Ten Little Bloodhounds (14 page)

“I only met with you briefly, but I know enough about your character to make an informed decision. You’re brash, prideful, and stubborn. You would not take money you felt you hadn’t earned. You were not afraid to judge me and tell me what you thought. I know you didn’t like or approve of me, yet you took the time
to return Amelia secretly, so I would hear your assessment of what occurred and offer me some advice before the others knew.

“If you think I’m seeking revenge and retribution, you are absolutely correct. You may not be able to supply either one. It may be impossible to find my murderer and prove it in a court of law. This is not a condition that has to be met before you are compensated. I want an honest effort. My lawyer has been authorized to offer you twenty-five thousand dollars to investigate, and another twenty-five thousand if you succeed.

“Sitting here, I can almost predict your argument
against
even trying to find a solution. I know that you aren’t a qualified detective or have vast resources of information available. Mr. Jackson will handle your inquiries and personally pass them on to a large reputable agency that can find out anything you wish to know.

“There is no time limit. I know you cannot work fulltime on finding a solution. You have your business and your bloodhounds. I know they will come first with you. If you are wondering why I should care about justice for the guilty party, as I will not know if you succeed or fail, I’ll explain. At this moment I feel better in knowing that I have hired a person who will try diligently on my behalf to find the answers surrounding my death. As they say, you can’t take your wealth with you, so there is no reason for me to haggle over costs.

“I also know what you are now thinking at this moment. You have independent means and cannot be bought for a possible fee of fifty thousand. I understand this, Ms. Sidden, and I have baited my hook with the means to secure your services. I saw your face
when you discovered that I owned four of your father’s paintings. You adored your father, and love his paintings. You know that you can’t be bought. I hate to disillusion you, but anyone can be bought if you know his or her price. I know yours.

“Mr. Jackson has been instructed to hold the four oils your father painted in a trust for one year. If you try and succeed or fail after one year from this date, you may choose your favorite from the four, and it is yours, tax-free.

“Good-bye, and good luck.”

I saw her make an angry gesture toward the camera and watched the picture fade, leaving only the static sound of a continuing reel. Jackson ejected the cartridge and cut off the machine without rewinding the tape. He walked to the windows and opened the drapes. He was tactfully giving me time to recover from hearing her demands.

I felt as if I was walking out of a movie theater after viewing a double feature in the daytime. The sunshine was too bright. I was disoriented and reality was slightly askew. The bitch really knew how to turn the screws. I went back and slouched in my chair behind my desk. Jackson sat silently across from me.

I gave him a smile. “You have to give the ol’ gal credit. She knew how to push the right buttons.”

“I’ll never forget the first time I drew the line and said no to her,” he reminisced, giving me a rueful grin. “She didn’t argue, and seemed to accept my decision gracefully. I went home and found my wife, Carolyn, ecstatically sporting a tennis bracelet with a total of two carats of exquisite cut diamonds that had been delivered that very afternoon.

“Enclosed was a charming note from Alyce telling her how happy she was that she and I always agreed on business matters. Carolyn has a great weakness for expensive jewelry and I have a great weakness for Carolyn, so I never said no again.”

I shook my head in understanding and grinned.

“I’m afraid, however, that there is a quirk in my personality that Miz Cancannon didn’t know about when she made her horseback estimate of my character traits.”

I leaned back in my chair and braced my feet on the desk. I was enjoying this.

“You’re going to turn down the offer?”

He seemed taken aback.

“Not hardly,” I drawled. “I’m not stupid, just nosy. I would have paid money to be able to dabble in this case, even on the edges of it unofficially. Here I’m given unlimited funds, plenty of time, and the right to pry officially. Who could ask for anything more?”

“I don’t think Alyce would be overjoyed with your answer. She loved to manipulate and control her employees. She would be very unhappy if she knew your feelings right this minute.” He looked amused.

“Good. Let’s get to work. How did she die?”

“She was shot above her right ear at close range with a small-caliber round, probably a twenty-two. Her doctor thinks she was asleep and died instantly.”

I stared at him. “Shot? This is the cause of death that you think they can keep a secret? I bet everyone in Camden County knows it by now. I thought there was a chance of natural death, or some hard-to-diagnose poison. Shot? I’m not believing this!”

“Only the sheriff, the doctor, and I were told the method of death, and now you. The sheriff seems to
think that one of the suspects might slip up if everyone is kept in the dark.”

“Tell me another one,” I said with disgust. “This is a small town in South Georgia. Where do y’all live, on the moon? The EMTs told their co-workers, the doctor told the coroner and hospital morgue staff, and they all told their families. How often does a billionaire recluse get murdered close by? Also, the sheriff’s deputies, reporters, the media, you told your wife, and she told the beauty parlor regulars. Ten-year-old boys are reen-acting the crime by shooting their buddies in the head with imaginary guns, and sprawling across desks in the classrooms. You’re probably the only man in the county who thinks the cause of death is still a secret.”

“I didn’t tell my wife the cause of death,” he answered stiffly.

“Then I’m sorry I misspoke,” I said, laughing. “Alyce died Thursday morning, and it’s now shortly after lunch on Saturday.” I picked up the telephone receiver and held it out to him. “Call your wife and ask her how many different opinions about Alyce’s shooting has she heard.” He didn’t reach for the phone, and after a couple of heartbeats, I replaced the receiver. I changed the subject.

“It’s a shame, really, how few mantrailing bloodhound teams are now working in Georgia for local city, county, and state law enforcement. There have been tremendous advances in forensic evidence gathering in just the past five to ten years, including crime scene scent evidence. Would it surprise you if I said that if the crime scene had been handled correctly and with the latest techniques in use, there would have been an
excellent chance to point out the killer with the use of a bloodhound and a machine that costs less than five hundred dollars?”

Jackson just looked at me with a quizzical expression. He had no idea what I was talking about. It never hurts to let the person who was gonna pay the freight know that you were knowledgeable in what you do. I made him ask.

“What kind of machine, and how could a bloodhound find anything after the killer had gone?”

“That would probably be the exact question that Sheriff Beaman would ask, and it’s ironic. Scent at the crime scene is the forgotten evidence. We now have the ability to gather scent, store it, and use it in the future to convict a suspected killer.”

“How?” He seemed surprised. “And why doesn’t Sheriff Beaman know about it?”

“It’s been available for several years and has actually convicted suspects, but they can’t see it, feel it, or hold it in their hands. Law enforcement officers can’t envision what a great tool it is and they spend their money on what they understand.”

“Explain what you are describing.”

“Scent. Scent left in the air hovering over the murder scene. Let me give you a hypothetical scenario. Suppose the sheriff employed a good handler with a trained mantrailing bloodhound, and the handler had a scent machine and knew how to use it. This scenario would also suppose that the sheriff’s men would be trained to protect the scene from contamination.

“A call comes into the station that Mrs. Cancannon had been found dead. The sheriff immediately orders
the room to be sealed, with no one to traipse in and out of the room. She’s dead, right? What’s the big hurry and bustle about? If the room is immediately sealed off and if platoons of people aren’t in and out, looking, touching, standing around and contaminating the room, the killer’s scent is all over the victim, the bed linens, the floor, and permeating the
air itself.
The dog handler arrives with the scent machine.

“Picture the machine in your mind. It’s slightly larger than a twelve-volt car battery. It can be operated with electricity or on a battery. It is carried into the room, set near the victim, and turned on. It runs from five to ten minutes, depending on the size of the room. It is sucking the air into the machine like a vacuum cleaner. The air has to pass through a sterile pad. This places the scent in the air in a concentrated form onto the material. This piece of evidence is stored in an airtight bag and can be frozen
indefinitely!

“In some random killings they have no idea who did it, but years later they may have a suspect, say a serial killer with not enough evidence to place him at the scene. If the scent material is thawed out and presented to a trained bloodhound, he can pick him out of a lineup of several people. That’s corroborating evidence that will nail him.

“In this supposed case, the sheriff has ten suspects. Ten people who are heirs apparent and under suspicion. A bloodhound could clear nine people in a lineup and give you the correct suspect. This person couldn’t be convicted on the dog’s testimony alone, but when you’re positive who did it, you can narrow the search for corroborating evidence and usually turn it up. This same method can be used on lesser crimes, armed robberies, residential break-ins, you name it.”

“Then why isn’t it used by every law enforcement agency?”

“It’s fairly new. There’s no twenty years of precedents in court cases. Each case has to be won individually on its own merit. Judges, lawyers, law enforcement people, and possible jurors have to be educated in the bloodhound’s abilities.

“To all the people who judge, it sounds unbelievable. And, as I said before, so many officials want to purchase the flashier tools: the German shepherd who works to catch fleeing suspects and guard his human partner’s life, and who also can be used for crowd control and other duties.”

I laughed. “A bloodhound would hunker down and hide his eyes with his paws if someone tried to knife his handler. They are gentle and aren’t aggressive.”

“How about all those old movies with a pack of howling bloodhounds chasing a prison escapee?”

“Hollywood has a lot to answer for in relation to the public’s perception of bloodhounds. Using their noses to find a person exhilarates them. When they find them, they don’t attack or bite or hold them with their teeth. Detection is their only function. They just find them and when they do, the bloodhound’s job is done.”

“You lost me back there in your scenario when you said the bloodhound handler could have captured the killer’s scent in Alyce’s bedroom. Wouldn’t the machine have pulled Alice’s scent from her body, and given him two scents to look for?”

“When a person dies, the body doesn’t give off an individual scent anymore. It instantly begins to decay and only gives off the scent of a decomposing cadaver. Cadaver search dogs are trained with actual human bones and the
smell of decomposing flesh. The laboratories have invented new chemicals now that replicate the smell of decomposing bodies and bones. If a child is believed to have drowned in a pond, you don’t scent the bloodhound with a child’s sweater. That’s the way they find live people. To find a dead one, they are given the scent of a decomposing body. Mrs. Cancannon’s dead scent wouldn’t have been confusing, even mixed with the suspect’s scent.”

“Couldn’t you still try it, even though two days have passed?”

“I could try it successfully a month from now, if the room had been properly sealed, with only the body removed, but that’s not what happened. I’m sure the room has had heavy traffic, people taking photographs, dusting for prints, family members coming in to see where it happened. The maid has cleaned the room and changed the linens. The scene is too contaminated with different and more recent scents. Also, the murderer was probably in the room with the rest of the family, at least briefly, gawking as the others did. An identification now would be suspect. The forgotten evidence of scent has been lost forever from Alyce’s bedroom.”

Jackson sighed and shook his head.

“It sounds to me like most unsolved crime statistics could be cut in half if all officers used the machine to collect the scent first, and investigated afterward.”

“That’s right on the money.”

“You know what? If this came to pass, it would also cut out half the judges, half of overcrowded court dockets, half the lawyers’ fees, and half of the law enforcement personnel. It will never happen, trust me.”

“You have a point,” I agreed.

I
walked Jackson out, and when we reached the back porch he stuck out his hand.

“The minute any information that you requested comes into the office, I’ll forward it to you immediately.”

“Whoa,” I said, acting confused. “You must have misunderstood me, Mr. Jackson. I’m relaying my first request through you just to get the system working and for them to be informed the bills go to you, but all the information comes to me.”

“I thought we’d both read them and discuss …”

His voice trailed off as he watched my head moving slowly back and forth and the solemn expression on my face.

“It ain’t gonna happen, Mr. J. I don’t work well with someone watching over my shoulder. You set up the
account where whoever is in charge knows that I’m the boss and the only one they take instructions from. Have the person call me and I’ll relay what I wish them to investigate. That will prevent any confusion further down the road, okay?”