Page 15 of She Didn’t See It Coming

Jayne steels herself for what’s coming. It’s Donna who opens the door. When she sees the dog, she takes an involuntary step back as if she’s frightened of him. Then she recovers herself and calls over her shoulder, “Sam!”

Sam appears in the foyer. He takes in the handler and the large, panting dog, the detectives, and is momentarily speechless. Jayne tries to read him, but she can’t.

Now Lizzie comes up behind Sam and says, “Oh good, you’ve got a dog.”

“Come in,” Sam says finally.

They make their way into the living room. Jayne notes that Paige seems to have left and there’s no sign of the little girl, but she asks, just to be sure. “Where is your daughter?”

“She’s at Angela’s,” Sam says.

Jayne nods, relieved. “We’re going to do another search of the building. This is Officer Bremmer. He’s going to need something of Bryden’s, so that the dog can get her scent.”

“A piece of clothing would be good,” Bremmer says, “maybe something of hers from the laundry basket that hasn’t been washed.”

Sam retreats to the bedroom to find a piece of clothing.

They are all silent while they wait for him to return, with only the unsettling sound of the dog panting.

Jayne finds herself watching Lizzie, wondering what she’s thinking.

She wanted the K-9 unit, but now she’s quiet, as if she’s frightened by what they might find. Fair enough, Jayne thinks.

Sam returns with a T-shirt and hands it to Bremmer. They all watch as the handler holds the clothing to the dog’s nose. The dog sniffs it thoroughly, rooting into it.

Jayne says gently, “If there’s anything to find, this dog will find it.

He’s trained as both a tracking dog and a cadaver dog.

” There’s a charged silence as cadaver dog registers with everyone.

Sam’s face blanches and Bryden’s parents look stricken.

Although they always hold on to hope when there’s a missing persons case, Jayne knows that Bryden may not still be alive.

For the family, it’s an idea that needs getting used to.

Sam suddenly looks pale and unsteady on his feet, as if he might fall over. Jayne observes him with concern. She’s seen grown men faint before. “Sam, you’d better sit down.” He slumps onto the sofa. She observes him for a moment and then turns to go.

“Can I come?” Lizzie asks.

Jayne turns back. There’s an avidity about Lizzie that Jayne finds almost distasteful. “No. You should all remain here, in the apartment.”

“Let’s go,” Bremmer says, turning the dog around.

Brutus seems to pause, his nose testing the area between the living room and the front foyer.

He whines slightly and Bremmer watches him closely.

Then the dog seems to settle, and they head out the door into the corridor.

Nose to the ground, the dog goes to the bank of three elevators.

Naturally he will be able to detect Bryden’s scent here, Jayne thinks.

It’s whether the dog can track her to somewhere in the building she wouldn’t be expected to go that they need to determine.

The dog picks up the scent on the path between the front door of unit 804 and the elevators, to Angela Romano’s unit, and the trash disposal. But nowhere else on the eighth floor.

Bremmer says, “She hasn’t been to any of the other units on this floor.” The dog shows no interest in the stairwells at either end of the corridor.

“Let’s see if he can pick up the scent on any of the other floors,” Bremmer says.

They all get into the elevator and go up to the top floor, the twelfth.

They emerge from the elevator, but the dog clearly finds no scent of Bryden on the twelfth floor or in the stairwells.

They repeat this all the way back down, stopping at each floor.

They arrive on the ground floor, and when the elevator doors open, the dog eagerly puts his head down and clearly follows Bryden’s scent to the front doors, and also to the concierge desk and the bank of mailboxes, but not to the exit doors at the back of the building.

“Which level is her car on?” Bremmer asks, back at the main floor elevators.

“It’s on 1B,” Jayne answers.

“Let’s do 2B first.”

Brutus does not pick up Bryden’s scent on 2B at all.

They go back down one floor. At 1B the elevator opens and the dog leads them eagerly through a pair of windowed double doors into the parking garage and directly to Bryden’s parked car, which has already been thoroughly searched.

Bremmer gives him a treat. The dog then puts his nose down and leads his handler to the car next to it, to the passenger-door side.

“That’s Sam’s car,” Kilgour says.

Bremmer says, “She’s obviously in the habit of taking the elevators directly to the lobby or directly to the parking garage and going to her car or her husband’s car. Brutus hasn’t picked up anything else.”

“So, no possibility she walked out of this parking garage?” Jayne says.

He shakes his head. “No. And she wasn’t taken to a car parked somewhere else down here either, or Brutus would have caught it.” He suggests, “He did seem a bit agitated up in the apartment.”

Jayne asks, “What are you thinking? That she might have been killed in the apartment?” Jayne knows that a body doesn’t have to be dead for long—perhaps only minutes—before a trained cadaver dog can detect something.

Perhaps the body was moved too quickly? How would someone move the body without being seen?

Bremmer shakes his head. “I don’t know. Brutus didn’t seem sure.”

They return once again to the elevators while Jayne texts Ravi to come down and join them with the keys.

From there, Brutus lowers his nose and leads them down the corridor through another set of double doors toward the storage and maintenance areas.

Brutus starts to tug more eagerly on his lead and Bremmer gives Jayne a glance as if to say, Prepare yourself.

Now the dog is pawing at the cement floor at the base of the locked door marked Storage Lockers .

Ravi arrives, fumbling with the keys as he opens the door.

Jayne knows that this area was searched yesterday.

The door finally opens, and inside, Jayne sees rows of lockers, all enclosed with wire mesh.

She follows the handler and the excited dog down the first row, aware of a jumble of items—bicycles, old furniture, and camping gear—inside the lockers on either side.

She reaches locker 804, Bryden and Sam’s locker, and glances in, peering through the wire mesh at the contents.

It’s full of baby equipment—a playpen, a swing chair, a crib, and boxes marked Baby Clothes—all carefully covered in clear plastic, waiting to be needed.

Jayne remembers Angela Romano saying that they were trying for another baby.

The dog is barking wildly now, at the end of the corridor, and a terrible feeling comes over her.

Jayne follows the sound. Bremmer and Kilgour are standing at the door to another storage locker, which is slightly ajar.

Inside the locker are a number of cardboard boxes, stacked about three feet high, and another open box full of old computer equipment.

Jayne turns and tells Ravi to stay back.

The handler reaches into his pocket, pulls out gloves, and puts them on.

Kilgour does the same, and Jayne copies them.

Then Bremmer pulls open the locker door.

Brutus charges inside and leaps on top of the cardboard boxes, barking furiously at something behind them. Jayne can’t smell anything, but the trained dog clearly can.

Bremmer follows the dog inside, gesturing for Jayne and Kilgour to come closer. They all lean in over the musty cardboard boxes to see what the dog is barking at, on the floor behind the row of boxes.

It’s a large suitcase. And the dog won’t stop barking.

Bremmer says solemnly, “I think we’ve found her.”