Adam wrote:He looks, coldly, at the head of his former servant. "I assume the blood will be sufficient for them to track. If you need it, I can get you something from the children, as well..." He drifts off for a second before snapping back, "And, possibly, something that may have belonged to the bastard that did this, recovered from another crime scene."
''So it's true! The Woman-Killer is back in the city after, what-- seven years? No, eight. Jonathon Matyr."
Thibault shakes his head. "Mad. He must know he's marked here. Why did he come back? Some dark compulsion... I...well, let's not waste time. Yes, hurry, grab things that carry the smell of the children, and whatever item it is this vile criminal left behind at the other scene."
...
THE SEARCH, CONTINUED
The dogs sniff at the blood in the nursery, and at objects brought to them: blankets and clothes of Benn’s small children, and something Benn recovered from a locked cabinet—a silvery steel hunting knife with a hilt shaped like a raven’s clawed foot.
Then the beasts bound out of nursery down the hall, through the kitchen, out the back door and into the back garden.
They become agitated near the garden gate that lets onto the back street, barking and leaping. The animals bound back into the garden and destroy a flower bed, rubbing their snouts in the dirt.
“Something’s wrong—they’re off the scent.”
KAT, helping the searchers
trips on a root exposed by the dog’s digging near the gate while she examines the ironwork. Quick reflexes save her from hurting herself falling over the low points of the decorative wrought iron fencing. But she gets something sticky all over her dress. Not blood. It leaves a green stain on the blue silk. And –ugh—a yellow stain on her fingertips.
Smells like rotten ginger and worse things.
And it won’t rub off!
Kat has just enough time to straight her garments when the bloodhounds bound through the gate and into the street, snarling and yowling.
''Back on the trail!” their handler says, and then he’s off with them, running to put a little slack in the leashes he holds in his hands.
…
The hunt takes the party
down crooked streets and through back alleys, sometimes the dogs stop to sniff the air again before turning.
Black ash falls from the sky. The dogs stop several times, rolling to wipe the stuff off their coats. They don’t lick it.
The trail runs crooked and crazy, and splits several times so that the hounds pull in different directions. They keep on doing that—pulling apart and sniffing again at the air. Finally, the Hound-Master turns to the sergeant Captain Thibault placed in charge of this detail and says,
"What’s more important, the children or the one covered in the dead man’s blood? They aren’t in the same place. The killer was following, but then he went off another way. I can split the team, send my apprentice with one set of dogs. Or we can bring ‘em all in after just the killer or just the children. That’d give us a better chance of finding the one, but we might lose the trail of the other.”
The sergeant shakes his head and turns to Benn,
''Monsieur? I can’t decide. They aren’t my young ones."