Cage gave directions as he and Dr. Murasawa raced to find where the others had gathered.
Examining the photographs on his phone, he found Amber and Brooklyn had opened Sarah's car. They’d been checking out the interior and were photographing what they pulled out. His irritation rose, but there was nothing he could do, the damage was already done.
There might have been fingerprints on the car doors, maybe on the trunk. Maybe even blood . . . Pulling things out of Sara's car could have destroyed evidence!
He tried to remind himself, it might have seemed like a good idea at the time if he’d been the one who found her car. Also, some of these things he hadn’t known until Dr. Achebe had been murdered and he'd been accused of the crime.
Beside him, he watched as his old boss cranked the wheel into the turn. Pulling up next to the other cars she swung a sharp arc. Had they been on pavement the tires would have squealed. Using the centripetal force, Cage opened his door and practically tumbled out, running toward the car. He was anxious to see what they had found, because clearly, it wasn't Sarah. Unfortunately, there was nothing in the pictures he'd been scrolling through—wishing he could make them larger on his phone—that told him where she might be.
“Any luck?” he asked into the crowd in general. But it was Malcolm and Aurora Walker, standing back, holding hands tightly, who turned to him with sad faces, shaking their heads No.
Everyone stood around watching as Amber and Brooklyn went about their work as if it was all okay. It didn’t seem to bother anyone that they were simply destroying evidence, that they might be losing the very thing that could lead them to Sarah.
But Joule’s hand reached out, grabbing his wrist and holding him back when he would have lunged forward yelling angrily.
“Look,” she told him pointing at the car with her free hand.
Only then did he see. Both girls wore blue non-latex gloves. Though Amber worked her way slowly through the car, Brooklyn had her phone out and was taking pictures from every possible angle before anything was moved. She motioned to a third member of the work party, telling him where and how to aim his light so she could get the best images.
“They shone the lights on the car door handles looking for fingerprints,” Joule told him, her voice catching Amber's attention, and the woman looked up at Cage.
Her dark caramel colored hair was pulled back in a hasty ponytail. As she worked, she offered him what she could. “We worked very hard not to destroy evidence. We entered through the passenger rear door—” she pointed, “—the only handle that didn't have any fingerprints. And even then—”
Brooklyn turned around then, “We used Amber's belt.”
She pointed one blue gloved finger at her friend's waist where the belt had clearly been returned. “We did our best not to mess up anything that we couldn't see.”
Smart, he thought. Smarter than he’d given them credit for. He’d had no right to be angry. If he'd been thinking at all he would have realized that. He was used to Sarah and her overalls and hiking boots. Amber and Brooklyn and Gisela looked a little more like they were going to the mall, but they were still Helio Systems Tech employees—smart, well vetted, and able to think on their feet.
“Also, my sister is a forensic scientist,” Brooklyn told him as she turned back to her work of photographing the things in the trunk. “I can lift these prints if we need to, if the police won't do it themselves.”
Not only had they likely done better than he would have, they thought ahead to a point he hadn't arrived at yet. He'd simply been excited and scared to find the car. They’d reasoned through notifying the police. Even as he realized that, Cage heard the wail of sirens in the distance, likely coming here.
“Hurry up!” Gisela rushed her two roommates.
Ah. They’d done the work themselves on purpose. If any of the group trusted the police around here to gather everything, they were in the minority apparently. Even as all the pieces clicked together for him, Brooklyn mumbled, “I wish I had a plaster kit for these tire tracks.”
With his wrist now free from his sister's grasp, Cage tapped her with the back of his hand, reaching for his own phone. “We've got it.”
The tracks that Brooklyn had pointed to led from Sarah's tires back toward the rutted path. He walked over, careful not to bother anything as he took pictures, motioning Joule to shine the flashlight from her phone.
“Some with flash on and some with it off,” Brooklyn called out to him, but she didn’t look up from her work. Sound must travel far out here on flat land, he thought. The sirens were still getting closer, but he couldn’t see them yet.
He nodded, now following her lead. He clicked a handful of pictures, right up to the shifting of the tracks as Sarah had parked the car—or when whoever had driven it last had parked it. But looking where Brooklyn pointed revealed a wide berth. He and Joule realized quickly that another car had pulled up alongside Sarah's. A car that was no longer here.
Had Sarah's car been here the entire time she had been missing? The dust made it look like it had. The other car had possibly come with her. Which would make the tracks likely days old. Though the tracks themselves were for different tires, the depth and the way they’d worn a little looked the same to his untrained eye. Later, he could ask Brooklyn what she thought, or maybe her sister could analyze it for them.
The desert appeared to have degraded the indentations only very slightly. There'd been very little wind over the past few days, keeping the heat oppressive. But suddenly he was grateful.
The sirens were growing louder.
“Look,” Joule pointed out. “It seems the car stopped right next to Sarah's.”
As he looked up, he saw Brooklyn and Amber nod. They'd been first on the scene and likely had been talking their way through this ever since. Amber told them, “We’re guessing they both arrived at the same time. Then, when Sarah disappeared, whoever was in the other car came back and drove it away. But it’s hard to say for—”
She was cut off by flashing lights and the sound of slamming doors. Authoritative voices called out, telling them to step back.
Glancing every direction, Cage snapped one last picture of the tire tracks. Noticing as he looked up that Amber and Brooklyn had carefully peeled their gloves and stuffed them surreptitiously into their pockets.
Interesting, he thought.
But it was Joule’s gaze that caught his as she motioned to the tires and whispered, “You know whose tires we have to test these against.”