A minute went by while Chelmin emptied his bursting bladder. He shut his fly, then cautiously turned around and resumed his journey back toward the far end, hopping and pushing his bundle until he reached the far wall.
Then he pushed the bundle to his left and followed with a hop, and then another, hop, then push and hop until he found the corner where he had been left, drugged, hours before.
He put his back to the wall and slid down, keeping the bundle beneath him.
Then squirming awkwardly, using his battered and bound body as best he could, he laid the opened dress on the floor beneath him and pulled the coat over him.
He was still cold, but even a little insulation helped preserve his body heat. As he lay in his prison, trying to relax, he felt the stirring of his stomach.
He was hungry. And thirsty. And cold.
But for the first time, he had hope.
One hundred
“I’ve got something,” Sergeant Northup’s voice said in Will’s ear.
“Come right about thirty degrees,” Northup said, and Will watched the horizon move as Jackson banked.
“About a mile out,” Northup said. “On that dirt road. A clump of trees, a house.”
“Got it,” Jackson said and tilted the nose downward.
After a few seconds, Will felt the aircraft slowing. The horizon tilted sharply to the left and Will looked down at a small house surrounded by bare trees.
“Behind the house,” said Northup. “I think there’s a white car half hidden in those trees, to the east of the shed. I think it’s a wagon.”
The aircraft descended, then made a low, slow pass over the house and beyond it.
Will said, “That could be his car.”
“I’ll set down on the road,” Jackson said.
Slowly, the helicopter descended, side-slipping until it was aligned with the road, then settling down on its skids amid a hurricane of dust.
“Sit tight,” Jackson said and hit a series of switches on the instrument panel. The rotor slowed, a dozen lights on the panel glowed red, and they waited another half minute until the rotor stopped.
Sergeant Northup said, “Spaulding—with me.”
Will got out of the chopper, pushed the door shut, and turned to find Northup unlimbering an assault rifle from a storage compartment behind the cabin. He slapped a magazine in it, put another in his pocket, and jacked a round into the chamber.
Will drew his Glock.
Side by side, Will and Northup moved across hard, parched earth toward the house. As they got closer, Will saw that the windows were boarded up, the front door was ajar, the porch sagged to the left, and the whole structure was coated with an air of neglect.
Will said, “There are quite a few abandoned homes out this way.”
“Never assume,” Northup replied.
They mounted the three steps to the porch. Glock at the ready, Will stepped through the door, with Northup a beat behind.
The room held an ancient couch, bedsprings below a soiled mattress, a few empty shelves. The kitchen had been stripped of all metal. A trio of cabinets slouched from the wall, their doors open to reveal empty shelves. Beyond the kitchen was a bedroom, with an open doorway; the door had been lifted from its hinges and stood against the wall.
The windows were paneless. A small, oddly-shaped, vibrating carpet seemed to cover the floor. When Will approached, thousands of shiny blue and green flies lifted from the floor and filled the room. Will took an involuntary step back, bumping into Northup.
“Careful, young 'un,” the sergeant said.
The floor was covered with a thick layer of dried blood, and after a few seconds, the flies, in their multitude, settled back on it and resumed their grisly task.
Will fought the urge to vomit.
“Just blowflies,” Northup said. “Something big was killed here.”
Will said, “A man?”
“Or a deer. Even a coyote. But if I was betting, my money’s on a man.”
Will backed out and followed Northup to the front porch. They split, Will going right, Northup left, and met behind the house. To their right was a shed.
“Probably an outhouse,” Northup said. “Didn’t see anything resembling plumbing in there. Check it out.”
Will advanced on the shed, noting that its walls of weathered wood leaned to the left. He pulled the door open, and the smell of fresh excrement assaulted his nose. In the darkened interior, he glimpsed a platform and a white toilet seat.
He backed out.
“Let’s check out the car,” Northup said, and they moved slowly toward the trees.
The white car was a Subaru Outback.
Will’s heart skipped a beat. He recognized the battered body and the license plate frame advertising a Paso Robles dealership.
Will said, “That’s his car.”
They crept closer until they could see that the back seat was dropped flat. The windows were down, and a moving carpet of blue and green blowflies feasted on something that had once been human.
Will turned away and vomited the remains of his breakfast on the ground.
One Hundred One
“No head, no hands,” said Sergeant Northup, peering through the open window at the naked male corpse in the back of the white Subaru.
“It’s not Chelmin,” Will said.
“How can you tell?” Northup said.
“Chelmin lost most of his right leg in the first Gulf War,” Will replied. “This guy has two legs.”
“Then we call it in and keep looking,” Northup said.
“Tell me something: Where do all those flies go when they don’t have something like this to jump?”
Northup shrugged. “Shoot, I never thought about that. Where the hell do they go?”
Will said, “Hold on a second. Why cut off his hands and his head? To send a message?”
Northup said, “That, and to make it harder to ID the body. No hands, then no fingerprints. No head, then no face, no teeth for dental ID. Unless he’s got an unusual tattoo or his DNA’s in a federal database, it’ll be very hard to know who that is.”
Will said, “Sergeant, who would do such a thing?”
“Twenty years ago, when I was a rookie deputy, I’d have said, Columbian drug dealers. Scum of the earth. But they’re not the problem here that they used to be.”
“So, then who?”
Northup turned to squint at the body again. “Salvadorans involved in one of your cases?”
Will said. “Oh shit. Why do you say that?”
“These days, the Salvadoran drug gangs are just about the only full-blown crazies we see out this way. In fact, they’re all over Southern California.”
“Good to know,” Will said, his heart sinking as he realized that, if someone from the M-9 had snatched Chelmin, he might never be found.
As he and Northup slowly picked their way back to the helicopter, the sergeant raised his arm to the vertical and described a circle in the air with his index finger. A moment later, Will heard the whine of the engine starting. Every so slowly, the blades began to turn.
Northup returned to the aircraft storage compartment, cleared and stowed his rifle, and withdrew a smoke grenade. He pulled the pin and lobbed it underhand down the road, fifty feet or so behind the helicopter.
A column of bright red smoke billowed up and was driven away before the artificial hurricane created by the helicopter’s whirling blades.
Two minutes later, Northup was buckled into the co-pilot’s seat. Strapped into the back seat, Will put the headset on.
He heard Jackson call the Daggett tower to announce their approximate location and ask permission before taking off. Once in the air, Northup switched frequencies and spoke to someone at Sheriff’s headquarters in San Bernardino.
“About three-quarters of a mile south of Interstate 15, off Harvard Road, two miles east of Newberry Springs,” he said. “Dead white male in the back of a white 2005 Subaru Outback. There’s an expended red smoke c
anister in the road right there. Should be a nice red stain on the dirt ten feet across by the time the crime scene people get there.”
Jackson said, “Where to, Spaulding?”
Will said, “Back to Barstow. I think we’ve found all that we’ll find out here.”
One Hundred Two
Agent Blair was waiting for Will at the Daggett airport.
“Is it true? You found Chelmin’s car?”
“It wasn’t him. Headless corpse with the hands removed. But it has two legs. Chelmin has only one.”
Blair looked shocked. “I didn’t know that. What happened to him?”
“Lost a leg in Kuwait in the first Gulf War.”
“Any leads on Chelmin?”
Will shook his head. “Last I heard from him, he was going out to the Marine base. Maybe you should take a couple of guys and go check with Malone, the NCIS agent—my gut tells me that Chelmin is still on that base somewhere.”
“I think I’ll do that. You coming with?”
Will shook his head. “I’ve got one more thing that I need to look at—a stack of my first murder victim’s mail, Kendra Farrell’s mail. I just got my hands on it yesterday. I’m going through that as soon as I get a cup of coffee and a doughnut.”
§
Will selected a chocolate-frosted doughnut from a box near the coffee maker, laid it on a napkin, and carried it to his desk along with his second cup of coffee.
The detective bullpen was empty—every sworn officer of the entire Barstow Police Department was out looking for Chelmin.
Except for Will. He was at his desk, trying not to think of the body covered with flies in the back of the Subaru, as he ate a doughnut and sipped coffee.
When he finished, he headed for the evidence locker and came back with the cardboard box that Alter had given him the previous evening. Looking around, he saw a half-empty desk in the corner, the desk used by the chief of detectives before Arthur Spaulding eliminated the position on the same day that Will was promoted to detective, almost ten months earlier.
He stacked the few items left on the desk in its farthest corner, then began going through the box of mail. He pulled on gloves, and as he removed each item, he placed it in one of three piles: bills, junk mail, and everything else.
Then he went through the junk, inspecting each piece to see if it had been tampered with, then carefully sliced it open with a device that had a razor blade and cut the bottom off the envelope, preserving any DNA that might have been left on a cornstarch-based adhesive by someone licking it with their tongue.
Two-thirds of the mail was political promotion, product advertisements, coupons for local businesses. Will examined each piece, then slit it open to see the contents. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
Next, he tackled the bills, using the same technique: Each appeared perfectly ordinary: a MasterCard statement, a Visa statement, an American-Express statement. An electric bill. A phone bill. A bill for Internet and cable television service. A bill from the gas company and one from a Victorville optometrist. A bill for medical insurance, a statement for her checking account with the Navy Federal Credit Union, a statement from her insurance agent for car and apartment- dweller insurance. A bill from a New York bank for a payment on her car loan.
Will separated the credit card bills from the others, made photocopies that he would look at later, and returned the envelopes to the correct stack.
Then he started on the last stack. He found birthday cards for Spencer, a thank-you note addressed to both Kendra and Eugene Alt for a dinner party, a manila envelope from a San Bernardino company whose name he didn’t recognize, and a thick envelope from the Hotel Mopan in Belize City with a colorful, oversize, Belize stamp postmarked Belize City.
Will opened the latter and found half a dozen travel brochures. He opened each carefully, shook it out, used a magnifying glass to peer at the edges of each sheet, and concluded that unless there was something written with invisible ink on one of them, the brochures were just what they seemed.
Next, he found the manila envelope and opened it. Within was a fold-out map of railroad lines in California from San Francisco to the tip of the Baja peninsula. The map was stamped “Official Use Only” in big red letters. Freight train stops were circled in red.
There was also a smaller envelope. Inside it Will found a check made out to Kendra for $125, and a bill from “United Legal Services,” for $375; Kendra had paid $500 for a retainer, and the $125 was listed as a refund for “investigative services.”
Half a minute on Google and Will confirmed that United Legal Services was a private investigator.
She had hired a detective to get her a map of rail freight lines in Southern California. Why?
Will called the phone number on the bill, and a man’s voice answered.
Will look at the signature on the check to Kendra and asked for William Bledsoe.
“This is Mr. Bledsoe,” the man said.
“This is Special Agent Spaulding,” Will said. “I’m investigating the murder of a federal employee who hired you last year to do some research.”
“Who was murdered?”
“Mrs. Kendra Farrell.”
“How can I help?”
“I have the map that you sent her, and a refund check for $125. I’d like to know exactly what Mrs. Farrell asked you to investigate.”
“That’s a private matter.”
“I can get a subpoena and turn your office inside out. What’s it going to be? You tell me what a murder victim wanted to know, or I charge you with obstruction of justice?”
“Hold on, I never said that I wouldn’t cooperate.”
Will said, “Then answer my question. She wanted to know about freight railroads. Why?”
“I’m not really sure. She asked me to find out how a package could go by rail from the Marine base in Barstow to places in Orange County, California.”
“Which places?”
“She didn’t say. She wanted to know where freight was delivered, how it got from the train to any particular street address in Orange County.”
“Surely that kind of data is available on the Internet?”
“No, not entirely. Homeland Security has stepped in and made certain kinds of rail maps, the freight kind, classified as ‘official use only.’”
“Anyway, I told her that smaller packages would be sent to freight forwarders, and they would deliver the goods in some kind of truck.”
“What else did she want to know?”
“There are few places in that county with their own rail siding. She wanted to know where they were.”
Will peered at the map and saw printed notations in several locations along the railroad as the line ran between Los Angeles County and San Diego County.
Will said, “Did she say why?”
Bledsoe sounded pained. “No, not really. She never said what she was up to, exactly. But she paid in cash, and it was a half day’s work to find the map, and another few hours to find the rail sidings. I guess she could have done that part herself, just by looking at maps, or from Google Earth.”
“Mr. Bledsoe, you’ve been very helpful. Thanks for your assistance.”
“Wait, did you say that you’re with the FBI?”
“No. I identified myself as a special agent. I’m with the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division.”
“Is that like NCIS, but for the Army?”
“It is. Also, we don’t have a television series.”
Will hung up in the middle of Bledsoe’s laugh.
Now he knew that Kendra was trying to track the movement of goods from the Marine supply base to somewhere or someone in Orange County. Which, Will knew, included the city of Santa Ana.
One Hundred Three
As Will began to clean up the stacks of mail, his cell phone rang.
“Agent Spaulding,” he said into the phone.
“This is Blair. Tom Blair.”
“Any word on Mr. Chelmin?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“Did you go out to the base to see Malone?”
“He’s not in his office, his secretary doesn’t know when he’ll be back. He doesn’t answer either of his cell phones or his home phone, which is a land line. I’m thinking of sending someone to his house, but I’ve got something I need to do first.”
“What’s that, Agent Blair?”
“Do you know who Rafael Cardenas and Wellington Maradona are?”
“Chelmin told me about Cardenas. Intelligence sergeant for Santa Ana PD?”
“That’s him. Maradona is his neighbor and runs the parking enforcement division for Santa Ana PD. “
“OK, what about them?”
“They’re both in the wind.”
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“As I said, they’re neighbors. Three or four days a week, they carpool to work. They live in Temescal Valley, and the day before yesterday, they left for work together in Maradona’s car. They didn’t go to work, and nobody has seen them since.”
“What’s that got to do with our investigation?”
“Maybe nothing. But Cardenas and Malone have been buddies since they were in Marine boot camp. Cardenas was also close to a guy named Alvarez. They all went through boot camp together. Cardenas became, as you know, a cop. Alvarez was an important gangbanger in the early days of M-9—and Dalton Guerrero’s mentor.”
“Dalton Guerrero is the top boss of M-9?”
“Exactly. Alvarez has been dead for years. But we have good reason to suspect that Cardenas and Maradona are dirty. Nothing concrete, mind you, but Cardenas owns millions of dollars worth of real estate, and he makes less than $100,000 a year, before taxes.”
“And they’re both missing?”
“They are.”
“Could one of them be our headless corpse?”
“Maybe so. I hadn’t thought of that. “
“Cardenas must have DNA in a database somewhere?”
“I’ll run with that. What are you doing now?”
M-9 Page 22
