Page 12 of Fallen Creed

“I’ve been working the city streets too long,” Pakula said without looking at Maggie. “Out here, every single crime is like a ripple in the water.”

Pakula the Poet. His allegories still surprised her, made her smile. They betrayed his gruff exterior. With all the horrible images he’d seen and witnessed in his decades as an Omaha homicide detective, she always expected the jaded skeptic he casually portrayed.

“Actually, her coming here might not be such a bad idea,” Maggie told him.

This time, he glanced over, one eyebrow raised.

“It could save a lot of time if she’s able to identify the body.” She let that sink in before she added, “Or body parts.”

—10—

Grace was restless. She poked her nose out the Jeep’s window.

Creed helped the medical examiner unload and carry her equipment to the edge of the ditch. Both of them were distracted by the scene playing out in the middle of the gravel road. Even from fifty feet away, the argument between Spencer and his wife carried on the breeze.

The woman wore the blue scrubs of a health care professional. She was almost a head shorter than Spencer. Her long hair was swept back and tied in a ponytail. Strands broke free and danced around her face. She constantly swiped at them while shouting up at her husband.

Having family members at the scene of a crime always made Creed uncomfortable. Their emotions couldn’t help but permeate the air. He immediately wondered if that was what made Grace fidgety.

To Grace, death was a pink, squeaky elephant.

In her mind, her alert equaled her reward. It didn’t matter whether the object she alerted to was an SD card, a bag of cocaine, the tripwires to an explosive device or a decomposed body. Dogs didn’t bring emotion to their searches, but they could sense it in the people who surrounded them.

Emotion runs down the leash. Creed’s handlers grew tired of him drilling that phrase into their training sessions, but it was one thing that determined an expert handler. And in the end, a good team. A dog constantly distracted by the handler’s emotions became fidgety and confused. Dogs had an overwhelming urge to please their people. Too much emotion could trigger false alerts.

“It’s not the ruckus,” Lucy Coy said.

“What’s that?” Creed asked. She interrupted his thoughts so completely he did not know what she was talking about.

Lucy tugged on latex gloves and chin-pointed back over Creed’s shoulder toward his Jeep.

“Grace isn’t agitated about their shouting,” she told him. “She’s sniffing in this direction.”

Creed turned, his arms still full of rolled tarps and evidence bags. Lucy was right. Grace’s nose poked out on the opposite side from where Spencer and his wife were arguing.

“Is it possible she’s smelling the contents of the garbage bag?” Even as Lucy asked, they both looked down into the ditch.

“She knew we were finished for the day. But she tends to have a mind of her own.”

“I wonder where she gets that?”

He noticed a slight smile and took advantage of it when he asked, “Do you mind if I see if she’s alerting to the bag?”

Lucy stepped into the tall grass, moving her gloved hands to separate the blades and get a better look at the ground. Creed could see the black plastic and white fabric flapping in the breeze. He noticed that the air had already chilled as the sun set. The bag was only about six feet away from them.

“Go ahead and bring her,” Lucy said. “If something else fell out of that bag, she’ll be able to find it in this grass quicker than any of us.”

Carefully, he put everything down and went back to the Jeep. He changed out Grace’s vest, taking the GPS tracking device from one pocket and tucking it into the pocket of the other. Already she wagged, pleased that he understood exactly what she wanted, as if this was what they had planned all along.

“Grace, you are such a smart girl,” he told her.

She licked his chin as he prepared his daypack again, going through all the familiar motions that Grace expected. By the time he put her on the ground and snapped on the leash, she was nose-punching the air. Her feet shuffled impatiently. She was ready to go. He closed the tailgate, and she looked up at him, head cocked to the side as if she couldn’t believe how slow he was.

“Okay, Grace. Go find.” He used a generic command.

She raced to the ditch, straining at the end of her leash. She didn’t stop when she got to the edge. Instead, she zigzagged down, dragging him along. She raced around Lucy and the equipment on the ground.

“Slow down, Grace,” Creed told her as the tall grass swallowed her whole and threatened to trip him.