Silent Creed (11 page)

C
reed had to take several detours to get to the Hillcrest area. Vance had warned him that some roads and bridges might be ripped up a bit. That proved to be an understatement. Thick layers of fog replaced the rain, making it difficult to see chunks of the road missing until he was practically on top of them. But still, he was glad to be back in the driver’s seat of his own Jeep Grand Cherokee. Even more glad to have Grace sitting in the back watching the road through the space between the front seats, where she could also see and catch her owner’s eye every now and then. The girl was excited to be getting back to work.

He had packed what he needed for himself as well as for Grace. Though Jason had insisted that Hannah hadn’t meant for Grace to work the disaster area, she had still loaded a duffel bag with all of the dog’s gear, including two extra pink squeaky elephant toys that Grace loved as her reward.

Vance had promised they’d do this quietly. He’d have his back if Logan had a problem with it. Creed had to admit he was surprised Logan still hadn’t shown up in Haywood County. So it seemed possible that they might be able to offer this family some help with little attention. Possible until Creed saw a local TV van and camera crew waiting at the curb in front of the two-story house that belonged to the missing woman and her daughter.

He parked around the corner, making sure that the neighbor’s house blocked them from view. He wanted to put Grace’s vest on and slide on his own gear before drawing any attention.

Hannah always told him that publicity was a good thing. Over the summer she had even convinced him that it could help to locate his sister, Brodie. That’s if Brodie was still alive. Creed couldn’t hide the fact that the small possibility of that being true was one of the things that helped him get out of bed each day. But he and Grace had had their fill of publicity over the past months.

Okay, he’d had his fill. Grace was already prancing and wagging in the direction of the TV van. He ignored the camera crew even as they came at him. He ignored the female anchor, too, as she shoved a microphone in his face.

“What exactly will you and your dog be doing to help find Mrs. Hamlet?”

When he didn’t answer and kept walking she continued a barrage of questions.

“She’s been gone for almost forty hours. Is this a cadaver dog? Does that mean you think she might be dead?”

He saw Vance in a group on the front lawn. When he noticed Creed and Grace he hurried up the sidewalk.

“Your dog seems so small,” the anchor said, still walking in front of him. Creed was trying to be polite and not shove her or the cameraman out of his way. “Will you be bringing in other dogs?”

“Folks, please let the man and his dog through so they can get to work.” Vance stepped between Creed and the woman, opening his long arms to create a path, but more important, blocking the TV crew.

He led Creed up over the mud-slick lawn. Debris was scattered where the receding floodwaters had left the heavier items, like rocks and branches, pieces of siding, and a few shingles. Already Creed kept an eye on what Grace might step on. Grace was straining at her leash to greet the group that waited and stared at them.

Before Vance even introduced them, Creed had picked out the grieving daughter. The entire group looked exhausted. Clothes wet and mud-stained. Shoulders sagging. But the daughter, Charlene, was in the center. Her short blond hair was windblown, damp strands stuck to her forehead. Her eyes were bloodshot with swollen bags underneath. She was biting at a fingernail as Vance introduced them, and then she absently presented Creed with the same hand to shake.

“We’ve looked everywhere,” she told Creed. “My fear is,” and she stopped as tears began to choke her words. A man standing behind her moved up and squeezed her shoulders. “This is my brother, Lonnie.”

But the man didn’t offer Creed his hand. Instead he eyed him and Grace suspiciously, keeping his hands on Charlene, more protective than comforting.

“I keep imagining that she’s hurt,” Charlene continued. “That she’s stuck under some branches. She’s just a little bitty thing. Barely a hundred pounds.” She dragged a sleeve over her runny nose. The fingernail found its way between her teeth again.

“I need to ask a few questions,” Creed told her, waiting for her eyes to quit flickering to Grace, then to her friends and her brother. They darted back to the woods that started at the edge of the cul-de-sac.

“Miss Hamlet?”

Finally she looked at him and offered a hint of a smile as she said, “Call me Charlene.”

“Charlene, how advanced is your mother’s dementia? Are we talking Alzheimer’s?”

“Early stages. She gets confused very easily. Can’t remember things. She doesn’t recognize anyone except me.” She looked down at her finger. It was bleeding now. “Some days I’m not sure she even recognizes me or if she’s just pretending to.”

“What does she do when she’s confused?”

Charlene had to think about this and her nose scrunched up as she did. “Sometimes she sits down. Other times she paces, almost like she’s looking for the correct answer.”

“Does she ever go outside the house alone?”

“No, never.” She shook her head to ward off more tears. “She was probably worried about me. I tried calling, but sometimes she doesn’t remember what the phone is.” She looked back at her brother as if she needed to convince him. “Sometimes she doesn’t know where the ringing is coming from. You know how hard of hearing she is.” Her eyes trailed back to the woods. “I don’t know if she can even hear us calling for her.”

Grace sat patiently at Creed’s feet. He glanced down to find her looking at Charlene Hamlet, tilting her head from side to side, ears pitched forward, listening as though she were taking in all the information, too. She would definitely be focused on the woman’s emotional state.

He’d already explained to Vance that Grace was an air-scent dog. She found dead people by the particular smells of decomposition that every human being gives off after death. She was also trained in rescue, just like Bolo. Live humans emitted particles of scent, millions that go airborne and are carried by the wind or get caught on items in the environment.

Most lost or trapped people ended up in remote areas where there were no other people, so it didn’t matter whether Grace could distinguish one person’s individual scent from another. She was trained to simply find human scent. But in this case there had been dozens of people roaming through the woods already looking for Mrs. Hamlet. They would have left human scent everywhere. And unlike trailing dogs or tracking dogs, Grace had never been trained specifically to take in an individual’s scent off a personal item and then go find that same person.

However, she was trained for scent discrimination. That’s how she had become a celebrity over the summer when she was able to track down illegal drugs hidden in anything from jars of peanut butter to a drug mule’s stomach. And recently Creed had been working with her to recognize the scents of different illnesses, including viruses and cancer.

Still, he warned Vance that he wasn’t sure she’d be able to do what they were asking here. In order to specifically find Mrs. Hamlet, Grace would need to know definitively what the woman smelled like, independent of everyone else around her, and then understand that she needed to go find that scent despite the downpours, fog, and wind that could have taken Mrs. Hamlet’s scent far away from where the woman ended up.

When he glanced back at Charlene she was staring at him. So was the rest of the group, waiting, expecting, hoping.

“Is your mother right- or left-handed?”

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” Lonnie asked.

Charlene looked back and forth between the two men.

“When a person’s lost”—Creed kept his tone calm—“they tend to move in the same direction of whichever hand is dominant. Right-handed people usually go to the right. Left-handed to the left.”

“Even if they don’t know their right from their left?” Lonnie questioned him, and Creed could tell the man had already decided this was a waste of time.

“It’s an involuntary reaction, so memory or thought doesn’t necessarily affect it. Because they’re always going in the same direction, sometimes they end up going in circles.”

“She’s right-handed,” Charlene said.

Everyone continued to stare at Creed, periodically looking down at Grace or glancing at Lonnie. Creed was used to it. People were either skeptical, like Lonnie, or they expected to see a magic act and were waiting for it to begin.

“I’ll need to take Grace inside your house. Is there a chair or perhaps even your mother’s bed that hasn’t been disturbed since she was last in it?”

“Sure thing.”

Charlene started to walk toward the house, but Creed reached out and stopped her.

“I’m sorry, but you won’t be able to go with us.”

“What the hell?” Lonnie asked again, and this time he stepped in front of his sister, as if challenging Creed.

Now Creed could feel the others’ suspicions, too. Even Vance shot him a look.

He tried to explain to Charlene. “I’m afraid if you come with us, it’ll confuse her. You live in the house, too. Your scent is all over the place. I need Grace to be focused on your mother’s scent only.”

“Right,” Lonnie said. “How do we know to trust this guy?”

“Lonnie!” Charlene’s cheeks flushed. “Mr. Creed is here because I asked Mr. Vance to bring him here.” To Creed she said, “I am so sorry.”

“I can’t promise this is going to work,” Creed told her. “But Grace has made some amazing finds.”

Charlene looked down at the Jack Russell as if seeing her for the first time. She squatted down and offered Grace her hand, then petted her.

When she stood back up she said, “The recliner in the living room is Mother’s. The quilt that she uses to cover her legs is still bunched up in the seat. Upstairs, her bedroom is the first on the right.”

He nodded, then called to Grace. The entire distance to the front door he could feel their eyes on him. Grace pranced beside him, happy to find a couple of puddles to splash through.

Creed’s head began to throb and his chest ached, reminding him of his tumble not even twenty-four hours earlier. He hated when families were on-site. Fifty percent of the time he would disappoint them. He hoped this wasn’t one of those times.

T
his is a totally inappropriate process for recovering a body,” Dr. Gunther scolded the four guardsmen who stood towering over her, heads bowed though they had no control over those details.

O’Dell was impressed and mildly amused that this small woman—the word “elfish” came to mind—could reduce these lean, tough soldiers with the command of her voice and her presence, despite her lack of physical stature.

“Even if Mr. Creed’s dog alerts to the exact spot,” Dr. Gunther continued, “how are Agent O’Dell and I supposed to retrieve the remains? Surely we’re not expected to wade into those floodwaters and fish them out?”

O’Dell was thinking the same thing and could only imagine the force of the water knocking both of them off their feet. Although she had helped recover bodies from stranger places. This landscape reminded her of a past crime scene with dissected bodies stuffed into fifty-five-gallon drums, then buried in a rock quarry.

There were no manuals that dictated recovery instructions for many of the scenes she had helped process, so Dr. Gunther’s complaint about “inappropriate” seemed a bit silly to O’Dell. But she also knew that coroners and medical examiners were oftentimes precise and detail-minded, with more experience in the laboratory than in the field.

“We were instructed to secure and assist,” Ross defended his team.

“Of course you were.” The woman’s irritation bit through her stoic demeanor.

She glanced up at O’Dell. “Well, Mr. Logan’s boss told me that
you
are in charge of this recovery operation. How would you suggest we proceed?”

O’Dell looked out over the rushing water. In several areas it had carved deep crevices in the mud. Downhill it widened and she could see debris riding on the surface. Branches tangled with electrical wire passed by.

Uphill it was impossible to determine where the stream began. The fog was too thick. But one thing she knew for sure—it didn’t look like it would be slowing down to a trickle anytime soon. As if to emphasize that fact she heard a low rumble of thunder in the distance. She could feel Dr. Gunther staring at her. The guardsmen waited patiently for her reply and instruction.

“We’ll wait for Mr. Creed and his dog. If they can give us a smaller area to search, we’ll still need to stop the water or divert it.” She sought out Ross’s attention. “There must be some sort of equipment you have available that can send the water in a bit of a detour?”

He held up his cell phone and said, “I can check.”

“Yes, do that, please.” Then to Dr. Gunther, O’Dell pointed at the tent and said, “Let’s take a look at the remains that are not underwater.”

The older woman nodded and started a slow limp in that direction. Ross finished his text and followed. O’Dell fell into step alongside him this time.

“You’ve seen these remains?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Her title is agent,” Dr. Gunther corrected him without turning to look back.

Ross looked to O’Dell and she simply ignored the comment and continued, “What equipment do we have to recover this body?”

“I was told to bring shovels and trowels. We have tarps and several body bags.”

O’Dell heard Dr. Gunther making a
tsk-tsk
sound while she shook her head. Obviously she was not pleased. Again, Ross noticed and his eyes darted back to O’Dell, looking for instruction or absolution. She wasn’t quite sure which.

O’Dell ignored the woman’s reaction a second time and simply trudged through the mud. She had brought her own backpack with items she’d anticipated needing, including a digital camera, rubber gloves, and evidence bags. She imagined Dr. Gunther’s satchel held whatever she expected she’d need.

All four sides of the tent were screened in. Ross unzipped the door and held the flap open for the two women. The floor was uneven ground—or rather tamped-down mud—but other than removing the bigger pieces of debris, O’Dell imagined the rescue crew had left the scene the way they’d found it. The guardsmen had pitched the tent as carefully as possible so as not to disturb what was covered by a tarp in the center of the area.

Dirty water pooled between creases in the black plastic. Underneath, O’Dell could see additional pools. The body and tarp had been left in the rain until the tent could be set up.

O’Dell shrugged out of her backpack, found her digital camera, and took a few shots of the scene before they disturbed it. Then she nodded for Ross to remove the tarp.

He lifted the corner, slow and easy, folding it over to let the water run off and away. The pile of dirt underneath looked unremarkable, pocked with rock and gravel. The hole was only a foot in diameter. Even with the screened walls it was difficult to see because of the thick fog and cloud cover. Dr. Gunther pulled a flashlight from her satchel and turned it on. As Ross uncovered the hole, she shot a stream of light into the shallow depths.

She stopped at the blue-gray skin washed clean by the rain before the rescue crew had covered it. At first glance O’Dell didn’t recognize that it was part of a face until the light flicked over the chin, lips, and then an eye looking straight up at them.

“Oh, my good Lord,” the woman said, taking a step back so quickly she almost stumbled.

O’Dell reached out to help steady her, but Dr. Gunther waved her off again. This time she looked embarrassed about her reaction. O’Dell watched her take a deep breath, then step forward. She moved in closer, pointing the beam of light back down the hole. And before she could control it, O’Dell saw her wince.

At that moment all O’Dell could think was that this was not going to be quite as simple as Benjamin Platt had made it sound.