“A little late for that.” Pam sighed, and the pain and misery in the sound went straight to Savannah’s heart.
A squad car with a large K9 on the door was coming down the road, and Dirk was motioning the car over to him.
“Listen,” Savannah said. “You can help us here. I’m looking in a gym bag that was in the trunk. Inside, there’s a red T-shirt with the high school bulldog logo on it, black shorts, and some gray sneakers. I assume these are Daisy’s clothes?”
“Yes, they are.” Pam started to cry. “Why?”
“Because we have a K9 unit—a dog tracker—arriving right now. We can use these clothes to help him identify her scent. He might be able to track her down whatever trail she took.”
“Oh, good. I’m coming over there right now.”
“You don’t need to, Pam. Really. We’ve got it.”
“No! I want to! I want to be there. I want to look for her myself.”
The last thing they needed was a distraught parent in the middle of what they were trying to do. Just knowing that a worried mother was sitting at home, sobbing her face off was pressure enough.
“Pam, please stay there by the phone. There’s really nothing you can do here. Maybe if we get to the point of organizing a search party, then you could help. But for now, you need to stay there. If Daisy phoned you and you weren’t there to take her call, you’d never forgive yourself.”
There was a long silence on the other end as Pam thought that one over. Finally, she said, “Okay. But would you please call me the second you find anything? Anything at all.”
“Of course I will. And you have my number. If you can’t stand the waiting, you give me a ring, okay?”
“I’ll try not to bother you.”
“It’s no bother. Really.”
“Thanks, Savannah. For everything.”
“You’re most welcome.”
Savannah hung up and hurried over to the tall, slender young officer who was holding an enormous German shepherd on the end of a thick choke chain.
Dirk was greeting him and the dog, who was barking and straining against the chain, eager to get on with his duties. Getting down on his knees, Dirk grabbed the big dog’s head in both hands and shook him hard from side to side. “Hey there, Mongo, old buddy! How’s my boy?”
Once, when Officer Thornton had gone on vacation, Dirk had dog sat for him. Now Dirk considered himself the Dog Handler Master. He had taught Mongo to fall onto his side and roll onto his back when Dirk fake shot him with his finger.
Dirk didn’t realize that Don had already taught Mongo that trick years before. And Don had been kind enough not to mention it when Dirk had crowed about his accomplishment.
“Is that the vehicle?” Don asked, nodding toward the Honda.
“That’s it,” Savannah told him. She held out the T-shirt, shorts, and shoes. “And these are her clothes. You’re in luck. They haven’t been laundered.”
Don gave her a broad, proud smile and said, “Even if they were laundered, Mongo could pick it up. But he doesn’t like lavender-scented fabric softener. Makes him sneeze.”
Dirk was pointing his finger at Mongo and saying, “Bang.” But the dog didn’t respond, only continued to whine and prance anxiously at the end of his lead.
Don chuckled. “If you’re finished playing with my dog, we could get down to business here,” he said.
“Oh, right. Sorry.” And for once, Dirk really did look a bit embarrassed as he got up off his knees. He cleared his throat and donned his serious business demeanor.
They walked over to the car, and Savannah and Dirk watched as Don scented the dog with the gym clothes. A moment later, the dog had his nose to the ground and was sniffing, sniffing all around the car.
Having seen the dog work before, they waited anxiously for his particular alert, his signal that he had found something. Sometimes, he sat on the ground, looked up at Don, and gave an excited bark. Other times, he would just take off, following the trail, his nose to the ground.
But although Don circled the car over and over with him and even the surrounding area, Mongo seemed to be unable to find any trail.
The animal whined and shook his head, looking up at his partner with frustration, obviously as disappointed as they were.
Finally, Don drew him up short and gave him a treat. “Let’s give him a minute or two, and then maybe we’ll try something else. That’s her car, right? Your missing girl?”
“Yes, it is,” Dirk said.
“The one she usually drives?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Let’s have him scent off the driver’s seat. See if that helps.”
Dirk opened the front door of the car, and Don led Mongo over to it. The dog had followed this routine many times before and knew it well. He hopped up and put his front feet on the driver’s seat, then sniffed all over it.
Immediately, he dropped to all four feet beside the car and put his nose to the ground. He followed along, smelling, intent and focused. He traced a line from the car door, around the back of the car to the parking space next to it. There he stopped. Sitting on his haunches, he looked up at his handler and gave one sharp bark.
“That’s it,” Don said. “She walked from one car to here... probably got right into another one that was parked here in this spot.”
Savannah didn’t know whether to be relieved or not. “I guess it’s a good thing if she’s not up in those hills,” she muttered, mostly to herself, “but getting in another car? That could mean anything.”
“I guess somebody picked her up,” Don said. “Maybe they snatched her, forced her into their car.”
Dirk was walking around the spot where the dog had indicated the end of the trail. “But Mongo says the trail ends here, on the left side of this parking space. If the car she got into was nosed into the space the way most people park, she would have gotten into the driver’s side. Not the passenger’s.”
Savannah nodded. “That’s true. Some reincarnated gunslingers and gangsters park facing out for a quick getaway, but most people nose in, like you said.”
“Maybe somebody drove out here with her,” Dirk said, “with the intention of leaving her car here. They pulled in, she got out of the Honda, the other person slid over onto the passenger’s seat, she got into the second car and drove off.”
“Could be,” Savannah mused. “Could be. And that’s a cheerier scenario than her getting snatched and shoved into the passenger’s seat.”
Michelle, the CSI, sauntered up to them and gave Don a flirtatious smile. “My coffee break is way over, and I can only justify so many games of sudoku on the taxpayers’ time,” she said. “Can I start dusting yet?”
“Yeah,” Dirk said, “you might as well. It looks like it’s been wiped down, though. Good luck.”
She grinned. “Oh, those are the fun ones. I just lo-o-ove a good challenge.”
As she walked back to the van to retrieve her kit, Officer Don watched her backside with avid male interest.
Savannah leaned close to him and whispered in his ear, “Um . . . isn’t your wife the one who threw a beer bottle at you at the Fourth of July picnic because you were checking out some gal in a tight halter top?”
He snapped out of it instantly. “Yeah, right,” he said. “Come on, Mongo. Let’s go get you an ice cream cone.”
An hour later, Michelle was still inside the Honda, sitting in the driver’s seat, swirling fingerprint dust with a thick, soft brush onto the dash.
Savannah watched as she worked, dropping the dust, placing sheets of tape onto the area, peeling it off, and then attaching the tape to white evidence cards.
“Anything yet?” Savannah asked, standing by the open driver’s door, trying to see what she was doing.
“Nope. Nothing. Dirk wasn’t kidding when he said it was wiped clean. I’ve covered just about every surface up here. And I haven’t found one print, even a partial.”
That small bit of hope that maybe there was a non-sinister ex
planation for Daisy’s disappearance evaporated. There was simply no good, honest reason why a person would remove their fingerprints from a car . . . or anywhere else, for that matter.
“That Officer Thornton,” Michelle said as she dusted. “He’s a hottie. Is he married?”
“Yes, absolutely married,” Savannah told her.
“Happily?”
“I’m not sure, but you don’t want to go there. Trust me.”
“You a moralist or something?”
“Let’s just say if you’re a survivalist, you’ll steer clear. She’s got a temper and a half. Very jealous. Prone to violence.”
“That bad? Really?”
“Clocked him in the head with a beer bottle in front of at least fifty off duty cops at a picnic. I heard it took nine stitches to close up the gash. He bled all over the potato salad. Ugly. Very ugly.”
“Oh, okay. Gotcha.”
Dirk walked over to the car, opened the passenger’s door, and stuck his head in. “How’s it coming?”
“Lousy,” Michelle said. “Nothing. And I’m about done.”
He grunted. “Don’t forget to do a Night Stalker.”
“Yeah, yeah... telling me how to do my job again. None of us ever forget to do a Richard Ramirez.”
Dirk left them and wandered away. Savannah could tell he was getting tense, just waiting around. To Dirk, wait was a nasty, obscene four-letter word.
Savannah watched as Michelle carefully dusted the back of the rear view mirror, applied the tape, and ripped it off.
Years ago, the horrific murder spree of serial killer Richard Ramirez, the so-called Night Stalker, had come to an end because the cops had found a single fingerprint on the rearview mirror of a car he had driven.
And as a result, any CSI tech worth their brush and dust checked all sides of a vehicle’s mirror before the job was done.
“Oh my God, I don’t believe it!” Michelle said, staring at the white card where she had affixed the tape. “I’ve got one. It’s a partial, but I’ll bet it’s enough for a match.”
“Hey, Dirk,” Savannah called out to him. “Come back here. She’s got one.”
It took him only five seconds to return to the car and snatch the card out of Michelle’s hand. One look, and a big grin spread across his face.
“Fantastic!” he said. “Michelle, consider yourself kissed, kiddo!”
He handed the card back to her and said, “Sign it and fill it out. I want to get that over to the lab right now so they can process and run it.”
Michelle began to write on the card, filling in the necessary information to properly document it. Then she slipped it into a manila envelope and sealed and signed the envelope as well.
She handed it to Dirk and started to get out of the car.
“Wait.” Savannah put her hand on the tech’s shoulder and pushed her back into the seat. “Hold on a minute. I want to see something.”
After looking down at Michelle’s legs and feet, she said, “Did you move this seat?”
“What?”
“Did you adjust the seat, move it forward or back?”
“No, of course not. Why?”
“How about the mirror? Did you adjust it, or was that the position it was in when you first got into the car?”
“No. I didn’t move it. I’m really careful about that kind of thing.” Michelle looked confused and more than a little defensive. “Why are you asking me this stuff? I know how to—”
“Sh-h-h. I know you do.” Savannah reached into her purse and pulled out the pad where she had been jotting notes since she had first talked to Pam O’Neil at the Dante estate. “Michelle, how tall are you?”
“Five-two,” she admitted reluctantly, “not that it’s anybody’s business.”
“And your feet reach the pedals just fine there, right?”
“Uh . . .”—she looked down—“. . . yeah.”
“And when you look in the rearview mirror, it’s in a good position for you?”
She glanced at the mirror. “Yes. Why?”
Savannah checked her notes. “Because Daisy O’Neil, our missing girl, is five feet, ten inches.”
Dirk had been on his cell phone, alerting the lab that he was on his way in to see them, but all of a sudden, he was interested in the point Savannah was making.
“That’s right,” he said, checking out the position of Michelle’s body in the seat. “Daisy would have had the seat a lot farther back than that if she was the one at the wheel.”
“Somebody else was driving Daisy’s car,” Savannah said, wondering what the significance of that might be. “They may have dropped this car here, got out, hopped into another car, and driven off in the second one.”
“That would be my guess, too.” Dirk nodded thoughtfully. “And whoever was doing the driving wasn’t nearly as big as Daisy...or that boyfriend of hers, either.”
“Nope. Petite. A very short man or a small woman.”
Savannah’s eyes met Dirk’s, and they exchanged knowing looks.
“I guess I know whose prints you’re going to run a comparison on first,” she said.
“Yep.” Dirk slipped the envelope into his inside jacket pocket. “In less than an hour, I’ll know if it’s Miss Tiffy’s.”
Savannah crossed her fingers.
If she’d thought it would’ve done any good, she’d have crossed her eyes, toes, and legs, too.
Savannah drove Dirk to her least favorite part of town, the industrial area. Not all that many years ago, this land had been covered with orange, lemon, and avocado groves and strawberry fields—blooming, bearing fruit, cleaning the air, and perfuming it with the intoxicating scent of blossoms and fresh citrus.
Now it grew nothing but more and more gray steel and cement.
Progress.
Los Angeles had arrived.
And in the middle of the boring and soulless maze of windowless concrete block buildings with steel garage doors was an equally unremarkable windowless building with a small, white door with the Great Seal of California emblazoned on it.
They parked, hurried up to the door, and Dirk punched the doorbell button.
A moment later, a voice spoke from the intercom speaker mounted over the door just below a security camera.
“What do you want?” asked a pseudo-gruff female voice. “Whatever you’re selling, we’ve got enough.”
“Open this door, Eileen,” Dirk barked back. “I got something that’s gotta be processed right away.”
“What else is new?”
When the door opened, a sixty-something woman with long, curly silver hair was standing there, her hands on her hips. She wore a crisp white lab coat, blue jeans, and sneakers and a broad smile on her face—for Savannah.
Eileen Bradley had been head of the lab since Savannah had been a cop, and she ran the place with impressive efficiency and frightening despotism. But in Savannah’s opinion, Eileen was a good egg...as long as you weren’t foolish enough to cross her.
“Hey, girl,” she said, giving Savannah a warm hug. “I don’t see nearly enough of you around here.” As she turned to Dirk, the smile dropped off her face. “You, on the other hand, I see far too much.”
Ignoring the insult, Dirk reached into his pocket and pulled out Michelle’s envelope. “I’ve got a latent here that I need run ASAP.”
Eileen turned to her other techs, a middle-aged Latino and a freckle-faced young miss, who were both sitting at computers, their noses practically on the screens. “Hear that?” she asked them. “Detective Coulter has something that has to be processed right away. Drop everything, run over here, grab his evidence, and kiss his ass.”
Savannah cringed and gave Dirk a sideways glance. She half expected him to explode. And maybe with anyone else, he might have. But Eileen had the upper hand, gold shield or not. She could make him WAIT. And in Dirk’s world, that gave her rank and stature.
“It’s important, Eileen,” he said in a far softer tone than Savannah might have exp
ected. “A kid’s missing and—”
“And another kid’s dead,” Eileen interjected. “Shot four times, twice in the head. Do you mind if we process his bullets first before we get to your latent?”
For a moment, Dirk looked confused and a bit chagrined. Then he flared, “Who? You mean that damned gangbanger who got himself popped Monday night? Give me a break. My kid’s an innocent civilian. That punk was asking for it.”
G.A. McKevett Page 11
