CHAPTER 1
“Look, I’m a big enough guy to admit when I’m jealous.” I spoke to Vira, my golden retriever who rode shotgun in the passenger seat of my aging Ford pickup. We were heading toward a job that, amazingly, Special Agent in Charge Len Squires—the head of the Chicago Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation—had sent my way. We were on the west side of Lake Michigan, winding through some Glencoe roads on our journey to the Kenneth and Calley Kurtz Druckman estate. The sun was on the rise; our windows were down. It was another beautiful late-summer morning, and Lynyrd Skynyrd rocked on the pickup’s radio.
“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, Vira, but whenever you snuggle up to Kippy, she’ll flick my arm, point at you, and say, ‘She likes me more, she likes me more’ or, even worse, ‘Na-na na-na boo-boo.’”
Glencoe, a village in northeastern Cook County, on Chicago’s North Shore, lies twenty-plus miles north of downtown. Glencoe is one of the richest, most affluent, and most exclusive suburbs in Illinois, and maybe in the entire country. Needless to say, I don’t get up here much. They probably have a picture of me posted at the city limits with a couple of red lines crossing my face.
“I guess what I’m wondering, Vira, is if you could throttle it back a little bit?” I continued, though my golden retriever appeared more interested in Ronnie Van Zant belting out “Sweet Home Alabama” than in listening to my yammering. “There could be extra snacks in your future if you, say, tilted things in my direction when we’re with Kippy. I know you love them pretzels of yours—crispy, salted on the outside. Be a shame not to get any more. That’s all I’m saying.”
Like most guys who date out of their league, I’ve come up with a dozen ways in which to introduce Kippy Gimm to everyone I’ve ever met, have ever known, or even passed on the street. Us guys who date above ourselves should form a secret society—a brethren of the blessed—where we can sing songs, shoot hoops, drink beer, and high-five. Who knows, maybe we could even get a group discount on auto insurance.
Now don’t get me wrong, I like to think I’m not as clunky as some of those other lucky bastards you’ve spotted parading about the streets and malls—big, dopey smiles on their faces, hands entwined with their eye-catching lady friends—my comrades-in-arms who’ve somehow managed to date several niches above themselves. My mom once informed me I ranked a ten, though there may be some maternal bias hidden in her assessment. In high school, my older sister told me I was maybe a seven, which is likely closer to the mark. I’m on the ass-end of my twenties—spitting distance from the big three-o—stand at that six-foot-nothing height, am a bit on the wiry side, and sprout a disagreeable thatch of brown hair that gets brushed on days I’m seeing Kippy and finger-combed on days I’m not.
“I don’t mean to dump on Kippy or anything, Vira, but, you have to admit, she does kind of screw you over on the walks,” I said, glancing at my golden retriever. She looked my way, but then stuck her head out the window. “Remember, girl—the Zen walks are all on me.”
Since dogs live through their sense of smell, I’ll let Vira sniff each twig, every dried leaf, fire hydrant, stop sign, tree, or random rabbit turd as though she’d just discovered the Lost City of El Dorado. Thus a walk out to the mailbox turns into an hours-long odyssey. On the other hand, Kippy doesn’t think a trip around the block should take the amount of time it took Magellan to reach the East Indies. Kippy walks for cardio, always keeping Vira at a brisk pace with a half snort here or a quick sniff over there. Kippy’s philosophy is that Vira has smelled enough leaves, litter, and roadkill to last a thousand lifetimes, and, if they ever truly stumble upon the Lost City of El Dorado, she’ll let Vira linger a moment or two before they zip onward to the park.
The two gals—Kippy and Vira—have a special relationship. Kippy met Vira first, having been the patrol officer answering the call about a suspected suicide via carbon monoxide poisoning in a closed garage at a townhome in Forest Glen. Some unhinged drunk had been gassing my little girl—her capital offense being only that she had been picked out of a litter of puppies as a household pet by the drunkard’s former girlfriend whom he himself had just chased from their home. The drunkard had even managed to off himself as the carbon monoxide seeped into the kitchen where he’d been sitting at the island, getting intimate with a fifth of Jack Daniel’s and beer.
Good riddance.
Vira somehow survived, and stumbled out of the lunatic’s garage and into the open arms of Officer Kippy Gimm. Soon after that fateful night I’d picked Vira up at CACC—Chicago Animal Care and Control—and adopted her into my canine family.
My name is Mason Reid—I go by Mace—and I specialize in human remains detection. That is, I train dogs to hunt for the dead. I train HRD dogs—human remains detection dogs or, more bluntly, cadaver dogs. Vira is my prize pupil, the most gifted cadaver dog I’ve ever trained or met, and together we help the law enforcement authorities—CPD, various sheriff departments, and, as of this morning, the FBI—hunt for the missing and presumed dead. I call my pack of cadaver dogs The Finders and would promote them in billboard ads had I a few extra grand lying about the dresser table.
Just last spring, Kippy, Vira, and I found ourselves in a hell of a bind, but we’d fought back—somehow managed to stay on the right side of dirt—and brought the FBI Special Agent in Charge, Len Squires, information that led to the arrest and incarceration of a corrupt police superintendent, as well as the sitting mayor of Chicago. It also led to the execution of the head of the Chicago Outfit—evidently, his colleagues got it in their collective noggins that, sooner or later, the mob boss would try cutting a deal with the prosecutors—you know, screw omertà and turn federal informant.
I turned off my pickup’s radio as Vira and I were waved past a daunting set of wrought-iron gates by one of SAC Squires’s investigators. I steered the F-150 another half mile on the paved road that wound itself toward Druckman Manor. The Kenneth Druckman family lived in a Georgian-style mansion of reddish brick and raked roofs situated on a forty-acre spread along the shore of Lake Michigan. The front of the Druckman estate was a beehive of activity: numerous squad cars from the Glencoe PD, plus a handful of dark sedans, as well as two black panel vans, which I assumed came with SAC Squires, were all parked on one side of an outsized roundabout driveway that encircled a hedge maze. I parked next to one of the forensic vans, leashed Vira, and the two of us loitered about the front walkway. Agent Squires spotted us, nodded our way, but remained standing halfway up a stoop that would look more natural atop the Parthenon in ancient Athens. He was deep in conversation with a bath-robed and clearly shaken Kenneth Druckman.
Any other day and I’d have unleashed Vira and seen how long it would take her to get the two of us to the center of Druckman’s maze of hedges. But today, I figured the FBI might frown on that.
Because, today, Calley Kurtz Druckman and her daughter had been kidnapped.
CHAPTER 2
After SAC Squires had instructed me on the phone to make haste to the Druckman estate, he confirmed several of my follow-up queries. Yes, it was that Kenneth J. Druckman, the founder and CEO of Druckman Financial Group, a financial planning and asset management firm, and one of the wealthiest people in Chicago, possibly in the United States, maybe even planet Earth. And, yes, I’d probably seen him interviewed a time or two on TV—well, only long enough for me to find the clicker and flip to another channel. CEO Druckman could be found in front of a camera whenever a Windy City business anchor needed a talkative and photogenic financier to discuss upswings or downswings, even minor speed bumps, in the global economy.
Kenneth J. Druckman—with his styled-to-perfection black hair, sparkling blue eyes, and crisp Giorgio Armani suits—served that purpose well.
However, the real reason I knew about Druckman was because of the celebrity whom the financier had married … Calley Kurtz.
Calley Kurtz had worked as a fashion model during my, shall we say, formative years. I might still have that old Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue on which Calley had graced the cover hidden away in a bottom drawer somewhere back at my trailer home. CEO Druckman had met the supermodel when she’d come to Chicago for some photoshoot or another, nature took its course, and the two were married in the Crystal Ballroom at the Millennium Knickerbocker Hotel on New Year’s Eve a half-dozen or so years ago.
You’d have had to be blind and deaf to live in Chicago and not have heard about the event at the time. Everyone who was anyone had been there. My invite must have gotten lost in the mail, but I saw the pictures in the newspaper, and Calley Kurtz did not appear to have aged a day since the week I blew my allowance springing for that now dog-eared issue of Sports Illustrated. The papers also highlighted the engagement ring Druckman bought Calley: a rock the size of Mount St. Helens.
SAC Len Squires patted financier Druckman on the forearm, and stepped down our way.
“Thanks for driving out, Mace,” Squires said. The head of the FBI’s field office in Chicago fit central casting to a T, that is, if you subtracted half a foot in height. Square-jawed and hawk-nosed, Agent Squires may have topped five-six if he stretched or got measured first thing in the morning. But based on the way he’d pulled our chestnuts out of the fire during those most-unpleasant circumstances last May, in my book Len Squires stood ten-feet tall.
“So the poor guy’s wife and daughter were taken, huh?”
Squires nodded. “Two white males and a Hispanic, early to mid-twenties, broke into the house around 3:00 a.m. They knocked Mr. Druckman around a little bit—broke his eyeglasses—and stuck a steak knife to his wife’s throat so he’d open their jewelry safe. They also took whatever cash they found lying about, plus watches and rings and other miscellaneous stuff.”
“It started as a home invasion?”
Squires nodded again. “They were expecting more cash—as though rich people don’t keep their money in banks like the rest of us—and got all bent out of shape at their de minimis haul. Druckman tried educating them on the value of fine art, the paintings and sculptures about the house, but got punched in the face for his effort.”
“Not exactly art buffs.”
“I doubt this bunch would have a clue about unloading stolen paintings, much less whatever treasures they got out of the wall safe,” Squires replied. “Instead, they went postal. Grabbed Druckman’s wife and daughter, and told Druckman he’d better pony up ten million in cash apiece if he ever wanted to see them alive again.”
“Aw, jeez.”
“Anyway, Druckman’s going to scrape together the money for when they phone with instructions, but the man’s scared to death. He said all three of the assailants kept smacking him in the back of the head at random moments, just out of spite. He thinks they were on drugs and they weren’t only looking for cash but painkillers and maybe rec drugs—amphetamines or coke or whatever. They did ransack the medicine cabinets and tear through drawers.”
“They get anything?”
“Ambien and some brand of valium Mrs. Druckman had tucked away,” he said. “Druckman’s terrified the assailants will come to realize how stupid it is to try and collect ransom in this day and age. And when they do, maybe they’ll hurt his family—maybe do things to his wife—maybe kill both the wife and daughter so they won’t be able to ID anyone. That’s why he called the cops and then the Bureau.”
Behind Druckman’s mansion lay several acres of brush and wetland. “You want me and Vira to check the backwoods, right?”
“That’d be great, Mace,” Squires said. “It’s about a half mile of trees and marsh and muck before it hits a public road on the far side.”
“And we’re positive they left that way?” According to my earlier call with Squires, the kidnappers had cut through the back mire in the wee hours of the morning.
“They half-assed tied Druckman to the staircase railing in the front entryway. He didn’t hear a car start or anything in the five minutes it took him to jiggle free and call 911. And the gates were shut when Glencoe PD showed up.” Squires added, “The Druckmans got home late last night from some charity banquet downtown, and he thinks his wife may not have reset the security system after they came in.”
Evidently, the Druckmans had originally planned on staying overnight in the city. A reservation for a top-floor suite had been made at the Langham. As such, house staff and security personnel had been given the night off. However, a wave of nausea had swept through Calley during the event’s dinner, and the allure of recuperating on the Egyptian cotton sheets at Casa de Druckman proved too attractive to resist. The Druckmans grabbed their daughter, treated their nanny to the penthouse suite for the rest of the evening, and hightailed it back here to Glencoe with Eleanor in tow.
“Eleanor?”
“That’s their daughter,” Squires said. “She’s five years old.” He must have read the look on my face, because he followed with, “I know.”
The only staff on-site had been the gardener, but he’d been sound asleep in the servants’ cottage a hundred yards away when the police arrived. The gardener said he’d been awake, watching TV, and heard when the Druckmans pulled in a little before eleven, but he hadn’t seen nor heard any other vehicles before he dropped off to sleep an hour later. This supported the general consensus that the unknown subjects, or unsubs as Squires termed the home invaders, must have approached Druckman Manor from the rear, passing through the ravine and the muck.
“Mind if I borrow a few of your guys? There might be some trails back there, and several of us could cover the ground a lot more quickly.”
“Of course,” Squires said. “We’ve got you here to cover all bases, Mace. But I hope to hell you don’t find anything.”
CHAPTER 3
Three of Squires’s agents and I fanned out, letting Vira plunge into the woods ahead of us. Human remains detection dogs are trained to identify the distinct odor of decomposing human flesh and then alert their handlers. If there’s anyone deceased in the marsh and the woodlands, Vira will find them—with or without that special thing she’s got going. Dogs kick our asses in the olfactory department. Canines have three hundred million scent receptors, as opposed to the paltry five million divvied out to mere humans. As scents exist for a chunk of time after they’ve been laid, sniffing, for my pups, is like streaming a National Geographic documentary on things that may have occurred in a particular spot. That said, Kippy and I had always struggled to define Vira’s special thing. The easiest analogy might be that for every fifty million of us dunderheads ambling about with a finger in our nose and wondering what’s for dinner, there’s an Albert Einstein or a Thomas Edison or a Marie Curie hidden in the mix.
Why should it be any different for dogs?
When we’re at a murder scene—where Vira has discovered human remains—she has the briefest of episodes, the shortest of spells or seizures or whatever the hell you want to call them. And, afterward, my golden retriever comes away having made … connections.
Now, before you contact the authorities and have me committed to Chicago Lakeshore Hospital, please hear me out.
Murder’s an intimate act, right? And we all know, at least from years spent watching the nightly news or true crime shows on cable, that murderers leave behind a mountain of physical evidence. All sorts of DNA for the CSI teams and medical examiners to ferret through—fingerprints, footprints, hair, skin under fingernails, saliva, blood, semen, you name it.
So why couldn’t there be scent DNA—some kind of scent aura or chemical signature—left at crime scenes as well?
Vira, and perhaps all HRD dogs, receive this tidal wave of stimulus, this tsunami of scent data, and my golden retriever then takes the art of human remains detection to the next level … to the Albert Einstein or Thomas Edison or Marie Curie level. When Vira discovers a body or visits a crime scene, she attempts to process this data, to perform some kind of forensic analysis on the various smells and odors—the scent DNA—in order to decipher their meaning.
I mentioned canine scent receptors, which are for all practical purposes supernatural to begin with as they enable dogs to identify thousands and thousands of different odors. And in Vira’s case, she attempts to interpret these odors.
Vira makes links, she makes relationships … connections … Vira connects the unseen dots.
If you’d still feel safer with me eating Jell-O in a rubber room at Chicago Lakeshore, let me bend your ear a moment longer. Let’s say I’m a serial killer who—aw hell, I don’t know—has it in for the local Tiddlywinks champions. I really hate them disc-flipping bastards, so I’ll grab one, take him or her—why do I think they’d mostly be male?—to my hidden lair, where I’d mess with them for weeks before, eventually, jamming a cup full of winks down their throats and watching as they slowly asphyxiate. Later, under the cover of darkness, I’d dump their bodies near playgrounds at public parks.
Perhaps I’d leave behind some blood or hair, saliva or footprints, or even fibers from my clothing for the crime scene investigators to rummage through. Knowing me, I’d make a helluva mess out of being the Tiddlywink Killer. I’d likely leave my fingerprints all over the winks for the CSI agents to discover. Anyway, all of this forensic evidence would point in my direction. Similarly, if Vira came across the body of one of my Tiddlywinks victims, she’d do her damnedest to piece together whatever forensic scent or aura exists at the scene … up to and including the tiniest trace of the murderer.
In other words, Vira’d sniff out my fingerprints on the Tiddlywinks.
And I’m positive she’d stare at me in a most-peculiar manner right before she ran to Kippy to tattle.
* * *
It hadn’t rained much in weeks. The ponds on Druckman’s back property were shallow, the soil dry, and the brush gnarled and thick. Five minutes in, Vira barked. I cut left to follow the sound, jogged along the gulch until I spotted my golden retriever—dead silent now and quivering as though a million beetles stirred beneath her fur.
Vira was having one of her episodes.
It was then I spotted the small foot jutting out from behind a boulder.
I knelt down, placed a hand on Vira’s back, hoping to calm her, hoping she could sense I was there, hoping to snap her out of the spell she was in. I clipped the leash to the back of her harness and wondered for the hundredth time what happens during these episodes of hers. Is the act of murder so intense, so extreme, that some chemical signature lingers in the place where a life has been taken?
But lingers for how long—a day, weeks, a month?
A thousand years?
I followed Vira’s gaze to the body. What I saw turned my stomach, and I quickly looked away. Someone had smashed Supermodel Calley Kurtz Druckman’s once-stunning face against the boulder. Smashed it repeatedly. Again. And again. Leaving poor Calley lying out here alone in the darkness, alone in the cold … never again to grace the cover of any magazine.
Suddenly, Vira sprang to life, back in the here and now. She knocked hard against my chest, caught my eye for the briefest of seconds, jumped around me, and pointed herself back toward the Druckman mansion, tugging hard at the leash.
Vira could not have been clearer had she spoken English with closed captioning on display for the hard of hearing, but I held firm, needing a minute to absorb everything, to sort out what my golden retriever was telling me.
A flash of movement, and I spotted the agent who’d flagged me past the entry gates cutting into the ravine from the opposite side of the thicket, slowly approaching, his eyes focused at the base of the boulder—on what had once been Calley Kurtz. He was one of the agents who’d been helping us search the brush and the muck at the back of the Druckman estate. I tried recalling his name but came up blank.
“A horrible sight,” the agent said after a long moment and lifted his head toward me. “I called Squires and he’s on his way.” The nameless agent held a cell phone in one hand. “I’m going to go wave him and the others over, try and keep them off to the side, off whatever path those bastards took.”
“I’ll go get him,” I said, standing. “You should probably stay here; secure the scene or whatever it is you need to do.”
“Okay,” the agent agreed. “But keep to the side—by the bushes—and stay off anything that looks like shoeprints or any other tracks they may have left.”
Vira and I kept to the side, as instructed, as we threaded our way back toward Druckman’s manor. I thought hard about Kenneth J. Druckman … and I wondered if he’d concocted his tale of a home invasion turned kidnapping before or after he’d murdered his wife.
You see, if Vira’s peeked into your soul—if she’s captured your chemical signature at a murder site—she gets aggressive. Some golden retrievers have it in them to be aggressive, especially if they’ve experienced abuse or neglect at an early age. But I believe it’s Vira’s street smarts—her awareness on some base level of the evil that men do, plus her having connected the brutality of murder to whom she believes to be responsible—that triggers her aggression.
Sure, Vira’s playful, gentle around children, a loving spirit, but if she finds out you’ve hurt someone … or killed them … you’d best be on the next train out of Dodge.
And she’d had plenty of time to latch on to Druckman’s chemical signature—gotten a big trace off him—as we stood at the bottom of the steps while he interacted with SAC Squires.
“It can never be easy,” I said, absorbed in how best to sway Squires away from CEO Druckman’s narrative regarding a random band of home invaders. Perhaps tell him Vira followed the killer’s scent back to the mansion, which, in a manner, she had. Perhaps suggest they scour the ravine to see if there truly were multiple footprints left by multiple assailants. Perhaps I could bring up domestic abuse or crimes of passion or ask him if they still looked at the spouse first.
Not overkill, not anything to make it weird with the special agent in charge. Just enough to plant the seed—a notion—in order to point Len Squires in the right direction.
Suddenly, another thought occurred to me—what the hell had become of Kenneth J. Druckman’s daughter?
I stared at my golden retriever. “It can never be easy, can it, girl?”
Vira barked once and strained hard against the leash.
Copyright © 2022 by Jeffrey B. Burton
