So far, so good.
I speeded up my pace, still angling to circle him. “Lead on, Mike. What you got?”
The deputy turned his back to me and I glanced at his cruiser. Shotgun still in its rack. I started to relax. He led me down a short trail that ended at the edge of a cliff. From there I could see the quarry, vertical stone bluffs blasted out of the ground with a small greenish pond at the bottom.
I shuffled up to the edge, keeping Davis in my peripheral vision and out of arm’s reach. If he noticed, he didn’t remark on it. “Down there,” he said, and pointed.
“I can’t see anything,” I said.
“The red bandana. Couple of hikers spotted the body and called the station. Left that as a marker. They said you can’t see it from the rim.”
That reminded me to pull out my phone. Two bars. Okay, he wasn’t lying about that. I looked again and saw the speck of red.
“I’m going to call it in now,” Davis continued. “I can’t wait any longer, but it will take at least a half hour for another unit to get out here.”
“How do you know he’s dead?” I asked. “Or she.”
Davis’ eyes narrowed. “I guess I don’t, but if he fell from the rim…”
“We gonna find out or stand around talking?”
“What’s got into you?” His hands went to his hips and I rested my left on my weapon’s grip, out of his sight.
“Nothing. Sorry. Having a rough day. Go ahead, make the call.”
Shaking his head, Davis trudged back to the cruiser and pulled the radio handset out the window. I stood back a bit and listened to him call it in by the book and I heard the response from Marilou. Sounded kosher.
“Okay, now let’s go take a look.” Pulling the shotgun out of its rack, he slung it on his back.
“What’s that for?” I asked.
“Puma, mainly. We got a few roaming around and if the smell of blood is fresh it may attract one. Got coyotes too, but they won’t usually attack an adult human, let alone two. Feral dogs might, if the pack is big enough. Oh, and then there’s anyone that don’t like us finding this.”
“Yeah.” As a former city cop I had no idea if he was telling the truth or not about the animals, but it seemed reasonable. It made me resting my hand on the butt of my weapon that much more sensible, though, so I kept my mouth shut and followed him.
A hundred yards as the crow flies turned into three hundred around the rim of the quarry, then into a draw, down a switchback trail and finally out along a dry stream bed that cut its way to the bottom. I was glad I had put on the heavy leather boots with the Vibram soles, but not so happy about the Kevlar and the unnecessary windbreaker. I unzipped it for ventilation and still ended up sweating.
I checked my watch. Ten minutes had passed. We walked warily up on the body, which lay tucked up under the cliff with some bushes uprooted and placed over it. Looked like the hikers had pulled the brush off. Two sets of prints, one man and one youth or woman by the size.
“The body was dragged,” I said, pointing at some bloodstains on the bare rock.
“Yeah. Looks like he hit the ground farther out and someone drug him in close by the rocks and hid him. Can’t see from the rim. Must have figured on it being a lot longer until he was discovered.”
I looked the corpse over. Carpenter jeans, the kind with extra pockets, a faded purple t-shirt and ratty tennis shoes. No socks. No watch. No jewelry. No belt.
Davis unslung the shotgun and tucked it under his arm, squatting down to lay a finger on the face-down body’s neck. He shook his head. “Dead and cold.” Brushing long dirty hair back from the face, we confirmed the corpse was male.
“Two broken arms,” I said as I pointed. “Neck as well, looks like. He augered in headfirst.”
Davis laid the shotgun on a rock and I relaxed further. He reached to move more of the corpse’s matted hair aside. “I don’t think that was what finished him, though.” His finger pointed at a blackened ring around a neat hole at the back of his head. “Let’s roll him over, real slow and careful.”
I helped him with that until we could see the man’s face. “Exit wound. Something soft and slow. Forty-five maybe, hollowpoint I’d say.”
“Yeah,” he replied. “Put the muzzle right there against the base of his skull and pow.” Davis made a gun with his hand and fired his finger in slow motion. “Then over he goes. Plows in face down, bones break…”
“No,” I said. “He went over before the kill shot. If he were unconscious when he fell, his arms would have been limp and slack. They wouldn’t have hit first. He has massive bruising, broken forearms…no, he had his hands out like a diver in a futile attempt to break his fall.”
“Then they must have come down and finished him off.”
“That means he might have been trying to get away. He hit only about fifteen feet from the water. Maybe he thought he’d survive the splashdown.”
“Maybe.”
“Been here about a day, I’d say. Hardly anything has nibbled on him, but he’s cold and starting to bloat a little.” I pulled on a latex glove and began searching the guy’s pockets. “Here we go.” I pulled out something from one of the odd little pockets on the jeans and held it up.
“Some kinda…wrench?”
“Bicycle wrench. Like from a kit cyclists carry. Very light.” I hefted it. “Four inches long, and I don’t think it’s even metal. Carbon fiber maybe?” I tapped it against my teeth, the best way I’ve found to get a feel for the material, and then bit it lightly. “Yeah. Not steel, and plastic wouldn’t be strong enough.”
“Don’t contaminate the evidence.” Davis’ order had no force behind it.
Turning the wrench over I saw it had some kind of stylized letters. “T. V.” I fished in my memory, that place where every good cop keeps the trivia picked up on the way. “Tommaso…something. Tommaso V…anyway, it’s a bicycle company. High-end road machines. Not the very most expensive, but…Davis, do you remember what brand that stolen bike of Jerry Conrad’s was?”
“Not for certain, but it was something Italiany. Like that.”
“Bet you lunch it was a Tommaso V-whatever.”
“No bet. You think this was the thief?”
“Looks good for it. One thing to check…” I handed Davis the wrench before moving around to the head and opened the dead guy’s mouth. “Definitely a tweaker. Teeth are rotted to hell.”
Davis nodded. “Sugar cravings. Surprised we didn’t find bags of hard candy on him. Could this be your skip?”
Moment of truth for me, so I sat down on a rock nearby, took off the windbreaker and began unfastening the Kevlar vest.
“You always armor up when investigating crime scenes?” Davis started to laugh, and then he stopped and his face fell as I stared at him. “What, you thought…”
“It crossed my mind, Mike. If you were crooked and I was causing too much trouble, what better place to get rid of me?”
Davis sat down too, taking off his Smokey hat and wiping his brow with the back of his sleeve. “Yeah, okay. But murder you? I thought this was about a skipped perp. Something else you need to tell me?”
“Yeah. This is my second homicide scene of the day.” By now I knew Davis was honest, so I told him about Frank, all of it, though I left out my latest conversation with Kerry. “Sorry I didn’t give you everything up front.”
The deputy waved my apology away. “Dang.” That seemed to be the strongest epithet he allowed himself. “You think they’re connected?”
“Somehow, yes. This guy was actually killed before Frank, though.”
“Hmm.” Davis mopped his head again, checking the sun. “We ought to have company soon.”
“No theories?” I prodded.
“Rather keep gathering facts.”
“I like theories. Here’s the outline of one. This guy’s a lowlife addict. No indication he’s associated with a motorcycle club. No colors, no boots, no ink. But he buys from someone. Bikers are small-time suppl
iers.”
“Okay.”
“Like all junkies, he’s broke and he’s got no good place to be. Can’t sleep in town unless he wants to hang out with Preacher John’s crowd, but addicts aren’t usually real big on religion. At least not until they hit bottom and get into a program. He’s almost out of goodies, but at least he has his old F150 and he knows about the rest stop. Knows it’s a place to buy. Maybe he’s bought before.”
Davis nodded. “So he hangs out there sleeping in the cab. He has access to water and a restroom, and eventually he hopes to get a hit of something. Beg, borrow, offer to do some kind of service, perhaps sexual. Anything for the next fix.”
“Right. But then a godsend falls into his lap. A guy rides up on an expensive bicycle and just leans it against the restroom wall. Goes inside to take a dump. Our perp sees his chance, runs over, grabs the bike and tosses it into the bed of his truck. Roars away. Then what?”
“Yeah. Where’s he gonna sell it? Turlock’s the nearest big town from here, though not really large enough to be anonymous. Merced’s a possibility. Modesto or Fresno are better. Several hundred thousand people in each, where someone will give him three hundred bucks easy for a three thousand dollar item and he’s set for a week or two.”
I stood up to pace, continuing this train of thought. “But maybe he has no gas, or he’s hurting bad for a fix. He wants to get well, fast. He can’t wait hours or more to drive fifty miles, make a sale, find a dealer. So who does he go to?”
“Whoever can give him what he wants.”
“And who would that be around here?” I watched him closely, still wondering about Kerry and what Davis knew. Knowing what he would say.
“Like you said. Bikers. They do all the street-level dealing. He goes to them to make a trade. The bike for some crystal.”
“And somehow he gets dead. That’s where I run out of theory. What did he do to get popped? I can see bikers tossing him off the cliff, maybe, if he stiffed them, or giving him a beatdown, but they’re not usually cold-blooded killers. Draws too much heat on the club.”
“Besides,” Davis said, “like you said, it looks like he was leaping for the water. So, he figures he was going to die one way or another and takes his one shot at making it through. Like in the movies, where the heroes jump off a cliff and into the lake.”
“Only this is real life.”
“And bikers wouldn’t have gone and finished it unless they could ride there. Healthy climb down from the top, worse back up.”
“One other thing,” I said. “Bikers wouldn’t have done it here. We’re a quarter of the way around the rim. They would have driven in and done it at the parking area.”
“Why do it this way at all? Why not just beat him to death and dump the body?”
That stumped me. “We have to look up there, where he fell from.”
“Yup.”
About that time we heard the whoop of a siren and saw the roofline of an ambulance appear at the top of the quarry near where we had parked. Once a figure appeared, we moved out into the open by the water’s edge and yelled and waved until we received an acknowledgement. Davis pulled out his phone, but got nothing here down on the rocky floor of the dig. Same with mine. He didn’t carry a walkie.
“Let’s go up the trail. Meet the CSU and take a look up top,” he said.
Ten minutes later we met the crime scene unit of two and a pair of EMTs with a stretcher and briefed them. The paramedics looked sour at being told the guy was dead and they would have to carry the body up once the forensics people were finished. “I’ll call the county coroner’s office,” Davis told them. “They can help you.”
We diverted off the trail and went for a cross-country climb up to the rim. It took about half an hour before we found a clearing at the edge of the cliff with enough bare dirt to show tire tracks. A rutted trail adequate for four-wheel drive led away to the north.
“Two vehicles. Trucks, SUVs. One with bad tires, one good,” I said as I carefully walked around the area. “No motorcycle tracks.”
“An old F150 and something nicer. Tracks are road tires, though, not mud.”
“So an urban SUV or cowboy Cadillac.” I pointed. “Turning radius is pretty tight. Nothing huge, then.” I pulled out my phone and took some pictures.
Davis snorted. “Craziest thing ever, cameras on phones. Might be handy right now, though. No money in the department budget for something like that.”
I grunted. “You could always buy yourself one. They’re only a few hundred bucks.”
“Maybe I will.”
I pointed. “This is where he went over. Footprints here near the rim.” I edged around until I stood on the exposed rock near the cliff. “Worn tennis shoes there. Two other sets. What does that look like to you?”
Davis squatted down and squinted, lengthening shadows from the scrubby trees making it hard to see. “Biker boots. Huh.” He looked up at me. “Guess we were wrong.”
“Maybe. Either we got bikers driving a nice truck or someone putting biker boots on to throw us off.”
“Naw.” Davis shook his head. “If they were trying to be clever they’d have brushed out all the tracks here. Leave us with nothing.”
“These guys weren’t all that smart. Not pros. Why’d they kill the tweaker?”
“For the bicycle?”
“Okay. I’ve seen people kill for less if they’re desperate. But why not just give the guy his rock, take the bike and make a profit. Killing brings too much heat.”
“Then he panicked and jumped.”
“But they went down, finished him off, hid the body and then came back up. They wanted him dead.”
“Yeah.” Davis pulled off his hat and spun it idly in his hands. “That’s the real question, isn’t it. Why?”
We took a long slow turn around the clearing but didn’t find anything else, so we trudged back to the parking lot.
Throwing the vest and windbreaker into the back I said, “Thanks for calling me in on this, Mike.”
“My pleasure, Cal. The force was stupid to let you go. You ever need a job I’m sure Sheriff Bartlett would take my recommendation.” His eyes stayed resolutely on mine despite my sweaty blouse clinging to my B cups, which was better than most men would have done. Looked to me like Alice was getting a good one, even with his puritanical streak.
“Thanks, Mike, but San Francisco is my home and I’m doing all right.” I couldn’t imagine trying to take Mom away from her fading bubble of hippietude, not to mention having to put up with this kind of small-town drama.
A thought struck me. “Wait. I have something I want you to look at.” I fished in the car, pulled out my blazer and got the photo of Conrad’s barbecue from the pocket and showed it to Davis. “Who’re the people in the picture?”
“Jerry Conrad. His wife Carol with the platter. His nephew Kerry Lindquist and some girl I saw him with a few times…”
My heart thudded as I suppressed a yelp of surprise. “The Kerry that manages the Old Mill is Conrad’s nephew?”
“Yup. Sister’s boy. You don’t think a slacker ex-con like that could keep such a sweet job on his own, do you? I told you Conrad owns the place.”
Ex-con? And Frank claimed Kerry had been banging Carol Conrad, his…would she be called a step-aunt? Technically it wasn’t incest and I guess stranger things had happened with in-laws.
“How interesting,” I understated. Now I really wanted to fess up about my talk with Kerry, but I didn’t see straitlaced Davis overlooking that kind of extralegal interrogation. “You do know Kerry deals, right?”
Davis’ lips narrowed to a line. “Yes, but I can’t prove it. Even if I did, I hear it’s only small time. I got bigger fish to fry.”
“I think he gets it from the tattoo parlor. They must have enough in there to make a bust worthwhile.”
“I know that too, but I need probable cause or a warrant and Judge Filleroy is a very cautious man. So’s Sheriff Bartlett. They’re both elected officials,
so causing too much trouble in the name of law and order could get them replaced.”
“That’s crazy. Doing their job could get them fired?”
“Most people don’t want to know about the crime going on around them. They’ll shoot the messenger.”
I nodded. “So find another judge. Someone that will stretch.”
“This ain’t the big city, Cal. There ain’t no other judge. Filleroy ain’t even taken a vacation in three years, which would be my chance for a substitute to give me one.”
I rubbed my neck, checking the sun and then my watch. Coming up on four o’clock. “You don’t need a warrant for Frank’s place, do you? Now that he’s dead?”
“I need an official word from SFPD. Then it becomes potential evidence, so no.”
I gave him Lieutenant Jay Allsop’s number and watched Davis dial it. The call failed to connect. “Have to get into town in line of sight of the tower,” he said.
“Right.” I climbed into the rental. “Meet you at Frank’s. We can make the call there.” Stomping on the gas, I sped down the dirt and gravel road, again wishing for Molly. I saw Davis in the squad car vainly trying to keep up and I chuckled. Downhill and with my skills I could outrun a heavy boat like his Crown Vic even in a piece of crap like this. Plus, he had to eat my dust, which would slow him further.
I’d just passed the spot where I’d stopped to gear up on the way in when I felt a spray of glass on the back of my neck. The moment of recognition passed and I automatically downshifted and redlined the cheap four-banger, throwing all the power I could get into the drivetrain and slewing through the next turns.
Glancing over my shoulder, I could see a neat hole and a star in the safety glass of the rear window on my side. Someone had just taken a shot at me. If I hadn’t been hotdogging it down the trail he’d probably have put a bullet right through my head.
Score one for exuberance.
For the next four miles I concentrated on driving, but no other shots came. Had this been a pro hit he would have taken a position to the front, where my momentum and the direction of the road brought me closer and closer. He’d have kept slamming shots into the car until something gave out. As it was, it looked like I had outrun his field of fire.
In a Bind Page 12
