Breaking Creed

37

There was something she wasn’t telling him. It wouldn’t be the first time law enforcement officers had held back information or important details from him, but for some reason Creed expected more from Maggie O’Dell. Yes, they had worked only one case together, but he thought it had been enough for her to know him, to know that she could trust him. And yet, she didn’t trust him.

That was her problem, not his. It became his problem if it endangered his dog. Grace was fine. She was ready to start all over again. So why did he feel anxious, on the verge of anger?

“I don’t get it,” Jason interrupted Creed’s thoughts.

“Get what?”

“She didn’t find what you wanted her to find but you rewarded her. How do you keep her from trailing off and finding some other discarded item?”

“It wasn’t some discarded item. At least not to Grace. She thinks she did find what I asked her to search for because it has the same scent.”

“The same scent?”

Creed glanced over at Maggie. She wasn’t anywhere near denying it.

“Blood. She smelled the blood. I try to reward her for anything she finds with blood on it, or remains. Human blood or remains, that is.”

He was surprised to see Jason’s face pale. He thought he’d made it plain when they found the child’s T-shirt that it had blood on it.

“She can tell human blood from animal blood? Son of a bitch,” he muttered, visibly shaken by the revelation. “I guess I was thinking there was a chance it was just dirt. Or animal blood.”

This time Creed met Maggie’s eyes. He wanted to ask what the hell was going on, but instead he focused his attention on Grace. She was in a hurry. She rushed from side to side, her nose held high, as if the scent she was trying to harvest floated up above.

She already sniffed deeply, quick breaths that in the humidity made Creed nervous. He kept track of the time, not allowing her to go over the twenty-minute work intervals. He made her stop for water, and she patiently obeyed but as soon as he gave the okay, she raced off.

She leaped over fallen branches and started bounding from tree to tree. Once in a while she hesitated at the base of a trunk and stared at the protruding roots. At one tree she pawed the ground, then stood on her hind legs and scratched at the bark. She inhaled and snorted.

Nothing there. And she took off again.

He wondered if finding the T-shirt had thrown her off. Was she expecting to find the new scent — the one she was obviously working — was she expecting it to be buried in the same way?

Creed tried not to react. She could be feeling his anxiety, his anticipation. He checked his tracking monitor. They had gone almost a mile from the house. It was going on two hours since they began. Grace was not the least bit exhausted. If anything, she was overly excited, not even concerned about her reward. She was definitely in a scent zone. They’d have to wait to find out whether it was part of the one they had just found.

He dreaded that it might be the child this time. As awful as it had been discovering those kids on that fishing boat, at least they were alive. It was nothing like finding the dead body of a child.

Oftentimes he’d lose track of the number of bodies — or parts of bodies — he and his dogs had helped find over the course of seven years, but he knew exactly how many of them were children: sixteen. He hoped today he wouldn’t be adding number seventeen.

In the next clearing between trees Creed noticed that the grass looked trampled. Small shrubs were broken, their leaves already turning brown. He stopped at the edge and put up a hand to warn Maggie and Jason to stop, as well. Almost immediately he could smell it — something rancid, as if someone had dumped out a garbage can.

“Something definitely happened here,” Maggie said before he had a chance to point out the disruption in the landscape.

Off to the right, branches had been tossed onto a pile along with other debris. Without getting closer, he could decipher pieces of two-by-fours and a roll of wire mesh. It looked as if someone had been constructing something and left the scraps behind. Then he saw the shovel, its blade half-buried in the ground, the wooden handle teetering sideways. He felt his stomach clench. So here was the torture chamber they were looking for. Or perhaps a grave.

But none of this interested Grace.

Creed turned around to find her pawing at another tree. This time she stood on her hind legs, her front legs pedaling the air and her head thrown back, as if she were trying to see up into the branches. He’d never seen her work a scent like this. It looked like she was trying to capture it floating above her.

And then it occurred to him just as she finally sat back on her haunches and turned toward him, finding his eyes and giving her alert.

Maggie and Jason only now noticed as Creed walked the short distance to the trunk of the tree. He didn’t see it until he was standing directly underneath. The woman’s eyes stared down at him, her long black hair tangled in the branches. Her body was snagged in the upper V, hidden from view by the leaves and the mass of kudzu that engulfed the tree.

He felt Maggie and Jason come up beside him. There were no gasps from either of them. Only a “son of a bitch” from Jason and a resigned sigh from Maggie. The sigh almost sounded like regret, as though she was too late.

And then in a calm, casual voice, she said, “I think we just found Mrs. Bagley.”