Bloodless

21

Standing in the muck, Commander Alanna Delaplane slapped at a mosquito and cursed under her breath. The dog handler, Boris Strawbridge, was moving ahead of her, his boots squishing along the riverbank as he forced his way through the thick vegetation. Twist, the giant bloodhound he had brought, had the longest tongue Delaplane had ever seen on a dog. The powerful animal’s leash was clipped to a belt around Strawbridge’s waist to keep his hands free for pushing aside vegetation. Behind, she could hear the distant rush of traffic as it crossed the river on the Victory Drive Bridge, but the trees and bushes were so thick she couldn’t see the span. Where they were — along the marshy shores of Sylvan Island — might as well be the damn Amazon jungle for all its impenetrable thickness and whining bugs. The big bloodhound was snuffling about listlessly, more interested in trash that had washed up than any scent connected with the Ellerby homicide.

The body had to have entered the river somewhere, and while it might have been thrown off the nearby bridge, that seemed unlikely, as the roadway carried Interstate 80 traffic and was almost continuously traveled day and night. Dumping the body would have involved hoisting it over a tall cement guardrail, across a breakdown lane, and over a wall: too much time, too many opportunities to be seen. Delaplane figured the body had been dragged down to the river and left there, and judging from where it was found, it might have been anywhere along this stretch of shore. She wondered how the dog could smell anything above the stench of swamp gas and mud coming up from the river, but Strawbridge hadn’t seemed to think it was a problem.

Strawbridge abruptly shouted and tried to haul the dog away from something, and Delaplane could see it had gotten into a McDonald’s bag full of rotting french fries and a half-eaten burger.

“No, no, Twist! Drop it!” Strawbridge yanked on his leash while the dog strained to slop more of the disgusting mess into his mouth. Strawbridge reached over and pulled away the bag, only to have the burger spill out of it, along with a mass of writhing maggots.

“Keep that damn dog moving,” said Delaplane.

This was looking more and more like a wasted idea. They had already been down the cemetery side of the river, with no luck, and were approaching the place where the body had originally been found. If they didn’t pick up a scent here, there was no point in going farther, because bodies didn’t float upstream.

Maybe the dog was no good. In the square, the same dog hadn’t even been able to track the route of Ellerby’s corpse from the spot he was killed — based on where they’d found his finger and bit of scalp — to the nearest street. She supposed the body might have been carried by two people, and thus not left a scent. That itself was a valuable piece of information.

“Find!” commanded Strawbridge yet again, kicking away the maggoty burger and waving the scent object from Ellerby at the dog’s nose. Ahead the woods gave way to a small grassy marsh with a mud bank. At the far end was where the body had been found by some boaters. That was their stopping point. And thank God, because beyond the little salt marsh rose a junglelike wall of green worse than anything they had gone through so far.

“We’ll turn around just before those woods,” she said to Sheldrake, who was bringing up the rear.

“Can’t be soon enough for me,” replied Sheldrake, smacking a bug. She could already see some ugly red welts on his face and neck.

They emerged from the trees into the marsh, the grass about waist high. A breeze sprang up, sweeping the bugs away and providing some welcome relief from the stifling humidity. And now, finally, Twist latched onto a scent. It was remarkable how finding the trail changed the dog’s entire demeanor; how this ungainly, clumsy animal was suddenly focused, straining at the leash, nose to the ground, eyes keen.

“Got a scent,” said Strawbridge, pointing out the obvious.

“Good, good,” Delaplane told him. This was more like it.

Now Twist was really straining at the leash, pulling Strawbridge along with him. Strawbridge was a small man and Twist a very big dog, so it made a ridiculous sight.

They moved quickly through the grasses, the breeze continuing to pick up. She could hear Sheldrake, an infamous cannoli eater, wheezing as he jogged behind her, trying to keep up. For the first time, Twist issued a deep baying cry, then another, the mournful sound echoing across the river.

“He really has something!” said Strawbridge breathlessly as he was dragged along by his own belt.

They came around the far side, skirting an indentation in the riverbank. A few hundred yards ahead, Delaplane could see the muddy embankment where crime scene investigators had flagged the body’s location.

The dog was now bounding forward in his eagerness, jerking Strawbridge like a marionette with each lunge. “Easy, Twist!” the handler said, but the dog paid no attention and bayed again: a long, powerful sound from deep within his chest.

“Twist! Heel! Heel!” Strawbridge grabbed the leash with both hands and pulled. But the dog was clearly in full chase mode, and it was almost comical to see Strawbridge stumbling along behind him, shouting and trying to keep up.

“Bad dog! Heel! What the hell’s wrong with you?”

Twist was frantic, baying loudly, slobber flying from his mouth, his footlong tongue swinging with each bark, straining and lunging — pulling Strawbridge toward the dense wall of vegetation just beyond where the body had been found.

“Come! Sit!”

No command worked — and a moment later, what Delaplane feared would happen indeed happened. Strawbridge lost his footing and fell in the tall grass, but still the dog struggled forward, dragging him along. Grabbing the leash in both hands once again, Strawbridge unclipped it from his belt and the dog took off like a shot toward the line of trees.

“Damn him,” Strawbridge spluttered, standing up and brushing himself off as the dog bounded away, baying like mad. “He’s never done that before.”

A moment later Twist dove into the bushes and then vanished into the woods, his baying becoming muffled.

“What now?” asked Delaplane, glancing back at Sheldrake huffing and puffing his way through the grass behind them.

“We follow. I think he’s due for a little refresher training, frankly.”

“I’ll say.” Delaplane could still hear the baying, fainter now, but at a higher pitch.

Strawbridge listened for a moment as the barking reached a hysterical timbre. “He’s definitely found something.”

They started walking and, as they did so, the baying abruptly stopped. Strawbridge paused to listen.

“Why the silence?”

Strawbridge shook his head. “I don’t know.”

A few more minutes of trudging through marsh grass brought them to the edge of the forest. Pushing through a screen of bushes, they entered a dense thicket, light filtering down, the heat suddenly rising along with the insects. Strawbridge took a moment to grab his cell phone.

“Think he’ll pick up?” Delaplane asked, irritated.

“Twist has a GPS unit on his collar. This just tells me where he is.” He fiddled with some app on the phone, then set off: naturally, toward the densest part of the forest.

“This way,” he said.

“I could sure use someone with a machete,” said Delaplane, pushing through a mass of palmettos. Sheldrake’s only comment was a muttered curse.

The forest was totally silent. Not even the birds were singing. Strangely, after a few minutes even the insects seemed to vanish as the palmettos gave way to a forest of live oaks, so ancient and draped in moss it was like walking through curtains.

A good ten minutes of struggle and then Delaplane could see, ahead, a shaft of sunlight penetrating the green gloom — a clearing. Strawbridge hastened his pace. “Twist!” he called, still glancing frequently at his phone. “Funny, it shows he’s right up ahead. Twist! Here, boy!”

Pushing aside an especially thick screen of moss, they stumbled abruptly out into a small, sandy clearing. Delaplane halted. There was something lying in the sun, almost at their feet. It took her a moment to recognize what it was: the dog’s head and long tongue.

The rest of it lay about twenty feet away, connected by a long coil of viscera from which a single french fry — rotten and undigested — could be seen protruding.