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— JONAS SALK
CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION,
SWEETWATER ROAD
11:17 A.M. PDT
THE PATROLMAN SAID: “Detective Garcia? Over here, ma’am.”
Following the patrolman, Detective Carmella Garcia’s long legs picked her way through tall grasses and wet soil . . . And to think you thought today was a good day to wear your new pumps . . . around empty beer-bottles and hidden stones until she reached a small glade perhaps fifty yards from the road. There, she found Elmond Winkle slipping his phone into his pocket while studying blades of grass crushed out in the shape of a woman.
Elmond looked up. “Where’ve you been? Kevin?”
Carmella nodded and said nothing more, because lately, when wasn’t it? Kevin continued having a terrible time with Ted’s death and that wasn’t going to change overnight. Instead, she turned her attention to the grass and a path of bent blades leading back to the tall grass, as if the body had been dragged to this spot and then removed. Or crawled. There was a small pool of blood where the victim’s head would have been. “Who found her?”
“Couple girls playing fairytale or something like that.” Elmond pointed to the dragging pattern that led into the high grass. “There’s another pool of blood back in there, like she crawled out before collapsing here.”
Carmella studied the bent grass. A mass of footprints had been trampled into the grass when the paramedics hauled out the body. These footprints led back to the highway, where a disheveled man stood up on the shoulder of the road watching them. She turned her attention to grass.
Numerous evidence techs were spread out and sweeping the grass for clues. Following the trail, she came to another depression in the tall grasses and more blood. Here the grass was stamped down even more.
Carmella looked to Elmond. “If she was found back there, who walked all over the scene?”
“According to the reporting officer, the grass was already walked over and the kids say it wasn’t them.”
Carmella considered this, before glancing up at the highway and the man who stood watching them from the shoulder. “Husband?”
Elmond shook his head. “Husband’s at the hospital with the victim, a woman named Jane Sorenson the doc’s’re saying is ’Likely’ anytime.” He pointed. “They live in that row of houses back there. I don’t know who that guy is.”
A hundred yards across tall grasses, a track-home development overlooked the clearing, the tops of swing-sets and shade trees visible above back-yard fences. Quintessential Americana.
Carmella returned her attention to the grassy outline of the woman’s body. “What’s the husband’s story?”
“He’s a medical technician. Says he got home from work just after three in the morning to find his house empty along with her running shoes missing. Says he figured she must have went jogging and that it wasn’t until after he’d taken a shower that he started to worry.”
“Why was she jogging at three in the morning?”
“She’s a nurse and goes on shift at two in the morning. To wake up, she likes to take a jog. Says she always carries mace and a whistle.” Elmond held up an evidence baggy containing a plastic whistle spattered in blood. “Found in the grass over there.”
Carmella glanced back up the hill, at the man still watching. He had a nervous way about himself that made Carmella curious.
Carmella glanced up at the road, at the man talking to the patrolman who now looked there way and waved. Trying to limit further damage to her pumps, she made her way across the grassy, broken field.
THE QUIRKY GUY was a neighbor.
“I couldn’t sleep so, I got out of bed about 12:30 in the morning to get a glass of milk and make a sandwich, maybe watch a little late-night TV. I ate it in my backyard, overlooking the field here, and that’s when I saw flashlights sweeping the field.”
Carmella felt her interest piqued. “How many flashlights?”
“Three. Looked like they were searching that area down there.” He pointed at the tall grasses where Mrs. Sorenson had lay. “At first the flashlights were moving around separately, and I thought maybe it was kids playing hide-n-go-seek out there or something. After a couple minutes, the flashlights joined up. Then, after another minute or two, they winked out. A few minutes later, I heard an engine start and a vehicle drive away in a hurry.”
“Did you see the vehicle?”
The neighbor shook his head. “My view’s blocked by a neighbor’s hedge, so I only heard it. Sounded like a bigger engine, maybe a V-8, though it’s kinda hard to tell nowadays.”
Carmella questioned the man a little while longer but got little else. She waited until he’d walk away to ask Elmond. “What are we, two miles from Norcestor and Imperial? “
Elmond nodded. “Two missing VIPs, dead homeless guy and a big can of federal investigative whoop-ass.”
Carmella swatted at a mosquito buzzing around her head. There was a little creek fifty yards away, the kind of thing Carmella-the-tomboy would’ve loved at 12. Now, at 34, the creek just bred bugs. “In a two-mile radius: one missing scientist, one missing son—”
“Also supposedly a scientist,”
“Two scientists, a dead homeless and a dead jogger. Plus Mij Poopikov being found dead with a carpet fiber linking him to the Chambers woman who someone once thought was linked back to one of our missing scientists. Lot of action, even for this neighborhood.”
“Not for Norcestor and Imperial. Besides, Poopikov was found in an avocado grove in Beeler Canyon, not the hood in Market Park.”
Carmella regarded the field again, thinking about Jane Sorenson, dying with her husband at her side. Carmella wondered if she’d ever regained consciousness to say goodbye. It was an important question to Carmella because she’d never got the chance to say goodbye to Ted. Ted had slipped off with his life running out across the bank’s cold marble floor, dead and gone before Carmella could fight her way through traffic for a chance to say a word. Jimmy’d never had that chance either, Evie Chambers a week dead before they found her body dumped at the Otay Mesa landfill.
“You call Jimmy Francisco?”
“I might’ve.”
“Don’t let Neil Finnerty find out. You know how he is with Jimmy.”
“I am managing the situation.”
Carmella nodded a moment . . . El doesn’t even believe that himself . . . before saying, “For the record, I always believed Ducroix was the one killed Evie Chambers. Even when the DNA came back negative. And I never had a problem with Jimmy going after him— Jimmy’s got Latin blood and that’s how it is.” Carmella let her gaze drift to the dancing yellow butterflies that glowed in the sun down by the creek. “I always wondered if somebody wasn’t covering up for Ducroix’s on account of who he is. Those kind of people are protected.”
“Because he’s got money?” Elmond chuckled sarcastically. “You can’t hate people just because they've done well for themselves, Car.”
“He inherited it.”
“So. Somebody had to. That's how it goes in America. We don’t get upset when others make it, we make it ourselves. And sometimes pass it along.” Elmond smiled. “Hey, it’s a beautiful world.”
Carmella studied Elmond in his slick suit and expensive tie. “You doing that network marketing again?”
“Yeah. Why, you wanna get in?”
“No,” Carmella said, glancing up at the houses that overlooked the field, “I do not wanna get in.”
“Well, maybe you should,” Elmond said, “Least then you could afford a new pair of shoes.”
Carmella glanced down at her pumps, now stained from the walk through the tall grass. “These were new. This morning, when I left the house.”
“Detective Garcia?” the patrolman who had led Carmella down to the body said. “Detective, dispatch says a woman just called in saying she saw a car speed past her apartment last night around three in the morning doing close to a hundred miles an hour. Lives a mile from here, so the timing could be right. Didn’t get a plate, but says it was a Hummer, black or maybe dark blue. You wanna talk to her?”
“Get her address,” Elmond interrupted, “and tell her we’ll be there in ten minutes.”
When the patrolman headed back up the hill, Carmella turned to Elmond.
“Since when do you go telling people where I’m going and who I talk to?”
Elmond smiled. “Since that avocado farmer Hendricks said whoever dumped Mij Poopikov’s body was driving a black Hummer.” Adjusting his tie a little, Elmond said, “You drive. I wanna call Jimmy Francisco.”
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