Mattie looked at her, noticing that in the bright sunlight, the detective looked older than she’d originally thought. Lines were etched around her eyes and the corners of her mouth. LoSasso slipped on her sunglasses, brushing back a strand of highlighted hair that had fallen forward against her cheek.
“Rainbow Anderson, our dispatcher, is the only other woman that works weekends,” Mattie said. “There are others who do office work during the week.”
Detective LoSasso sniffed. “That bit of fluff doesn’t really qualify. I meant, are you the only female deputy?”
Mattie resisted the urge to defend Rainbow. She thought LoSasso was acting like a snob, but after all, Rainbow did appear a bit fluffy today. Hell, Rainbow looked fluffy almost every day. Mattie turned the key and the car’s engine roared to life. “Yes, I’m the only female deputy in the department.”
“How long have you worked K-9?”
“About three weeks on the job. I just finished training. But I’ve been on the force more than seven years.”
LoSasso pursed her salmon-colored lips, turning her face away to gaze out the windshield.
Mattie put the cruiser in reverse, backed out of her parking space, and steered the car toward the highway. It was going to be a long drive up the mountain.
After about ten minutes on the road, LoSasso broke the silence. “You didn’t turn up any evidence when you did a grid search yesterday?”
Mattie gritted her teeth. “When I started the grid search, Robo alerted to the forest. That’s when I let him trail the scent, and he turned up the body.”
“Didn’t you go back to the search?”
“We also turned up the dog. She was injured and needed a vet. So I took her.” Even to her it sounded lame, a poor reason to abandon an evidence search. Mattie felt like kicking herself. The glory of Robo’s discovering a dead victim had been erased by her own inability to stay on track.
“I see,” LoSasso responded. “Shoddy detective work, Deputy. By now, your canine’s nose could be useless at the crime scene.”
Mattie hated to admit the woman might be right. “Maybe so. But we’ll do a sweep anyway. Dope could’ve been hidden in or near the cabin. We’ll see if we can turn something up.”
LoSasso nodded.
“Mike Chadron, the man we were talking about at briefing, shows and sells the same breed of dog as the one we found at the gravesite. I found out last night that he sold that dog to our victim.”
“Was our victim involved in drug traffic? Did she use her dog as a mule?”
“We don’t know. The vet swears she wasn’t that kind of kid.”
“We’ll follow up on that when we talk to the daughter.”
Mattie nodded. Once again, silence deepened until they reached the turnoff to Ute Canyon Road.
“How far from here?” LoSasso asked.
“About ten miles, but it’s slowgoing. Pretty rough.”
“I realize in the hoopla of finding a body, you might lose track of what needs to be done next, but I think Sheriff McCoy should have done a better job.”
Mattie wouldn’t stand for that. “Working with a K-9 team is new to Sheriff McCoy. It was my responsibility to go back to the evidence search, not his.”
“If anything was left at the crime scene, the perp’s been back to get it by now.”
“Sheriff McCoy left a deputy there to guard it overnight, until we could get a detective up there today.”
“Aha. Good thinking.”
Mattie gave her a sharp look at the note of sarcasm and then directed her attention back to the road, dodging potholes and steering carefully around hairpin turns.
“Well, it is what it is,” LoSasso said. “We’ll just have to wait and see what we can get.”
Robo paced back and forth in the back, sniffing out the windows as the car lurched up the pitted road. By the time they reached the two-track that led to the cabin, he seemed as eager as Mattie to get out of the patrol car.
“Listen, I didn’t mean to come on so hard about the handling of the crime scene,” LoSasso said as they pulled up next to the yellow tape around the cabin. “It’s just a pet peeve of mine: cops mismanaging the scene before I get a chance to do my work.”
Switching off the car engine, Mattie turned to face LoSasso directly. “We agree on that. And I admit I may have bungled things, but I’m learning. I don’t usually make the same mistake twice.”
“Let’s start over,” LoSasso said, offering her hand. “I’m Detective Stella LoSasso. Call me Stella.”
Mattie extended her hand as well, and the two women clasped hands firmly. “You can call me Mattie.”
Stella removed her sunglasses and gave Mattie one of her measuring looks. “Let’s go get a better look at the cabin.”
Mattie opened her car door and got out, noticing that Robo was dancing side to side on his front feet, eager to follow. “You wait here,” she told him.
Robo’s perked ears fell, and his body slumped.
As Stella exited the vehicle, she wore a smile that transformed her face, and their eyes met over the roof of the car. “I didn’t know dogs were so capable of pouting.”
“He’s full of it every time I put the kibosh on something he wants to do.”
“How do you resist it?”
“It’s easy. If I give in to him once, he’ll test me for days. It’s just better to be consistent with him.”
“Must be challenging.”
“The rewards are worth it.”
They had come up next to the taped-off area, and Deputy Cy Garcia stepped out of his cruiser to meet them, moving stiffly as though he’d been sitting for a long time. He was of Hispanic descent and built like a fireplug. He usually worked the night shift.
“Things were quiet last night?” Mattie asked by way of greeting.
“Yeah, not a thing happened.” He gave Stella a once-over.
She extended her hand. “Detective LoSasso.”
“Cy Garcia.” They shook hands, and he turned back to Mattie. “Are you here to relieve me?”
“Not exactly, but Sheriff McCoy said to tell you to go on home. We’ll be here a while, and he’ll come up later to determine if we can let the scene go.”
“Okay then, I’ll leave it to ya.” He got back into his vehicle and left.
Stella turned to Mattie. “Do you want your dog to work this area before I go in?”
“Yes. I’d like to do a sweep of the cabin first. Then I’ll have Robo do a grid search out here.”
“Sounds like a plan. Maybe I’ll just take a look around back while you’re at it.”
Robo was delighted to see Mattie coming back to the vehicle and greeted her with his usual exuberance. She prepared for the search as she had the day before and led him around the perimeter, ducking under the tape when she came to the cabin. He stayed close to her left side as they stepped up onto the plank porch and went inside the rough log building.
Mattie paused at the threshold to allow her eyes to adjust to the dim light. “Sit,” she told Robo quietly.
He sat at her left heel.
She looked around the cabin, taking in log walls smattered with cobwebs, a plank table and chairs in the center of the room, and a bare metal frame with wire support for a bedroll against the far wall. She could see nothing that would endanger Robo, nor were there any suspicious-looking nooks and crannies that might be hiding a stash.
She leaned down to pat him on the side. “Do you want to go to work?”
He came to his feet, tail waving.
“Okay,” she told him. “Find some dope.”
Robo turned into a slinking, sniffing machine. With his ears pinned back, he shifted his nose first to the floor and then to the air as Mattie directed him around the edge of the room in a clockwise sweep. She made him take his time, holding his leash with her left hand while she directed the search area with her right, first asking him to sniff low and then high. Without any alerts, they made it back to their anchor point.