Nothing.
Except . . . I moved closer to the rough rock face about halfway in. Someone had made a faint marking with chalk. It looked like a dash, followed by the letter M, and then an N maybe? The lettering was blurred. I took a photo, using the flash function, and got out of there.
I emerged next to the spiral of stones. They culminated in a strange formation of pebbles, a half-moon on its side, cupping a round ball, and something else on top. I snapped another photo. If I hurried, I’d still get to Deronda before Bill.
My phone pinged.
Or not.
Bill’s text was condensed, but I got the point: GET UR BUTT OVER HERE.
It took my butt five minutes to reach the car and another eight before I was turning north onto Beachwood. A large solar-powered digital display cautioned tourists against stopping, smoking, parking, or trying to reach the sign—against existing, basically. I was willing to bet the digital messages were paid for by the wealthier residents who lived up the hill—NIMBYs, Bill called them. Not In My Back Yarders.
Driving up Beachwood itself was an adventure of braking and swerving to avoid impervious pedestrians. They darted in and out of the middle of the street, blind to any hurtling sheet metal, their phones and cameras held aloft.
My sympathy for the locals grew a little.
After a mile and several stop signs, a pair of stone gates marked the entrance into upper Beachwood. The gates were also from the ’20s, and composed of rough blocks of gray stone. The one on the right was tall and turret shaped, and its base formed a pedestrian arch over the sidewalk. It reminded me a little of the tower in my dream.
I tested my response to it. No chilly fog of fear descended, not even a wisp.
CHAPTER 31
Bill pointedly looked at his watch.
I squeezed into a spot behind his car. The Hollywood sign loomed across the canyon treetops. On either side, homes crouched behind walls and fences, their windows shuttered, their inhabitants vainly attempting to block out the fact that they lived in the shadow of the world’s cheesiest icon.
Bill was waiting next to a white Suburban stenciled with the words Park Ranger. A green gate was wrapped in a thick chain bracelet dangling with padlock charms. A stocky park ranger in a gray uniform and a jaunty straw hat was unlocking the last of the padlocks.
“Sorry I’m late,” I said. “I had to eat something. Hypoglycemia.”
“My ass.”
The ranger looked up from the padlocks.
“This is Ten,” Bill said. “Ten, meet Ezekial Foss. Big Dodger fan.”
“Zeke,” the ranger said. He swung open the gate. “Let’s go.”
We climbed into the Suburban. Zeke drove at a snail’s pace. The rutted road was paved, but barely, and we stopped more than once to make way for joggers, hikers, and tourists. They were the safari animals and this was their habitat.
“It’s just up there,” Bill said.
The road widened slightly. Zeke parked the Suburban parallel to the shoulder, hugging the inner part of the trail. He turned the radio on—some kind of sports station. Two men were yelling about how bad the Dodgers were right now.
“Rockies tonight,” Bill said. “Coors Field. Balls’ll be flying.”
“Yep.” Zeke settled in his seat. A man of few words.
Bill and I walked to the scene of the noncrime. Yellow tape fluttered, attached to a pair of stakes driven into the soft dirt shoulder. The road beyond twisted and turned, forking through miles of parkland.
I faced the view, trying to get my bearings. The copper domes of the Griffith Observatory sprung from a hillside to my left. Straight ahead, the downtown skyline jutted like a city of toy blocks. A sprawl of flat urbanization culminated in a thin strip of ocean, where distant haze mounded into vague humps, the islands of Catalina. And finally, to the right, the dual towers of Century City.
“So what do you think?” Bill said.
I redirected my attention to the asphalt art at my feet.
The body tracing was much as Bill had described: a life-size silhouette of a prone human being. The colored lines were now more brown than red, but that was the nature of exposed blood.
I circled the form. And knew immediately. My heart started to hammer.
This message is for me.
Dots of black started their swirling dance, and a second voice kicked in— soothing, rational.
You don’t know that, not for sure. Take a deep breath.
I took a deep breath.
That’s it.
“Interesting,” I said.
“What?”
“The positioning of the arms and legs.”
“What about them?”
I walked around the pictograph a second time, using my forefinger like a pointer.
“See how the right elbow is bent with the fingers pointing upward, and the left arm is straight, with the hand aimed toward the feet?”
“Okay . . .”
“And how the legs are almost parallel?”
Bill tipped his head. “Hmmm. It is a little unusual.”
“It’s more than unusual, it’s impossible. No one would fall this way. But what if it’s posed? What if you were trying to depict a specific posture? Say, this one?” I illustrated, standing with my legs hip-distance apart, right elbow bent, palm forward and left arm down, fingertips stretching toward the ground.
“I got nothing,” Bill said. “Enlighten me, oh wise one.”
“The Buddha wasn’t born the Buddha. He was born a prince, Prince Siddhartha.”
“Ten, even I know that. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“But there were signs that he’d be special, starting with this dream his mother had about a huge white elephant.” I saw Bill’s face. “Okay, scratch that. The elephant’s not important. So, he was born in a grove of trees, and the story goes, his birth was marked by a shower of flower petals and streams of colored light pouring from the sky.”
Bill opened his mouth. I held up my hand.
“I’m setting the scene, okay? So here’s this baby, maybe a few minutes old. And what does he do? He stands up and walks. And how does he do it? With one palm reaching upward, and the other pointing down toward the earth.” I took the pose again. “Comme ça.” I had Bill’s full attention now. I let my arm drop. “It’s a classic symbol of godlike power, known to Buddhists everywhere.” Another thought crossed my mind. “One more thing. He didn’t just walk, he talked.”
“I’m guessing he didn’t say mama?”
I closed my eyes, retrieving Shakyamuni’s first words. “I alone am the world-honored one,” I recited. “Heaven above and earth below revere me.”
Was it my imagination, or had the world gone briefly silent? I opened my eyes.
Bill was watching me, his expression unreadable. “So you’re thinking this is some sort of religious statement?”
But my attention had shifted to the three-lettered tag a few feet to the right of the traced figure. JMM, written with the same bodily fluids.
I pulled out my phone. Compared the letters to the chalked lettering inside the cave. With a little imagination, the monograms were the same.
And another insight clicked into alignment.
“What,” Bill said. “What are you seeing?”
“This.” I motioned. “JMM. It’s not a gang tag, Bill. The letter J stands for jai.”
“Jay, like the bird?”
“No. Jai, like the devotional greeting. From the Hindu tradition. It doesn’t translate easily. All victory to, maybe. Or, blessings upon, or even long live, as in long live the Queen.”
“Okay, this is actually interesting. Keep going.”
“If I’m right, the two M’s stand for the Sanskrit names Maha and Mudra. So Jai Maha Mudra translates as all victory to Maha Mudra.”
“And?”
“And my misper, Colin Purdham-Coote, came over here to join a cult, led by a female guru called Maha Mudra. He signed off with those same three words
on a card to his parents. Postmarked four days ago, from Hollywood.” I met Bill’s eyes. “Which ties this scene directly to my missing person’s case.”
“Jesus, Ten.” Bill walked a few more yards up the path and waved me over. “You’re batting a thousand so far. What about this one?”
The second marking, painted in the same darkened red-brown, was about six inches high and four inches across, an odd stacked series of shapes crowned with a small crescent, like a quarter moon lying on its back. The crescent cupped a round ball topped with a tiny flame. The design was unusual, more like a hieroglyph. Or . . .
“It’s got nothing to do with gangs either,” I said, “unless there’s a gang of Gelugpa monks we don’t know about. Because this is definitely some kind of Tibetan Buddhist symbol.”
And I had found something similar constructed out of pebbles by the caves.
Bill returned to the body tracing. “I don’t suppose you can tell me what any of this means.”
“I can’t. But I know people who can.”
A wave of dizziness sent me to the aluminum safety fence. I grabbed it with both hands and leaned over, eyes closed.
Not cured.
Never okay again.
Always alone.
After a moment, the panic passed.
I straightened up, ignoring Bill’s look of concern.
Eric was right. I needed to know more, to verify the truth. Everything was connected. Everything traced back to my childhood.
It usually does.
A joyous string of yelps behind us announced the carefree presence of a dog.
“Shirley! Wees stil, wees stil!”
A muscular German shepherd bounded in our direction, towing her handler behind her. Black markings crisscrossed the thick brown coat, and a soft shield of white spilled across her chest like foam. She skidded to a stop a few yards away and sat. Her tail swept the ground in wide, fringed arcs.
Her dark-haired handler was out of breath. Her name was Fran Hoagland, and I was pleased to see her again.
“Hey, Bill.” Fran caught sight of me and brightened. “Hey there, stranger. Haven’t laid eyes on you in a while. Good Lord, you don’t age. Still drinking that Trappist swill?”
“Absolutely.”
Fran was a double-Scotch-no-rocks girl. She didn’t see the point of wine or beer.
She, too, appeared unchanged. Her hair was so black it was almost blue. The blunt cut was all sharpness and angles, sides curved inward like pointed scimitars. She was dressed for work: bright blue shirt with a yellow and blue coroner’s shield sewn onto the left front pocket; black cargo pants; black cop shoes. I’d never seen her wear anything else.
Shirley was also in uniform. The tan harness yoked beneath her collar sported a bright yellow Los Angeles Coroner’s Office medallion, stitched onto the front.
“So, Fran,” I said, “you break a hundred yet?”
“One thirty-nine, suckah!” Her grin was wickedly pleased.
When I left the force five years ago, the K-9 team of Fran Hoagland and Shirley Bones had only been at the County Coroner’s Office for two years, but they’d already recovered remains on more than four dozen homicide cases. They were close to the best— if not the best—in the country.
One hundred and thirty-nine meant they had almost tripled that count. “So where’s that put you?”
“Third. I’ve been stuck there forever, feels like. But June is always a pretty good month, statistically.”
“Still checking your stats every day?”
“I can’t help it. I’m obsessed.”
“There’s a term for that, you know. Comparing mind. According to the Buddha, nothing puts you on a faster track to suffering.”
Fran shrugged. “Fuck that. We all do it.”
Bill was on his phone, listening and frowning. Fran pulled out hers and started to thumb through e-mails.
I checked on Zeke. He had pulled the straw brim low over his face. He appeared to be taking a nap.
A couple with a border terrier off the leash jogged into view. Shirley’s low warning grumble culminated in a sharp bark. She pushed to her feet.
“Zitten!” Fran commanded in Dutch, and Shirley complied, but her eyes followed the trio until they were a safe distance past.
Shirley was born in the Netherlands. She’d arrived here with formal papers, some training, and an unpronounceable surname. Meanwhile Fran, like me, had grown up on a steady diet of Sherlock Holmes. When she joined the K-9 training unit she’d already picked out a name for her future search dog.
But he was a she, so Sherlock became Shirley.
The Bones part came later; something to do with an actress who starred in a television series about pigeons, or partridges, or something.
“How’s working for yourself, Ten? You miss the fast lane?”
“Sometimes.”
“I’d go nuts.”
I didn’t envy Fran her job. Cadaver searches were difficult and often fruitless. By definition those that ended successfully ended badly.
For most people, the work would be too grisly and morbid to bear. For Fran, the job was a mission of mercy. She saw herself as a vital piece of the homicide process, maybe the last piece standing. Be the voice of the victims, and bring answers to their families.
This was the second thing we shared. The unsolved dead and unrecovered missing haunted us.
Shirley yawned, her tongue curling. She bumped her head against her handler’s thigh. Fran stroked the thick ruff of fur while keeping a tight hold on the leash.
Bill ended his call.
“What are we waiting for?” Fran said to Bill.
“Sully and Mack,” Bill said. “But you know what? They’re running late, as usual. So screw ’em, let’s get started.”
CHAPTER 32
Fran led Shirley to the outlined body. The dog seemed to extract information out of thin air, nose quivering. Then she lay down, resting her head against her forepaws.
“What did you say this fluid was composed of?” Fran asked Bill.
“Blood, menstrual blood, and semen. Plus a couple of organic chemicals, namely sulphur and mercury.”
“Charming,” Fran said. “But not extracted from a carcass, right Shirley?”
Shirley’s tail wagged.
“Shirley’s been proofed off of live scents. She’d be on high alert if it wasn’t, uh, fresh, so to speak. This particular combo’s a new one, though.”
Fran gazed across the expanse of park, dotted with paddled cacti and scattered brush. “So you’re thinking there might be a body . . . where?”
I pointed right. “Over there. Brush Canyon.” A few black specks circled. “See those crows?”
Fran squinted. “Ravens,” she said. “Common ravens, if they’re in Griffith Park.”
So much for my murder of crows.
“Ravens, then. Anyway, whatever they’re circling isn’t in the caves, but close by, over the next couple of steep ridges.”
“And you just happen to know that, how?” Bill had trained his legendary glower on me.
“I might have checked out the caves before meeting you here.”
Bill turned to Fran. “You see what I have to put up with?”
We woke Zeke from his afternoon snooze and he drove us out. Moments later, Bill and Fran were following me, caravan-style, back to the Bronson Canyon lot. We parked in a row next to a porta-potty and a Dumpster.
Shirley was already on alert in the open bed of the coroner’s truck, tail wagging, nose testing the air.
Sully and Mack tore up the road and pulled in beside us.
“Okay,” Bill said, opening his trunk. “Who besides me remembered crime-scene kits? Norbu, you get a pass.” Fran raised her hand. Sully and Mack looked at the ground. “As it happens, I have two.” Bill loaded up a backpack with two kits and a digital camera and slung it over his shoulders. “We find anything, that should be enough to hold us over until the troops arrive.”
Bill hadn’t been o
ut in the field for months. He looked 10 years younger.
Fran kept Shirley reined in tight as we took off at a half-run. I led the way, Bill, Fran, and Shirley right behind.
We reached the caves in five minutes, at least four of us did. Sully was an oversize person. Mack was thinner, but he smoked. By the time they turned the corner, Sully’s bright red face was beaded with sweat and Mack wasn’t doing much better.
“How’s this work again?” Sully swiped at his forehead with a wrinkled bandana he’d pulled from his pocket. Maybe he didn’t remember the drill, or maybe he just wanted to catch his breath, but I was glad for the chance to review procedure. It had been quite a few years since I’d participated in a K-9 operation.
Fran rested her hand on Shirley’s head. “Shirley will conduct the search following a scent cone pattern. She’ll be moving in a kind of serpentine configuration, gradually reducing the area she’s covering. I’ll be shadowing her closely. You guys follow my lead. And don’t worry, if she finds anything indicating a cadaver, she knows not to taint the evidence.”
Bill and I exchanged a look—Sully and Mack could take a page out of the dog’s book.
Fran unhooked the leash and belted the length of chain around her waist. She hunkered face-to-face with the dog. They locked gazes, bright brown eyes meeting bright brown eyes. The connection between hunter and handler was palpable.
“All right,” Fran said. “Sook. Shirley, sook!” Shirley took off, and the sook was on.
The dog zigzagged over dirt and brush, tail up, nose close to the dry packed soil. Fran was right on her heels. We held back, maintaining a gap measured in yards. But fallen rock and scrubby undergrowth made the steep route up the first jagged incline a challenge, and our progress was painfully slow.
“Should have brought my hiking boots,” I said to Bill.
“Tell me about it.”
By the time we reached the apex, Fran and Shirley had already made the sharp descent and were crossing a dried gully that bordered a second, even steeper ridge. Dog and handler continued shifting both laterally and vertically as they descended like snakes.
The Fifth Rule of Ten Page 16
