Finally finished, he slipped on the backpack. To Maggie he said, “Would you mind taking Grace to stretch her legs while I check around?”

“Sure.”

And to Tully, “Can you fill me in while I take a look?”

Tully simply nodded.

Creed handed Maggie a small, soft, pink elephant. The dog toy was plastic, but squishy and squeaky, and as soon as it came out of Creed’s pocket Grace could barely contain herself. Her entire hindquarter wiggled, excited and impatient, but she still sat waiting for her master’s permission. She watched Creed but also watched as he handed off her toy to Maggie, eyes darting back and forth, wagging, listening, ears perched and haunches ready to run.

“Toss it around for her, but she might just want to carry it in her mouth. Tap your hand against the side of your leg like this”—and he demonstrated—“if she strays.” Then he looked into Maggie’s eyes and asked, “Is it okay if I call you Maggie?”

“Yes, of course.”

But immediately she realized he wasn’t asking for himself. He turned back to Grace and said, “Okay, Grace, go with Maggie.”

The dog leaped into Creed’s arms—obviously something they did without either of them thinking—and in one fluid motion he swung her to the ground. Immediately all her attention was focused on Maggie and the pink elephant.

She seemed so playful, so spirited, so ordinary. As Maggie led Grace to the soft grass closer to the house it was hard for her to imagine that this little energetic dog spent a good deal of her time hunting dead people.

CHAPTER 29

Creed tried to concentrate on what Agent Tully was telling him. As they walked, Creed kept Agent O’Dell and Grace in his line of vision. To Agent Tully it probably looked like he wanted to make sure Grace was okay. That was only half the truth. He couldn’t get Agent O’Dell—Maggie—off his mind.

God, she had gorgeous eyes, rich brown with flecks of caramel.

Hannah would be laughing at him about now, telling him, “Since when have you ever noticed a woman’s eyes, let alone what color they are?”

She was right. This was stupid.

Agent Tully pointed at the crater left by a backhoe and was telling Creed about the construction project that had uprooted a skull and other bones along with a garbage bag containing a body.

“Was it male or female?” Creed asked.

“That’s information we haven’t released yet,” Tully said.

Creed didn’t need to know. Grace didn’t care what gender the corpse was. They all smelled alike to her. But Creed wanted to know. The only reason he put himself through so many of these recoveries was in the hope of finding his sister, Brodie. Hannah had told him that when Agent Alonzo at Quantico called, he mentioned that the farmstead was behind an interstate rest area.

“Does it make a difference?”

Tully must have seen something in Creed’s face. Hannah had said that these two—O’Dell and Tully—were profilers and that Creed should “behave” himself. If they really did have antennae for someone’s psychological wellbeing they should have already sent him packing back to Florida.

“It doesn’t matter to Grace,” Creed confessed. “But it helps me to know as much about the situation as possible. For instance, if you suspect it’s a crime of passion the body might not be hidden or buried as deep.”

“That makes sense.”

“How many others do you think there are?” Now Creed just wanted to cut to the chase.

“We really don’t know. There might be a dozen or there might not be any more than what we’ve found.”

The details that helped Creed and Grace weren’t necessarily the same ones that law enforcement was interested in. And sometimes it was better to not know everything law enforcement suspected, or even what their expectations were.

Creed knew Hannah had also gone over with Agent Alonzo what Creed and Grace could offer, what they would do, and what that meant. She always spelled it out before she ever accepted an assignment so that there were no misperceptions, no misunderstandings, and so the client knew there were no guarantees. At least no family members were here. Creed hated when the officials allowed family to wait somewhere in clear sight.

“If you can’t tell me the gender, can you give me an idea of how old the remains were in the garbage bag?” Creed asked.

“About three weeks.”

“And the skull and bones? What kind of shape were they in?”

“There wasn’t any flesh. No residue of decomp. They definitely had been in the ground for a while. This property has been vacant for almost ten years. We don’t know if the killer has had access to it for that long, but we can’t discount it either.”

Creed pulled a GPS monitor out of his pack and turned it on. He started tapping into the gadget’s memory some baselines to define the search corridor. It was a large area, and overwhelming if the woods behind the property were to be a part of the grid.

“I imagine it must make a difference,” Agent Tully continued when Creed had no more questions, “whether a body’s been buried a couple months or a couple of years.”

“Grace has a remarkable ability to work through multiple targets, but yeah, it can be difficult if those targets are in different stages of decay. Cadaver scent is not one single scent. There’s a whole range of scents that the body gives off at different stages. And there are a variety of things—as you know—that affect decomp. For instance, how deep the body is buried. If it’s enclosed in a garbage bag or just underneath the dirt. The composition of the soil and what the air exchange might be. When we’re searching in water, it makes a difference how warm or cold the water is.”

Creed glanced at the agent and realized he may have given him too much information to decipher. He found that often law enforcement just wanted him to find the dead bodies. They didn’t care how it was done. As far as they were concerned it was magic. If he tried to explain the science of it, he usually lost them.

“Your dog can smell a body underwater?”

Creed smiled, pleased that Agent Tully appeared fascinated rather than lost.

“The scents can carry up to the surface,” he told him. “If you teach a dog to recognize certain scents, the dog doesn’t care whether it’s underground, under water, or up in a tree.”

Suddenly Creed heard Agent O’Dell calling to Grace. He turned to see the agent trying to get the dog to come back to her side. He also saw Grace, nose in the air, her ears pricked forward. She was circling and her tail stood straight up, wagging rapidly.

Grace had started without him.

CHAPTER 30

“Do you keep her off lead?” Maggie asked. “Doesn’t she need a collar or leash? Something for you to keep track of her?”

She hated that she sounded out of breath, that she felt like she had done something wrong. Maybe she shouldn’t have thrown the dog’s toy so far.

“She’s okay. We don’t use collars or leashes for free range. I don’t like to risk that she’ll get tangled up in the brush. Especially if we get separated.”

Maggie had picked up Grace’s pink elephant and didn’t realize until now that she was squeezing it in her fisted hand.

Creed didn’t seem angry or worried. He’d come over to Grace and without any urgency in his voice simply told her, “Show me.”

The dog had been straining, almost as if she had been on a leash, struggling to leave Maggie but knowing she wasn’t allowed. She kept circling farther and farther away until Creed came over and gave her the command.

Maggie watched him tap coordinates into a handheld GPS. He kept an eye on Grace and followed her, but he wasn’t in a hurry. He walked as Grace trotted. Maggie and Tully stayed a couple of steps behind.