OTHER THAN THE BUZZ FROM THE CHOPPERS, THE CLEARING SOUTH OF THE CRIME scene was especially quiet for a homicide. No wailing from a distraught mother or shouting from an angry uncle, This ain’t right! This ain’t right! No calls to Jesus. No grumblings about the cops not caring and not doing shit.
The two women who “saw a man” shivered in their wet sweat suits and faux Pucci head scarves. They huddled together beneath a tired pink umbrella that threatened to collapse from this phenomenon called rain. They peered at my head—Lieutenant Rodriguez had yanked off some guy’s LAPD baseball cap and had given it to me to wear.
The thick, dark-skinned woman with the eyebrow stud was Heather Artest.
The other woman was also thick and mixed with some type of Asian. And because she had watched too many episodes of Law & Order, she would only tell me that her name was Cynthia. “Why do you need my last name? I don’t wanna give my last name.”
“Give me a last initial, then,” I said.
“Q.”
“Great. So who saw what?”
“We was walking right over there.” Heather pointed to the trail south of the tarp that ran beneath a canopy of eucalyptus trees.
“And we smelled something dead,” Cynthia said. “But I’m in the forest, so I’m like, ‘whatever, it stank in the forest.’”
“So we kept walking,” Heather continued. “And the more we walked, the worse that smell got.”
Cynthia nodded. “That’s when our girl Vanessa said—”
“Who’s Vanessa?” I interrupted.
“She was walking with us,” Heather said. “She saw the bag first.”
Cynthia took hold of the umbrella. “She’s the one who said, ‘That looks like a person’s leg comin’ out that bag.’ Then, she took some pictures with her phone.”
I narrowed my eyes. “And where is Vanessa?”
“She freaked out,” Cynthia said. “When we found the park ranger, he had one of the other rangers take her down to the community center. She may still be down there.”
“So what happened next?” I asked.
“We kept walking,” Heather continued, “and we got close enough to see—” She covered her mouth with a shaky hand.
“The black girl from the Jungle,” Cynthia said. “Is it her? Is it Trina?”
“We don’t know much yet,” I admitted. “May I ask the obvious question?”
“Why were we walking in the rain?” Heather asked.
“Diabetes and New Year’s resolution,” Cynthia explained.
“And it’s rain, not lava,” Heather said, rolling her eyes.
“She’s from Seattle,” Cynthia announced.
I nodded. “May I see the bottoms of your tennis shoes?”
Cynthia lifted her left foot.
No whorls.
Still, I took a picture with my camera phone.
Heather lifted her foot.
Lines, squares, no whorls.
I snapped another picture.
“Why you takin’ picture of our shoes?” Cynthia asked.
“We ain’t done nothing,” Heather complained.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Just procedure. You were close to the body and I just wanna make sure that any shoe prints we find aren’t yours.”
“Why it seem like a lotta black girls gettin’ kidnapped this year?” Heather asked.
“Don’t know,” I said.
Even though Poor, Black, and Female was my Everyday, this case worried me. One thing, however, did not worry me. I knew for sure that Jane Doe was not my sister. Because Victoria had been found. Finally.
“What about the guy you saw?” I asked the couple. “Tell me about him.”
“He was coming from that direction.” Cynthia pointed toward the tarp.
“Was he carrying anything?” I asked.
“His hands were in his pockets,” Heather said.
“Can you describe him?”
“He was tall,” Cynthia said.
“No, he wasn’t,” Heather countered with a frustrated head shake. “He was, like, five eleven.”
“That’s tall.”
“To Mini-Me.”
“Anyway, he was black.”
“Girl, you need glasses,” Heather said. “You couldn’t even tell what he was cuz he was wearing a baseball cap and this big jacket with a turned-up collar. Black jacket, blue cap.”
“No,” Cynthia said, “it was a black jacket, and a black cap.”
“No, the cap was wet from the rain so it just looked black.”
Cynthia shrugged. “You probably right.”
Then the women looked at me.
“Did the cap have a team name on it?” I asked. “Any kind of marking?”
“Umm …,” Cynthia said.
Heather shrugged. “Can we go now?”
I blinked. “That’s all you can tell me?”
“We gave you specifics,” Heather snapped.
“Right. A not-too-tall, tall man of indeterminate ethnicity wearing a black jacket and a dark baseball cap.” They had described every man in Los Angeles County—but not the park ranger in khaki. “What time did you start walking the trail?”
“A little after eleven,” Heather recalled, “and I know it was a little after eleven cuz my mom had just texted me, telling me that she had picked up my son from kindergarten.”
“And so you’re walking,” I said, “and you got where when you first spotted the bag?”
The two women led me to the slight bend in the trail, right before the canopy of trees.
“And you kept walking?” I asked.
They nodded.
“Let’s walk now.”
And we walked.
“When did you see the guy in the cap?” I asked.
“Right … about … now.” Cynthia stopped in her step.
We had walked eleven paces—and had a clear view of the blue tarp and the trail. There were no trees above to create shadow.
“His shoes were really muddy,” Cynthia said.
“So what?” Heather said with a frown. “It’s raining. They supposed to be muddy.”
“Was he walking fast or slow?” I asked.
“Kinda hurrying but not running,” Cynthia said. “He had his head down and his chin was kinda tucked into his collar cuz of the rain.”
Or because he didn’t want them to see his face.
“And what time was that when you saw him?” I asked.
“A minute or two after I got the text from my mom,” Heather said.
“Did he say anything to you?” I asked. “Speak to you at all?”
Heather shook her head. “He ain’t said a word.”
“Where did he go once he passed you? Did he stay on the dirt trail or did he take that gravel service road?”
The women shrugged.
“Who called 911?”
“I tried to, but my call kept dropping,” Cynthia said.
“So we ran to that road and waved down the park service truck,” Heather added.
“And we told that park ranger what we saw,” Cynthia said.
“And then he called 911,” Heather finished.
“Your girl Vanessa,” I said. “Can you describe her for me? I need to talk to her, too.”
Heather pulled out a phone from her sweat-pants pocket and found a picture of Vanessa: round face, caramel complexion, nose ring, black and pink dreads.
“And her phone number?” I asked.
“Why you need her number?” Cynthia asked.
I sighed and stopped myself from rolling my eyes. “Cuz she may have pictures of this guy. I can keep calling you to reach her, or I can call her directly. Ladies’ choice.”
Cynthia groaned, then sucked her teeth.
Heather rattled off a number.
I thanked them both, then gave each my business card. “And if you see Vanessa before I reach her, please tell her to call me ASAP.”
As Luke took Heather’s and Cynthia’s official witness statements, I headed down to the base of the trail. My feet felt thick and numb in my fancy combat boots, and I’m sure the burning on my chest was a rash caused by my wet sweater. But I couldn’t stop.
I needed to find Vanessa. And I needed to find the man in the baseball cap.