Trail of Echoes (3 page)

“Just don't get snot on my scene,” I said. “But if you really start looking like crap, I get to send you home. Deal?”

“Uh huh,” Colin said.

“Lou!” Zucca was calling from beneath the tarp.

I dropped my mask back over my nose and mouth and returned to the tarp.

“How old do you think she is?” Zucca asked.

I clicked on my flashlight and stared at Jane Doe's half-mast eyes, at the black T-shirt—Abercrombie & Fitch—and at the corn-kernel-shaped birthmark on her right hip. “Thirteen, fourteen,” I said, swiping at the few buzzing blowflies.

“Where are the bugs?” Colin asked.

“These aren't enough for you?” Zucca snarked. “Good question, though. Anyway, look what I found.” He opened the duffel bag wider.

Green leaves and shiny black berries the size of cherries were scattered around the girl.

“A clue,” I said, a prick of hope in my chest. “Hooray.”

“What kind of plant is that?” Colin asked.

“According to my plant lady,” Zucca said, “it doesn't grow in this park. She has an idea, but she's not saying until she's sure.”

“Her unofficial answer?” I asked.

“Bad-shit berries,” Zucca quipped.

I frowned. “So the monster did her somewhere else then.”

“Yep.”

Colin and I wandered back to the trail to gaze at that east-facing hillside. The dirt, mud, and plants looked flatter, recently disturbed. Chunks of that hillside had collapsed because of the rain, and now gnarled brown roots from sage and other plants were exposed. I pointed to the high grass. “What if he dumped her up there, on the higher slope, in thicker brush. Then, when it started to rain…” My finger traced the route in the air, dropping down to the tarp. “She slid down over there.”

“But how did she get
up
there?” Colin wondered. “I'm no geometry wiz, and I sucked at physics and the metric system, but that incline seems steep, close to vertical.”

I shrugged.
The monster expects me to fail
. So many obstacles—from the outdoor setting to the crappy weather. He knew that his tracks were literally covered by rain and mud.
Except for those whorls.
He had left those behind.

Moments later, a crime tech wearing a Tyvek suit stuck into the mud little yellow flags that led from the tarp, over to Bruce and Leslie huddling over those suspicious whorls left in the mud, and, finally, up the slope.

“When we talk to witnesses,” I said to Colin, “we'll ask if they saw a man hoisting a duffel bag. And let's also get pictures of their shoe bottoms.”

I gazed at the homes peppering the other side of the bluff—the residents there enjoyed views of the basin, the Santa Monica Mountains, and the Hollywood sign, each nearly invisible in the drizzle. Century City sat to the west, and downtown skyscrapers sat to the east. Down below, cars on La Brea Avenue sat bumper-to-bumper because of the rain and the mysterious curiosity on the hillside involving a police helicopter.

I could also see the Jungle, that dense collection of low-to-no-income apartments that, once upon a time, had been my home. One day, I planned to tell my daughter Natalie about growing up in that ghetto, about gun battles in the alleys that made Auntie Tori, Nana, and me lunge beneath our beds. I planned to drive her past that concertina wire and those iron fences. “See?” I'd say with pride. “That's where Mommy grew up.”

But I didn't have a daughter named Natalie. I was a month away from my thirty-eighth birthday, and Natalie was as real as Snow White, and the man that I thought I had loved, was pretty sure that I had loved, but what
is
love really? was now selling our dream house as part of our divorce settlement.

My stomach cramped—bad memories, too much pastrami.

A low growl rumbled from above—far-off thunder. The northwestern sky over Pacific Palisades flashed with white light.

“Storm's almost here,” Colin said.

“He left her with the best view of the city,” I whispered. “A place where she'd certainly be found. Why?” I swallowed hard, uneasy now. “I'll handle the autopsy.”

“Bless you,” Colin said, then sneezed.

Pepe joined us, notebook in hand. His shellacked black hair
still
hadn't moved. “How ya feelin', Taggert?” He didn't wait for Colin's response before turning to me. “So Mr. Park Ranger says he didn't see anyone on the trail except for a few joggers.”

“You take pics of his boots?” I asked.

Pepe reddened. “Did not.”

I sighed. “Anything else?”

He cleared his throat, then said, “The ranger also said that gang-bangers have been hanging around. Smoking, gettin' high—”

Colin sneezed.

“Dude,” I said to him, “go home.
Please?
Weather's only gonna get worse.”

He shook his head. “But what about witnesses—?”

The sky opened up then, sending wanton raindrops that fell without hesitation or modesty. Standing on the highest natural point in the LA basin was the last place I wanted to be during a storm.

“
Go,
” I shouted at Colin over the roar of rain now pounding the tarp. “We'll finish up here and wait for the medical examiner to arrive and take possession of the girl. Since I don't want you dead, I'm ordering you to go home, get some rest, watch TV, then come back in tomorrow. You'll help catch him. I promise. Cross my heart.”

After a sneeze and a wave, Colin trundled back down the trail.

We
would
catch this monster.

I knew that like I knew light could not exist without dark.

“So,” Pepe said. A lock of hair finally surrendered and draped across his forehead. “These women said they saw a man.”

 

5

Other than the buzz from the choppers, the clearing south of the crime scene was especially quiet for a homicide. No wailing from a distraught mother or shouting from an angry uncle,
This ain't right! This ain't right!
No calls to Jesus. No grumblings about the cops not caring and not doing shit.

The two women who “saw a man” shivered in their wet sweat suits and faux Pucci head scarves. They huddled together beneath a tired pink umbrella that threatened to collapse from this phenomenon called rain. They peered at my head—Lieutenant Rodriguez had yanked off some guy's LAPD baseball cap and had given it to me to wear.

The thick, dark-skinned woman with the eyebrow stud was Heather Artest.

The other woman was also thick and mixed with some type of Asian. And because she had watched too many episodes of
Law & Order,
she would only tell me that her name was Cynthia. “Why do you need my last name? I don't wanna give my last name.”

“Give me a last initial, then,” I said.

“Q.”

“Great. So who saw what?”

“We was walking right over there.” Heather pointed to the trail south of the tarp that ran beneath a canopy of eucalyptus trees.

“And we smelled something dead,” Cynthia said. “But I'm in the forest, so I'm like, ‘whatever, it stank in the forest.'”

“So we kept walking,” Heather continued. “And the more we walked, the worse that smell got.”

Cynthia nodded. “That's when our girl Vanessa said—”

“Who's Vanessa?” I interrupted.

“She was walking with us,” Heather said. “She saw the bag first.”

Cynthia took hold of the umbrella. “She's the one who said, ‘That looks like a person's leg comin' out that bag.' Then, she took some pictures with her phone.”

I narrowed my eyes. “And where is Vanessa?”

“She freaked out,” Cynthia said. “When we found the park ranger, he had one of the other rangers take her down to the community center. She may still be down there.”

“So what happened next?” I asked.

“We kept walking,” Heather continued, “and we got close enough to see—” She covered her mouth with a shaky hand.

“The black girl from the Jungle,” Cynthia said. “Is it her? Is it Trina?”

“We don't know much yet,” I admitted. “May I ask the obvious question?”

“Why were we walking in the rain?” Heather asked.

“Diabetes and New Year's resolution,” Cynthia explained.

“And it's
rain,
not lava,” Heather said, rolling her eyes.

“She's from Seattle,” Cynthia announced.

I nodded. “May I see the bottoms of your tennis shoes?”

Cynthia lifted her left foot.

No whorls.

Still, I took a picture with my camera phone.

Heather lifted her foot.

Lines, squares, no whorls.

I snapped another picture.

“Why you takin' picture of our shoes?” Cynthia asked.

“We ain't done nothing,” Heather complained.

“Don't worry,” I said. “Just procedure. You were close to the body and I just wanna make sure that any shoe prints we find aren't yours.”

“Why it seem like a lotta black girls gettin' kidnapped this year?” Heather asked.

“Don't know,” I said.

Even though Poor, Black, and Female was my Everyday, this case worried me. One thing, however, did
not
worry me. I knew for sure that Jane Doe was not my sister. Because Victoria had been found. Finally.

“What about the guy you saw?” I asked the couple. “Tell me about him.”

“He was coming from that direction.” Cynthia pointed toward the tarp.

“Was he carrying anything?” I asked.

“His hands were in his pockets,” Heather said.

“Can you describe him?”

“He was tall,” Cynthia said.

“No, he wasn't,” Heather countered with a frustrated head shake. “He was, like, five eleven.”

“That's tall.”

“To Mini-Me.”

“Anyway, he was black.”

“
Girl,
you need glasses,” Heather said. “You couldn't even tell
what
he was cuz he was wearing a baseball cap and this big jacket with a turned-up collar. Black jacket, blue cap.”

“No,” Cynthia said, “it was a black jacket, and a
black
cap.”

“No, the cap was wet from the rain so it just
looked
black.”

Cynthia shrugged. “You probably right.”

Then the women looked at me.

“Did the cap have a team name on it?” I asked. “Any kind of marking?”

“Umm…,” Cynthia said.

Heather shrugged. “Can we go now?”

I blinked. “That's all you can tell me?”

“We gave you specifics,” Heather snapped.

“Right. A not-too-tall, tall man of indeterminate ethnicity wearing a black jacket and a dark baseball cap.” They had described every man in Los Angeles County—but not the park ranger in khaki. “What time did you start walking the trail?”

“A little after eleven,” Heather recalled, “and I know it was a little after eleven cuz my mom had just texted me, telling me that she had picked up my son from kindergarten.”

“And so you're walking,” I said, “and you got
where
when you first spotted the bag?”

The two women led me to the slight bend in the trail, right before the canopy of trees.

“And you kept walking?” I asked.

They nodded.

“Let's walk now.”

And we walked.

“When did you see the guy in the cap?” I asked.

“Right … about … now.” Cynthia stopped in her step.

We had walked eleven paces—and had a clear view of the blue tarp and the trail. There were no trees above to create shadow.

“His shoes were really muddy,” Cynthia said.

“So what?” Heather said with a frown. “It's raining. They supposed to be muddy.”

“Was he walking fast or slow?” I asked.

“Kinda hurrying but not running,” Cynthia said. “He had his head down and his chin was kinda tucked into his collar cuz of the rain.”

Or because he didn't want them to see his face.

“And what time was that when you saw him?” I asked.

“A minute or two after I got the text from my mom,” Heather said.

“Did he say anything to you?” I asked. “Speak to you at all?”

Heather shook her head. “He ain't said a word.”

“Where did he go once he passed you? Did he stay on the dirt trail or did he take that gravel service road?”

The women shrugged.

“Who called 911?”

“I tried to, but my call kept dropping,” Cynthia said.

“So we ran to that road and waved down the park service truck,” Heather added.

“And we told that park ranger what we saw,” Cynthia said.

“And then
he
called 911,” Heather finished.

“Your girl Vanessa,” I said. “Can you describe her for me? I need to talk to her, too.”

Heather pulled out a phone from her sweat-pants pocket and found a picture of Vanessa: round face, caramel complexion, nose ring, black and pink dreads.

“And her phone number?” I asked.

“Why you need her number?” Cynthia asked.

I sighed and stopped myself from rolling my eyes. “Cuz she may have pictures of this guy. I can keep calling
you
to reach her, or I can call her directly. Ladies' choice.”

Cynthia groaned, then sucked her teeth.

Heather rattled off a number.

I thanked them both, then gave each my business card. “And if you see Vanessa before I reach her, please tell her to call me ASAP.”

As Luke took Heather's and Cynthia's official witness statements, I headed down to the base of the trail. My feet felt thick and numb in my fancy combat boots, and I'm sure the burning on my chest was a rash caused by my wet sweater. But I couldn't stop.

I needed to find Vanessa. And I needed to find the man in the baseball cap.