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.”
“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.”