Noah's Rainy Day (15 page)

Skepticism soured my mood.

The hundreds of travelers rushing past me fueled my anxiety and my desire to be useful on this case, to help find Max’s son as fast as humanly possible. I wanted to please Streeter, to prove to him that his choosing me as a special agent wasn’t wasted. As if the masses of people weren’t bad enough, those who slowed and gawked made it worse. I slid the harness over Beulah’s head, easing her front paws through the straps and fixing the clasps snugly around her chest and back.

Beulah became as calm as ever, seemingly undisturbed by the strange surroundings, the volume of people. It was as if her harness erased any distractions for her. She was ready to work. Most of our training and many of our actual trails were in wooded areas or fields. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought judging by her calm disposition that this dog had a regular job searching airports. Her confidence eased my apprehension and whittled away my skepticism. She was a pro.

“No mountain lions here, Beulah,” I said, coaxing her to make me feel more confident.

I wondered if Beulah could actually track a scent trail from seven hours earlier in an airport where thousands of travelers had since trampled. I scratched behind her ears and she lifted her nose toward me, the folds of skin on her face sliding back and revealing her wide, bright eyes. I knew that if any dog could do this impossible task, it would be her. I’d learned over the last six months just how amazing bloodhounds were, especially Beulah. She’d practically saved my life while risking her own at the Hanson place. She’d suffered injuries, and although she’d taken time off to heal while I was at Quantico, she was back on track the instant the wheels of my plane touched down at DIA three weeks ago. Both of us were excited to reacquaint ourselves with the business of trailing.

Beulah’s sense of smell is incredible and if I wasn’t careful, I could indicate the wrong scent for her to follow. The backpack and the items inside it were the only articles I had from the child, and I was concerned about how many people had or may have touched or handled the bag. The
boy’s backpack would include his scent if the bag was actually worn or used by the child. But I had my doubts. The bag appeared to be new, as did the jacket inside. And both felt expensive. Knowing Max, this boy was showered with gifts, clothes, and toys. It would be far easier to indicate a scent for Beulah to follow from a familiar, well-worn item than from something that little Max barely touched or wore. The conflicting, inconsequential scents mingled with the one I wanted to highlight could be a significant hurdle for us in this search.

I cursed under my breath, wishing I had an article of the boy’s clothing, something he might have worn more recently and more often than the new jacket stuffed into a backpack. A jacket I wasn’t sure the kid had ever even tried on before.

As I hitched the lead onto the harness, Beulah set herself in a ready position. I led her to the counter next to gate B31. Passengers were moving away from the counter area and cramming into the row of chairs on either side of us as if we were repelling magnets. The crowd was waiting to board the next flight out of the gate and the marquee above the counter read “Des Moines.” I explained to the BlueSky employee what I was trying to do, who I was working for, and that I hoped not to delay the boarding. She had made an announcement for passengers to clear the area and to please be patient as the authorities started a search.

Beulah leaned against my leg. While passengers stared, I nodded my thanks to the BlueSky gate attendant and told her I hoped Beulah would only spend a few minutes at the gate. Concerned about the many different scents that could be lingering on the bag, I carefully extracted the tiny, new jacket and laid it on the ground at Beulah’s paws and said, “Find.”

Beulah dropped her eyes to the jacket and the folds of skin on her head and ears billowed over her eyes.

I repeated, “Find.”

Everyone was ogling us. No pressure there. Beulah looked up at me, circled the jacket, walked toward the gate, then back to the jacket, toward an older woman sitting closest the gate, and then back to the jacket.

“Find.” Beulah stood over the jacket, and then looked up at me and down at the jacket. And sat down at my feet. She wasn’t budging. I assumed that meant I was right. There was no scent on the jacket worth trailing. I
ignored the mumbles and whispering from the Des Moines crowd and retrieved the jacket, stuffed it back into the child’s backpack, and placed the entire bag on the ground at Beulah’s paws.

“Find!” I commanded. She rose to her feet and stood above the backpack.

I was sure the boy’s scent would be on the bag since he had worn it getting on the plane earlier that day. I just didn’t know how strong his scent would be. I hoped the signal from the jacket allowed Beulah to isolate the boy’s scent from everything else—from the scent of Kevin Benson, who wore a heavy, musky cologne, from the TSA agents in NYC, possibly from a bellhop or a taxi driver, from a staff member at Max’s penthouse or the mansion he undoubtedly owned, and possibly even from Streeter’s scent if he had touched the bag and left behind a whiff of that incredibly sexy new cologne he was wearing. A Christmas gift? From Jenna?

I barely managed another “Find” before Beulah circled once toward the gate and then took off hot on a scent through the concourse. I scooped up the backpack and shouted my thanks over my shoulder as Beulah pushed her way through the hordes of people toward the center of the concourse, which led us past more moving walkways as we headed toward B51, where the boy should have departed for LA, just as Kevin Benson had suggested.

If Benson was telling the truth, Beulah would head down the length of the concourse through the crowded center to B51, double back to the center of Concourse B where most of the shops and restaurants were located, and head to whichever bathroom Benson had last gone to with the boy. With five levels on each concourse, most not accessible by the public, I questioned for the first time where BlueSky employees might have access that others didn’t.

But before I could formulate my thoughts around areas where a young boy might hide, Beulah lurched to the left down a nearby escalator that led to the underground train.

“Benson, you liar,” I mumbled, trying to think back, to remember Benson’s specific eye movements that suggested he was lying. “What were you doing down here?”

Keeping the lead short, I excused Beulah’s bad manners as she pushed
her way through the crowds on the escalators, in the waiting area below, and to the door for boarding the trains. The mechanical voice sounding over the PA system was announcing train arrivals and warning people to keep clear of the doors so arriving passengers could get off, but I could not budge Beulah from her post at the closed doors. Once on the train, Beulah seemed confused. I let her follow people off at the next stop, but she seemed to have lost the scent entirely.

I loaded Beulah back on the train and headed toward B31, starting the search again. She bolted from the gate directly to the same down escalator heading to the underground trams; she went to the same door and again seemed lost when she got on the tram. This time, we stayed put on the train until the second and last stop, which was at the main terminal. Beulah tentatively stepped off the train, hesitated briefly, and then bolted through the foot traffic to the escalators, nearly knocking a few passengers over. Beulah didn’t trail the scent up the escalator. Instead, she broke toward a quiet area to the right, underneath the escalators, which I finally recognized as the elevators. I pushed the button and when the doors opened, Beulah pulled me on, confidently and surely.

The scent on the bag led us to this route, I thought. I couldn’t believe it. Kevin Benson had lied. Worse, he took the child out of the secure area to the main terminal. Or someone did. Directly out of the secure area as the boy deplaned. What did it mean?

Maybe I hadn’t trailed the scent correctly. Surely Kevin Benson would not have taken a child out of the secure area, would he? Isn’t that against the law or something? To take an unaccompanied minor away from airport security? Okay, maybe not illegal, but certainly ill advised. Surely it broke some code of ethics with the airlines.

And what if I missed a signal? Beulah had only been confused when
on
the train, which may make sense given the boy likely stood in one place and didn’t wander about as the train traveled. The likelihood of getting on the exact train was slim to none; surely these trains ran every few seconds. That was my speculation based on similar behavior Beulah was demonstrating in the elevator. Again, the boy likely stood in one spot, waiting for the elevator to go up to the main terminal.

The doors to the elevator opened and I saw familiar faces from the
underground train exiting the escalator into the main terminal. Ticketing was around the corner to my right with the security checkpoint ahead. The down escalators to the underground train were on my left and stores brimming with shoppers rimmed the edges of a large open area beneath white canvas peaks overhead that emulated the snowcapped mountains. Beulah trotted toward a nearby bar called the Buckhorn Bar and Grill, circled, and then bolted straight for the restrooms. She pulled up short at a particular door between the men’s and women’s restrooms. The sign on the door read “Family” above the picture of two stick figures, one wearing a skirt. I tried the knob. The bathroom was not in use; its door was not locked. I let Beulah continue into the roomy stall. The room was a single bathroom with one seat. It had a changing table that dropped from the wall, one sink, and a large garbage can.

Beulah pulled me all the way into the Family room, and the door bumped shut as Beulah circled, went to the toilet seat, then hesitated. Beulah stood near the sink for a long moment, decided to circle, went back to the toilet seat briefly, and then to the sink. She planted herself on the bathroom floor and looked back at me over her shoulder.

“Find,” I said but knew she wouldn’t. The trail seemed to stop here.

I let out some slack in her lead so I could reach the door, opened it, and repeated the command. Beulah just sat there, staring at the sink, and then at me. She didn’t howl. She didn’t bolt back out the door. She didn’t whine. She just sat there near the sink and stared at me.

I propped a rubber wedge beneath the Family door to keep it open, walked back over to Beulah, laid the backpack at her feet, and repeated the command.

She didn’t move. This was the end of the trail. I didn’t understand what it meant, but I certainly had confidence in what Beulah was telling me. The scent simply ended. Right here. I squatted down and rubbed Beulah’s ears and sides, offered her a handful of dog treats, telling her she was a good dog and giving her lots of praise. I decided to verify the trail from B31 to the main concourse bathroom again, to confirm my results.

When I led Beulah back through security to the underground trains to Concourse B to start over, I noticed a familiar face, one I’d seen a few times before on my trail with Beulah. Twice on the trains at different times
during my search earlier and now a third time on the train heading back. Maybe the woman was simply riding the trains back and forth, a bored passenger with nothing to do on her layover but ride. I turned to smile at her, catch her eye. Her face was blanched, her expression weary. And when her eyes landed on mine, she turned her face quickly away and pretended she hadn’t noticed me. Odd, I thought. I assumed she was either embarrassed that I noticed her riding the trains again or that I realized she was one of the curious travelers who’d followed us to watch an official investigation in action. But I didn’t mind if she was. I was proud of Beulah’s exceptional skills.

Back at gate B31, the Des Moines passengers were lined up to board the plane, and I decided to give Beulah a rest and another treat as I sank into the stiff row of chairs to wait until the area was cleared. This time around, all the travelers who had earlier gawked and whispered offered me wary smiles, worried glances, and suggested “good luck,” one passenger glancing up to the television monitor above my head. My eyes followed hers and I realized most of them had probably noticed the national news story announcing the missing child at DIA.

As I watched Beulah drool over her dog treat, I thought about Kevin Benson lying to Streeter and the chief earlier, knowing now that the kid had gone straight off the plane and out of the security area. No gate B51. No ice cream. No bathroom. No way. Benson had lied about all that. But I had to verify the trail one more time to be sure.

As the travelers shuffled past me, I glanced up to see how fast the line was moving. I noticed a familiar face across the concourse at gate B30. A guy who looked a lot like Jack Linwood was coming off the plane, sandwiched between a bespectacled man who appeared to have been traveling for several lifetimes and a heavy lady who seemed unsteady with every step. Jack, on the other hand, looked crisp, handsome, as always. He was punching buttons on his cell phone with the pads of his thumbs, and just as I was about to call out his name, tell him what I was doing, and ask what he was doing on the plane, my cell phone chirped. I had a message.

I fished the cell phone quickly from my pocket and saw that the text was from Jack. The idea of watching him text me without him knowing it made me smile. But the message confused me. I looked from my phone to
Jack as he slipped his phone into his pocket, quickly stepped around the weary traveler ahead of him, and walked away from gate B30 toward FBI’s makeshift headquarters on the other end of the concourse.

My mouth opened in protest, then closed again. I stared at the text message that read, “On my way. At Concourse B. Be there in a few minutes.”

Hoping to learn where he had just come from and why he was on that plane—maybe searching it or something?—I texted, “Where’ve you been? We’ve been looking for you.”

His reply was, “Don’t laugh, but I fell asleep—the sleep of the dead—and didn’t notice everyone trying to call me. That never happens. But I’m awake now. And I’m here.”