Page 63 of Desperate Creed

It still did not move.

Frankie stopped. She held her breath this time. Then she sniffed the air and her eyes darted to Maggie’s. She smelled it, too.

“Don’t panic,” Maggie told her.

How could she not panic? The storm had broken a gas line, and now the fumes were filling their small, incredibly cramped area.

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Grace led Creed across the street. Her nose was working the scent. Her tail curled up over her back. Deputy Huston had skidded down the debris pile to follow. Alice was close behind. Her husband, Bud stayed and continued to dig.

“My mom was in the house,” Alice shouted at their backs. “She didn’t leave the house.” But she still trailed behind them.

Grace strained at the end of the leash. Once she shot a look back at Creed to hurry up. He cringed as she trotted over broken glass. She threw her head back and sampled the air without stopping. Her breathing grew rapid and her eyes fixed ahead. He tried to steer her around oily puddles and two-by-fours with nails.

“This is the little dog that found that baby,” Deputy Huston was telling Alice. “He was thrown out of the car. It had to be over 200 feet.”

Creed tried to tune them out. He thought about stopping and asking them to stay back. But at this point, he didn’t want to stop Grace. And the deputy brought up a good point. Tornadoes threw people around. But at the same time, he wanted to warn them that the storm had thrown the woman’s belongings around, too. There was a chance that Grace could be tracking something that had belonged to Alice’s mother. Something that simply had her scent on it along with some blood.

She led them between rescue vehicles and through groups of first responders. Most hardly noticed them. Creed glanced over his shoulder. They were cutting a diagonal line that already crossed two streets. They came around a debris pile almost two-stories high, and now, Creed could see where Grace was taking them. Jason and Scout were already there with a team of firefighters. Grace tugged even harder.

The small park and half a dozen huge live oaks had survived, although all the leaves and some of the bark were stripped away. Under the second tree, Scout jumped at the trunk and peddled the air with his front paws. Then he sat down. Creed could see Jason already pulling out Scout’s rope toy to reward him.

The block of white glistened against the stark black and brown. Cradled in the branches above was a bathtub.

Creed stopped and turned around. He put a hand up to stop Deputy Huston and Alice.

“Hold on a minute,” he told them. To Grace, he said, “Good girl.” She was already staring up at him, waiting. His fingers fumbled with his daypack’s zipper. He found the pink elephant and handed it to Grace. Pleased, she took it in her mouth and made it squeal, again and again.

“I don’t understand,” Alice said.

“Where did your mother usually take shelter?” Creed asked.

“Very few of us have basements. Bud and I have a closet under the steps. Mom usually goes to the bathroom and gets—” She stopped and her eyes flicked over his shoulder and up at the tree. “No. It can’t be.”

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They let the firefighters do their job. They were supposed to wait for a fire truck to maneuver its way through the downed power lines. There was no secure way to climb up and look inside the bathtub without a ladder. And yet, the men were already tossing a rope over one of the few branches that wasn’t bearing the weight of the bathtub.

The youngest of the firefighters was stripping out of his gear, tossing off anything and everything that might obstruct his climb.

To Creed, he asked, “Can your dog tell...”

He stopped himself and checked to see if the family members—by now Bud had joined Alice—were back far enough to not hear him. Deputy Huston had made sure of that.

The firefighter continued, “Can your dogs tell if she’s dead or alive?”

It was complicated. Creed didn’t want to get into a lengthy explanation of how fresh this scene was. Both dogs were trained for search and rescue, but both had also been trained for recovery. There was a distinct difference in the scent of a live person and a decomposing body. But a person who may have died only hours ago?

“No, sorry,” Creed told him.

“But you’re sure someone’s still in there? Isn’t it possible she was inside and is gone, but her scent is still there?”

“I guess anything’s possible,” Creed said. He’d seen stranger things. But he trusted his dogs. “Both dogs believe she’s still there.”

The man simply nodded. To the other firefighters, he said, “Okay, let’s do this.”

He was short and compact. When he grabbed hold of the rope, it quickly became clear why he was chosen. He shinnied up with little effort. In no time, he pulled himself up onto a thick branch adjacent to those cradling the bathtub.