Creed led Grace directly to the old woman’s chair. Made her sit in front of it. He wanted her to focus on him instead of all the different sounds and smells inside the house.
He gave her a few minutes to glance around. An ear twitched toward the ticking of the grandfather clock. Her head jerked when an appliance’s motor kicked on in the kitchen. Finally she settled down, shifting her weight and looking up at him.
He took the quilt gently from the recliner and held it in front of her nose, offering it to her for inspection. She sniffed at it and he let her put her nose inside the folds. There was a faint medicinal smell and Creed had no clue if that would help or hinder. Individualized scent was always tricky.
Like he had told Vance earlier, although Grace had proven herself in finding a variety of scents Creed had asked her to search out, she wasn’t trained as a trailing or tracking dog. Those dogs—usually bloodhounds—were trained to sniff a particular item or article of clothing that belonged to a specific person, take in the tiny particles of human tissue or skin cells cast off by that person, and then go search for that specific scent. Yes, Grace could rescue lost people, but she did that differently.
Grace was able to rescue the lost by picking up traces of human scent that drifted in the air. The same scent that all humans give off. Throw in some extras like universal body odors from fear, anxiety, and perspiration. Maybe even blood. Grace didn’t look for any specific person. She simply searched for human scent.
One of the reasons this worked was because people tended to get trapped or lost in remote areas. So if Grace picked up human scent in the woods, she searched for the cone of air, an area with the most concentrated scent. She zeroed in on where it was the strongest, and usually the person was nearby.
In this case, the forest around Mrs. Hamlet’s house was already filled with human scent from those who had been trying to find her.
“Grace,” Creed said, and waited for her eyes. He held up the quilt and very slowly said, “Hamlet.”
He put the quilt aside, then waved for her to come smell the chair. She stood on her hind legs, sniffing. He patted the seat and allowed her to jump onto the recliner.
“Grace.” He waited for her to look up at him from her new perch. He tapped the arm of the chair and said, “Hamlet.”
Her nose went to work on the fabric from the creases to the tufted buttons on the back where he could see a treasured strand of hair had snagged. When she was finished she jumped back down to the floor and sat down.
As a test he unsnapped the leash from her vest. He pointed at the door on the other side of the room, the entrance they had come in. The same door that Mrs. Hamlet would have left through.
“Go find Hamlet, Grace.”
She took off across the room but skidded to a halt on the polished wood floor. She turned around, nose in the air, and headed back toward him. She stopped at the coffee table, her nose twitching. Then she sat down and looked up to find his eyes. It was her alert. Her way of telling him that she had found what he had asked for.
Then he noticed the TV remote and a wad of used tissues on the tabletop. They probably belonged to Mrs. Hamlet. But it wasn’t what he was looking for. He couldn’t reward her even though these items most definitely had the same scent on them. He didn’t want her to find Mrs. Hamlet’s things. He needed her to find the old woman.
Creed held back a sigh of frustration. The throbbing at his temple had changed to a continuous dull beat. Maybe this would never work.
31.
Creed snapped the leash back in place. Last month at the Atlanta airport Grace had alerted to cocaine stashed in plastic bags and stuffed into jars of peanut butter. He knew she could do this if he could figure out a way to tell her what it was he wanted her to find. He decided to start at the last place they knew Mrs. Hamlet had been.
He led her through the door onto the front steps. Because of the debris in the yard he hated to take her off the leash again. He dug into his daypack and pulled out a retractable lead that would give her twice the roaming distance. Grace was watching him closely. She knew he also kept her pink elephant in that same pack.
“Grace, find Hamlet.”
She looked back at the door, as if to say that Hamlet was inside. Creed didn’t flinch. When he wouldn’t indulge her with even a glance back, she started sniffing the air again. He knew he was asking a lot. Mrs. Hamlet’s scent had been washed away by downpours and blown around since she stepped out two nights ago.
Grace tugged at the end of the leash. Creed felt his adrenaline kick in when she took a turn to the right, a hard right. Mrs. Hamlet was right-handed. This was a good start.