“This sod looks freshly laid,” Norwich said, examining the spot Grace had alerted to earlier.
“Give me a few minutes, Sheriff,” Creed told her. “I need to check something.”
The clouds lit up around them. A roll of thunder moved closer.
Creed took Grace aside, then asked her to “find Will.” He winced when her immediate response was to take off across the golf course. She wanted to continue to the woods on the other side. Those were thicker than the stretch they’d come through. He reined her in.
Now he knew he’d made another mistake. His mistake. Not Grace’s.
Will had crossed this field of grass. Maybe someone was chasing him. Grace insisted he had run to the woods. To escape?
Creed glanced back at the place where the Jack Russell had alerted. He couldn’t shrug it off as fertilizer. Just because it didn’t make sense to him, or because he hadn’t given her the correct command, didn’t mean she was wrong. Grace was rarely wrong. Sometimes she found things. Other scents she’d been trained to find. And she did it without Creed asking.
He hated to stop her now, but he needed to check her previous alert.
“Let’s take a break,” he told her.
She recognized the phrase and relaxed. It didn’t matter that they had already been standing down and waiting. That was different. They were tending to Hank. She understood that. She was quiet and at his side, knowing the dog had been hurt.
As they walked back, Grace dragged her nose through the dew-slick blades of grass. Instinctively, she was keeping her nose wet. A wet nose helped to collect and navigate scent. She knew she wasn’t finished.
When they got back to Norwich, she asked, “Does that mean this is a false alert?”
“I’m not sure. It was a solid alert. I think we need to check.”
“You mentioned she alerted to the bags of fertilizer earlier. Didn’t you say it was Mr. Monroe’s landscaping truck?”
Creed nodded.
“Sod, fertilizer,” Norwich said, her face tense but her voice hopeful. “It could just be more fertilizer, right?”
“It could.” But he no longer believed it was.
“This section doesn’t seem as flat as the rest.” Deputy Trevor poked around the grass where Creed had tossed down a red flag.
Norwich swept her high-powered flashlight along a seam in the sod that buckled up. Creed grabbed the other shovel. He and Trevor started carefully peeling back rolls of sod as the first drops of rain began to fall.
Underneath the grass were chunks and clods instead of smoothed out dirt. As they rolled up another area, they could see a mound begin to emerge. It stretched about six feet by two feet. Not only was the earth disturbed here, but there appeared to be an obvious hump.
Something was buried here.
Both Creed and Deputy Trevor hesitated. Creed glanced over at Grace. She sat calmly, her eyes going back and forth from the mound to Creed’s eyes, almost as if she was telling him it was about time he took a good look.
When he glanced at Norwich, she was watching Grace, too.
“You’ll need to be careful,” she reminded the men.
Creed stood back and let Deputy Trevor gently scrape off bits of dirt with the end of his shovel rather than stick the blade down into the mound. Little by little, something red and brown and orange began to appear. Something sturdier than a piece of fabric. With only a small section revealed, Creed heard Norwich inhale, a long deep breath close to a gasp.
“It’s a rug or a piece of carpeting,” she announced.
Deputy Trevor skimmed the blade over an edge, and a corner flapped open. He stopped and without a word, checked with Norwich. She gestured for him to continue. He wedged the blade under the flap.
The rug sagged open enough for them to see a head of hair.
Norwich released a long, tired and disappointed sigh. She kneeled on the damp grass as she fumbled a pair of latex gloves from her trouser pocket. Gently and slowly, she pulled back the corner of the rug. Then she dropped her hand and shook her head.
Creed recognized the boy, if only from the photograph being shown during his search.
Lightning illuminated the sky, followed by a rumble of thunder, a soft groan reverberating above them. Rain came down harder now, washing the lifeless face of Caleb Monroe.