Twenty-Seven Bones

Chapter Six
1

The murder scene-Bendt had breathed his last on the sheep truck on the way to the hospital, without regaining consciousness-was as compromised as an old hooker by the time Pender and Coffee arrived. After clearing the area around the outhouse building, Coffee gave orders that no one was to leave the Core, then dispatched a uniform for someone named Silent Sam.

Silent Sam, who arrived just before dawn, turned out to be a lanky, knock-kneed bloodhound with doleful, expressive eyes and a mournful countenance even for a bloodhound. According to his owner/handler, Burt Reibach (who was also tall and knock-kneed, but less mournful, and wore a tan Stetson and a tan gabardine zippered jacket and slacks outfit like his fellow Texan Lyndon Johnson used to wear on the ranch), Sam owed his prodigious scenting abilities to the fact that he was a deaf-mute.

They arrived just before dawn. On their way up to the Crapaud, Coffee congratulated Reibach on finding a missing girl in Puerto Rico a few weeks earlier.

“Them P.R. dawgs are purty good with drugs and bombs, but they couldn’t track a skunk crost a railroad trestle,” Reibach grumbled, by way of deflecting the compliment. “Wasn’t nothin’ fer Sam, though.”

“This one might be a challenge even for Sam,” said Julian, when they reached the outhouse. “The scene’s been badly trampled.”

“Cain’t track in a buffalo herd,” agreed Reibach, as Julian led him around the side of the building, where they believed the attack to have taken place.

“See those screens under the eaves?” said Julian. “Those are above the shower stalls on the inside. A woman was inside taking a shower-either the victim or the killer stood on that log to spy on her.” He pointed to a fat log resting against the base of the wall; there were drag marks in the dirt-it wasn’t hard to figure out how or why it had gotten there. “Maybe the victim came upon the killer, maybe vice versa. The bloodstains over there”-he nodded toward the brownish spatter marks at the base of the wall, three feet beyond the log-“show the victim was already on the ground when he was attacked with what we believe to be a machete.

“After the attack, the victim regained consciousness and staggered into the building-you can see the blood trail. The question for Sam, of course, is which way did the killer go?”

“Lessee if we cain’t answer your other question first, about which one was the peeper.” Reibach unclipped Sam’s lead from his collar, pointed to the log, then gave him a hand signal. Sam sniffed the log, then trotted, nose down and snuffling, back around the side of the building to the door, where he turned and gave his owner a baleful stare, as if to say, now give me a hard one.

“Okay, that’s your victim standin’ on the log, then goin’ inside. But the only way we’re gonna isolate the killer’s trail among all these others is if he was lyin’ in wait. I’m gonna ask Sam to fan out, tell us where he finds the strongest scent, where somebody’s been hangin’ around the longest.”

More hand signals; the dog began loping back and forth along the path, then ducked into the underbrush on the high side of the trail. The men followed, found Silent Sam standing at the edge of a trampled patch of ground, his head raised and his lower jaw, jowls, and chest quivering-he looked as if he were trying to balance an invisible ball on the end of his nose while having an epileptic seizure.

“He thinks he’s baying,” Reibach explained. “Somebody was here, and for a while. Lessee where he went.” Another hand signal. Sam loped out to the trail, straight back to the log, then raised his head again, sniffed the air, and took off back down the path toward the clearing. He waited for the others to catch up, then zigzagged diagonally across the clearing, toward the misty, dawn-gray forest.

“Why he zigzag so, mon?” called Detective Hamilton, bringing up the rear as Coffee and Pender followed Sam and Reibach into the woods.

“Bloodhound on the trail is picking up scent particles down to the mo-lecular level,” Reibach called over his shoulder. “Molecules drift from side to side on the wind, he tracks from side to side.”

They caught up with Reibach just as Silent Sam veered through the undergrowth to the left, snuffling head down. A moment later he came loping back, shaking his heavy head furiously from side to side, jowls and saliva flying, as if he’d been skunked, or gotten a faceful of porcupine quills. Only there were no skunks or porcupines on St. Luke.

“Son of a bitch,” yelled Reibach. He scooped the huge dog into his arms and stood up, staggering from the weight of the load. “Help me get him under one of those showers, quick.”

“What happened?” asked Pender.

“Son of a bitch run him into a manchineel tree.”