Cadaver Dog Read Online Free PDF Page A

dog’s name was Skippy. She also trained a forensics dog named Jake for the NYPD. Also for the NYPD were her bomb dogs, Cash and Hank (Waylon’s brothers—the breeder wanted all the littermates to be named for outlaw country stars). Cash and Hank worked in a special warehouse built for training bomb dogs. While the dogs worked in one area, she had a large open pen where the other dogs could relax and play and run around. It was like a small dog park with pools and toys and a few trees. After working the bomb dogs, Angie took a break and logged all their training.
    The sun was starting to disappear behind the mountains, and she hadn’t yet had time to work her breeding dogs, two Labradors she was planning to show in a few months. She also had a lot of cleaning up to do after her dogs. Of course, that wasn’t the only thing she was avoiding. The other thing was lying in a cardboard box with her training tools in the warehouse storeroom.
    She put her pen down and went to the storeroom where she kept random equipment that didn’t need to be scent-proofed. The box sat on a side shelf where she could not accidentally bump into it or knock it over. She knew what she would find in there, the dead carcass of the giant wasp. But she didn’t want to open it. Even though she knew it was dead (if it was alive, it would have crawled away by now), she hesitated to open the box.
    “Don’t be a pussy,” she told herself. “It’s just a dead bug.” She felt silly being this reluctant to open a box with a dead thing in it. How many times had she worked with body parts to train her dogs? She had a whole deep freezer full of human remains. So she had no reason to be so squeamish around a dead bug.
    She told herself she was putting on her work gloves because she was handling remains and not because she was holding a box with a giant wasp inside.
    She opened the box lid and looked inside. The giant black and red markings of the crimson wasp stared back at her. Angie dropped the box and jumped back. She had to catch her heart in her throat and push it back where it belonged. It was dead, but that didn’t make the wasp any less intimidating. There was something about the markings of a wasp, something that pulled at her and told her to run. She forced her fears down and picked up the box. She took it into the yard and dropped it there. Then she grabbed some treats and went to the barn.
    Normally the dogs would begin jumping and barking when Angie entered the barn, but this time they stayed silent, like they could smell the wasp’s scent on her gloves, and they feared it. Some stayed lying down, and a few got up and walked to their door, but most ignored her.
    Angie went to the last kennel in the barn. Lying in the kennel was a blue-and-black dog with short hair and folded ears. Scars streaked across the dog’s muzzle like cracks in driftwood. A piece of the left ear was missing, like it had been ripped or bit off. The dog lay there chewing on a stuffed chicken. Long ago the stuffing had been removed from the chicken by the dog, and the toy’s yellow velvet had been transformed to the color of dirt.
    “Murder,” she said, and the dog raised its head and cocked it to one side, the stuffed chicken hanging like a dead body in the jaws of a giant dog-monster. Angie opened the door and went inside. She kneeled down beside the mutt (she thought he was part Labrador and maybe Blue Tick, but she was guessing there) and petted his head. Murder pressed his head into Angie’s hand and dipped it so that she could better rub behind his ears.
    “I’ve tried you as a gun dog and as a cadaver dog and you wouldn’t take to either. But ever since I found you half-dead on that road, I’ve thought you were meant for something. I think I might have found it.”
    She walked out of the kennel, and Murder followed at her side, chicken in mouth.
    Once outside, Angie stopped and waited. She had left the open cardboard box in the middle of the grass