“Looks like he’s just not feeling the magic anymore,” she told them. “Which means our demonstration is over.” She hoped the look she sent to Cissy told her she needed a little help, and it apparently worked. When their homeroom teacher stood up, the girls did, too.
“Wally and Gus are glad you were here to meet them.” Was that Jazz’s voice, too high and too tight? Another silent plea in Cissy’s direction and the homeroom teacher went to the stairs and stepped back so the girls could start heading down.
What is it? Cissy mouthed the question.
Jazz shrugged. “Could you have Eileen come up?” she asked.
Cissy didn’t question her, and one by one the girls filed down the steps, the sounds of their footsteps retreating along with the echoes of their voices.
It wasn’t until they were gone that Jazz wiped her suddenly sweating palms against the legs of her pants and crossed the room to where Gus waited.
Not a squirrel.
Not a raccoon.
Not a dead rat.
Gus knew better than to signal on an animal.
Gus had been trained to detect only one scent.
Human death.
CHAPTER 3
“The dog could be wrong.”
Eileen’s voice was small and hushed. Her words settled in the dust at the corners of the attic room.
Jazz stared where Eileen was staring, at the closed access door that led into the maze of heating pipes, a door that hadn’t been opened in years. She would have liked to agree with her boss, but she couldn’t lie, and the realization sent a cold shiver up her back. “Gus is really good at what he does.”
“But he’s retired, right? Maybe he’s a little rusty.”
“Maybe.” Jazz glanced at the dog sitting at her side patiently waiting for her to keep her end of the bargain. His eager look told her exactly what he was thinking—he’d followed the scent, just as she’d asked him to. He’d alerted her to it. Now it was her turn to come through.
Open the door.
Take a look.
To be sure she made a complete and accurate record, she dug her phone out of her pocket and took a picture of the closed door before she turned on the flashlight app. “If he’s wrong, no one ever has to know,” she told Eileen, and reached for the door.
Eileen clamped a hand on Jazz’s arm. “And if he’s right?”
Jazz did her best to swallow down the dread that made it feel as if her throat was filled with sand. She’d trained for this moment, with Manny and with other dogs from her HRD group. She knew the drill.
Except she never thought she’d have to use it inside the walls of St. Catherine’s.
“If Gus is right…” She bobbled her phone and caught it up before it hit the floor. “I’ll secure the scene, call the cops, stay here until they arrive. That’s the procedure. If he’s right…” She drew in a breath. “If he’s right, I’ll follow procedure.”
Eileen squeezed her eyes shut for a minute and, when she opened them again, explained, “Praying. Hoping. It’s got to be some kind of mistake.”
There was only one way to find out.
Jazz grabbed the handle of the door and tugged.
It didn’t budge.
“Well, that proves it.” The words left Eileen on the end of a whoosh of relief. “That door hasn’t been touched in years. There’s no way there could be…” She swallowed hard. “No way anything … anybody … It’s been so long, there’s just no way…”
Eileen was looking for reassurance Jazz couldn’t provide. “Properly trained HRD dogs have been used on archaeological sites. They’ve found the remains of graves in Roman hill forts that date back to—”
“Okay, okay, I get it.” Eileen waved away the rest of the information with one trembling hand. “So what’s inside there…” She slid a wary look at the closed door. “It could be very old.”
“It’s possible.” And before she could convince herself otherwise, Jazz tried the door again.
It creaked, budged, flew open.
It was pitch-dark inside the room and Jazz slanted her light at the maze of pipes and the strings of rotted wiring that hung from the low ceiling like fat spiderwebs. She’d just about talked herself into the fact that Gus was, indeed, rusty and wrong to boot when her light flashed against something smooth and pale.
She leaned forward for a better look and her breath caught and her heart bumped against her ribs.
A skull with strands of leathery, desiccated flesh hanging from it looked back at her from a mound of plastic wrapping, its eye sockets black and empty, its mouth gaping.
“He’s not wrong,” Jazz told Eileen, and when the principal stepped forward and saw what Jazz had discovered she let out a little whimper.
Jazz didn’t have that luxury. A cadaver dog that’s done his job and done it well deserves praise, and she turned away from the horror of the gaping skull so she could pat Gus and take a chew toy out of her back pocket, the one toy his owner said he loved above all else. “Good boy, Gus! You’re a good, good boy.”
She smiled when she said it and felt like a fool when she turned to Eileen and saw tears on the principal’s cheeks. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to be upbeat. That’s how Gus knows he’s done a good job.”
“You don’t need to explain.” Eileen sniffled. “You do what you need to do. I’ll stay out of your way.”
Jazz hooked the leash to Gus’s collar and handed the leash to Eileen. “If you’ll take him over with Wally, I’ll make the proper call and make sure everything’s secure.” Again she swept her light over the scene. She couldn’t say she was used to death; she was pretty sure no one could be. But she’d seen it a time or two, and it didn’t creep her out or disgust her. There was a certain stillness to it that always struck Jazz as profound, a quiet that hovered over it and around it. She wasn’t afraid of death. She wasn’t in awe of it. But she gave it its due and met its silence with her own.
Still, when the beam of her flashlight highlighted a scrap of orange-and-brown-plaid fabric beneath the plastic, she caught her breath. And when the light winked against something metallic, she couldn’t help but gasp.
“What?” Eileen had just turned with Gus and she stopped and spun around. She had been calm enough, all things considered, sure enough that what Gus and Jazz had found were probably the remains of some long-dead Orthodox priest that had stayed hidden in all the years since St. Catherine’s took over the seminary and all the years before that when the building was empty and silent. Now she picked up on the tremor of recognition that sent a cascade of goose bumps up Jazz’s arms, and when she saw what Jazz saw she caught her breath.
It was a gold cross, maybe three inches long, bigger than the ones people typically wore around their necks. The gold probably wasn’t any more real than the jewels in each arm of the cross. A red ruby at the head. A blue sapphire at the feet. An emerald on the right. A diamond on the left.
It was ugly. Gaudy. Which had always struck Jazz as odd, because the woman who wore it every day was anything but.
The cross and the chain that held it hung loose around the skeleton’s neck, tucked half in and half out of the plastic that contained the woman they both knew.