Nothing To Sniff At (Animal Instincts Book 5) (4 page)

I woke the next morning to a phone call. I rolled over but it was barely 6am. Brate was on the line, and he was talking so fast that I had trouble understanding him. I had to ask him twice to slow down before I could comprehend what he was saying.

“Barkley’s been returned,” he said at a slower pace. “The other one spent the night at the station. Barkley did that once in a while, but I didn’t really feel right having an unknown dog in my home. When I got in today, Barkley was back to being himself.” He sighed loud enough for me to hear it on the other end.

“That’s great,” I said. I was confused and rattled from sleep. My brain needed a minute to process all of the new information.

I tried to take it in. Then I began to tell him my story of how I’d tracked Barkley down and found him at the house in Onyx. He asked a few questions about it, but I didn’t have much to add.

Of course, not being a professional detective and not thinking that the thieves would return the dog before I could talk to Brate, I had no photos or other evidence to back up my claims. All he had for the trouble was a name and address of someone who would not be approached about the incident now that it was over. Brate didn’t want to make trouble or have anyone ask any questions about the events, so he wouldn’t look into it further. Doing so would highlight the fact that he’d been negligent about his treatment of the police dog.

Brate asked for a meeting. I hoped it wasn’t a discussion to ask for his money back. My plan was for Barkley to tell me that he’d seen me at the house yesterday in Onyx. While that didn’t constitute proof in a court of law, it would back up my story and allow Brate to see that I’d earned my money.

I managed to get a cup of coffee and wash my face before I met Brate at the Port Clinton police station. The small building was quiet at this time of morning, which is likely why Brate wanted to meet now.

He was standing near the door with Barkley waiting for me. I nodded, and we went inside.

“As I told you, I put Barkley, or rather fake Barkley, in his crate last night. When I got in this morning, the real one was in his place.”

I didn’t even need to tell Brate my story. Barkley licked my face and hands when I bent down to greet him. It was obvious that we’d met before, and that he was happy to see me again. He jumped up on me and barked several times. This was not a quiet reunion by any means. I tried to quiet him down, but Barkley was having none of it. He barked a few more times before he stopped.

Two guys from the station walked by. The first was a younger guy, probably fresh out of school and looking to make his name. He stopped by, threw Barkley a treat, and walked on without talking to us. I could see that Brate was visibly relieved not to have to explain to the officer who I was. Apparently I was on the same level as mediums and unreliable CIs in his book.

The second man was more talkative. He was an older gent, carrying a large cup of coffee that I coveted with all my brain cells. He laughed as he saw the dog and threw it a treat as well. “Barkley, old buddy. I haven’t seen you in a few days.” The officer did not know how right he was.

The man made a few more comments, mostly to the dog and none to Brate or me. Then he moved on. It was apparent that the dog was well loved in the station house, which meant that any of these men could have easily persuaded the dog to get in the car with him. Narrowing down the field of suspects here would be difficult.

After the second officer left, Brate stood. “Let’s go outside and get away from the spectators,” he said. He whistled for Barkley who headed for the door with no leash. I knew of many trainers who managed to get their dogs to walk off-leash, but my Corgis were not among them. My dogs would be likely to run full tilt towards a squirrel or a treat without any care for my commands.

Barkley looked at the cup in Brate’s hand and jumped on his leg to indicate that he wanted some. After jumping for a few seconds, Barkley went silent. He still had his front paws on my legs, but he stopped jumping, and his body went still. He just continued to look up at me expectantly, like I had the answers to his problems.

I looked at Brate. “What’s going on? What’s he doing?”

Brate stared off into the distance, but all that I saw when I turned around were a few cars in the parking lot. “I’m hoping I’m wrong, but that’s Barkley’s stance when he finds something. I think we might have our motive as to why he was taken in the first place. I think he’s found some drugs.”

Brate had no sooner finished speaking when Barkley put all four feet on the ground and trotted off into the parking lot. His bark was loud and demanding, and even without “talking” to the Beagle I knew that we were supposed to follow. Barkley ran from one car to the next, his head up and his nose sniffing wildly at the air.

Finally, he stopped behind a late model red Corolla and put his paws on the back bumper of the car. The Beagle barked twice and the sound changed to a howl, a long low sob. I felt my blood run cold, knowing that the dog had found something in the car. I’d never seen a sniffer dog in action before and I was surprised at how easily it worked.

Brate was there before me.  He tried the trunk which was locked, of course. He tried both of the front doors and then tried the back doors. The passenger side rear door was unlocked, and Brate leaned through to open the driver’s door.

“Get in and find the trunk release.”

I looked at him, shocked that we might be corrupting a crime scene. My time with Detective Green had told me the protocol to follow with a crime scene and the need to secure the scene. I didn’t have gloves or any type of protective gear. My DNA and fingerprints would be on the crime scene if I did this. However, if there were any chance that Barkley’s nose had found a not quite dead person, I guess that we had to take the chance. I opened the door and leaned in, looking for a lever or button to unlock the trunk. I found it and pulled up on the lever. I heard the trunk pop open, and then a coughing sound from Brate. That was not a good sign.

I left the car and walked back to the trunk again. I was slow in getting there in case Brate wanted to do the nice thing and not let me see the body. However, he had no such intention. I peered in the trunk and saw the body of a man.

The man’s hands were handcuffed behind his back, which would not be a great advertisement for the Port Clinton Police Department. He’d been dead for a while, because the stench that arose from the trunk was sufficient that I could have probably located the cadaver without Barkley. The scent was overwhelming and like nothing I’d ever smelled before. I wanted to throw up from the magnitude of it.

The body matched the stench. The skin had gone pasty white and bugs crawled across his face and neck, but from what I could discern beyond my desire to wretch was that he was a middle-aged white man who had been shot at least twice in the head. Not much of a description, but I wouldn’t be called on to identify him. I’d never seen him before in my life.

I didn’t feel that I needed to give an explanation as I left the crime scene to sit down on the steps to the station. Barkley came over and sat with me, satisfied that he’d done his job well. After a few more minutes in which I felt my own breathing grow more normal, Brate came back over to me. My stomach was still doing flips, but I didn’t feel like I’d throw up now. More like I wouldn’t want to eat for a few days.

“I need to call this in. You’ll have to stay and back up my story about this.” He nodded to the car with the open trunk.

“Sure, no problem. Do I leave out the part about me looking for Barkley?” I asked, thinking of how Brate had wanted to keep this quiet. It wouldn’t look good for the local police if a body was found on the premises and the police were hiring a man to talk to the K-9 unit for clues in the investigation. He nodded at me and then went inside.

The next two hours were tortuously slow as I was asked the same questions repeatedly. A few of the officers had heard of me, two of them had seen me inside the station moments before, and I merely explained that I was offering my services to police animals as possible witnesses. Just trying to grow my business in a soft market. My response elicited some snickers, but it kept Brate from explaining why he’d lost a valuable police asset and how he couldn’t explain why the asset had been returned to the station without explanation. Still the story left out a few facts that needed to be investigated, like the fake Barkley and the man who had bought him from Mike Johnson. That was a lead which needed to be followed soon, and the situation looked like the police would not be the ones to do it.

The circumstances left Brate and me with more leads than the rest of the force had. We knew about the house in Toledo where I’d first found Barkley. I had a name for the people who had bought that dog as well. We knew that someone had been trying to stop Barkley from doing what he had done today.

However, we – certainly I – couldn’t explain why Barkley had been returned at this juncture. I did wonder if I’d been spotted at the house in Onyx yesterday. Had the dognappers been frightened when they saw me snooping and decided to return the dog before they were arrested? It was possible but I hadn’t seen anyone at the house.

The other option was that they were done with whatever needed to escape detection and they’d returned the dog since they were finished. However, the corpse was still around and had been discovered within hours of Barkley’s return. That didn’t make this option seem as likely – unless I was still missing something. I would have expected the scene to be clean before the dog was returned. Why store the body here and return the dog?

So what exactly had the disappearance accomplished? It had made Brate aware of the disappearance and possible motives for Barkley being removed from a potential crime scene. It had possibly prevented the killers from being caught in the act; however, we had a name and an address of the most likely suspects. We still had a body and a crime. They’d merely gotten a head start.

My thoughts were stopped by a realization. Up until this point, we hadn’t known if the dog had been taken to stop him from sniffing out drugs or a corpse. Now we had a corpse, but had we really ruled out drugs? “Could you check the trunk for drugs too? I was just wondering if the scent of the drugs would be overwhelmed by the stench of the corpse? I know that dogs can break smells down by their different scents, but does the dog have different manners of telling you when it’s found one or the other?” I asked the officer who had, up until this point, been asking all the questions.

The man looked at me. He didn’t speak for nearly a minute before answering, a time where I wondered if I was going to be locked up. “I honestly don’t know. You have a point though. If the dog barks, we look. I don’t know that he’s got a drug bark and a body bark.” He picked up the phone and dialed.

He spoke for a few minutes on the phone. I assumed that he was talking to the officer who was questioning Brate about the crime, though I was guessing that Brate was getting more professional courtesies than I was – like coffee. I needed some caffeine in the worst way. I’d rushed up here at the crack of dawn to meet Brate, thinking I could get some coffee soon after. Now it was close to 10am, and I’d only had one cup so far. It was not starting off to be a good day.

When he hung up, he nodded. “Good call. The dog doesn’t really distinguish by bark. He’s just trained to bark at certain smells. The Captain is calling the crime scene team to have them test the trunk carpet for different types of drugs.”

I nodded. I didn’t ask to be notified about the results. I knew that I’d have to rely on Brate for that information. However, the thought of the crime being drug-related made the officer ease up on my questioning. I was out of the station within another 45 minutes.

On the way home, I drove by the house in Onyx to see if their dog was there. I thought perhaps they’d switched the dogs back, and that the fake Barkley might be in their yard. However, the yard was empty. From the looks of it, so was the house. The drapes and window treatments had been pulled down and the vacant windows told the story. A variety of trash cans sat by the curb, looking like they’d dumped all the furnishings quickly before leaving. The people who had kept Barkley here were long gone.

More than any line of questioning I might have had, this told me that I’d been right. The people at this house had been involved with the dognapping and presumably the murder of the man in the Corolla. Sometime between yesterday afternoon and this morning, they’d left the house and returned the dog. The timing could not be a coincidence.

My cell phone began to chirp as I got closer to home. I mainly relied on wi-fi for service rather than paying for 3G. Just another part of my staying under the radar. I tried to keep my digital footprint as small as possible. So as I moved toward Toledo, I was able to pick up signals and retrieve messages. Apparently, I’d gotten a number of texts from Detective Green who wanted to know what the hell was going on with me.

I waited until I returned home to call her back. I didn’t particularly want to be yelled at while I was driving.

She opened with “I thought you said you weren’t involved with Port Clinton? What the hell?”

“I didn’t say that, but I didn’t want to give away why the officer there hired me. It was vital to him that I didn’t acknowledge him as a client.”

She snorted. “Right. What’s the matter? Is his goldfish depressed?”

I hadn’t been expecting that type of response. While Sheila had made her share of sarcastic comments about my career choice, she had eased up since we’d started dating. While she was by no means supportive of what I did, the mocking had ceased.

“No, actually he had an issue with his K-9 partner.” I felt my cheeks flush as I tried to explain myself. I wasn’t used to such sarcasm from her.

“Apparently the dog is working well enough now to spot a body in the trunk of a Corolla. So whatever you did seems to have worked. Do you know what you’ve gotten yourself into here?”

I breathed a sigh of relief and felt myself go back to a more normal heartbeat and face color. Apparently her rudeness was a mask for concern. I made a note to stay out of ICU if this was the way she showed that she cared. “This doesn’t really affect me.”

She laughed, but it wasn’t a funny type of chuckle. It was cynical and hard. “The one thing that I never want to get involved with at any station is a police corruption case. It’s dangerous, because everyone involved has a gun except for you. It’s vindictive, because someone is going to jail and a few officers aren’t really concerned with who does as long as it isn’t them. And it’s messy, because the papers love a good corruption story. That’s not the type of publicity that you want associated with your name.”

“Okay.” I stretched the word out, not sure what she was getting at here. She’d rarely talked about the conditions or politics of her work like she was now. I was surprised at the openness she was sharing at the moment.

“Griff, you don’t get it. You’re not watching a corruption scandal. You put your foot right in the cow pie of a corruption scandal.”

I hadn’t thought of it that way, but the truth was that a police officer had to be involved in some way. The most likely place for the switch had been the police station, and almost assuredly the return had taken place there. That meant that a cop was involved, because civilians were not allowed to wander the station with a dog and not be noticed. A bad cop was somewhere at that station. I hadn’t thought of the implications of that. He could deny everything and push the blame on to me. Despite my relationship to Sheila, there were a number of people who were willing to believe the worst of someone who made a living like I did.

The body had been discovered in the police station parking lot. It seemed like an odd choice for hiding a body, given that investigators went in and out of the building all day long, but if the killer was an officer, the location would make more sense. The body could have been hidden there because the officer involved didn’t have a way to leave and properly hide the body. If we’d been able to get the body out of the trunk so easily, then someone could just as easily have put him in the trunk.

On top of that, I hadn’t been able to investigate Adam McNabb, the officer from the Erie police who had shown up at the scene and outperformed the fake Barkley. Brate had said that the officer wouldn’t tell him why he’d been there at that time in that place. It seemed like too much for it to be coincidence. There had to be a pattern somewhere, and it seemed like the pattern was that the police, or at least one officer, were involved in whatever was going on. Sheila was right. I didn’t want to be involved in a matter where everyone else was an officer of the law.

The situation was well beyond my abilities. I had no idea of how to investigate the police. In most cases, I was able to make a connection to witnesses and victims through animals, but in this case, all the animals were police officers in a sense. So I had no leverage and no way to get people to talk. My choices were limited, and I had nothing that I could investigate without bumping up against an open police investigation.

Sheila was still talking when I came out of my thoughts. “My question to you is how are you going to wipe off your shoe and get the hell out of there as fast as you can?”

I furrowed my brow. I had focused so much on finding a lost dog and helping to interpret what the dog was feeling in order to perpetrate my talking to Barkley that I hadn’t seen the larger picture. I’d totally neglected to lift my head and look at the chaos around me. One and possibly two police departments were now involved in a scandal that involved murder and possibly drugs.

I swallowed hard. “What should I be doing to get out of this?” I asked finally. This was an area where she knew the score,and I didn’t even have an idea of how to play the game.

She eyed me for a second. I had a history of not doing what she suggested, so perhaps the look was warranted. If anything was a barrier to our relationship, perhaps the conflict between what she wanted me to do and what I was willing to do was our largest hurdle. She’d wanted a more outgoing and risk-taking boyfriend, and through no desire of mine, I was becoming that person. She’d given me advice multiple times to stay out of a murder investigation, but I rarely listened to this. I thought I knew best. However, now I realized that I had no experience in police politics, and I was willing to defer to her judgment on the matter.

“First, we need to see how tied up to the police this case is.” She looked at me like I should add something, but I had no ideas.

“I don’t know,” I admitted to her.

She sighed. “At the very least, there was a dead body in a car that either belonged to a member of the police force or had been impounded by a member of the police force. In the first instance, there was a corpse in a policeman’s car, which almost definitely means that a policeman or policemen were involved in the murder. That’s the worst case scenario.”

“Because of the implications?”

“Because it means that there’s a dirty cop on the force in Port Clinton. You don’t want to be seen as crooked, especially when there are lots of drugs involved. If that’s the case, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they’d try to pin the killing on you. You were on-site and you found the body. It would not be pretty at all.”

I was beginning to see her point. I had been a useful tool while I’d been helping Brate, but now that they had unwanted publicity, I would be fair game for them.

“What if the corpse was in a car that was impounded?” I asked, hoping for a rosier answer than before.

“It’s hard to say. If the body was there for a while, then it’s a relatively minor mark against the officer who brought it in. He really should have checked everything, but you could always chalk it up to being overworked or some such thing. However, if the body was put there by someone, chances are that it was a police officer doing the putting. It would be safe and convenient for them. No one else would have the balls to drag a body to the police station and stash it in a car.”

“So I want to hope for the body being in the car for a while?”

“That’s definitely your best bet. If it’s one of the other scenarios, you’ll have to tell everything you know to the police, no matter how much it embarrasses your new buddy there.”

She had a point. I would have to share my story publicly if the corpse had been put there by someone on the Port Clinton police department. I thought I needed the practice, so I shared it with her now. She listened carefully and took some notes while I talked. I wasn’t used to her these days in a professional mode, so it came as a surprise to see the way she followed my words.

When I was done, she looked at me and smiled. “It’s not as bad as I thought. You’re pretty tangential to the case at hand. It will be harder to frame you than I thought. That’s all good.”

I smiled at her in return. I had no desire to draw that much attention to myself. Even though I now knew that Susan had not been kidnapped all those years ago, my primary instinct was still to hide under the radar. Being a major suspect in a police-related homicide would be about as far from under the radar as I could get. I still had the desire to keep myself safe by being inconspicuous. I felt a bit antsy about it, even though I logically knew that my worldview was entirely wrong. It had become habit, and I knew it would be one that was very hard to break.