?Or . . .?
They all looked at me.
?Or, he could still have it.?
?Still have it?? scoffed Claudel.
?Shit,? said Ryan.
?Like Dahmer?? asked Charbonneau.
I shrugged.
?We better take Fang back for another sweep,? said Ryan. ?They never brought him near the torso site.?
?Right,? I said. ?He?ll be pleased.?
?Mind if we watch?? Charbonneau asked. Claudel shot him a look.
?Not as long as you think happy thoughts,? I said. ?I?ll get the dog. Meet me at the gate.?
Striding off, I heard the word ?bitch? in Claudel?s nasal tone. No doubt a reference to the animal, I told myself.
The dog leapt to its feet when I approached, its tail wagging slowly. It looked from me to the man in the blue jumpsuit, seeking permission to approach the newcomer. I could see ?DeSalvo? stamped on the jumpsuit.
?Fido ready for another go?? I asked, extending a hand, palm down, toward the dog. DeSalvo gave an almost imperceptible nod, and the animal leapt forward and wetly nuzzled my fingers.
?Her name?s Margot,? he said, speaking in English, but giving the name the French pronunciation.
His voice was low and even, and he moved with the fluid, unhurried ease of those who spend their days with animals. His face was dark and deeply lined, a fan of small creases radiating from the corner of each eye. He looked like a man who?d lived outdoors.
?French or English??
?She?s bilingual.?
?Hey, Margot,? I said, crouching on one knee to scratch behind her ears. ?Sorry about the gender thing. Big day, eh??
Margot?s tail picked up velocity. When I rose, she leapt back, pivoted full circle, then froze, studying my face intently. She tilted her head from side to side, and the crease between her eyes furrowed and unfurrowed.
?Tempe Brennan,? I said, offering my hand to DeSalvo.
He clipped one end of Margot?s lead to a belt at his waist and grasped the other end with one hand. He reached out his other hand to me. It felt hard and rough, like distressed metal. His grip was an uncontested A.
?David DeSalvo.?
?We think there may be more in there, Dave. Margot good for another go-round??
?Look at her.?
On hearing her name Margot pricked her ears, crouched with head down, hips in the air, then sprang forward in a series of short hops. Her eyes were glued to DeSalvo?s face.
?Right. What?ve you covered so far??
?We zigzagged the whole grounds, ?cept where you were working.?
?Any chance she missed something??
?Nah, not today.? He shook his head. ?Conditions are perfect. Temperature?s just right, it?s nice and moist from the rain. Plenty of breeze. And Margot?s in top form.?
She nuzzled his knee and was rewarded by strokes.
?Margot don?t miss much. She wasn?t trained to nothing but corpse scent, so she won?t get sidetracked by nothing else.?
Like trackers, cadaver dogs are taught to follow specific scents. In their case, it?s the smell of death. I remembered an Academy meeting at which an exhibitor had given away samples of bottled corpse scent. Eau de putrefaction. A trainer I knew used extracted teeth, bummed from his dentist and aged in plastic vials.
?Margot?s ?bout the best I?ve worked with. Something else?s out there, she?ll scent it.?
I looked at her. I could believe it.
?Okay. Let?s take her over to that first site.?
DeSalvo clipped the lead?s free end to Margot?s harness and she led us to the gate where the four detectives waited. We moved along the now familiar route, Margot in the lead, straining at her leash. She sniffed her way along, exploring nooks and crannies with her nose the way my flashlight had with its beam. Occasionally she stopped, inhaled rapidly, then expelled the air in a burst that sent dead leaves eddying around her snout. Satisfied, she?d move on.
We stopped where the path branched off into the woods.
?The part we haven?t done is just off here.?
DeSalvo gestured in the general direction of our first find.
?I?m gonna swing her around, bring her in downwind. She scents better that way. She thinks she?s got something, I?ll let her have her head.?
?Will we bother her if we go into the area?? I asked.
?Nah. Your smell don?t do nothing for her.?
Dog and trainer continued up the roadbed for about ten yards, then disappeared into the woods. The detectives and I took the path. The crush of feet had made it more obvious. In fact, the burial site itself could now qualify as a tiny clearing. The vegetation was trampled and some of the overhead branches had been clipped.
At the center, the abandoned hole gaped dark and empty, like a plundered grave. It was much larger than when we?d left it, and the surrounding earth was bare and scuffed. A mound of dirt lay off to the side, an earthen cone with sloping sides and truncated top, its particles unnaturally uniform. Backdirt from the screening.
In less than five minutes we heard barking.
?He behind us?? asked Claudel.
?She,? I corrected.
He opened his mouth, then crimped it shut. I could see a small vein pulsing in his temple. Ryan shot me a look. All right, maybe I was goading him.
Wordlessly, we moved back down the path. Margot and DeSalvo were off to the left, rustling through the leaves. In less than a minute they came into view. Margot?s body was as tense as a violin string, her shoulder muscles bulging, her chest straining against the leather harness. She held her head high, jerking it from side to side, testing the air in all directions. Her nostrils twitched feverishly.
Suddenly, she stopped and grew rigid, ears extended, tips trembling. A noise started somewhere deep inside her, faint at first, then building, half growl, half whine, like the keening of a mourner in some primordial ritual. As it grew in intensity, I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck and a chill travel down my body.
DeSalvo reached down and released the lead. For a moment Margot held her stance, as though confirming her position, recalibrating her heading. Then she bolted.
?What the fuck . . .? said Claudel.
?Where the . . .? said Ryan.
?Hot damn!? said Charbonneau.
We?d expected her to scent on the burial site behind us. Instead, she cut straight across the path and tore into the trees below. We watched in silence.
Six feet in, she stopped, lowered her snout, and inhaled several times. Exhaling sharply, she moved to her left and repeated the maneuver. Her body was tense, every muscle taut. As I watched her, images formed in my mind. Flight through darkness. A hard fall. A flash of lightning. An empty hole.
Margot recaptured my attention. She?d stopped at the base of a pine, her whole being focused on the ground in front of her. She lowered her snout and inhaled. Then, as if triggered by some feral instinct, the fur rose along her spine, and her muscles twitched. Margot raised her nose high in the air, blew out one last puff of air, and flew into a frenzy. She lunged forward and jerked back, tail between her legs, snarling and snapping at the ground in front of her.
?Margot!
I didn?t have to look. I knew what she?d found. And what she hadn?t. I remembered staring at the dry earth and the empty hole. Dug with intent to bury or intent to uncover? Now I knew.
