Trail of Echoes (2 page)

“Where you at?” I growled into my Motorola radio.

“Don't move,” Colin said. “The White Knight's comin' to get you.”

I slipped my messenger bag across my chest. “Doesn't look like a Wednesday, does it?”

No kids swinging from monkey bars or retirees walking the trails. No personal trainers leading small classes of round housewives on a patch of grass. The ducks on the lake had remained, but no preschoolers threw crumbs of stale bread.

“Cuz it's raining,” Colin pointed out. “You Angelenos don't do rain.”

A handful of civilians had gathered behind a barrier made of rope, canary-yellow crime-scene tape, and six thousand of LA's bravest.

Just three miles from my division, and located in Baldwin Hills, Martha Bonner Park was home to gray foxes, raccoons, skunks, possums, and forty-one species of birds. And they weren't stupid enough to scamper around in this weather. Just us smarter creatures. The 380 acres of land boasted playgrounds, picnic areas, seven miles of hiking trails, and the man-made fishing lake. The park also sat in the middle of the highest concentration of black wealth in the nation. The homes on the park's perimeter cost thousands of dollars less than their equivalents in Brentwood and Santa Monica—here, you got more house, more land, and maybe even an orange tree. Ah, segregation.

“Lou! Up this way.” Colin Taggert strode toward me. His blond hair lay flat on his head, and his Nikes and the hems of his nylon track pants were caked in red mud. His tanned skin looked pea-green, as though he had been bobbing on a dinghy for three hours.

He pointed at my trench coat, sweater, and heeled combat boots (if Doc Marten and Salvatore Ferragamo had a baby…). “You
almost
got those right,” he said, pointing to the boots.

“I'm in a good mood,” I said. “Wanna take a chance?”

He blew his nose into a bouquet of tissue. “I was supposed to go boardin' up in Mammoth tomorrow.”

“A warm cabin sounds really good right now.”

“I invited you,” he said. “We could've grilled some steaks. Snuggled in front of the fireplace. Guzzled cases of beer.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Why? So you could give me your cold?”

“Oh, I'd give you
something
—” He sneezed, then shoved his nose into the tissue.

I grinned. “If this is you seducing me…”

He started back to the trail still wiping his nose.

“Ooh, baby,” I said, following him. “The way you sneeze, and all that snot. Ooh, Colin, you give me fever. I'm getting hot from just being around you.”

Without looking back, he threw me the bird.

We traveled a well-developed gravel road lined with parked earthmovers and green park services pickup trucks. We veered right and onto a red-dirt trail that ran between large overgrowths of coastal sage, eucalyptus, and cypress trees.

I stopped at the large trail marker. “Where we going?”

Colin pointed to trail 5, northwest of the red “You Are Here” dot. “A mile and a half up.”

Dread knotted in my stomach. “Who'd dump a body that far from the parking lot?”

A police helicopter roared across a sky now the color of tarnished silverware. The rain had stopped, but fog rolled in from the Pacific Ocean four miles away. Up ahead, through the brush, forensic lights burned like supernovas. Clumps of patrol cops dotted the trail, and a few uniforms gave Colin and me a “what's up” and a “good luck.”

“Before I drove over,” Colin said, glancing back at me, “a man stopped by lookin' for you. Tall, black, older. Didn't leave his name.”

That visitor had been Victor Starr, the man who had contributed sperm toward my existence and then abandoned the results eight years later. Back in December, he had spent the night wrestling with angels or some crap like that because, after being MIA for almost thirty years, he had showed up on my front porch, expecting hugs, tears, and a heartfelt chat over cups of International Foods coffee.

Yeah. That didn't happen. I had better shit to do that day, and the next day and the next day and today and tomorrow.

“Second time this week he's dropped in,” Colin said. “Some dude you meet outside AARP headquarters?”

“Ha,” I said.

“So who is he?”

A nerve near my left eye twitched. “Victor Starr.”

Colin looked back at me again, eyebrows high this time.

“Yeah,” I said. “Really.”

He chuckled. “He's just like you: he doesn't know when to give up. You're Little Lockjaw and he's Daddy Lockjaw. So sweet—I think I'm gonna cry.”

“And I think I'm gonna vomit,” I said. “Anyway: you said ‘girl.' Do you mean that in its colloquial, sexist usage? Or do you mean ‘girl' as in ‘
girl
'?”

“As in ‘girl.' Teenager, if you really wanna get technical. Could be the one who went missing last week.”

“Yeah,
that
narrows it down.”
Not
.

Just last week, over in Inglewood, a teen girl had been abducted from her driveway; and in Gardena, another teen had been kidnapped by her stepfather. And then there was Trina Porter, the fourteen-year-old stolen earlier this month from a bookstore near my old neighborhood. We had no clue where Trina was or if she was even alive. So again:
which girl?

Guess I'd find out soon.

 

3

We came to a clearing of low grass and mud where twelve civilians stood around as two patrol cops interviewed each person one at a time. Detective Luke Gomez, plump and short-legged, was snapping pictures of the group.

“Think the monster's still hanging around?” Colin asked.

“Now that we're here with our questions and suspicions and nosiness?” I shook my head.

Detective Peter “Pepe” Kim, Luke's partner, was talking to a light-skinned, middle-aged black man dressed in a khaki-shorts park ranger's uniform. The ranger resembled Smokey Robinson with his café au lait complexion, short curly hair more gray than brown, and fine nose butched-up with a mustache. He was muscular for an older guy, and, like me, he wasn't dressed for this weather.

Colin sneezed.

I frowned. “Thought you were going home.”

“L.T. caught me at the door. How was lunch with Seward?”

“Fine.”

“I was picturing you going out with some muscle-head. The opposite of your ex.”

“I did—Lena fixed me up with the Dodger, remember?”

He laughed, then nodded. “Oh yeah. Angry Pitcher.”

I sighed. “Dude needed a Zoloft and a bubble—” My step faltered, and I covered my nose with my hand. “Oh
shit
.”

Colin reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a little tub of Noxzema. “Since I can't smell a thing.” He offered me the jar.

The pastrami in my gut soured as I swiped cream beneath my nostrils.

Colin made a sad face. “And you're wearing such a nice sweater, too.”

We reached the tarp and the victim now hidden beneath a yellow plastic sheet—and guarded by one big man in a wet trench coat.

“Good lunch?” Lieutenant Rodriguez asked, his gray eyes squinting at my muddy boots.

“The best lunch I've had in a very long time.” I pulled latex gloves from my bag and plucked a flashlight from my coat pocket. I stepped beneath the tarp, then lifted the plastic to find a large, unzipped, green canvas duffel bag. The earth beneath the bag looked different, wet and moist but not from rain. A few maggots wriggled in that strange-colored earth, and some flies buzzed around me. But not a lot of flies. Not
enough
flies.

Jane Doe's left leg and foot—size 6 maybe, pink nail polish—were sticking out from the bag and had settled on the dirt. Bare calf … Bare thigh …

I ducked from beneath the tarp. “Wow.”

“Yeah,” Lieutenant Rodriguez said.

As I took out my binder, I glanced back at Smokey Robinson the Park Ranger—he was still speaking with Pepe, but now he was also gazing at me.

What did he see? Did
he
find her?

The man winked at me.

My scalp crawled, and something inside of me shuddered.

“The first responder,” Lieutenant Rodriguez was saying, “tried to protect any evidence from contamination, but in this weather…” He looked up to the wet, gray sky, then pointed his flashlight beam down to the mishmash of shoe prints and trash left in the mud. “And we won't get any good shoe prints since thousands of people run this trail every year.”

“Maybe that's why he chose this spot,” I said. “It's private but still a little busy.”

“Evidence destroyed by the constant flow of traffic?”

“Yep. Where's Zucca?”

“On his way.”

“You tell him to bring a plant guy and a bug guy?”

My boss nodded.

“The responding officer?” I asked.

“He's interviewing witnesses,” Colin said, wiping his nose. “So now?”

“So
now
we grab everybody we can and we walk.” I glanced at my partner. “But you—”

“I'm cool,” Colin said, wanting to blow his nose again but not daring to.

“You have a
cold
at a
scene
.”

“I won't sneeze no more,” Colin promised, wide-eyed and panicky.

I turned to Lieutenant Rodriguez with pleading eyes.

“Taggert, don't touch nothing,” the big man ordered. “You gotta sneeze or cough or breathe heavy, do it
away
from the scene.” He regarded me.
Satisfied?

My scowl said,
Not at all.
I pointed at Colin. “Don't fuck this up. Not this one.”

He blanched. “I won't. I promise. I'm good. Okay?”

Even if you solved them, child cases—abuse, assault, neglect, murder—snatched pieces of your soul. Some cops, some pediatricians, and some social workers filled those holes with booze and blow. And for those of us totally hollowed out? The barrel of a gun.

So today, if I had to lose parts of myself because some monster committed an act of horrific violence, I refused to have that monster freed from life in prison or the stainless steel table all because Colin's mucus had tainted Monster DNA.

“If I see one drop of snot from you, I
will
kick you to the curb,” I warned my partner.

Colin rolled his eyes. “I'm not stupid, Mom. I heard you, all right?”

I glanced back at the park ranger—he knew these trails, the life of the park, peak visiting hours, which areas were more populated and at what times.

And that wink he gave me …

Who the hell winked thirty yards away from a dead girl?

 

4

Never thought I'd be walking through high grass and clomping through mud on a March day boasting forty-degree weather and threatening clouds. But there I was, one woman in a long east-west line of uniforms, detectives, any free hand with a badge, slowly walking together, arm's length apart, flashlights bright, jaws clamped tight, hoping to find something and expecting to find the worst—nothing at all.

Each man and woman, positioned from the trail to the hillside, had their eyes on the ground. Searching. For a girl's shoe, a monster's footprint, a gun, a bloody
something
that would tell us who she was or who the monster was. Behind us, a bearded videographer recorded the search, and ahead of us a tall black man carried a metal detector. No clicks or chirps emitted from his contraption: No bullets or bullet casings. No calls out. No whistles blown.

It was the cleanest city park in the history of city parks.

We strip-searched down to the large clearing that separated Bonner Park from those million-dollar homes. Then, we returned to the blue tarp, empty-handed and drenched from rain now falling from battleship-colored clouds.

“Well?” Colin asked me.

“He got here,” I said. “And then he left the girl, which means he left something behind. They always leave something behind.”

“Zucca and his crew are almost done taking pictures of the girl for now,” Lieutenant Rodriguez said. “Nothing obvious so far.”

“And the coroner?” I asked.

“En route.”

I sighed. “The monster gets luckier every time we're en route.”

I wandered toward the tarp, stopping now and then to peer at the hillside and then down at strange whorls left in the mud there … and there, just five steps away from the tarp. I stooped near those whorls, and, since I had no evidence tents with me, I left one of my business cards by each whorl to mark the spot. Then, radio to my mouth, I called Arturo Zucca, my favorite forensics tech, and told him of my discovery. “Could be nothing. Could be everything.”

“I'll send Bruce and Leslie over to take pictures and imprints,” Zucca said. “And I'll have 'em take pics of the personnel's shoes, too. Could be ours.”

It was almost three o'clock, and wetter and colder than it had been all year in this drought-stricken state. Two hours in and we'd only collected a Bazooka gum wrapper, two burned matches, a smashed plastic water bottle, and an orange peel. The duffel bag, Jane Doe, and now these whorls in the mud were my only hopes.

I noted the current temperature—forty-three degrees—then sketched the scene in my damp notebook. Weather-water snuck past the barrier of my cowl-necked sweater and pebbled between my shoulder blades. Those drops became rivulets, trickling down my spine to soak my ballistics vest, sports bra, and, for the most ambitious trickles, the waistband of my wool slacks.

Colin, shivering with fever, sneezed.

“You okay?” I asked, looking up from my sketch. “Shouldn't you be used to cold, wet weather, being from the Springs? All that snow and ice and Pike's Peak and whatnot?”

His eyes looked like he was underwater. “I'm not going home, so don't ask.”