“Sure,” said Roy. “He feels cheated if he doesn’t get to hop out and sniff around.” Roy bent down and picked up a dry leaf. Then, raising his arm to shoulder height and extending his hand, he crushed the leaf and sifted the fragments through his fingers, watching them drift in a breeze almost too slight to feel. “Looks like the air’s moving downhill and downstream,” he said. “Which means that the scent—if there is any—would be moving in that direction, too. Scent is like water—it tends to flow downhill, and tends to pool in low spots. Cool spots, too.” He glanced at the steep hillside and the line of vehicles, frowning slightly. “I hate to be a bother,” he said, “but could we maybe all back up a couple of hundred yards? I’d like to work him along the road, but the gas and oil fumes will pretty much overpower anything else that’s here.”
Roy ambled back to his truck, and the rest of us headed for our vehicles. After a few moments of tense, hesitant backing down the narrow pair of ruts, we all parked again. Roy opened the hatch of his camper shell and dropped the tailgate. I heard him talking in a low, soothing voice, and then a large German shepherd on a stout leather leash jumped down from the truck. Roy stood at least six feet tall and probably weighed somewhere around 200 pounds, but the dog was pulling him as if he were a child. “As you can see, he really gets into this,” Roy said. As they pulled alongside the group, Roy gave a quick tug on the leash. “Cherokee, sit,” he said firmly. The dog sat, but even sitting, he strained at the leash.
Miranda leaned slightly toward the dog. “Is he friendly? Can I pet him?”
“He’s a sweetheart,” said Roy, “but he’s more interested in work than love.”
Emert laughed. “Reminds me of my ex,” he said.
“Reminds me that dogs are more useful than men,” said Miranda. The rest of us—the six men she had just skewered—laughed briefly and changed the subject quickly.
Roy led the dog upslope to pee, then had him sit again, slightly apart from the group this time. “Okay, the smell from the vehicles has probably dispersed enough now,” he said. “I’ll start by letting him off leash for what’s called a hasty search—pretty much what the name implies—and see if he picks up anything. If he doesn’t, I’ll work him through the area again on a grid pattern.”
Thornton raised his hand, like a kid in elementary school. “Yes sir?” said Roy.
“The dog doesn’t work on commission, does he?”
Roy looked puzzled, and so did everyone else. Everyone except Miranda, who snorted. “Like, ten percent of the bones?”
“Ten percent seems a little steep,” the agent said with a grin. “Anything over five seems greedy.”
“I wish you were running the IRS,” Miranda said.
Just then Thornton’s cell phone jangled loudly. “Sorry,” he said, snatching it from the holder clipped to his belt. He frowned at the display but answered anyway. “Hello? Who?” His frown deepened. “Yes,” he said. “Listen, I’m in the middle of something right now. Can I call you back?” He slumped—a dramatic gesture meant to telegraph his frustration to those of us watching him. It was the sort of gesture a man would make if his wife or girlfriend or teenager called him at an inopportune time. “You know, it really wasn’t that big a deal,” he said. “Anybody else would have done the same thing.” He paused, listening, shaking his head. “You’d have done the same thing, too,” he said, “in a heartbeat. Look, I really, really can’t talk right now. Gotta go. Sorry. Bye.” He snapped the phone shut with a wince, then looked apologetically at the group. “I am so sorry,” he said, and flashed us that damn Indiana Jones grin again.
“Okay,” said Roy, “if y’all are ready, I’ll go ahead and let Cherokee work the area.” He looked around, and everyone nodded. “If everybody would just stay down in this area, that’ll minimize the scents and the distractions for him.”
“Would it be okay if I took a few pictures,” I asked, “long as I stay back here?”
“Absolutely,” Roy said. “Long as you promise to shoot only my good side.” With that, he bent over and wiggled his butt.
“You Ph.D.s,” Emert grumbled. “Always showing off your brains.”
Roy reached into a pocket of his coat and pulled out a plastic water bottle. When he did, the dog’s demeanor changed instantly: his ears and tail stood up, and he began trotting back and forth almost like a Tennessee walking horse. “Cherokee, sit,” said Roy, and the dog sat, almost quivering with eagerness. Roy gave the bottle a squeeze, and a small stream of water shot out, which Cherokee lapped noisily from midair. Capping the bottle and putting it back in his coat, Roy made eye contact with the shepherd. “Zook mort,” he said, or at least that’s what it sounded like. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that “mort”—related to “mortal” and “mortality”—was a dog-handler term for “dead guy.” I remembered enough of my foreign-language studies to realize that “zook” was probably based on the German word for “seek.” I smiled at the thought that Roy was speaking German so that the dog—a German shepherd—could understand him.