog chewing his eye out.”
“Did you go inside and check the house?”
“No.” Hanson looked as though he’d bitten into a lemon.
“Why not?”
“Why not? You want to know why my men didn’t B and E after granny didn’t come to the door?” Hanson now looked as though he’d been beaned in the face with a bag of lemons. “Because fuck you—that’s why not.”
I sat in silence, fully aware of incoming glances from Hanson’s colleagues. My eyes settled on the detective’s desk. In the mishmash of Velvet Choker case files sat a single photograph of him and two kids at what appeared to be a theme park. There was no corresponding wife hovering about in the picture and Hanson wore no wedding ring.
Probably divorced, like me.
“Look, Reid,” Hanson shifted to a more conciliatory tone, “I understand the squeeze you’re in, and I’ve granted you all of this time—done you a solid—because of all the good work you’ve done for us in the past. Okay?”
I gazed at his desktop and nodded.
“But you need to take a hard look in the mirror instead of wasting my time,” the detective continued. “The kid’s attorney will go after your homeowners’ insurance or umbrella coverage or whatever canine liability policy you’ve got and then, after that, he’s going to sue you personally. You can lawyer up and fight it, but the jury—especially in a civil case—they’re going to find for the poor bastard with the missing eyeball.” Hanson stared at me. “That’s what you need to be focusing on … not dicking around here.”
The Finders Page 3
