He pulled the truck into a grove of river birches until it was out of sight of the road and then killed the engine. He took a handful of knotted bandannas from the seat beside him and switched on the cab light to examine them. He remembered what Alena had told him: The dog was trained to distinguish four different kinds of remains. The first bandanna was red with a polka-dot pattern—the one Trygg wore at the Patriot Center when she searched for skeletonized remains. Nick set it aside—it wasn’t the one they would need here. The second bandanna was green with a checkerboard print—the one Trygg wore when she searched the lake for submerged remains. Nick set that one aside too.

That left only two: an elaborate blue plaid and a bright orange print with a series of wavy black lines. He looked at each of them: putrefying remains and distressed body. One of them told the dog to search for Alena alive and the other to search for her dead—but he had no idea which was which. And how “distressed” did Alena need to be before the dog could find her? The dog would never find her alive and unharmed; she had to be just less than dead.

He made a random guess—the blue plaid—and stuffed the other bandanna in his pocket.

He climbed from the cab and opened up the back of the truck; Trygg stepped onto the tailgate and silently leaped to the ground. Nick squatted down in front of the dog and held the blue bandanna in front of her face.

“I hope I’ve got this right,” Nick said. “See this? This means we’re going to work now. I want you to search for the same scent you just found inside—got it?” He looped the bandanna around the dog’s neck and stood up. “We’ll circle around behind the house and check the stables and outbuildings first—that’s our best bet. He wouldn’t have dumped her out in the open and he wouldn’t have taken her in the house; he would have hidden her until he figured out what to do next. Come on, let’s go.”

Nick walked a few yards away but the dog didn’t follow. He turned back and said to her, “Look—I know how smart you are, so there’s no use playing dumb. If you can detect the scent of table salt in a dilution of one part in ten million, then you can figure out a simple spoken command. Now we don’t have time to mess around, so—”

He snapped his fingers once and said, “Come!”

Trygg immediately rose and followed.

Nick nodded with satisfaction. “Your first word. Momma will be so proud.”