Love You More_ A Novel - Lisa Gardner [98]
Like most canine teams, the Mass. group was comprised of all volunteers. They had eleven members, including Nelson Bradley and his German shepherd, Quizo, who was one of only several hundred trained cadaver dogs in the world.
D.D. needed Nelson and Quizo and she needed them now. Good news, team president Cassondra Murray agreed to have the whole crew mobilized within ninety minutes. Murray and possibly Nelson would meet the police in Boston, and follow caravan style. Other members of the team would arrive once they had a location, as they lived too far outside the city to make it downtown in a timely manner.
That worked for D.D.
“What d’ya need?” D.D. asked by phone. She hadn’t worked with a dog team in years and then it’d been a live rescue, not a body recovery. “I can get you clothing from the child, that sort of thing.”
“Not necessary.”
“ ’Cause it’s a body,” D.D. filled in.
“Nope. Doesn’t matter. Dogs are trained to identify human scent if it’s a rescue and cadaver scent if it’s a recovery. Mostly, we need you and your team to stay out of our way.”
“Okay,” D.D. drawled, a bit testily.
“One search dog equals a hundred and fifty human volunteers,” Murray recited firmly.
“Will the snow be an issue?”
“Nope. Heat makes scent rise, cold keeps it lower to the ground. As handlers, we adjust our search strategy accordingly. From our dogs’ perspectives, however, scent is scent.”
“How about time frame?”
“If the terrain’s not too difficult, dogs should be able to work two hours, then they’ll need a twenty-minute break. Depends on the conditions, of course.”
“How many dogs are you going to bring?”
“Three. Quizo’s the best, but they’re all SAR dogs.”
“Wait—I thought Quizo was the only cadaver dog.”
“Not anymore. As of two years ago, all our dogs are trained for live, cadaver, and water. We start with live searches first, as that’s the easiest to teach a puppy. But once the dogs master that, we train them for cadaver recovery, then, water searches.”
“Do I want to know how you train for cadaver?” D.D. asked.
Murray laughed. “Actually, we’re lucky. The ME, Ben—”
“I know Ben.”
“He’s a big supporter. We give him tennis balls to place inside the body bags. Once the scent of decomp has transferred to the tennis balls, he seals them in airtight containers for us. That’s what we use to train. It’s a good compromise, as the fine state of Massachusetts frowns on private ownership of cadavers, and I don’t believe in synthetic ‘cadaver scent.’ Best scientists in the world agree that decomp is one of the most complicated scents on earth. God knows what the dogs are honing in on, meaning man shouldn’t tamper with it.”
“Okay,” D.D. said.
“Do you anticipate a water search?” Murray asked, “because that poses a couple of challenges this time of year. We take the dogs out in boats, of course, but given the temperatures, I’d still want them in special insulated gear in case they fall in.”
“Your dogs work in boats?”
“Yep. Catch the scent in the current of water, just like the drift of the wind. Quizo has found bodies in water a hundred feet deep. It does seem like voodoo, which again, is why I don’t like synthetic scent. Dogs are too damn smart to train by lab experiment. Do you anticipate water?”
“Can’t rule anything out,” D.D. said honestly.
“Then we’ll bring full gear. You said search area was probably within an hour drive of Boston?”
“Best guess.”
“Then I’ll bring my book of Mass. topographic maps. Topography is everything when working scents.”
“Okay,” D.D. said again.
“Is the ME or a forensic anthropologist gonna be on-site?”
“Why?”
“Sometimes the dogs hit on other remains. Good to have someone there who can make the call right away that it’s human.”
“These remains … less than forty-eight hours old,” D.D. said. “In below freezing conditions.”
A moment of silence. “Well, guess that rules out the anthropologist,” Murray said.