Forty-six

They all stared at Ellie for a moment, letting it sink it. When it finally did, Sabrina felt the hope she’d been harboring slip loose, cut free by the certainty in Ellie’s tone. It was the same tone she’d used earlier when she’d told her she was certain that the blood evidence found under Stephanie Adams’s fingernails hadn’t been a mistake.

Santos didn’t give up so easily. “Sure it is,” he said, pointing at the obvious trail that tumbled down the face of the ravine. “She came in here—”

“Probably a mule deer or cattle coming down for a drink of runoff left in the ravine.” Ellie shook her head firmly. “Whatever it was, it wasn’t the victim.”

“How can you be so sure?” Santos said, stubbornly holding on to the illusion that they’d finally caught a break.

“The sky opened up at about four this morning and poured buckets out here for a good forty-five minutes.” Now it was Ellie’s turn to crouch down, angling her gaze upward so she could see them standing over her. “This ravine would have been full of fast-moving water—I’d guess four to five feet deep. Water that deep and fast would’ve carried her down the ravine, no problem.”

“Maybe he weighed her down?” Alvarez said, shooting his partner a nervous glance. “Or maybe she—”

“Why would he do that? He’d want her carried away from the crime scene.” Ellie shook her head impatiently. “And he got what he wanted. This isn’t where she was killed. This is where the current left her.”

“You’ve made mistakes before,” Santos said, ignoring his partner in favor of leveling a caustic glare in Ellie’s direction. “Been dead wrong before too.” Sabrina was suddenly sure that Santos didn’t share his partner’s protective instinct when it came to the crime tech.

“I wasn’t wrong then,” Ellie said, aiming a pleading look at her before continuing. “And I’m not wrong now.” Doing as Alvarez had done earlier, she wrapped a careful hand around the victim’s shoulder and rolled her, exposing her face and torso again. It was littered with debris. Leaves and a few pieces of trash that’d been left in the desert and swept into the ravine by the torrent of rain speckled her blackened belly. None of them were burnt but Sabrina had a feeling that wasn’t what she was showing them. “Her face is completely preserved. My guess, he was chasing her and managed to incapacitate her somehow and she fell face down in the mud,” she said, pointing to the hole that’d been punched into the victim’s skull. “That’s when he did this. Instead of taking her back to wherever he chased her from and risk getting caught, he set her on fire and let Mother Nature handle the rest. All her fluids settled to her front, making her heavier there. That’s why she resettled in the same position.”

Sabrina looked at the ground. It was stony, covered in rocks washed there by the flood, stuck to the floor of the ravine with the thick, clay-like mud that it was carved from, creating a surface nearly as smooth as a mortared walkway.

“Goddamnit,” Santos bellowed, snapping his gloves off with a frustrated yank that ripped the latex, causing uniforms and crime techs to cast wary glances in their direction. Seemingly oblivious to the concern his outburst caused, he turned away from all of them, walking farther down the ravine.

Sabrina followed him. Removed her own gloves slowly before tucking them into the pocket of her slacks. Standing shoulder to shoulder with Santos, she aimed her gaze in the same direction as his, up the wide swath of the ravine, in the same direction the body would have come from. “We need to talk,” she said, her tone low and even. From the corner of her eye, she could see Santos nod.

“I was wondering when we’d get around to it,” he said, the corner of his mouth lifting in a sardonic half smile. “To be honest, I’m surprised my CO hasn’t called us in for a sit-down to discuss my limitations yet.”

His admission made her think of her old captain and his love of verbal abuse. Mathews had hated her—blamed her for everything from a colleague’s gruesome murder to the sour milk in his refrigerator. She imagined that attending her funeral had made his year. “I don’t consider your prior experiences to be limitations.” She smiled when he looked at her. “I see them more like insider information. The only reason I didn’t push it before now is because when I brought it up, you seemed a bit … tender about it.”

“A young woman was tortured for nearly three months and then killed because of my sloppy police work,” Santos said, the line of his jaw drawing tighter and tighter with each word. “And then, to top it off, the sick asshole who does it slips through my fingers and skips on home … and keeps up with the raping and killing for another decade and a half.” He looked away, casting his gaze up the ravine again. “Tender isn’t the word I would use to describe how I feel about what happened to Melissa Walker.”

“Is that why you have such a hard-on for Paul Vega?” she said plainly. “Because you think the same thing is happening now?”

“Christ,” Santos muttered, shaking his head and shooting daggers at his partner over his shoulder before turning his gaze on her. “That punk needs to learn how to keep his mouth shut.”

Sabrina turned, looking in the same direction. Behind them, Ellie and Alvarez stood close together, talking to each other in hushed tones. Neither of them looked happy. In fact, it looked like they were in the middle of a pretty bitter argument. Deciding to give them their privacy, she turned toward Santos. “Alvarez was less than forthcoming when it came to answering my questions,” she said, failing to mention that his partner’s helpfulness only ended when her questions about Ellie started. “All he did was mention that Vega was briefly involved in a particularly nasty case you worked a while back and that his family made it disappear. I put the rest together on my own.”

Santos nodded, tipping his head slightly. “You sure you didn’t pack your Magic 8 Ball?”

She cut him a slight smirk. “Trust me, if I had my Magic 8 Ball, finding this guy would be a hell of a lot—”

Her phone let out a chirp and she gave Santos an apologetic smile while she unclipped it from her belt. It was a text from Church. Two words.

Graciella Lopez