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I'd gotten burnt out on the endless busywork involved in running a canine training academy - booking facilities, hauling gear all over tarnation in Dad's decades-old Chevy Silverado, the taxes and paperwork, working the phone lines, dealing with the occasional deadbeat who refused to pay up no matter how many notices I sent out, staying atop the bureaucracy... rinse and repeat. However, halfway through spring semester at Harper, I began to question myself. What the hell am I doing in computer science? Do I want to design and test software? Am I really passionate about writing code for mobile apps? Plus, won't AI eventually smother any career in the industry?

Perhaps running a canine obedience school isn't the only vocation that's a pain in the rump?

I didn't bring up any misgivings or second guessing with Crystal out of fear that, unlike with my high school assignments, her Glock 22 would truly work its way out of her shoulder holster. 

'These are actually pretty good.' I had relented and let Crystal slice up tomatoes and lettuce as well as toast some pumpernickel for a couple of BLTs instead of just mainlining bacon. We sat at the kitchen table, eating dinner and chatting.

'So you and Stretch kept walking the dogs in case there were even more dead bodies?'

'Yeah, the cops thought I was full of crap until they dug up the one closer to the trail and hit paydirt.' The first spot the police excavated was actually the second grave Alice and Rex had discovered as it was forty yards or so nearer the trail, thus quicker to get shovels and supplies to in the late-evening light. 'After that they got on the horn to bring back the medical examiner who'd been working on the old man as well as some other investigators out of Bourbonnais. A sergeant on the scene got the bright idea that as long as the dogs were handy, they should see what else they could find, if anything.' 

The sun had gone down by that point, but law enforcement officers had already lugged in shovels and spades, tarps, bottles of water, and energy bars on the back of a couple all-terrain vehicles. The cops used the ATV headlights to illuminate their dig at the gravesite. Then Stretch and I were each paired with an officer carrying one of those Stinger flashlights that put to shame any illumination kicked off by the light on my phone app. 

We paraded our dogs further and further away from where the old man had been found, from where Alice and Rex had made their two discoveries. We hiked what seemed a few hundred laps - back and forth and up and down - to the outer reach of the park in case the pups sniffed out more gravesites.

It was my idea of purgatory... and I've got the shin splints to prove it.

After an eternity, Stretch pulled the plug, had us all return to the basecamp that had been set up around the excavated grave, and informed the police sergeant we were both done for the evening. If not for Stretch, I'd probably still be out there. Quite frankly, I don't think I'd ever heard Stretch talk so much in my life, must have been two entire sentences in a row, a personal best - Stretch's equivalent of Hamlet's soliloquy. I'd never been more proud of him.

Crystal said, 'So they left the other grave for the morning?' 

'It was late and dark, and Bourbonnais had their hands full with the bones from the first dig.' I shrugged and continued, 'I bet those two graves have been out there since before you and I were born. Whoever's in that other hole isn't going anywhere.'

'Then you haven't heard?'

'No,' I said. 'I'm the dog guy. No one tells me anything.' I set the remainder of my BLT down on my plate and stared back at my sister. 'What did you hear?'

'They did find something in the other hole.' 

'Yup,' I said and nodded. 'Another body.'

'No, Cory,' Crystal said. 'Three more bodies - it was a mass grave.'

CHAPTER THREE

Four Bodies Unearthed in Kankakee River State Park

Cadaver dogs discovered two separate gravesites containing the remains of four bodies in a desolate northwest corner of Kankakee River State Park late Memorial Day afternoon. The dogs were originally brought in to aid the Bourbonnais Police Department and the Illinois State Police in their search for a missing octogenarian, Jim Severson, who had wandered off from a family reunion on Sunday afternoon. After locating the deceased Severson in this section of the state park, the dogs then alerted their handler to the location of two nearby graves. Bourbonnais PD found the remains of a single body in the grave excavated Memorial Day evening, and three additional bodies in the grave excavated Tuesday morning.

A preliminary examination by the forensic anthropologist/bone detective assisting the Kankakee County Coroner's Office is that all four bodies uncovered were adult males due to extended bone lengths as well as the sexually dimorphic features of skeletal size and shape. Time of death has not been established as after soft tissues have decomposed, skeletal remains do not break down in a predictable manner. The decomposition process for bones, referred to as diagenesis, can take years or several decades. If the bones are not dug up, moved, or destroyed by animals, a skeleton can take twenty years to dissolve in fertile soil or hundreds of years in neutral soil or sand.

Bourbonnais Police Chief Mike Thorsen said his department is currently combing through missing person case files going back fifty years, not only from Kankakee County but Cook County as well as the five collar counties bordering Cook. 'If we can connect four missing males,' Chief Thorsen said, 'we can then check dental records or perform DNA analysis in order to see if the missing males match these victims.' Thorsen went on to say how mitochondrial DNA in bones and/or teeth can be used to confirm the relationship of skeletal remains with living or deceased descendants.

Goddammit! The figure in the office chair dropped the Chicago Tribune on to the desk. How on earth did the old man venture that deep into the woods only to sit down and die? The guy had to have trudged a few dozen times the distance it would have taken him to locate a trail and hike back to the park's entrance. And the old man led the damned dogs right to the burial spots. The figure wanted to pound on the top of the desk. About those dogs - how in hell did they sniff out those graves because', the figure in the chair knew for a fact, 'they were anything but shallow.