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Temeke couldn’t help thinking the Esoterica had some association to the deaths in the Albuquerque area and he certainly couldn’t rule out the possibility that the killer was copying the format.
As for Cornell Drive, it was riddled with K-9s tracking scents through clumps of tumbleweed in the back yard, handlers going through rubble and trash in the alleyways. So far, the small tract of land had yielded nothing.
A photograph of Asha Samadi had gone out to all law enforcement agencies and the surrounding states, and a hefty $350,000 reward had been offered by her father. Unfortunately, the same photo had ended up on Jennifer Danes’ desk at the Duke City Journal promising an exaggerated and highly erroneous article.
It was the next call that unnerved Temeke as he sat there trying to understand the phalange nonsense. Luis had a car he wanted Temeke to look at. A gray Mazda RX7 found bobbing like a champagne cork under Alameda Bridge.
“When it rains, it bloody well pours,” Temeke said into the phone.
“Jarvis called it in. Said there was a woman inside.”
“I’ll be there. Seen Malin this morning?”
“She’s at Minerd’s Scrap N’ Haul. Told me to tell you she’ll be back before lunch.”
“Thanks,” Temeke muttered before ending the call.
He would have liked to have gone with her, but she was doing everything she could to keep up with the case, watching tapes of the late Alan Delgado, interviews, phone calls, reporting. He was proud of her.
Ten minutes later, he swung the jeep into the Alameda Bridge parking lot, choosing a spot away from the secured scene, the ambulance and the fire truck. It was a crying shame there was no video cam fixed to the only light fixture in situ. He gave the river a long, hard stare, higher than usual due to all the recent rain and swirling with red mud.
One Field Investigator was taking photographs of the front of the car, another was drawing sketches of the river and embankment, and Matt Black was tagging, logging and packaging. It must have been their third walk-through.
A videographer was shadowing Stan Stockard from Channel 4 News to get in on the best of the pictures, until Stan swatted him with a hand and took his camera crew down to the river. It was funny enough for a few loud cackles.
Officer Jarvis stood beside the ambulance, drenched to his waist. He walked toward Temeke, wiping his hands on a fluffy white towel someone had given him.
“Found the car after seven this morning. Driver’s dead, sir.”
Temeke could see that. One of the men in the medical response team that he recognized as Lauren De Paul, assistant to Dr. Vasillion, gave him a terse nod and pointed at the body bag. Temeke held up three fingers and nodded back. He turned back to Jarvis.
“When you got here, what was the first thing you saw?”
They both stared at the car which stood in the parking lot now, dripping water and sediment through the open passenger door, windows intact.
“When I drove over the bridge,” Jarvis said, “I could see a woman down there in the driver’s seat. She had her seat belt on, looked like she’d overshot the slope. I waded in and tried to open the driver’s door, but it was locked. The passenger door was open slightly. She could have got out if she wanted to, sir. Might have been a suicide.”
“We’ll leave all the science to forensics, shall we? Automatic or stick?”
“Automatic.”
“Was the car in drive?”
Jarvis’ eyes swept from side to side as if the question was obvious. “Yes, sir.”
“When you drove into the parking lot, which way was the car pointing?”
“The hood was down, front side facing the trees. All I could see was the underside, sir.”
Sounded exactly like a straight shot from the parking lot, thought Temeke, judging by the tire marks in the grass leading down to the water. Although he would have liked to have seen it for himself. There was another set nearer the bridge where the car had been pulled out, but it was the open passenger door that bothered him.
The victim could have climbed out unless she was intoxicated or rendered incapable before the car went under. Heart attacks could do that to a person, so could drugs. But a passenger door couldn’t have opened by itself. It meant only one thing. The passenger had jumped clear just as the car went in and if that someone hadn’t been found, it left another option, one Temeke wasn’t willing to consider yet.
“Purse? Cell phone?”
Jarvis jutted his chin at the crime scene specialists. “All bagged, sir. They also found a blanket and a shoelace with some hair on it. Probably nothing.”
“Everything’s something at a crime scene, son.”
Temeke reckoned the slope was roughly a twenty-five percent grade and there was no knowing how fast the vehicle had been going. Probably fifteen at a stretch, he imagined. Might have raced in from the road, only a sharp left-hand turn would have prevented any antics of that nature, unless she was being chased.
The temperatures had been in the low thirties at night and it made sense the car windows were closed. The sun had already burned through the dampness that had settled overnight and there was an eerie orange light through the trees.
He walked over to Lauren and stared down at the head of a young woman, hair matted against her cheeks and almost unrecognizable.
“Name?”
“Rosa Belmonte. Twenty-one, five feet, six inches tall, one hundred and twenty-eight pounds. All there on her driver’s license. Take a look at this,” Lauren said, unzipping the bag a little further and pointing at a prominent deep mark around her neck. “There are abrasions along the ligature furrow, pattern overlapping. Means she may have struggled a bit.”
Temeke curled his toes in his boots, felt his mind swim in cyberspace for a second without sound or color. “She was strangled?”
“Looks that way.” Lauren seemed to sense the question on Temeke’s face. “She was probably taken by surprise. Lost consciousness fairly quickly.”
“Any other marks, cuts, tattoos?”
“Didn’t see any.”
“Was she wearing shoes?”
“Training shoes. They’re badly scuffed at the heel and sole.” Lauren handed Temeke the bag and let him take a look.
“Bloody waste.”
Temeke saw the shoes were a mixture of white leather and mesh, but a series of deep scores along the heel revealed Rosa had been dragged, possibly across the parking lot. He noted both shoelaces were intact and handed the bag back.
“Officer Jarvis said someone found a shoelace. Could it have been used on the victim?”
“It’s possible,” Lauren said. “The doc will have a better handle on it when we get her to OMI.”
The last time Temeke had visited the office of the medical investigator he had asked Vasillion what he thought the victim might have seen or felt in those final hours. The doctor responded, “I’ve often imagined it. I think they beg internally for someone to come and rescue them, and then their minds scream, my God, I don’t want to die.”
The bland-faced doc took pride in his work, tidying up the remains other people had destroyed. He cut and sliced, sometimes humming a tune. And all this time, Temeke assumed Vasillion was hardened by it, no longer able to feel like he once had.
What Temeke couldn’t stomach in this case was the demonic component which had crept in through a sodding witch book. Someone thought they had an unholy mandate to snuff out innocent lives and take precious resources away from other investigations.
“Anyone else in the car?” he asked.
“Didn’t look like it. But there’s frogmen north of here, following the current.”
Temeke studied the open space where the teams were beginning to pull out, leaving a tow truck for the deceased’s car. He noticed one light on the south side of the parking lot, a metal halide fixture with a rectangular head. It would have shed some light on the area but certainly not enough to alert a passing car on the main road. Most drivers clocked fifty-five over Alamada bridge when no one was looking.
Temeke gave Lauren a slight wave of his hand and walked back towards the river. He heard the conclusive rasp of the zipper as he reached the summit of the slope, an eerie sound he had come to terms with over the years.
He crouched and squinted sideways at the wide imprint of tire tracks along the embankment. There were no scuff marks on the asphalt below, nothing to indicate the victim had been dragged in any direction. All he could hear was the breeze and voices bubbling from the emergency teams, and his gaze was briefly locked by a dragonfly caught in a strip of sunlight on the surface of the water, wings a twilight blue as it hovered over a wooden post. It was lucky to be alive.
Temeke stood, reached in his pocket for his cell phone to call Malin... and then paused. He was jarred from his thoughts by a scrawl of graffiti on that wooden post and the closer he got he could make out a word.
Gulshan.
As to its meaning he had no idea, but words near a crime scene deserved to be photographed. He took a picture with his cell phone for good measure and flicked his fingers at the videographer.
“Better snag that before the water level rises.”
