Sheepdogs: Keeping the Wolves at Bay, Gordon Carroll [howl and other poems .txt] 📗

His eyes narrowed and his jaw flexed. To his credit, he let it pass; took a deep breath and nodded. He didn’t yell or berate her. I liked him for that.

“Related how?” he asked.

“Whoever took your house apart was looking for something very specific. Something that could fit in the spine of a book or be stored on a computer. Could be a name, an address, a code, maybe a bank account. Whatever it is, I think Shane knows. So either Shane is on the run from these people, or they took him to get whatever information he has.”

The two of them looked at each other, then back at me. Lisa’s face was crumbling; Tom’s pale, but strong.

“We need to find your son, and we need to find him fast.”

9

I know a lot of Lakewood cops from my days back on the force, but the two kids that showed up at the door were strangers. Neither of them looked old enough to shave and both were crisp and shined and gung-ho. With high and tights that would make a Marine D.I. proud.

They couldn’t have been out of training for more than a month.

Lakewood P.D. requires a four-year degree just to get hired. After hearing these two talk, I figured ‘em both for masters at least, maybe even PhDs. I dubbed them Brainiac and Luther, after Superman’s smartest arch enemies.

While Lakewood’s Finest asked all the standard questions of the Franklins, I busied myself by checking the outside perimeter of the house and yard. I found a partial shoe-print in the back where someone stepped off the thin ribbon of sidewalk that led from the side of the house to the back porch, into the flowerbed. The imprint was in fresh dirt and, although only half a foot, bisected from toe to heel, it was picture perfect and would make a great cast. It was a size twelve and looked to be a dress shoe of some sort.

I checked the broken back door, but there was no impression from the kick. The windows were all clear of prints and the grass in the backyard was virgin; absent footprints and alkali trails.

My black Escalade was parked along the street a few houses down from the Franklins; cops never park in front of the house they are going to, it’s an officer safety thing. Like the girl at the deli said, I’m not a real cop anymore, but old habits die hard.

Max lay comfortably in the back seat and looked up at me with a disinterested raising of an eyebrow.

“Don’t be grumpy,” I said. “It’s time to work.” I jerked my head toward the house. Max gave me the eye, then stood and jumped down from the car. I didn’t need to give him the heel command. Max knew what to do.

When we got to the back gate at the side of the house, I gave him the command to search for evidence. If I’d had Pilgrim instead of Max, I would have had to go through the process of putting him in a sit, then stand in front of him and pretend to toss invisible objects out to the side and behind me, and give him the German verbal command to find, which is finden.

Max isn’t big on process, so I just gave him the command.

It took him about three minutes. He went up to the bushes on the side of the house, just after the gate, and lay down. He looked back at me, as if to say, well?

Going over to him, I saw the space between his front paws was empty.

That wasn’t right.

The concept of an evidence search is for the dog to look for anything with fresh human scent on it. Fresh is a relevant term of course. I trained Max to consider four hours as the threshold. Once he found something, he was trained to lay with the object between his front paws. So why wasn’t it there? Could be buried, but the dirt and leaves under the bush looked undisturbed.

I leaned closer. Max looked at me, an action that sent a tingle traipsing up my spine. With Max you could never be sure if he was just bored, or if he was looking for the right spot to kill you with the least expended effort.

Leaves and dirt and a couple of rocks. That was it. Only it wasn’t. I knew Max better than that. I looked higher. Branches, leaves, sticks, buds. Bushy things.

I looked back at Max. He smacked his lips, a sign of annoyance. A deep, rumble sounded from somewhere in his chest. It was low and long, like Lurch used to do on the Adam’s Family when someone said something stupid.

“You’re not being a big help here,” I said.

Max smacked his lips again and pushed himself up to a sitting position. He leaned forward; taking short sniffs with his long snout. The tip of a branch touched his nose and he stopped, swiveling one eye to look back at me. I put my nose right next to his and peered into the clump of bushes. And there it was. A chewed piece of grayish gum.

I turned back to Max. “Well you could have just done that in the first place, Mr. Smarty Pants.” Max smacked his lips and yawned. I pulled a small, plastic zip-lock bag from my pocket; I always keep a few on hand, and used a pen to nudge the little ball into the bag. Technically I had just broken the law, removing evidence from a crime scene. But it’s not like on TV shows where every case gets handled by crime lab CSI techs. Colorado’s fairly advanced in crime detection and a couple of departments, like Denver, Aurora, Jefferson County and Cherokee County have modern facilities with good equipment and personnel. But compared to big cities and counties, like L.A. or New York, or Broward, they just can’t compete. It’s not their fault; they just don’t have the crime or budgets