Scent of Murder Page 4

  Junior felt the first stirrings of the urge that compelled him to act. It was unavoidable. Usually it took longer to develop, but this date had not been like any other.

  He knew he wouldn’t be able to sit still during the night.

  4

  Tim Hallett and Darren Mori stood on the edge of the field where, a few hours before, Rocky had made the odd alert on the rag. It was a pretty big leap of faith to just assume the rag was associated with the kidnapper, but this was the kind of shit a good K-9 officer followed up on.

  It had cooled off like most evenings in the fall. This wasn’t the kind of place that tourists visiting Florida saw. And reality TV shows couldn’t convey the mud, mosquitoes, menacing sounds of various predators, and the stark beauty of rural Florida. Hallett recalled a high school creative writing teacher asking him to imagine an evening just like this one. In his youth and ignorance all Hallett called it was “nice.” Now, after living in Belle Glade for a couple of years, he found remote places like this invigorating and calming at the same time. It was awesome in a quiet way. It was the most contradictory place Hallett had ever seen. These miles wedged between Florida’s coasts were a mystery that no one ever really understood.

  With the wide canal at the edge of the field and the pine trees running up to the water, this was a spot he’d bring Rocky and Josh to go kayaking one day soon.

  Crickets in the pine trees chirped, and frogs along the banks of the canal sang their annoying love songs, while the occasional gator croaked a low bass to all the amphibian musical instruments he would eat later.

  The two K-9 officers had cleaned up since the search for Katie Ziegler earlier that afternoon. Now they were just in jeans and T-shirts as Brutus and Rocky explored the woods, chasing rabbits and playing together. It was a way to unwind before Hallett asked Rocky to get down to business.

  This time of the evening, as the sun set and a hazy twilight enveloped them like a fog, was the dogs’ favorite time to run. Especially Brutus. The Golden Retriever never seemed to run out of energy.

  Darren said, “You wanna get this started?”

  “Let’s wait for Claire.”

  “I’m getting hungry. Why should we wait?”

  “Because we’re a team and Claire might have an insight after talking with the victim all afternoon. It wouldn’t hurt to have a little extra info and look for something specific.”

  Darren just nodded as he turned back to the sketchpad lying on the hood of Hallett’s unmarked white Tahoe.

  “Don’t pout, she’ll be here in a few minutes.” He turned to look at the designs and logos for a new Canine Assist Team T-shirt Darren had been drawing for days. Aside from being smarter than just about anyone Hallett had ever met, Darren had some real artistic ability.

  Claire pulled her Tahoe off the shell-rock road and parked next to Hallett’s. After she got out of the vehicle with Smarty on a six-foot lead, she saw the other two dogs bound out of the woods, so she kneeled down to release Smarty to trot over to his friends.

  As she approached her partners she said, “Let me guess, you’re still working on a new logo.”

  Darren smiled and held up his sketchbook. “I like You can run but you can’t hide or Release the hounds.”

  Brutus ran up to Claire, wagging his tail wildly. When she squatted down to pet him she said, “How about Cute dogs finish first.”

  Hallett and Claire started to laugh. Brutus reinforced the slogan by jumping up and licking Claire.

  Darren said, “Et tu, Brutus, et tu?”

  Hallett restrained a smile at the rare moment when Darren let slip how well read he really was.

  Now Darren changed the subject and said, “What are we doing out here in severely fading light? We could be having a burger and a beer at Cooters.”

  Hallett said, “The dogs are rested and fed, and I thought we could just check the area again. Now we have an idea of where to start looking. Fusco rushed us along this afternoon.” He turned to Claire and said, “Did the victim give you any ideas of what to look for?”

  Claire said, “The victim has a name. It’s Katie. All she really remembers is that the guy was heavy and he had a black pistol. She’s not even sure where she ran from him. She thought it might be a smaller car just by the way the interior felt, but she never got a good look at it.”

  Darren said, “So we’re doing all this based on a rag?”

  “Why not? We got nothing else.”

  Darren shrugged, and they all got the dogs ready to search the area. To the dogs it was just another game, and this time their human partners were joining in. Each of the dogs was secured on a six-foot lead and started spiraling out in a concentric circle.

  Hallett was still learning all of Rocky’s capabilities. Any decent K-9 officer knew there was always something to learn, about the dog and about himself. Hallett was careful not to focus his SureFire flashlight in front of Rocky. That might inadvertently lead Rocky in its direction. Hallett felt a burning desire to find something they could use, but he didn’t want his desires to override good police work. He hoped he was doing all this for the right reason, which was to stop this asshole and make Katie Ziegler feel safe. Not just to show up Fusco.

  But that would definitely be a perk.

  * * *

  Junior’s efforts to satisfy his desires by searching the Internet for his next target had proven futile. He could no longer sit in front of the computer. He could no longer concentrate. All he thought about was Katie Ziegler and how he’d handled the whole incident. Not just letting the girl run on him, but how close he had come to being discovered and losing the rag out in the field. Normally he kept a rag or two with him in case the girls needed to be gagged or he started to sweat. He realized there was nothing to worry about; it just bothered him that he had made any mistakes at all.

  Ultimately, that’s what drove him to leave the house in his father’s car. There was something inside him that made him avoid using his own vehicle for anything related to this part of his life. Besides, the old man didn’t need it. It was just taking up space in his driveway.

  He lived a compartmentalized existence. Sometimes this compartment and work overlapped. It was just a bonus. But he recognized he could never let anyone, not even his brother, know about this part of his life. The secret desires and drives. Occasionally, he even felt revulsion when he saw news stories on sex offenders in court. The further he stepped back from his actions, the more unnerving they became.

  These were simply private moments he shared with these girls. Under the best circumstances they would be too ashamed to share these moments with anyone else. Or at least, as in the past, by the time they shared them, it was too late. Maybe that’s what had made him overconfident and sloppy.

  If he really wanted to do all he could to cover his tracks, then the idea of the rag he’d lost in the woods and the fact that Katie Ziegler had gotten away from him compelled him to take action. The urge was just too strong. It pushed him out the door into the twilight. His father’s well-maintained Oldsmobile hadn’t been driven in a while but cranked right up.

  Junior’s brain hurt as he considered his options and tried to decide what would satisfy this nagging drive.

  Anything was better than just sitting still.

  * * *

  Hallett took the time to study each dog on almost every assignment. He learned something from watching the dogs work as well as watching how the dog handlers worked. These three dogs were as different as the deputies who worked with them. In a way, the K-9 and human on each team had similar personalities. Hallett didn’t think it could be a coincidence.

  Brutus had two speeds, play and all-out romp. Just like a lot of other Golden Retrievers, he didn’t have a mean bone in his body and needed to be in almost constant motion. Darren Mori had that same active gene.

  Smarty, like his handler, was serious. If any dog could be called serious. He also tended to keep to himself. He and Rocky had a special friendship. Sort of a dog romance. The
y respected each other, but the Shepherd was clearly the badass, bigger brother.

  Rocky had a freewheeling side, but, like many other Belgian Malinois, once he set his mind to a task he never backed down. It struck Hallett that he’d been described in much the same way. One of his early evaluations at the sheriff’s office said, “Has potential, if he just learns to let things go occasionally.”

  It was a curse. Once he got stuck on something, everything else fell to the side. He tried to get past it—God, he had tried—but the right case, the interesting assignment, just consumed him. And it cost him. Cost him more than he could ever calculate.

  The first thing that always popped into his head when he started to think about things like this was his relationship with Crystal. He’d had something special with her, and there was no one but himself to blame for why he now lived alone in the trailer behind the Christian school in Belle Glade.

  Maybe his family wouldn’t be so weird if he was around more. His mom, brother, and sister all went weeks without seeing him, but he was at least trying to do better with them. Even if his brother drove both him and Rocky to distraction. Rocky couldn’t be in the same room with his stoner brother without alerting on him every ten minutes.

  Now, in the field, each of the dogs had staked out his own area in his own style. Brutus kind of looked around, making a game out of sniffing even if he wasn’t sure what to seek.

  Smarty walked the perimeter like a guard at a prison making sure everyone was safe and occasionally checking for a scent.

  Rocky was just determined. He’d detected a scent earlier, and something told Hallett the dog knew what he was looking for. Rocky showed no interest in a rabbit he flushed from a bush, or a dead bird lying across his path. He had his nose just off the ground and seemed to sense the urgency Hallett felt.

  * * *

  The sedan bounced and rumbled over the uneven, unpaved shell-rock road, giving Junior a headache.

  “God damn, it can get dark out here,” he muttered. There were no streetlights on either side of the road. There wasn’t even a streetlight in sight. Just the sinking rays of sunlight behind some clouds far to the west. The early evening seemed even darker with a thick clump of scrub pines and underbrush on the right side of the road.

  His annoyance and irritability were trumped by his urge. Or possibly caused by it. He lost all common sense when these moods came on him. He’d learned a long time ago not to fight them anymore. But this was the first time he had gone with the feeling so decisively. Maybe he was evolving.

  Junior realized he’d been lucky with the first two girls before today. They had gone smoothly. Maybe they had made him overconfident. He missed that feeling of competence. He needed it in at least one compartment of his life.

  It didn’t matter. Whatever the weird origin of his urge, he was doing something about it now. Junior slowed and shut off the headlights. He could barely see the white shell-rock road in front of him.

  5

  Hallett paused, still keeping the beam of his flashlight pointed in front of Rocky. It was always a concern that a police service dog would read or be influenced by subtle, inadvertent clues from the handler. In training, Ruben Vasquez went to great lengths to keep the handler in the dark as to where practice drug bundles were hidden so the dog had to find them on his own. Now Hallett wondered if he was violating that dog handler commandment by shining his light in front of Rocky, in effect leading him where Hallett thought might be the best place to look.

  Rocky hesitated, and Hallett waited patiently, not wanting to rush him.

  Darren and Brutus walked over, but Hallett raised his hand to give Rocky a moment more. Then the dog leaned down, put his paw over his nose, and made the same funky lawn mower sound.

  Darren asked, “What is it?”

  “Not sure. But you heard that abnormal alert, too. Just like this afternoon.”

  “It didn’t sound like any alert I ever heard or saw before.”

  Hallett stepped back and spread his beam over the soft, muddy ground just off the packed white shell-rock road between the fields and the pine windbreaks. He was missing something.

  Claire and Smarty walked over, but they stopped well outside the perimeter of where Rocky was alerting. She didn’t want to contaminate their potential crime scene. She called out, “Any idea what we’re looking for?”

  Hallett shook his head. “I don’t see anything in the area. Not even a branch or leaf.”

  Claire said, “Maybe it’s not something we can see on top of the ground.”

  Hallett said, “Rocky would start digging if it was buried.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about. Maybe it’s just a strong scent.” Claire carefully walked around to Hallett. She surveyed the scene like a movie director, changing position and squatting low to look along the plane of the ground. Finally, she said, “I see three things of interest. It looks like a tire tread right here”—she placed the beam of her flashlight on a patch of ground—”a shoe print here, and the ground has been disturbed over here.”

  Now that she pointed them out to him, Hallett noticed all three disturbances in the soft ground. He pulled out his phone and snapped a few photographs. “You think we should call crime scene? Fusco was in charge earlier, but I didn’t see them take any notice of these imprints.”

  Claire let out an exasperated sigh. “We’re supposed to be trained and adaptable. We don’t need crime scene just to take a few photographs and make a plaster cast of a shoe that may or may not involve the case.”

  Now Darren said, “You can make plaster casts?”

  Claire just shook her head and walked over to her Tahoe. A few minutes later she came back carrying a plastic box with the material needed to make a cast of the imprint.

  As she mixed and poured the plaster, Claire said, “There’s not enough of the other two imprints to make a cast. But I would guess the tire is small enough that it went to an import. The other imprint might be someone’s butt where they slipped and fell.”

  Darren had to say, “That’s a pretty big butt.”

  Claire snapped a few photos as the plaster dried.

  All three of them froze at an unusual sound on the quiet night air.

  Darren said, “You hear that?”

  It was a vehicle.

  * * *

  Junior took his foot off the gas and allowed the Olds to coast as he edged it toward a small stand of pine trees. There was someone on the edge of the road up ahead. He couldn’t make out any details, but he could see the shadow, and it threw off his plan.

  He’d thought he’d be able to creep in unseen and do what he had to do. He had to creep in unseen for the plan to work. As his eyes adjusted to the light he could make out that the figure was a man.

  Junior patted the Beretta in his belt. Was he ready to get drastic? The urge told him it might be time to take a few risks.

  * * *

  Hallett did a quick assessment of his team. None of them wore a uniform, but each of them had a pistol concealed under a loose shirt. He was considering all the factors for the worst-case scenario. Every good cop thought in those terms.

  Claire stepped toward him and said, “Who the hell would be in this place at this time?”

  It was now completely dark, and the absence of any city’s ambient light made it feel like they were in a cave. The closest building was miles away. All three shut off their flashlights immediately.

  Hallett felt responsible for his partner’s safety. He always did. Even as a kid, he looked after his brother, no matter how infuriating he was. The only fights he had been in were defending his brother’s odd behavior. Now his instinct was to send his friends to safety, but he had to understand that they were trained professional police officers and equal to any of the challenges that they ran up against. There was no telling who was in this vehicle, and he definitely needed the help.

  Darren said, “A fisherman?”

  Claire said what everyone was thinking. “The kidnapper? Wha
t are the chances?”

  Hallett calculated the odds. It would be weird, but possible. Crazy things happened on this damn job every day. He tensed as all three of them backed to the edge of the woods and watched the vehicle as it slowed, then turned toward the canal at the far end of the field.

  Now Hallett could clearly tell the vehicle was a pickup truck. It looked like a four-door Ram Charger. The truck drove along the edge of the far stand of pines to the bank of the canal. Although it was an isolated spot just to fish, that seemed like the easiest explanation.

  The front passenger door and the rear doors opened simultaneously as three men stumbled out. All three were loud and drunk. One man wobbled like a broken toy, and Hallett figured they were just drunk rednecks. The driver, a kid, about seventeen, stepped out of the driver’s door.

  Hallett’s hope that this was the kidnapper evaporated.

  Darren whispered, “Why the hell would you drive all the way out here to fish?”

  Claire added, “I thought they might be dopers, but I haven’t heard any planes, and there are no airstrips in the area.”

  Then they heard two small dogs yapping. That caught the attention of Rocky, Smarty, and Brutus.

  Hallett immediately realized what these assholes were up to. By the light of the open door, he could see two poodles on homemade rope leashes sitting in the rear seat. Hallett thought, Son of a bitch. I’ll make them sorry. He was all about justice no matter how it was handed out or who dealt it. He turned to his partners and whispered, “Gator poachers.”

  Claire muttered, “Assholes.”

  * * *

  Now that his eyes had adjusted to the dark and there was light coming from the double-wide trailer’s living room window, Junior clearly saw the thickset man leaning on the mailbox with a Confederate flag painted on it. He was smoking a cigarette. And he hadn’t noticed Junior.

  The trailer was on a permanent cement pad forty feet off the road and marked the beginning of the park that held twenty double-wides. Junior could see from the light that the front yard was sprinkled with old, cracked kids’ toys, and a satellite TV dish dangled from the side of the trailer.