Cloister just gave her a noncommittal smile and headed back inside.
Chapter Twenty-Two
SomethingabouttheFowlerresidence made Cloister uncomfortable.
It wasn’t the worst place he’d been.There was competition for that one.Trap houses where toddlers had been playing with syringes like blocks, burned-out meth labs with bodies curled in tight fetal balls of leather, and the warehouse that traffickers had used to store people like they were livestock.
Except they’d have watered livestock.
Those were in the top five.The Fowler house couldn’t compete; it was just…sad.
It had been a family home once.You could still see the bones of it: the shape of picture frames faded into the wallpaper where family portraits had once hung, the dents left in the linoleum from the legs of a kitchen table big enough for family meals, and the scribbled yearly line of growing bodies recorded on doorframes.
Some of it had probably gone when the parents died—keepsakes to friends and family, whatever the sister had wanted to take away with her—but Fowler hadworkedto get rid of the rest.He’d stripped the house down to the bare necessities.His computer in the main room, a single hard chair in the kitchen, and a pallet on the floor in the bathroom.
As Cloister walked through it—the stink of bleach obliterating any of the normal lived-in smells of a house—it felt like moving through the physical representation of Fowler’s mind.Everything comfortable and optional pared down until only what served the obsession was left.
It made him think of his mother.He wasn’t sure how he felt about that comparison.
Bourneville seemed on edge as well.She paced around the first floor, doubling back on her own tracks as she cast around for a scent that she couldn’t quite pin down.
“Was he here or not?”Javi asked as he watched Bourneville scrape at a cupboard door with her foot until Cloister opened it for her.
Cloister doubled Bon’s lead over in his hands and looped it around his neck.The rough material scraped against the back of his neck as he absently tugged on it.
“I’ll let you know when she submits her written report,” he said.The harsh tone in his voice caught him by surprise.The short preview of the line that had run through his head before it came out of his mouth had been dry, but not starched.“Sorry.”
There was a beat before Javi acknowledged that, “It’s OK.”
Did that make them even, Cloister wondered.It would be a relief if it did.He didn’t care for the fretful irritation that rattled around in his chest whenever he thought about Javi.He did it often enough that the feeling was settled.He decided that even if they weren’t even, he’d count his temper as rent on “OK” for the next hour.
Bourneville stopped in the middle of the kitchen.She whined in confusion and looked at Cloister expectantly.The game was broken; it was his job to fix it.
“There’s something, but it’s diffuse,” Cloister said.“She can’t find a direction.”
“And for those of us that don’t do dog?”Javi prodded.
That was a loaded question.Cloister was about to dodge it with a shrug instead of having to go back to the base principles of scent work.Before he could, he rested his hand on the countertop and felt the powdery film of dried bleach against his palm.He looked down at the dull, almost perfect, whorls of scrubbed bleach on the countertop.
“It’s scent-soup,” Cloister said.He lifted his hand and rubbed his fingers together.Soft white grains flaked off his fingers.“He washed the area down with so much bleach that it splashed the scent everywhere.”
He’d not come across it himself before.It had been one of the older K-9 handlers, retired now, who’d told them about a missing person whose OCD spouse’s reaction to the stressor had been to mop down the area so thoroughly they’d blown out the trail.
Javi grimaced and reached for his phone.“I’ll call it in,” he said.“If we’re doing it by hand, I want more eyes—”
“Let me try and reset her,” Cloister interrupted him.“The trail’s here.All she needs is a direction.”
He whistled Bon back to heel and gave her a reassuring pat.It wasn’t her fault.He dug his fingers into the ruff under her jaw, her weight pushed against his leg, as he decided between garden, car, and stairs.
Stairs won.
He used his knee to push Bon upright, off his leg, and headed back into the hall.Javi turned to watch him go, grunted a restrained—for him—sigh, and followed them to the foot of the stairs.
“What difference will this make?Javi asked.“If the trail’s gone, it’s gone.”
That was…sometimes it was like they didn’t speak the same language.
Cloister pulled the baggie out of his shirt, plastic body warm and pliable, and opened the seal to let Bon sniff and nudge the fabric.Once her ears pricked, he told her, “Fuss.”
