Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
My list-checking was simple distraction, a rosary of search equipment that slipped easily
through my mind. Solo's distractions were more concrete. Dog piss on the rusted jungle gym
and dog piss on the grass, making his tail curl defensively. As we walked toward the woods,
children from the apartments—having stood back at first to watch from a distance—now
surged around us, chattering like mockingbirds, then leaping back and screaming in exagger-
ated fear as Solo swung his huge head in their direction and wrinkled his brow. They weren't
dogs, they were just little people. He relaxed his tail to wag slow and low, all stiffness gone.
Around children, he dialed back both his drive and his rhetoric. “Don't worry, he's sweet,” I
told them. He wasn't always sweet with me, but he was with others. “He's big, huh? He won't
hurt you. He loves kids.” He wasn't a therapy dog, though, so we kept moving the whole
time.
Before we entered the fickle shade of the mimosas and elderberries and trees of heaven that
have colonized and overwhelmed the edges of these Piedmont woods, Solo paused to inhale a
last resentful snort of dog piss, baked onto a corroded steel post. Then the two investigators,
the dog, and I ducked under the yellow crime tape and through a jagged hole in a chain-link
fence.
We straightened up on the other side, and I took one of the rope tug toys out of the train-
ing bag and tucked it ostentatiously into my pocket. Solo yowled and spun in delirium, knee-
capping me with his big shoulder. I winced and unhooked him from my aching arm. I was
tempted to clock him, but I reminded myself once again that searches were not the time for
etiquette lessons. I didn't want him to sit or heel or watch me with adoration. I wanted him
to find the body.
Unhooked and far more obedient off-lead than on, Solo stood frozen, waiting. His eyes
fixed outward, then sliced back to my pocket, then down the hill littered with empty liquor
bottles, toddler diapers, a shattered Big Wheel, a rusted washing machine.
He didn't need to hear the command, but the words focused and centered me, reminding
me that we'd researched this dance for a couple of years. The least I could do was get it started.
“Solo? Go find your fish.”
He did a final brief tarantella around me, striking the pocket where I'd stashed the toy
with his open muzzle. Not a bite. It hurt nonetheless. Brat. Then he barked sharply and dis-
appeared into the dense undergrowth.
Solo was bounding, zigging and zagging downhill, the grim apartments left behind, past
the distractions of police radios, dog pee, children, and the broken glass and twisted metal
that slowed me but not him. We'd breached the first wave of Chinese privet and avoided most
although not all of the catbrier, which has the habit of digging its claws deep through thick
shepherd coats, right at chest height. We were now in understory, rife with baby buckeye and
larger oaks, hairy cords of poison ivy coiling around their trunks.
