by JF Freedman
“It is,” Sophia came back at her.
Kate inhaled slowly, then exhaled. “Do you want me to quit law school? Is that it?” she asked.
As soon as the words were out of her mouth she started to shake inside again. She had been going to the law school, nights and Saturday mornings, for two and a half years. In another year and a half she would have her degree, six months later she’d take the bar, and she would be an attorney, instead of a private detective who worked for attorneys.
“No, Mom,” Sophia protested. “No. It’s just that…”
“I can take a year off,” Kate said. Her heart was beating like a hummingbird’s. “Next year you’ll be in college. I’ve waited this long already, one more year isn’t going to make that much difference.”
Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn’t. Emotionally, of course it would. It would be wrenching. But she needed to be with her daughter more. They had so little time left.
“No, Mom.” Sophia’s eyes were tearing up. “Really, I don’t want you to quit, not even for a year. It’s not that. It’s…” An arrrgh of pain came from her gut. “I hate it there, okay?” she wailed. “I hate Santa Barbara! It’s totally plastic. I hate the high school, it’s all shitty little cliques.” She was crying now, bawling. “I don’t have any friends there, Mom. It’s like I’m a fucking ghost. They already have all their friends, there’s no room for me. All my friends are here, in San Francisco. I haven’t had one date since I’ve been there. And I don’t even have a car, so I can’t go anywhere, I’m stuck. I hate it. I hate my life!”
“Ah, Sophia…” Kate was reeling, she was going to black out. She grabbed the sofa to support herself.
“I know you want me to be with you, Mom!” Sophia cried. “And I want to be with you, I do. But my life there is horrible. Why don’t you get it? I got there too late. I can’t help that. I wish I could, Mom. But I can’t.” She slumped to the floor in a heap.
Kate stared down at her. “I…you just can’t live here with Wanda,” she said in a shattered voice. “Not like this, with no preparation. And you couldn’t anyway, it’s not the way things are. I’m sorry, I don’t know…” She trailed off.
Wanda knelt down and put her arms around Sophia. “Hey,” she said softly. She looked up at Kate. “Can we talk for a minute, Mom? She and I?”
“Sure,” Kate answered numbly. Her spirit and brain were fried. “I’ll take a walk.”
“Not for long,” Wanda said. “Just a few minutes.”
Kate hiked down to Haight Street and went into the first joint she came across. She sat alone at the end of the dark wooden bar, drinking a vodka martini, straight up. She hadn’t smoked a cigarette in fifteen years, but if smoking was still permitted in California bars she would have lit one up without hesitation.
She milked her drink, because she knew two would be over the top. Finally draining it to the last drop, she gathered her change off the bar and trudged back up the street to Wanda’s apartment.
The girls were waiting for her. Sophia had washed her face and redone her lip gloss. She smiled wanly at Kate, who was shaking inside.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Sophia said in an even, steady voice. “I know I can’t stay here.” She turned to her sister for a moment, then looked at Kate again. “I need to be with you.” She paused. “We need to be with each other.”
6
WHEN MARIA ESTRADA DIDN’T come home by ten o’clock at night, her mother tried her on her cell phone, but got the recorded message. After she dialed two more times with the same result she started calling Maria’s friends, trying to find her delinquent daughter. But none of the usual suspects knew where Maria was, and after an hour of fruitless trying, Mrs. Estrada gave up and went to bed.
This wasn’t the first time Maria hadn’t come home at night over the past few months; during summertime, kids slept over at each other’s houses as much as they slept at their own. But now, although school had started again, Maria was still gypsying around. She’d show up at home when she felt like it, blithely announcing that she’d been at this or that friend’s house and had forgotten to call, or had tried and the line was busy, or that she’d lost track of the time and it was too late to call—the usual litany of lame excuses that she knew her mother didn’t believe but didn’t have the energy to get into a fight over. Mrs. Estrada was pretty sure that Maria had a boyfriend she was keeping secret, probably an older man the family wouldn’t approve of. She knew that Maria had been sexually active for at least two years, because she had found a discarded condom mixed up in her daughter’s underwear (she was always cleaning up after Maria, a worse-than-usual teenage slob) in the spring of Maria’s tenth-grade year, and had angrily confronted Maria about it. Maria had flown into a rage at the invasion of her privacy, declaring that if she wanted to have sex that was her business, she was almost sixteen and every other girl in the universe was doing it, and that her mother ought to be glad she was using protection.
They hadn’t spoken to each other for almost a week after that blowup, and from then on Maria’s sexual activities weren’t mentioned. Her mother put her head in the sand about the subject, and they managed to coexist under the same roof. As long as Maria didn’t get pregnant, come down with a sexually transmitted disease, get heavily into drugs, and did the minimum amount of work required to graduate, Mrs. Estrada was willing to turn a blind eye. In nine months Maria would finish high school, get a job, and would move in with two of her older female cousins who had their own apartment in Carpinteria. Latino girls didn’t stay at home with their families until they were married anymore, especially antsy girls like Maria. Mrs. Estrada wasn’t unhappy with that prospect.
But when Maria failed to show up at school the next day—the social services worker called, checking up on her—and didn’t come home again that night, there was enough cause for alarm that Mrs. Estrada, a divorced woman who had raised Maria on her own, was sufficiently worried that she called the police and filed a missing-persons report. Because Maria had been gone for less than two days, was over eighteen (which made her ineligible for an Amber Alert), and had a history of casualness in her schedule, the officer who took down the information didn’t give the call a high priority. He promised Mrs. Estrada that a detective would get on it in the morning, but that in all likelihood Maria would turn up soon.
Although she was still worried after she talked to the cop, Mrs. Estrada was inclined to agree with him. She knew that her daughter was a tramp, and figured that Maria had probably found some jerk with money to shack up with for a few days. She would have a line of bullshit all prepared when she finally waltzed back home, and they would dance around the subject, and Maria would promise to stay in touch better, and they’d sweep the trouble under the rug, same as they always did.
Kate Blanchard stared at the notes on her computer screen. The words were blurring together; she shook her head to clear the cobwebs.
She was tired; recently, she seemed to be tired most of the time. She had nineteen active cases on her calendar. In addition, there were the two nights of law school, three hours each night, as well as her normal household chores. And of course, trying to spend time, not just sharing space, but real quality time, with Sophia.
Since their return from San Francisco, Sophia had adopted an attitude of sullen nonaggression toward both her mother and her school. She was up early without prompting in the morning, the day’s clothing and accessories neatly laid out the night before. She talked to her mother about what was going on in her life—school, kids, her routine—without revealing anything personal, anything about her feelings. In the evenings she did her homework, watched television, talked to her sister on her cell phone. It felt to Kate like they were two strangers on a long ocean cruise who had been assigned to the same table for meals and had to exchange polite conversation.
She was trying her best to bridge the gulf between them. The day after they returned home from San Francisco she had dipped into her savings and bought Sophia a car from a m
echanic she trusted. It was a twelve-year-old Volvo with high mileage, but it ran decently. Sophia hadn’t shown much outward emotion when Kate handed her the keys—a quick hug and a “Thanks, Mom”—but she was thrilled to have it. She could come and go on her own now without having to worry about borrowing her mother’s car. Sophia had already started putting her own personal touches on the old wagon—dried flowers woven around a bird’s feather hung from the rearview mirror, and an Indian shawl she’d found in a local flea market covered the worn backseat.
“Hi, Mom.”
Kate turned in surprise. She hadn’t heard the front door open. “Hi there,” she answered back.
Her office was on Anapamu Street, close to the courthouse, the central police station, and coincidentally, the high school. Last spring, Sophia would stop by after school and do her homework while she waited for Kate to drive her home. This was the first time this year she had come here after school.
Kate flushed with enjoyment from the unexpected visit. “How’s school?” Not the most intimate of questions, but she was treading lightly these days.
“The usual crap. My last period class was cancelled, so I thought I’d come bug my mommy.” Sophia tossed her backpack onto a chair. “You want to hear my latest news?”
Kate looked up from her computer screen. “Sure.”
Sophia unsuccessfully tried to appear nonchalant. “I auditioned for the fall play.”
“That’s great!” Kate could feel the smile spreading across her face. “What is it?”
“The Wizard of Oz. It’s not a musical. We’re doing the original play, not the movie.”
“What part did you try out for?” Kate asked eagerly.
Under her olive complexion, Sophia crimsoned slightly. “Dorothy. I won’t get it,” she said quickly. “There are too many girls who’ve been doing the plays at school since their freshman year. The drama coach has his policies—new kids never get leads. But I could get one of the other parts, like a munchkin.”
Kate stood up and gave Sophia a hug, both for love and support. This was a good sign, Sophia’s first positive move in a long time. Kate almost literally felt her shoulders lighten. “Have an upbeat attitude,” she told Sophia. “Maybe the drama coach will think outside the box.”
Sophia nodded. “Whatever happens, it’ll be fun.” She peered over her mother’s shoulder at the computer screen. “Whatcha working on? Not that I’d understand, even if you explained it to me. God, Mom, the shit you have to deal with sometimes. I don’t know how you do it.”
That makes two of us, Kate thought. She had to find a way off this treadmill.
Sophia grabbed her backpack. “See you later. Do you have school tonight?”
“Afraid so,” Kate said apologetically.
“No big deal,” Sophia assured her. “You’ll be home by nine. I’ll wait to eat with you.” She kissed her mother on the top of Kate’s head. “You need new shampoo, Mom. I’ll stop by the mall later and get you something that doesn’t have a ton of chemicals.”
She walked out the door, closing it behind her. Kate luxuriated for a moment in her daughter’s lingering aura before getting back to her workload.
Keith Morton crisscrossed Rancho San Gennaro in his vintage Jeep Wrangler. He was beginning his biannual survey of the ranch. It would take weeks to cover the entire property, but that was all right, there was no hurry.
Keith was the ranch foreman. He and his wife, Esther, lived in a small house on the opposite side of the property from Juanita McCoy’s house. Keith had the right personality for running a ranch—he loved rural life, he was patient, he was comfortable with his station in life. He was good at fixing almost anything that needed fixing on a ranch: machinery, fences, painting, plumbing, working with livestock. A good rider, and good with weapons.
Esther complemented his skills with her own—canning, gardening, animal husbandry. A childless couple in their mid-forties, they had been living and working on the ranch for over two decades; first Keith by himself, then Esther with him, after they got married. They were throwbacks to an earlier time, when a cowboy could have a life living on a ranch. Juanita was thankful to have them; not many people wanted this kind of life anymore.
Keith’s Jeep maneuvered over the bumpy ground. As he came over a low rise, the ancestral ranch house came into sight in the distance, its west-facing windows reflecting the late afternoon sun. Off to the side, about half a mile from the house, he spied some turkey buzzards circling overhead, their small, ugly, naked red heads protruding from their bony shoulders. Keith hated buzzards. They were disgusting creatures, flying hyenas feasting on rotting meat. Usually when he saw a flock hovering like this, he would get a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach, because it almost always meant one of their calves had been killed by coyotes or wild dogs. Or a mountain lion. Five years ago, a rogue puma had gone marauding on the ranch, killing off two calves before he tracked it down and shot it. You were supposed to notify the state Bureau of Fish and Game if a predator killed your livestock, but nobody did. You killed them, then reported it. Maybe.
He stopped twenty yards from where the buzzards were clustered on the ground. Grabbing his shotgun from behind the seat, he got out and walked toward them. When he had halved the distance between his Jeep and the carrion-eaters, he fired a shot into the air. The sound reverberated across the hills. The buzzards flew up in a flurry of beating wings, cawing raucously, angry at having their meal disturbed.
He approached the spot where the birds had congregated—a low ravine, overgrown with thick mesquite brush. Thousands of flies, a black, living cloud, were swarming the area, their buzzing as loud as a chain saw. The stench filled his nostrils with a sharp, acrid smell that made his eyes tear.
What a mess, he thought in disgust, covering his mouth and nose with a hand to try to ward off the smell, which was overwhelmingly putrid. What was it? A deer? Another wild pig? Hopefully, not one of their livestock. He couldn’t see it clearly; whatever they were feasting on was half-hidden under the clumps of dense brush.
Surmounting his revulsion, he walked a few steps closer. Using the barrel of his shotgun, he pushed the bushes aside to get a better look. For a few seconds, he stared at the remains, which were covered with writhing maggots, trying to figure out exactly what they were feasting on. Then he recoiled, violently.
“My God!” he blurted out, a hand going to his mouth to hold back the retching.
He sprinted back to the Jeep and grabbed his cell phone from the glove box. Fumbling with the buttons—they were small and his hands were shaking almost uncontrollably—he punched in 9-1-1.
All the entrances to the ranch were sealed off. Detectives from the county sheriff’s department, led by head forensic detective Marlon Perdue, a twenty-year veteran, secured the remains. They also began a search of the area, on the chance that some evidence had been left behind by whoever had dumped the body; it was assumed that she (the victim was a woman—they could barely tell, the body was in such poor shape) hadn’t gotten here on her own.
Perdue walked over to the old house, Keith Morton in tow. Impressive, Perdue thought. A real piece of history. He noticed that there were wrought-iron bars over the windows, and that the place, in general, appeared secure. He tried the front door—locked.
“Do you usually keep this locked up?” he asked Keith.
Keith nodded forcefully. “Hell, yes. There’s a lot of valuable stuff in there. Impossible to replace.”
Perdue looked the house over again for a moment, then walked back to where the remains were being handled. Overhead, helicopters from the tri-county area television stations circled like the vultures Keith Morton had found devouring the remains. A body discovered in the wild was always good television, the more grisly the better—this would be the lead story on tonight’s local news. If it turned out that the yet-unidentified woman had not died from natural causes, or if she came from a well-known family, or if one of several other juicy factors came into play, so much the bette
r, certainly for ratings. There was already a good hook to this story, because of the location of where the body had been found—Rancho San Gennaro was the oldest operating ranch in the county, and the McCoy family was one of its most socially prominent clans.
The corpse was placed in a body bag and put into a waiting ambulance. Sirens blaring, lights flashing, the ambulance, escorted by a covey of motorcycle officers, headed toward Highway 154, which would lead them over the pass and into the city.
The remains were brought to the lab at Cottage Hospital, in Santa Barbara. Peter Atchison, the county’s pathologist, positioned the remains on the stainless-steel examination table. After taking several photographs of the corpse, he snapped on a fresh pair of latex gloves to begin the autopsy. I don’t even need a saw or knife, be thought with dark, grisly humor, I could almost do this one with a spoon.
He turned on the tape recorder.
“These are the remains a woman who I would roughly calculate to have been in her mid-teens to late twenties,” he began. “The amount of decomposition makes a more specific calculation impossible. This ambiguity also applies to time of death, as the high summer temperature has accelerated the normal pace of decomposition. She seems to have been fully developed physically and sexually, but again, the remains are too poor to tell with any certainty.”
He began probing what remained of her torso. Almost immediately, he saw the reason for this corpse’s demise. “Ah, damn it!” he cried out involuntarily.
Marlon Perdue, who was witnessing the procedure, looked up sharply. “What?” he asked, alerted to trouble by the tone of Atchison’s voice.
Atchison reached up to the supply shelf to get a sterile pair of tweezers. Using them as a spreader, he pointed to a small piece of metal in the chest cavity. “There.”
Perdue bent over to get a closer look, “Shit on a stick,” he exclaimed flatly.
As Atchison plucked out the foreign object and dropped it into a ziplock evidence bag, Perdue dialed the sheriff’s direct emergency line. “Sheriff Griffin,” a man’s impatient voice came from the other end of the line.
