Trail of Echoes

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  “Good lunch?” Lieutenant Rodriguez asked, his gray eyes squinting at my muddy boots.

  “The best lunch I’ve had in a very long time.” I pulled latex gloves from my bag and plucked a flashlight from my coat pocket. I stepped beneath the tarp, then lifted the plastic to find a large, unzipped, green canvas duffel bag. The earth beneath the bag looked different, wet and moist but not from rain. A few maggots wriggled in that strange-colored earth, and some flies buzzed around me. But not a lot of flies. Not enough flies.

  Jane Doe’s left leg and foot—size 6 maybe, pink nail polish—were sticking out from the bag and had settled on the dirt. Bare calf … Bare thigh …

  I ducked from beneath the tarp. “Wow.”

  “Yeah,” Lieutenant Rodriguez said.

  As I took out my binder, I glanced back at Smokey Robinson the Park Ranger—he was still speaking with Pepe, but now he was also gazing at me.

  What did he see? Did he find her?

  The man winked at me.

  My scalp crawled, and something inside of me shuddered.

  “The first responder,” Lieutenant Rodriguez was saying, “tried to protect any evidence from contamination, but in this weather…” He looked up to the wet, gray sky, then pointed his flashlight beam down to the mishmash of shoe prints and trash left in the mud. “And we won’t get any good shoe prints since thousands of people run this trail every year.”

  “Maybe that’s why he chose this spot,” I said. “It’s private but still a little busy.”

  “Evidence destroyed by the constant flow of traffic?”

  “Yep. Where’s Zucca?”

  “On his way.”

  “You tell him to bring a plant guy and a bug guy?”

  My boss nodded.

  “The responding officer?” I asked.

  “He’s interviewing witnesses,” Colin said, wiping his nose. “So now?”

  “So now we grab everybody we can and we walk.” I glanced at my partner. “But you—”

  “I’m cool,” Colin said, wanting to blow his nose again but not daring to.

  “You have a cold at a scene.”

  “I won’t sneeze no more,” Colin promised, wide-eyed and panicky.

  I turned to Lieutenant Rodriguez with pleading eyes.

  “Taggert, don’t touch nothing,” the big man ordered. “You gotta sneeze or cough or breathe heavy, do it away from the scene.” He regarded me. Satisfied?

  My scowl said, Not at all. I pointed at Colin. “Don’t fuck this up. Not this one.”

  He blanched. “I won’t. I promise. I’m good. Okay?”

  Even if you solved them, child cases—abuse, assault, neglect, murder—snatched pieces of your soul. Some cops, some pediatricians, and some social workers filled those holes with booze and blow. And for those of us totally hollowed out? The barrel of a gun.

  So today, if I had to lose parts of myself because some monster committed an act of horrific violence, I refused to have that monster freed from life in prison or the stainless steel table all because Colin’s mucus had tainted Monster DNA.

  “If I see one drop of snot from you, I will kick you to the curb,” I warned my partner.

  Colin rolled his eyes. “I’m not stupid, Mom. I heard you, all right?”

  I glanced back at the park ranger—he knew these trails, the life of the park, peak visiting hours, which areas were more populated and at what times.

  And that wink he gave me …

  Who the hell winked thirty yards away from a dead girl?

  4

  Never thought I’d be walking through high grass and clomping through mud on a March day boasting forty-degree weather and threatening clouds. But there I was, one woman in a long east-west line of uniforms, detectives, any free hand with a badge, slowly walking together, arm’s length apart, flashlights bright, jaws clamped tight, hoping to find something and expecting to find the worst—nothing at all.

  Each man and woman, positioned from the trail to the hillside, had their eyes on the ground. Searching. For a girl’s shoe, a monster’s footprint, a gun, a bloody something that would tell us who she was or who the monster was. Behind us, a bearded videographer recorded the search, and ahead of us a tall black man carried a metal detector. No clicks or chirps emitted from his contraption: No bullets or bullet casings. No calls out. No whistles blown.

  It was the cleanest city park in the history of city parks.

  We strip-searched down to the large clearing that separated Bonner Park from those million-dollar homes. Then, we returned to the blue tarp, empty-handed and drenched from rain now falling from battleship-colored clouds.

  “Well?” Colin asked me.

  “He got here,” I said. “And then he left the girl, which means he left something behind. They always leave something behind.”

  “Zucca and his crew are almost done taking pictures of the girl for now,” Lieutenant Rodriguez said. “Nothing obvious so far.”

  “And the coroner?” I asked.

  “En route.”

  I sighed. “The monster gets luckier every time we’re en route.”

  I wandered toward the tarp, stopping now and then to peer at the hillside and then down at strange whorls left in the mud there … and there, just five steps away from the tarp. I stooped near those whorls, and, since I had no evidence tents with me, I left one of my business cards by each whorl to mark the spot. Then, radio to my mouth, I called Arturo Zucca, my favorite forensics tech, and told him of my discovery. “Could be nothing. Could be everything.”

  “I’ll send Bruce and Leslie over to take pictures and imprints,” Zucca said. “And I’ll have ’em take pics of the personnel’s shoes, too. Could be ours.”

  It was almost three o’clock, and wetter and colder than it had been all year in this drought-stricken state. Two hours in and we’d only collected a Bazooka gum wrapper, two burned matches, a smashed plastic water bottle, and an orange peel. The duffel bag, Jane Doe, and now these whorls in the mud were my only hopes.

  I noted the current temperature—forty-three degrees—then sketched the scene in my damp notebook. Weather-water snuck past the barrier of my cowl-necked sweater and pebbled between my shoulder blades. Those drops became rivulets, trickling down my spine to soak my ballistics vest, sports bra, and, for the most ambitious trickles, the waistband of my wool slacks.

  Colin, shivering with fever, sneezed.

  “You okay?” I asked, looking up from my sketch. “Shouldn’t you be used to cold, wet weather, being from the Springs? All that snow and ice and Pike’s Peak and whatnot?”

  His eyes looked like he was underwater. “I’m not going home, so don’t ask.”

  “Just don’t get snot on my scene,” I said. “But if you really start looking like crap, I get to send you home. Deal?”

  “Uh huh,” Colin said.

  “Lou!” Zucca was calling from beneath the tarp.

  I dropped my mask back over my nose and mouth and returned to the tarp.

  “How old do you think she is?” Zucca asked.

  I clicked on my flashlight and stared at Jane Doe’s half-mast eyes, at the black T-shirt—Abercrombie & Fitch—and at the corn-kernel-shaped birthmark on her right hip. “Thirteen, fourteen,” I said, swiping at the few buzzing blowflies.

  “Where are the bugs?” Colin asked.

  “These aren’t enough for you?” Zucca snarked. “Good question, though. Anyway, look what I found.” He opened the duffel bag wider.

  Green leaves and shiny black berries the size of cherries were scattered around the girl.

  “A clue,” I said, a prick of hope in my chest. “Hooray.”

  “What kind of plant is that?” Colin asked.

  “According to my plant lady,” Zucca said, “it doesn’t grow in this park. She has an idea, but she’s not saying until she’s sure.”

  “Her unofficial answer?” I asked.

  “Bad-shit berries,” Zucca quipped.

  I frowned. “So the monster did her s
omewhere else then.”

  “Yep.”

  Colin and I wandered back to the trail to gaze at that east-facing hillside. The dirt, mud, and plants looked flatter, recently disturbed. Chunks of that hillside had collapsed because of the rain, and now gnarled brown roots from sage and other plants were exposed. I pointed to the high grass. “What if he dumped her up there, on the higher slope, in thicker brush. Then, when it started to rain…” My finger traced the route in the air, dropping down to the tarp. “She slid down over there.”

  “But how did she get up there?” Colin wondered. “I’m no geometry wiz, and I sucked at physics and the metric system, but that incline seems steep, close to vertical.”

  I shrugged. The monster expects me to fail. So many obstacles—from the outdoor setting to the crappy weather. He knew that his tracks were literally covered by rain and mud. Except for those whorls. He had left those behind.

  Moments later, a crime tech wearing a Tyvek suit stuck into the mud little yellow flags that led from the tarp, over to Bruce and Leslie huddling over those suspicious whorls left in the mud, and, finally, up the slope.

  “When we talk to witnesses,” I said to Colin, “we’ll ask if they saw a man hoisting a duffel bag. And let’s also get pictures of their shoe bottoms.”

  I gazed at the homes peppering the other side of the bluff—the residents there enjoyed views of the basin, the Santa Monica Mountains, and the Hollywood sign, each nearly invisible in the drizzle. Century City sat to the west, and downtown skyscrapers sat to the east. Down below, cars on La Brea Avenue sat bumper-to-bumper because of the rain and the mysterious curiosity on the hillside involving a police helicopter.

  I could also see the Jungle, that dense collection of low-to-no-income apartments that, once upon a time, had been my home. One day, I planned to tell my daughter Natalie about growing up in that ghetto, about gun battles in the alleys that made Auntie Tori, Nana, and me lunge beneath our beds. I planned to drive her past that concertina wire and those iron fences. “See?” I’d say with pride. “That’s where Mommy grew up.”

  But I didn’t have a daughter named Natalie. I was a month away from my thirty-eighth birthday, and Natalie was as real as Snow White, and the man that I thought I had loved, was pretty sure that I had loved, but what is love really? was now selling our dream house as part of our divorce settlement.

  My stomach cramped—bad memories, too much pastrami.

  A low growl rumbled from above—far-off thunder. The northwestern sky over Pacific Palisades flashed with white light.

  “Storm’s almost here,” Colin said.

  “He left her with the best view of the city,” I whispered. “A place where she’d certainly be found. Why?” I swallowed hard, uneasy now. “I’ll handle the autopsy.”

  “Bless you,” Colin said, then sneezed.

  Pepe joined us, notebook in hand. His shellacked black hair still hadn’t moved. “How ya feelin’, Taggert?” He didn’t wait for Colin’s response before turning to me. “So Mr. Park Ranger says he didn’t see anyone on the trail except for a few joggers.”

  “You take pics of his boots?” I asked.

  Pepe reddened. “Did not.”

  I sighed. “Anything else?”

  He cleared his throat, then said, “The ranger also said that gang-bangers have been hanging around. Smoking, gettin’ high—”

  Colin sneezed.

  “Dude,” I said to him, “go home. Please? Weather’s only gonna get worse.”

  He shook his head. “But what about witnesses—?”

  The sky opened up then, sending wanton raindrops that fell without hesitation or modesty. Standing on the highest natural point in the LA basin was the last place I wanted to be during a storm.

  “Go,” I shouted at Colin over the roar of rain now pounding the tarp. “We’ll finish up here and wait for the medical examiner to arrive and take possession of the girl. Since I don’t want you dead, I’m ordering you to go home, get some rest, watch TV, then come back in tomorrow. You’ll help catch him. I promise. Cross my heart.”

  After a sneeze and a wave, Colin trundled back down the trail.

  We would catch this monster.

  I knew that like I knew light could not exist without dark.

  “So,” Pepe said. A lock of hair finally surrendered and draped across his forehead. “These women said they saw a man.”

  5

  Other than the buzz from the choppers, the clearing south of the crime scene was especially quiet for a homicide. No wailing from a distraught mother or shouting from an angry uncle, This ain’t right! This ain’t right! No calls to Jesus. No grumblings about the cops not caring and not doing shit.

  The two women who “saw a man” shivered in their wet sweat suits and faux Pucci head scarves. They huddled together beneath a tired pink umbrella that threatened to collapse from this phenomenon called rain. They peered at my head—Lieutenant Rodriguez had yanked off some guy’s LAPD baseball cap and had given it to me to wear.

  The thick, dark-skinned woman with the eyebrow stud was Heather Artest.

  The other woman was also thick and mixed with some type of Asian. And because she had watched too many episodes of Law & Order, she would only tell me that her name was Cynthia. “Why do you need my last name? I don’t wanna give my last name.”

  “Give me a last initial, then,” I said.

  “Q.”

  “Great. So who saw what?”

  “We was walking right over there.” Heather pointed to the trail south of the tarp that ran beneath a canopy of eucalyptus trees.

  “And we smelled something dead,” Cynthia said. “But I’m in the forest, so I’m like, ‘whatever, it stank in the forest.’”

  “So we kept walking,” Heather continued. “And the more we walked, the worse that smell got.”

  Cynthia nodded. “That’s when our girl Vanessa said—”

  “Who’s Vanessa?” I interrupted.

  “She was walking with us,” Heather said. “She saw the bag first.”

  Cynthia took hold of the umbrella. “She’s the one who said, ‘That looks like a person’s leg comin’ out that bag.’ Then, she took some pictures with her phone.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “And where is Vanessa?”

  “She freaked out,” Cynthia said. “When we found the park ranger, he had one of the other rangers take her down to the community center. She may still be down there.”

  “So what happened next?” I asked.

  “We kept walking,” Heather continued, “and we got close enough to see—” She covered her mouth with a shaky hand.

  “The black girl from the Jungle,” Cynthia said. “Is it her? Is it Trina?”

  “We don’t know much yet,” I admitted. “May I ask the obvious question?”

  “Why were we walking in the rain?” Heather asked.

  “Diabetes and New Year’s resolution,” Cynthia explained.

  “And it’s rain, not lava,” Heather said, rolling her eyes.

  “She’s from Seattle,” Cynthia announced.

  I nodded. “May I see the bottoms of your tennis shoes?”

  Cynthia lifted her left foot.

  No whorls.

  Still, I took a picture with my camera phone.

  Heather lifted her foot.

  Lines, squares, no whorls.

  I snapped another picture.

  “Why you takin’ picture of our shoes?” Cynthia asked.

  “We ain’t done nothing,” Heather complained.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “Just procedure. You were close to the body and I just wanna make sure that any shoe prints we find aren’t yours.”

  “Why it seem like a lotta black girls gettin’ kidnapped this year?” Heather asked.

  “Don’t know,” I said.

  Even though Poor, Black, and Female was my Everyday, this case worried me. One thing, however, did not worry me. I knew for sure that Jane Doe was not my sister. Because Victoria had been found. Finally.<
br />
  “What about the guy you saw?” I asked the couple. “Tell me about him.”

  “He was coming from that direction.” Cynthia pointed toward the tarp.

  “Was he carrying anything?” I asked.

  “His hands were in his pockets,” Heather said.

  “Can you describe him?”

  “He was tall,” Cynthia said.

  “No, he wasn’t,” Heather countered with a frustrated head shake. “He was, like, five eleven.”

  “That’s tall.”

  “To Mini-Me.”

  “Anyway, he was black.”

  “Girl, you need glasses,” Heather said. “You couldn’t even tell what he was cuz he was wearing a baseball cap and this big jacket with a turned-up collar. Black jacket, blue cap.”

  “No,” Cynthia said, “it was a black jacket, and a black cap.”

  “No, the cap was wet from the rain so it just looked black.”

  Cynthia shrugged. “You probably right.”

  Then the women looked at me.

  “Did the cap have a team name on it?” I asked. “Any kind of marking?”

  “Umm…,” Cynthia said.

  Heather shrugged. “Can we go now?”

  I blinked. “That’s all you can tell me?”

  “We gave you specifics,” Heather snapped.

  “Right. A not-too-tall, tall man of indeterminate ethnicity wearing a black jacket and a dark baseball cap.” They had described every man in Los Angeles County—but not the park ranger in khaki. “What time did you start walking the trail?”

  “A little after eleven,” Heather recalled, “and I know it was a little after eleven cuz my mom had just texted me, telling me that she had picked up my son from kindergarten.”

  “And so you’re walking,” I said, “and you got where when you first spotted the bag?”

  The two women led me to the slight bend in the trail, right before the canopy of trees.

  “And you kept walking?” I asked.

  They nodded.

  “Let’s walk now.”

  And we walked.

  “When did you see the guy in the cap?” I asked.

  “Right … about … now.” Cynthia stopped in her step.