“Fee?” Jana signaled, then lifted her hands in frustration. “She’s just not getting it, and she seems confused and, well, bored. We nail this at home. She loves this behavior, and we’ve got it down cold.”
Focus, Fiona ordered herself. “You’re not at home. Remember, a new place, new environment, new problems.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know you’ve said that before, but if we make it, every time she goes out on a search it’s a new place.”
“Absolutely true. That’s why the more experiences she has, the better. She learns every single time. She’s bright and eager, but she’s not pulling it in today—and she feels your frustration, too. First thing, relax.”
Do the same yourself, Fiona thought and glanced back to where Davey stood watching.
“Go back to where she started to circle and lose interest. Refresh, reward, reestablish. If she just can’t get it today, take her to the source, let her find it, reward.”
They were a good team, Fiona thought as she hung back. But the human partner tended to want quick results. Still, she put in the time and energy, had a strong relationship with her dog.
She turned to watch Mike and his Australian shepherd mix celebrate the find. The dog happily accepted the food reward and praise before Mike pulled on his plastic gloves and retrieved the cylinder containing human bone fragments.
Well done, she thought. And her third student held both his nose and his tail in the air, which told her he should find his source soon.
One day, she thought, one or all of them might go out on a call, search woods, hills, fields, city streets, and find human remains. And finding them would help give closure to family, help police find answers.
Bodies, she thought, like that of Annette Kellworth. Cruelly posed under a couple feet of dirt, left like a broken toy while the one responsible hunted something new.
Would there be another? Closer yet? Would her own unit be called in to search? She wondered if she could do it, if she could take one of her precious dogs and search for a body that could have been her own.
That would be hers if a man she didn’t even know had his way.
“She got it!” Jana called out as she bent to hug her Lotus. “She did it!”
“Terrific.”
Not bad news, she reminded herself as she stored her training tools. She got a Coke out of the refrigerator for both of them.
“Okay,” she said, “let’s have it.”
“The feds have a lead. They think it’s a strong one.”
“A lead.” Now her knees could tremble. She braced a hand on a counter stool to stay on her feet. “What kind of lead?”
“They’re looking for a specific individual, one who had contact with Perry inside the prison. An outside instructor. An English teacher from College Place.”
“Looking for?”
“Yeah. He quit his job, packed up some of his things and took off between Christmas and New Year’s. Cleaned out his bank account, left his furniture, defaulted on his rent. He fits the profile—they say. The thing is, he hasn’t had contact—that they can verify—with Perry in nearly a year. That’s a long time.”
“He’s patient. Perry. He’s patient.”
“The feds are putting pressure on Perry right now. Trying to find out how much he knows. And they’re digging into this guy’s background. What we got from them is he’s a loner. No relationships, no family. His mother was a junkie, so he was in the system even before she OD’d, when he was eight.”
“Mother issues,” she murmured as hope and fear bubbled up in a messy stew. “Like Perry.”
“They’ve got that in common.” Davey took a fax out of his pocket, unfolded it. “Does he look familiar?”
She studied the facsimile photo, the ordinary face, the trim, professorial beard, the ever-so-slightly-shaggy hair. “No. No, I don’t know him. I don’t know him. Is this really him?”
“He’s who they’re looking for. They’re not calling him a suspect. They’re careful not to. But I’m going to tell you, Fee, they believe this is the guy, and they’re all over it.” He gave her shoulder a quick rub. “I want you to know they’re all over it.”
“Who is he?”
“Francis Eckle. Francis Xavier Eckle. His age, height, weight, coloring are all listed on the fax. I want you to keep this picture, Fee. He may have changed his appearance. Cut the beard, dyed his hair. So I want you to keep this, and if you see anybody who looks anything like this guy, you don’t hesitate. You call.”
“Don’t worry, I will.” Even now his face was burned into her mind. “You said he was a teacher.”
“Yeah. His record’s clear. He had a rough childhood, but he didn’t make any waves—not on record, anyway. They’ll be talking to his foster families, his caseworkers. They’ve already started that, and interviewing his coworkers, supervisors, neighbors. So far, there’s nothing in his background that you’d look twice at, but—”
“People can be trained. Just like dogs. They can learn, good behavior or bad. It just depends on the motivation and methods.”
“They’re going to get him, Fee.” Davey put his hands on her shoulders, gave them a squeeze when their eyes met. “You believe that.”
Because she needed to believe it, she rushed over to Simon’s shop.
He stood at the lathe, music blaring, tool humming as he hollowed and smoothed the pale wood in his hands.
A bowl, she realized, one of those lovely ones he made with a sheen and texture like silk and a thickness that seemed hardly more than tissue.
She watched how he turned and angled, tried to figure out the method to help keep herself still.
He switched off the machine. “I know you’re over there, breathing my air.”
“Sorry. Why don’t you have any of those? You need one about twice that size for your kitchen counter, for seasonal fruit.”
He’d pulled off his ear protectors and goggles and simply stood. “Is that what you came in here to tell me?” And looked down as Jaws dropped a scrap of wood at his feet. “See what you started?”
“I’ll take them out for a game before my next class. Simon.” She held up the fax.
His body language changed. Alerted, she thought. “Do they have him?”
She shook her head. “But they’re looking, and they—Davey said—they think... I have to sit down.”
“Go outside, in the air.”
“I can’t feel my legs.” With a half laugh, she stumbled out, dropped down onto the shop porch.
Seconds later he came out with a bottle of water. “Let me have that.” He shoved the water at her, snatched the fax. “Who is this mother-fucker?”
“Nobody. Mr. Average Joe, except not really. Where’s the rope! Go get the rope!” All four dogs stopped poking with noses and bodies and shot off. “That’ll take a few minutes. Davey came to tell me what the FBI told them. His name’s Francis Xavier Eckle,” she began.
He continued to study the photo as he listened. When the dogs came back—the crafty Newman the winner —Simon took the rope. “Go play,” he ordered and heaved it hard and long.
“Don’t they check people out before they let them work at a prison?”
“Yes, of course. I guess,” she added after a moment. “The point is, there wasn’t anything there. Not that they’ve found so far. But he had contact with Perry, and now he’s changed his behavior. Drastically. They probably know more now. More than they told the sheriff’s office, or more than Davey could tell me. I’m looking at this because Tawney cleared it. Because he wants me to look at it.”
“Teaching at a small college,” Simon speculated. “Looking at long-legged coeds all day who probably don’t look back. It’s still a big leap from ordinary to Perry copycat.”
“Not so big if the predilection was there all along, if the drive was in place but he never knew how to engage it. Or didn’t have the nerve.”
She’d trained dogs like that, hadn’t she? Recognizing or finding hidden potentials, exploiting suppressed drives, or channeling overt ones, systematically altering learned behavior.
“You talked about the importance of motivation before,” she pointed out. “And you were right. It’s possible Perry found the right motivation, the right... game, the right reward.”
“Trained his replacement.”
