Mattie paused for a moment to walk Robo over to some bushes. “Take a break,” she told him, her signal for him to relieve himself. Nothing slowed the momentum of a search like an unplanned potty stop.
She placed Robo’s water bowl on the ground, and he slurped a few times. Moisture enhanced a dog’s sense of smell. Robo stood still while she put a blue nylon tracking harness on him and exchanged his everyday collar for one that he wore specifically for evidence detection. She clipped a short, blue leash to the active ring.
His work collar in place, Robo’s attitude switched from happy-go-lucky to all business. It happened every time, but the abrupt change still amazed Mattie. He stood at attention, ears forward, watching her prepare.
Typically she dressed in a khaki coverall with an arm patch bearing the county emblem. Today, for the meeting at the high school, she’d dressed in her best uniform. Not ideal, but it couldn’t be helped, and she decided not to give it a second thought. She strapped on a utility belt bearing several loops and pouches, all packed with her own equipment: a whistle, water and energy food, a compass, a portable radio, a small first aid kit, short strips of blaze-orange flagging tape to mark trails or evidence, and most importantly, a tennis ball for Robo to play with at the end of a successful exercise or mission.
Mattie tied an eighteen-inch strip of orange flagging tape to her wrist. It fluttered lightly, telling her that a mild breeze came from the south, across the face of the hill they were standing on, the same direction from which they’d come. She needed to start her evidence search downwind, north of the area in front of the cabin, so she wouldn’t contaminate the crime scene herself. She led Robo past the group of men who were still standing near the porch.
“Go to it, Cobb,” Brody said as she passed.
His words could’ve been construed as encouragement, but Mattie knew him better than that. She’d worked with him for seven years, ever since she’d been a rookie herself. Brody tried to appear friendly at times, but she’d learned never to trust it. She ignored him, along with the quiver that rattled her belly.
Once she reached the spot where she wanted to start, she knelt beside Robo, forced back her stage fright, and focused on her dog. She ruffled the thick, silky fur around his neck.
“Are you ready to work, Robo? Are you ready to find something?”
He gazed into her eyes, and the world faded away. Mattie knew he wouldn’t let her down. He knew what to do, and so did she.
She unhooked the leash from the active ring on his collar and transferred it to the dead ring so that she wouldn’t inadvertently give him an obedience signal. Standing, she gestured toward the ground in front of him and gave the command specifically used for evidence detection: “Seek.”
She expected Robo to put his nose down and start working a grid. They’d done it before in training.
But he didn’t.
Robo raised his head, sniffed the breeze, and then turned to stare at her, his body rigid, his ears pricked.
Mattie’s heart rose to her throat. Was Robo refusing her command? Dismay immobilized her for a few seconds.
“Good dog you got there, Cobb.”
“Back off, Brody,” Sheriff McCoy said. He nodded at Mattie. “Take your time, Deputy.”
She started to reissue the seek command, but swallowed the word when comprehension hit her. Robo wasn’t being disobedient. He was showing her a full alert.
But a full alert for what? Drugs? Something in the forest?
Should she force him to walk the grid like she’d intended, and he could indicate what he’d found when they came to it?
Robo must have known what she was thinking. He walked to the end of his leash and looked south, upwind into the forest. He turned to look at her, his posture stiff and ears forward, his eyes drilling into hers.
Now what the hell do I do? Lead or follow?
Chapter 2
During training at the academy, Mattie had experienced an exercise that taught her a valuable lesson.
She and Robo were supposed to practice finding a missing person. Robo’s trainer, Jim Matson, a retired police sergeant who trained police service dogs, set up a track for Robo to follow. Jim left the area and headed east, downwind on a heavily forested slope. Mattie and Robo waited an hour for Jim to get well away and hidden.
When the time came for Mattie to start Robo on the trail, she put him in his tracking harness, gave him some water, and let him sniff the scent article. Robo immediately turned toward the west and tried to lead her in the direction opposite the one Jim had taken. Mattie corrected Robo, forcing him back to the initial track. Robo tried to go the wrong way again. They wrestled with “who’s the boss?” for a few minutes until Robo gave up and took the eastward track, throwing her a disgusted “if you insist” look over his shoulder before putting his nose to the ground.
Halfway into the exercise, Mattie realized she’d made a mistake. Robo was leading her in a huge circle. After a mile and a half of tracking through rough terrain—over deadfall, through streams, around huge boulders—Robo led Mattie to Jim. She knew her face was flushed with embarrassment as well as heat from the trek.
They found Jim sitting on a boulder about one hundred yards from the starting point, shaking his head. Earlier, he’d circled around and positioned himself upwind. Through a pair of binoculars, he’d watched the entire fiasco from the start of the exercise. If Mattie had listened to Robo, who was catching Jim’s scent through the air, they would have found him in only a few minutes.
Jim had said, “Now play with your dog and tell him he’s a good boy. And tell him you’re sorry you didn’t listen to him. Always listen to your dog.”
Later, Mattie discovered that she’d been the only rookie handler set up with this exercise. Finally, by the end of her training, she got up the nerve to ask Jim why.
In his slow country drawl, he replied, “Deputy Cobb, you are a fine officer. But I can tell that you always want to control things. I can tell by the way you shine your boots every night, and I can tell by the way you try to manage this dog. This is one of the best dogs I ever trained. If you don’t learn to trust him, you’ll never be any better than a human cop can be. But if you learn to listen to him and trust that he knows what he’s doing, you two can be the best damn K-9 team in the country.”
Mattie vowed she would do better.
Always listen to your dog.
Mattie heard Jim Matson’s words as if he were standing beside her. The back of her neck tingled. She glanced at Sheriff McCoy. “He’s alerting to something in the woods.”
“Probably a deer,” Brody muttered.
For an instant, the comment threw her. Could it be true?
But Robo’s unblinking gaze continued to bore into her, erasing her doubt. She walked up to him, leaned forward, and unsnapped the leash from his collar.
A more experienced handler might send Robo into the woods off lead, but she didn’t yet trust their relationship enough for that. From a loop on her utility belt, she took a thirty-foot-long leash and attached it to the ring on Robo’s tracking harness.
“Okay, Robo,” she said, “we’ll do it your way.”
Not knowing what they were after, she decided to use the tracking command. “Search.”
Robo bolted toward the edge of the woods. The thirty-foot lead whipped through her fingers, making them sting. She grabbed onto the end and followed, knowing she’d have to run like hell to keep up.