“SERIOUSLY? A DOG?”
“That’s what it says.” Ray Langston was riding shotgun, Nick Stokes driving. They had come straight from another scene, a relatively straightforward domestic homicide, if that could ever be said about a situation in which a wife had opened three holes in her husband with a .22. On their way back to the Crime Lab, they had received text messages. Ray had read his out loud.
“We’re going to meet a dog. A live dog?”
“It says an animal control officer will meet us there. So I’m assuming it’s alive.” Ray chuckled. “You know as much as I do, Nick.”
Nick made a right at the next corner. They were closer to the scene—the dog scene—than they were to the lab, but not by much. “Yeah, but . . . a dog.”
“Apparently the dog is a crime scene.”
“That had better be one heck of a crime,” Nick said. “Or one heck of a dog.”
The dog, it turned out, was a mutt. Brown and white with splotches of black, maybe part shepherd, part Labrador, part something else. Ray couldn’t see much of it anyway, as it had taken refuge in the crawlspace underneath someone’s house. He and Nick and the ACO beamed flashlights in at it, but the mutt had its front legs out before it, pinning down whatever it was gnawing on. When they spoke to it, it curled back its lips and growled, defending its prize.
“What’s it got?” Nick asked.
“I can’t see from this angle,” Ray said. “I’m going to the other side, to try to see through that latticework.”
“Okay.”
Neighbors had gathered, and a couple of patrol officers worked on keeping them back. As Ray gingerly settled himself on his stomach and aimed the flashlight under the house, he heard a male voice raised in anxiety, or perhaps anger. “But I’m the one who called the cops in the first place!” Someone else answered in conciliatory tones. Ray couldn’t make out the words, but he understood the man’s response. “It was human, I’m telling you!”
The dog’s ears perked at the shout, and it raised its muzzle. Ray could see just enough of its treasure, lying limply across the dog’s right foreleg, to make it out. “It is human, Nick.”
“Human what?”
“I can’t be absolutely sure, but I believe it’s a hand.”
“A hand?”
“That’s how it looks from here.”
“Okay,” Nick said. “Who owns this dog?”
“Dog lives here,” the ACO said. He jerked a thumb toward the gathered onlookers. “Owner’s over there. That woman in the green.”
Ray looked at the audience. “Officer, please bring the homeowner here.”
“What about me?” a man called. “I’m the one who called you guys.”
“And we appreciate that, sir. But please stay right where you are.”
One of the officers, a slender young woman with a brown ponytail, led the homeowner under the hastily erected barrier of yellow tape. “That’s your dog?” Ray asked her.
She nodded grimly. “That’s Booger. Booger, you’re a bad boy!”
“Do you know where he got that hand?”
“I have no earthly idea.”
“Unless you can get him to come out, we’re going to have to tranquilize him.” Ray couldn’t bring himself to use the dog’s name.
“I was trying, before everybody got here. Then when the sirens came, and all the people, he went even farther back. He won’t come.”
“Do you want to try again, just in case?”
She bent down in front of the opening to the crawlspace. “Come here, Booger! Here, boy! Momma has a treat!”
Booger eyed her and snarled. Maybe he knew she didn’t really have a treat.
“It’s no use,” the woman said. “He’s never been very well trained.”
Ray addressed the ACO. “Can you knock him out?”
“Of course.”
“It won’t hurt him, will it?”
“He might have a headache when he wakes up,” the ACO said. “If dogs get headaches. Won’t kill him is all I know.”
“You might not want to watch,” Ray suggested.
“My ex bought the damn dog in the first place,” the woman said. “Then left him here when he moved in with some bimbo. You can do whatever you want to him.”
“We don’t want to hurt him.”
She offered a slight shrug.
“Do it,” Ray said.
“Coming up,” the ACO said. He hustled over to his truck. When he returned, he was snapping the sections of a long pole into place. A needle gleamed on the end. “You know the old joke? Wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole?”
“I’ve heard it,” Ray said.
The ACO brandished his fully extended pole. “I get paid to do that.” He laughed at his own joke as he fitted a syringe into the pole’s tip. “Ten-foot pole,” he said, laughing again.
It wasn’t that funny, but Ray didn’t say anything. They needed the man, and his ten-foot pole.
The ACO went to where Ray had been, and extended the pole through the latticework. The dog snapped at the pole, but the man jabbed the needle into its haunch. Once the pole was withdrawn, Booger whimpered a little, then turned his attention back to his gnawing. A few minutes passed, and the dog relaxed, finally going limp. Ray could hear it snoring. “I’ll bring him out,” the ACO said. He was a hefty guy. Although the day’s heat had lessened after the sun set, he had sweat running out of his hair and soaking his collar. Ray hoped he could fit in the crawlspace.
The man broke down his pole, then got onto his belly and slithered under the house. “So much for that scene,” Nick said softly, standing beside Ray. “If he’s dropped bits of tissue or blood under there . . .”
“You’re right,” Ray said. He watched the ACO close in on the dog. He couldn’t get to his knees under there, couldn’t lift the slumbering animal, so he settled for grabbing its collar and one upper leg and backing out the way he had gone in, dragging Booger behind him. Sweat rolled off the man’s forehead.
They would still collect any bits of the hand they found under there, and soil samples, but he thought it was all too contaminated to be much good.
When the ACO came out, he tenderly lifted the dog and held it out toward the woman. “He’ll be okay in a little while,” he said.
She kept her hands by her sides. “Put it on the porch.”
“Lady loves that dog,” Nick whispered.
“No wonder the husband left.” Ray lowered himself gingerly to one knee. “Guess I’ll get the hand.”
“I’ll get it,” Nick said quickly. He pointed toward Ray’s cane with his chin, probably unconsciously. The whole team had been good about not reminding Ray of the stab wounds he had suffered at Nate Haskell’s hands, the loss of a kidney, but he knew nonetheless that none of them had forgotten. The truth was, though he was mostly recovered, they did still hurt all the time. He had winced, getting down on his belly to look at the dog, and again getting up. He was glad to let Nick fetch the hand.
“Thanks,” he said.
“No problem.”
Nick took his field kit under the house with him, although it was awkward going. He was thinner and fitter than the ACO, but there still wasn’t a lot of room. Ray, on hands and knees, tried to help by beaming his flashlight where Nick needed it.
Nick took forceps from his kit, and small evidence bags, and plucked what Ray could only guess were bits of shredded skin from the ground. Finally, he reached the hand, which he lifted with a piece of sterile paper and placed into a paper bag. Most people, Ray thought, would have put it in plastic—that had been his inclination, when he had started this job. But plastic trapped moisture, and a moist body part in an airtight bag was a perfect cauldron for growing all sorts of bacteria. Paper would breathe.
When Nick emerged, sweating and filthy, Ray changed places with him and went back under, though not nearly as far and wincing all the way, for some soil samples. As he had told Nick, he didn’t believe this was the original scene—the dog had initially been spotted carrying the hand more than a block away. He had only brought it here because this was home, and he knew he could gnaw in peace under the house. They needed samples, regardless.
By the time Ray came out, pain lancing from his ribs and back, Nick had cleaned up as much as he could. He still held the bagged hand. “How does it look?” Ray asked.
“It’s pretty much a mess. That mutt really mangled it. Of course, we don’t know what shape it was in to begin with.”
“True.”
“So much epidermis is gone, I can’t even make out the skin color.”
“Can you tell if its separation was natural or forced?”
“You mean, did someone cut it off? Have to check that at the lab, I didn’t take that close a look.”
“Well, I didn’t see any other body parts in there. It’s going to be hard to get much off it, in the condition you describe. There might not even be any ridge impressions left.”
“Didn’t see any.”
“And the way that dog was slavering all over it, any DNA we get from the tissue will be suspect. Maybe Doc Robbins will be able to come up with something for us to test.”
“He’ll love having a severed hand to work with.”
“I’m sure.”
“You know what’s worse?” Nick asked.
“What?”
“He might be getting used to them.”
That fact had slipped Ray’s mind. The whole scenario, with the dog under the house, had driven it from his thoughts. And, in his defense, he’d had a lot on his mind recently.
But Nick was right. Over the past few months, four other severed hands had shown up on the streets of Las Vegas. They weren’t exactly becoming commonplace, but they were no longer as rare as Ray would have liked.
“Let’s get out of here,” Nick said. “If he doesn’t want to deal with it, I’m sure someone will lend him a hand.”
Ray gave him a groan. “That was awful, Nick. I’d never have fingered you for a punster.”
Nick shook his head. “You win, Ray. Let’s go. If you promise not to make any more hand jokes, I’ll even let you drive.”