Death Scent: A Jessica Anderson K-9 Mystery (The Jessica Anderson K-9 Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  Death Scent

  A Jessica Anderson

  K-9 Mystery

  by D. L. Keur

  Published by D. L. Keur, Sandpoint, ID 83864

  © 2021 D. L. Keur

  Dedication

  To Bailey, my wonder mutt,

  To my dad,

  And to Laura Belgrave, who made me do it.

  Acknowledgements

  Huge thanks to my editors, Anita Lewis, Marva Dasef, and Laura Belgrave. Without them, this book would be ‘less than’. Thanks to Ann Davis, Mitch’s mom, for her enthusiasm, support, and photos. Photo credits go to: Ann Davis, Artem Ivanchencko (unsplash.com), Fabrizio Conti (unsplash.com), and kuzmaphoto (shutterstock.com). Also to my German helper who insists she not be mentioned by name.

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2021 D. L. Keur (So there’s no confusion, D. L. Keur’s full legal name is Dawn Lisette Keur.)

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without written, notarized permission from D. L. Keur &/or Forrest W. Lineberry, her husband.

  Death Scent, A Jessica Anderson K-9 Mystery is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First Edition

  Orders, inquiries, and correspondence should be addressed to: D. L. Keur &/or F. W. Lineberry, P. O. Box 2419, Sandpoint, ID 83864

  Authorship, design and formatting by D. L. Keur, www.DLKeur.com

  Cover art by D. L. Keur, www.zentao.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  Table of Contents

  1 – 9-1-1 Call

  2 – Trouble

  3 – Pertinents

  4 – Idaho Code

  5 – Assessments

  6 – Surprises

  7 – High Praise

  8 – Clubbing

  9 – A Local Killer

  10 – Morning Rituals

  11 – The Perp

  12 – Dead Wrong

  13 – Surprise Visitor

  14 – Motivation

  15 – Flight Trauma

  16 – Courtesy Call

  17 – Surprises

  18 – Veteran Perspective

  19 – Special Talents

  20 – Comfort Zones

  21 – Trust

  22 – The Test

  23 – Skeptics

  24 – Home

  25 – Formal Complaint

  26 – Nelson Remmers

  27 – Respect

  28 – Pack Test

  29 – The Joke

  30 – Voices

  31 – Shock

  32 – Wonder Dogs

  33 – Lumps

  34 – Calling the Cavalry

  35 – Return of the Drones

  36 – Defense Drive

  37 – Drone Master

  38 – Tracks

  39 – Frustration

  40 – A Teaching Moment

  41 – Before Color

  42 – Lock and Load

  43 – Dead and Alive

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE DOGS

  ABOUT THIS SERIES

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  OTHER BOOKS BY D. L. Keur

  1 – 9-1-1 Call

  Oso, Jessie’s quiet, very independent Elkhound, watched from a distance, reserving judgment.

  Giant Milo, the Wonder Mutt, lay in a crouched ‘down’ position, still and sphinx-like, except for his tail, which tentatively brushed back and forth in the grass. Like Oso, Milo was reserving judgment, but with his natural optimism.

  Jessica Anderson touched the ‘on’ icon on the interface open on her laptop. The two little machines sitting on the ground in front of her clicked a couple of times, lights on them blinking.

  All three German Shepherds—Acer, Britta, and Sumi—pricked their ears. The fur on their backs rippled a bit, while Mitch, the Marvelous, Jessie’s young Belgium Malinois, came instantly to his feet. He tipped his head sideways, his attention riveted.

  Predictably, her top ground tracking dog, a deep copper-colored Irish Setter cross named Queenie, bounded up to the little machines, stopped short, backed up, barked, then moved in closer. One sniff, and she took off to race around the field in deliciously happy circles. Queenie thought them some new game or toy …which, in a way, they were. …And weren’t. “Good dogs,” Jessie crooned.

  All the dogs relaxed. Momentarily. Then all of them stood and went to full attention. The German Shepherds, or, as Jessie thought of them, GSDs, raised their hackles. So did Mitch as the drones came alive, the machines unfolding like strange insects as they engaged their tiny rotors to pull themselves aloft.

  Only Oso and Milo were still open to the possibility that these weren’t ‘danger’. Only Queenie still thought them marvelous fun.

  “Good dogs, gute Hunde, brave Hunde,” Jessie called again, using both English and German to sooth her pack as the machines moved higher, hovered for a moment, then flew outward, following the path that Jessie had previously programmed into the software’s control interface. “It’s okay. They’re good guys,” Jessie said to the dogs. “They’re going to save us a lot of time and effort.” At least, she hoped they would. Today would test that possibility.

  Almost as one, the dogs looked back to her, and she smiled—her pack, The Motley Mutts, as her grandfather called them, and she was their pack leader. “Good dogs. Brave Hunde,” she answered them, English for her rescues, Queenie, Milo, Mitch, and Oso, German for the Shepherds, though, because of her constant use, all of them knew both lingos, now.

  Watching her new tools circle the field twice, her dogs’ every sense tracking them, Jessie was pleased to see the machines were following her programming exactly. She grinned, then touched in the second part of the program, one that would send the drones out to do a test search. This will save countless search hours for us. If we can just get Idaho to relax their privacy laws a little. Still, there were other states. Jessie wasn’t limited to state lines, not now. Not with canine search and rescue expert Callen Parker on her side, and, so far, he was.

  The all but silent machines disappeared in the distance, heading toward Long Peak. Jessie hoped she’d gotten all the parameters right. These were a lot better than the toys she’d been practicing with, but this was their first test flight, and, at five grand apiece, she didn’t want them flying into a tree or a cliff, thanks. But, she’d already tested their proximity sensors, and they seemed to be working fine. Still, though, she’d set the program to keep their altitude above the treetops and the Cliffs of Long.

  Watching her laptop intently, she kept an eye on both their audio-visual feeds and their GPS positions on her screen. So far, so good. They were half a mile out already. “They’re fast,” she whispered to herself.

  A dog whined—Britta. “Braves Mädchen, ganz braves Mädchen,” she said soothingly. Acer touched his nose to his friend, and Britta yawned once, then lay down with a groan, Acer squatting down to sit next to her, hip to hip.

  On her screen, the GPS locators were showing the little flying bots now a mile out and still absolutely locked to their programmed flight path on her test search grid. She turned
on the motion sensors just to see what they would do, and if they actually functioned the way the company said they would, sticking to the search grid and avoiding each other, but reporting movement.

  Within moments, one reported in—what looked like maybe a raven taking flight. The camera adjusted its focus, and the bird came crisply into view before disappearing into the trees. The drone stayed true to its programming, maintaining flight path.

  They were amazing, and so was the software that controlled them. Not as amazing as her dogs, but Jessie was glad she’d come across the company responsible for building them—a small firm located in Alaska. They were fast, light, and had twice the flight time of comparably equipped drones. They were also more fragile, but the software helped with the flying.

  At two miles out, some eight minutes into their weaving, criss-cross search pattern, Jessica caught sight of something the wrong shape and color on the mountain’s broken snow floor. Taking manual control of the drone nearest to it, she lowered altitude and set the camera to target the object.

  With sudden recognition of what it was, she zoomed in. A proximity sensor blinked. Her other drone avoided collision all on its own and was now crossing to the east of the one she manually flew. It reported movement.

  Diverted, she let the one she controlled hover on auto-pilot, hoping it caught movement from the body, while she turned her attention to what the other was reporting—another person, she realized. That person disappeared into the woods, but the drone still sensed it. She gave it autonomous control and watched, riveted, as the machine now dodged between trees, self-navigating on proximity sensors and its software’s AI. Be careful, she pleaded silently to the little flying robot.

  A flash of red…. The camera zoomed and focused. The drone dodged and shifted, changing angles to auto-orient. The flash of red reappeared—the backend of a pickup about fifty yards ahead, part of the vehicle occluded by the trees. What she could see was that its tailgate was up, said ‘Chevrolet’, and it had no rear license plate. Jessie keyed the drone to hover. There was the sound of the engine starting. Then, the vehicle disappeared from sight.

  Jessie touched in a command for the drone to raise altitude to above tree level again and seek previous target. “In for a dime, in for five grand,” she muttered, hoping the drone’s proximity sensors accurately could sense overhanging branches above itself. A dog whine answered her, but she kept her concentration on the screen, which had gone to a blur.

  Shifting her attention to the other drone’s feed, she saw that, at least as much as she could tell, the body hadn’t moved. Asleep, injured, or dead, she wondered. And, deciding, she dropped the drone down close to investigate and saw what she didn’t want to.

  Every dog came to full alert, their eyes riveted on her.

  *

  “9-1-1, what is your emergency?”

  Stick to basics: “My name is Jessie Anderson. There’s a person lying on the bank of the creek up on Long Peak about two-point-two miles north by northeast of Anderson Working Dogs’ northwest property corner marker. They’re not moving.”

  The woman on the other end of the call was silent for a second, then said the predictable: “Stay on the line with me, please, Jessie.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  Eyes glued on her drone’s feeds, she heard the woman call code. From the corner of her eye, she watched her dogs ‘talk’ to one another, then, as if one, move to surround her.

  The drone tracking the red truck displayed it driving out of the woods, then heading down the old Forest Service road. The drone kept the vehicle in focus as it maintained a parallel flight path slightly above. Jessie had a relatively clear, if tiny profile view of someone whose face looked like a melted blur. What would cause that? A burn victim? A stocking pulled over their face, maybe?

  The 9-1-1 dispatcher came back on the line. “What is your full name, Ma’am?”

  “Jessica Marie Anderson. And, now, there’s a red truck, a Chevy long bed single cab, leaving the area.”

  “How do you know this, Ms. Anderson?”

  “My drones’ feeds.”

  And, from there, things turned into chaos.

  ***

  2 – Trouble

  Bitterroot County Sheriff Landon Reid worked through the logistics one more time, hoping for a different answer. Coordinating with the highway department and the Northridge Police Department for a good traffic detour around the town to accommodate the Mother’s Day parade was proving itself an unusual headache.

  The traditional solution wasn’t going to work this year because of the bridge wash-out on Hogalby, which wasn’t going to be repaired in time, and Hogalby was the only other paved through road that paralleled the highway. Now, they were reduced to unpaved county roads, which would be okay for cars. Truck traffic was the problem. You don’t ask a long-hauler with a fifty-three-foot trailer to navigate four tight ninety degree turns on narrow, steeply crowned county roads that had deep ditches on both sides, not and hope that some impatient motorist wasn’t going to cause disaster.

  “Boss?”

  Landon looked up to see Lieutenant Pete ‘Red’ Wheeler’s head poked around his open door. “Yes, Lieutenant?”

  “We’ve got a weird one.”

  Landon didn’t like the look on Red’s face. “What is it?”

  “The Anderson kid called in a body.”

  What Anderson kid? They all flew the coop years ago. …Unless somebody had a baby nobody had told him about. Then, when the rest sank in, he frowned. “A body?”

  “Yep. Dispatch has sent deputies, and Barry’s out there, too, but, well, I thought you ought to know.”

  His third-in-command had gone out—serious, then. Landon closed the lid on his laptop, got his piece out of the lockup in his bottom drawer, and secured his desk. “Let’s go. And, Red? I want you out there.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  *

  Dogs trailing, Jessie poked her head around the corner of the doorway. “Dad?”

  Oli Anderson looked up. “What’s up, Jessie?”

  She shook her head. ‘What’s up’ meant he saw that she was troubled, though how he always knew puzzled her.

  Letting out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, she stepped in, Milo leading, Mitch who was half his size, glued shoulder to leg with him. Next to her, Acer stayed at her left knee, with Britta on the right, and the other three, Sumi, Oso, and Queenie, just behind. “I think I just screwed up.”

  Her father sat back, and, stretching out his long frame, waved her toward a chair. “Sit down. Talk to me, my Jess.”

  Letting out another big breath, she plopped herself down in one of the overstuffed leather chairs across from him, the dogs lying down around her. “You know I got my drones in yesterday, right?”

  He chuckled and nodded. “Ye-eah.”

  “Well, I sent them out on a test flight this morning.”

  His blue eyes twinkled, and he smiled. “Ye-eah, you told me you were going to.”

  Jessie felt her face screw up and schooled herself back to normal. “Well, they caught somebody on public land, somebody not moving, and somebody else beating feet out of there. It didn’t look right.”

  Her dad—big, formidable, and rock hard—sat up and forward. Oli’s eyes went suddenly sharper blue.

  Acer pushed himself up from a down into a sit, his eyes intent on the man who had trained him. Britta did the same almost simultaneously. Mitch stood up, then sat. Milo stayed in sphinx mode, watching intently, his tail still, its tip lifted. Queenie, Oso, and Sumi came alert, too, their ears pricked sharply, their bodies almost rigid in their ‘down’s.

  “Go on,” her father said.

  “I shouldn’t have, but I dialed 9-1-1 and reported it.”

  Her dad’s forehead crinkled. “Why shouldn’t you have? It’s what you should have done. What’s the problem?”

  “The drones.”

  “You have all your licenses, right?”

  “Yes.”

&n
bsp; “You cross over somebody’s land you don’t have permission yet to fly over?”

  “No.”

  He frowned. “Then, what?”

  “They’re going to want to take them, and my external drives, my laptop, and probably my desktop, too. Then they’ll log them into evidence, and I won’t see them forever, if ever.” …And it was his money that had bought half of that equipment, which, of course, he already knew, since he’d loaned it to her.

  “Who is ‘they’, and why would they confiscate your equipment?”

  “Probably the Sheriff’s Office. And because of the laws concerning digital evidence authenticity and chain of custody rules for evidence.”

  “They can’t take them unless you allow them to, not without a warrant.”

  “Yeah. I know, but….”

  Oli shook his head and sat back, relaxing again. “You know better than me what you have to do to prevent that from happening.”

  “Yeah. But they may consider me ‘uncooperative’ if I stop them.”

  “Then let them consider you uncooperative. That’s what? Ten grand worth of equipment?”

  “Twenty, at least.”

  “Right.” Oli gave her a gentle smile. “Is the person okay?”

  “Dead, I think. There’s evidence of livor mortis.” Then, at his questioning look, she added, “Her—it looks like a her, anyway…. The body’s blood has pooled—gravity.”

  Her dad’s face went to that blank, neutral look that Jessie had never really understood, but happened any time there was trouble.

  Acer and Britta stood up. So did Mitch. Milo’s stature seemed to grow taller and stiller, if that was possible. His tail curved up in a stiffened arc. Queenie, Oso, and Sumi came to their feet, as well, and Queenie gave a little whine.

  Running his fingers through his hair, Oli blew out a huge breath, sat up straight, picked up the phone, and hit one of the quick dial buttons on it.

  ***

  3 – Pertinents