The Girl Buried in the Woods

by Robert Ellis

  He pulled a chair out from the end of the table, sat down, and gave Cabrera another look. “You okay?” he said.

  Cabrera sniffed his jacket but remained quiet. Matt leaned back in the chair, well aware that the smell of death had permeated their clothing and followed them like a shadow from the morgue.

  “You’re right, Denny. We smell pretty bad, but other than that, are you okay?”

  Cabrera kept his eyes down. “Yeah,” he said finally. “I guess so.”

  “You guess so?”

  Matt’s cell phone started to vibrate. Digging the phone out of his pocket, he saw Speeks’s name blinking on the face and, as he took the call, imagined it would be another grim setback.

  “Let me guess, Speeks. You just got off the phone with Madina. You’ve got something that breaks the case wide open, and you called to give us the good news.”

  Speeks didn’t say anything. Matt turned to Cabrera and saw him staring back at him. Switching on the speaker, he set the phone on the table between them.

  “I’m sorry, Jones,” Speeks said after a moment.

  “Why are you sorry? Just tell us what happened.”

  “We’re at a standstill. We’ve got no physical evidence. No footprints in the soil, no fingerprints, no hairs or fibers that match anyone other than the victim and the old man’s dog. It’s almost as if the killer’s a ghost. Like he was never there.”

  Matt thought it over. “What about the semen on her clothing? Madina told us there’s no indication that she was raped. But at least you’ve got something. You’ve got his DNA, right? You pulled it off the girl’s blouse and jeans.”

  “That’s the problem,” Speeks said in a shaky voice. “That’s why I’m calling.”

  Matt glanced over at Cabrera and saw his eyes go dark. No doubt about it—their plane had lost power and was going down. Matt took a deep breath and exhaled.

  “Tell us why you called,” he said.

  Speeks cleared his throat, still sounding nervous. “It’s not semen, Jones.”

  Cabrera got up in a huff and started pacing. Matt slammed his fist on the conference table.

  “What are you talking about, Speeks? We saw it. Everybody in the tent saw it. And there was a lot of it, like it came from a goddamn horse.”

  “I know what we saw, but we didn’t know what we were looking at. Not until we got back to the lab. It was just a bad call.”

  “A bad call, Speeks? This is a bad call. I can’t take another bad call like this.”

  A moment passed. When Speeks eventually spoke, he sounded embarrassed.

  “I’m sorry, Jones. I really am. I was just waiting to hear Madina confirm that he didn’t find any evidence that the girl was violated. The stains we saw in the UV light turned out to be from a goddamn can of Coke. She must have spilled it on herself. It turns out that under UV light Coca-Cola reflects back just like semen. When it dries, they’re almost the same color. That’s what we were looking at. That’s what we saw.”

  Matt heard Cabrera gasp. As the shock wafted through the air, Matt lowered his head to the table and closed his eyes.

  “She’s dead, Speeks. She was just a kid. Tell me there’s something. Anything.”

  Another long moment passed, and then another—heavy and acid-like.

  “If the killer wasn’t wearing gloves,” Speeks said finally, “if he strangled her with his bare hands, Jones, then there’s still a chance he left enough skin behind for us to work with. It could be in our soil samples. Madina told me that he swabbed her neck. You never know.”

  “So you’re saying there’s a chance you’ve got enough for a profile.”

  Speeks went quiet again. Another batch of uncertainty and gloom filled the room.

  “No,” Speeks said in a voice that had gone dead. “I’m saying there’s a slim chance. A very slim chance. The kind you can’t count on. She was in the ground for three days. That’s a long time. Some cases never get going, Jones. They just burn like a wildfire, taking everybody out who’s in the way.”

  Matt’s body shuddered, and he switched off the phone. When he looked up, Cabrera was removing the photographs of the five girls who’d gone missing from the window and dumping them in the trash.

  “I’m gonna go home, Matt. I’m gonna take a long shower and get into some clean clothes that don’t smell like some kid who’s been dead for three days. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Then we’ll finish the paperwork, turn the murder book over to McKensie, and call it a day. This one’s DOA. No sense wasting any more time chasing shadows in the dark.”

  Matt didn’t say anything.

  He just sat there, watching Cabrera walk out of the room and vanish around the corner. He heard the back door open and slam shut. Then the din of the bureau floor began to fade, and in his mind, everything went quiet. Numb. He was alone finally. After a while, he got up and dug the photographs out of the trash. He spent several minutes examining them. Once he’d committed each girl’s face to memory, he placed the pictures in an unmarked file folder and slipped it into his laptop case. The Chinese food he’d tossed out last night was still there and smelled so nasty it could have been road kill. As he walked out of the room, he thought it might be a while before he ordered Chinese again.

  FOURTEEN

  Some cases never get going, Jones. They just burn like a wildfire, taking everybody out who’s in the way.

  It wasn’t the tang of death anymore. It was the tang of failure.

  Matt ripped open the trunk, unzipped his gym bag, and dug through his clothing to find a clean black T-shirt and a pair of jeans. Pushing aside the boxer shorts and a fresh pair of socks, he spotted his shaving kit and felt a wave of relief that he’d remembered to return it to his bag when he got back from Philadelphia.

  Driving across town in the middle of the day to take a shower and change into fresh clothes wasn’t an option. A thirty-mile round trip between Hollywood and the Westside could eat through more than three hours. And he was too amped up to waste that much time.

  He grabbed his gym bag, tossed his leather jacket on the front seat, and slammed the trunk. Legging it back to the station, he burst into the locker room, glanced at the showers that hadn’t been working since last fall, and washed himself down at one of the sinks before the mirror. As he got into his jeans and slipped on the T-shirt, he thought he’d done a good job of washing away the smell of the girl’s dead body. But when he coughed and cleared his throat, he could taste it in his mouth.

  Not death, he told himself again. Failure.

  He met his own eyes in the mirror. Then he pushed the moment out of his mind and looked down at his shirt and trousers on the floor. Even a dry cleaner couldn’t make them right again. Rolling the shirt in his trousers, he tossed them in the trash, grabbed his gym bag, and walked out.

  The activity on the bureau floor made him feel uneasy. He could hear the banter of detectives talking on their phones and to each other behind the six-foot-high partitions. It sounded like they were working cases, earning their paychecks, and getting things done. As he reached the window by his workstation, he could see McKensie in his office talking to someone in the doorway.

  Matt ducked away from the glass to avoid being seen.

  After giving the rear door an angry heave, he crossed the lot quickly and with full knowledge that he was headed back to the crime scene for another look—maybe another talk with Sophia’s parents or, even better, the girl’s boyfriend who never made contact with them and didn’t seem to be around. As he wove through traffic on Sunset, he tried not to think about the nicotine gum he’d found in his glove box or even the café half a block south of the Skylight bookstore in Los Feliz. An extra-large cup of piping-hot java was only a few blocks out of the way, that is, if he stayed off the freeways and spent the extra time using surface streets.

  He could almost taste it—

  He turned on the radio to clear his mind, but the news of the day was the same news as yesterday and so abhorrent he switched it o
ff. Within twenty minutes he was speeding up Casanova Street and pulling to a stop in front of Trey Washington’s house. He took a moment to center himself as he gazed across the street.

  One look and he could tell that no one was home.

  Matt tried to shake it off and got out of the car just to make sure.

  He climbed the steps and crossed the porch to the front door. He could see the lamp still switched on by the window and stepped closer to peer through the glass above the dead bolt. Everything looked exactly the way it had last night, except for the business card he’d wedged into the doorjamb. Someone had taken his card and, he assumed, read the message but never called.

  He tried the doorbell. When no one responded, he knocked on the glass and waited. After a few minutes, he tried to open the door but found it locked. He stepped off the porch and walked around the house, eyeing the windows carefully. The back door had a window above the knob exactly like the front door. He climbed the steps, turned the handle, and found it locked, then gazed through the glass into the Washington’s kitchen. He noted the breakfast dishes stacked in the sink and the sponge that still looked wet. There could be no doubt that the Washingtons had returned home last night and began their day here before taking off again.

  Why hadn’t anyone called? He’d left that message on his business card, and he’d used the word important. But even more, they had to know that Sophia Ramirez was dead by now. That she had been murdered. So why hadn’t they called?

  Matt grit his teeth, circled the house, and got into his car. Last night’s rain had brought cooler air, and he zipped up his leather jacket and switched on the heat. As he turned into the drive and backed out, he glanced at the house and tried to keep an open mind but had to admit that it was becoming more difficult.

  He gunned the engine, then backed off and glided down the street to the Ramirezes’ home. As he pulled in front of the house, he saw Sophia’s father working in his wood shop in the garage.

  The driveway leading down the hill was unpaved. When Matt stepped onto the lawn to avoid the mud, Sophia’s father turned and gave him a look. Matt guessed that the moment of fear he saw in the man’s eyes was instinctual at this point, part of living a life off the grid while trying to provide for his family. The fear vanished as Ramirez shut down his table saw and turned.

  “You have news?” the man said.

  Matt nodded and met his eyes. “Your daughter wasn’t violated,” he said quietly.

  Ramirez seemed to wilt and almost stagger, then reached for the stool. Matt could see his mind going as he steadied himself and sat down.

  “You okay, Mr. Ramirez?”

  The man paused to catch his breath before lifting his eyes off the floor. “Not really,” he said in a shaky voice. “Not now or anytime soon.”

  Matt let everything settle for a while and looked around the garage. Ramirez had shown him the shop yesterday, but Matt had been distracted and not much registered. Kitchen cabinets were set on the floor in various stages of completion. They appeared to be made of cherrywood, constructed from scratch with enough detail that Matt could tell Ramirez was a master cabinetmaker. When he ran his finger across the surface of a door, it felt smooth as glass.

  “Where are these going?” he asked.

  Ramirez looked up like he was still deep inside himself. “A new house in Beverly Hills,” he managed in a low voice. “They don’t renovate anymore. They rip the old place down and start all over again. Everybody wants everything new.”

  The man’s eyes went lazy again. Matt leaned against the workbench.

  “I’m having trouble locating Sophia’s friend, Trey Washington. Have you heard from him or his family? Do they know what’s happened?”

  Ramirez nodded. “They were away for almost a week. They got home last night. Trey’s inside.”

  “Inside where?”

  “Sophia’s bedroom.”

  FIFTEEN

  Trey Washington had been away for almost a week . . .

  As cases go, Matt figured that Sophia’s boyfriend would have been the last stone in a short line of stones to kick over and see what might be found underneath. But now everything had been accounted for. Everything could be tossed aside. The girl wasn’t the victim of a sex killer. According to her father, the boyfriend wasn’t even in town. Whoever did the murder left nothing of himself behind.

  And Matt was out of stones.

  He opened the back door and stepped into the kitchen. He could hear the sound of an audio track coming from Sophia’s bedroom, the sound of the girl’s voice, the sound of her laughing. When he turned the corner and looked into the room, he could see the kid seated at her desk watching one of their skateboarding videos on the computer. Matt knocked on the door. The kid flinched, and when he set eyes on Matt, gasped.

  “Are you Trey Washington?” Matt said.

  The boy stopped the video. His eyes got big and he looked frightened.

  Matt stepped into the room. “There’s no reason to be nervous,” he said. “I’m a homicide detective. My name’s Matt Jones, and I’m trying to find out what happened to your friend. Her dad told me that you were away. I left my card in your door. Why didn’t you or your parents call me when you got home last night?”

  The kid stammered. “My father said I wasn’t supposed to talk to you. He said he’d handle it.”

  “Okay,” Matt said. “So why didn’t he handle it?”

  The kid lowered his eyes and began wiping tears off his cheeks. “I don’t know.”

  Matt moved over to the bed and sat down. He noticed the boy’s hands trembling.

  “Let me see them,” Matt said in a calm voice.

  “See what?”

  “Your hands. I’m gonna prove to you why you shouldn’t be afraid of me.”

  The kid wrapped his fingers together in an effort to conceal them, then lowered his hands to his lap.

  “Come on, Trey. Let me see your hands.”

  Reluctantly, the kid lifted his hands up and held them out for inspection. Matt examined them closely, then looked the kid in the eye.

  “Other side,” he said.

  The kid turned his hands over. The boy’s brown skin was soft and smooth and showed no signs of a scratch, cut, or bruise. No sign of being involved in a murder that reeked of ultraviolence.

  “You see, kid, I told you so. Your hands prove you shouldn’t be nervous.”

  “How?” the boy blurted out. “Why?”

  Matt spotted a box of tissues on the bedside table and passed it over. “Because I’m a fortune-teller,” he said. “You were away the day it happened, right? Just for the record, where were you?”

  The kid wiped his eyes with the tissue. “San Francisco.”

  “What’s in San Francisco?”

  “Nana and Papa.”

  “Did you have a good time?”

  The kid nodded. “Until Mr. Ramirez called . . .”

  A moment passed, and then another. Trey Washington was built just like Sophia—long boned and skinny, with a gentle demeanor that matched his angular face. But it was the inside that seemed so unique and striking. Despite losing his friend, his innocent nature seemed to have remained intact.

  “How old are you?” Matt asked.

  “Fifteen.”

  “Why aren’t you in school?”

  The boy’s dark eyes rose up from his hands and locked on Matt’s face. “Because of Sophia,” he said in a soft voice. “Because of what happened to her. My father gave me the day off. I’m making a video for her funeral.”

  It hung there. It hung there for a long time . . . and as the girl’s death and the loss of a friendship settled into the room, Matt watched the boy wipe another batch of tears away from his eyes, then stood up and patted his shoulder.

  “You’re a good kid, Trey. A good friend. Sophia was lucky to have you.”

  Matt noticed the bookshelf on the wall by the window and walked over for a quick look. As he skimmed through the titles, he realized that most of the bo
oks on the top shelf were graphic novels. On the shelves below were books about film production and stacks of skateboarding magazines. He was about to turn away when he noticed two paperbacks wedged in beside an old Webster’s dictionary and a copy of the Holy Bible. The first was a book of selected poems by Pablo Neruda, edited by Robert Bly. Matt had a copy of the same edition in his library at home. But when he spotted the book jammed in beside it, when he read the title—it threw him. It was a heavy book for a fifteen-year-old girl to read, a big book to grasp. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, arguably one of the greatest writers of the last century working on one of the greatest novels of our time. Matt owned a copy of this one, too—a dog-eared paperback that he’d taken to Afghanistan with him and read three times.

  The memory was a good one. But as he straightened up, he felt a sudden wave of pain rock through his body.

  “Are you okay, mister?”

  Matt grabbed the bookcase and looked over at the boy, trying to breathe evenly and not show anything on his face. All four gunshot wounds had erupted at the same time. The pain was so sharp and so deep that it felt like he’d been shot all over again. He wondered what triggered the eruption. Was it the physical act of bending over? Or was it the compassion he felt for Trey Washington’s despair?

  Matt tried to shake it off. “I’m fine,” he said. “It’s nothing.”

  “You don’t look fine. What happened? What is it?”

  Matt returned to the bed and eased himself down, knowing that his meds were in his laptop case in the car. “I was shot,” he said.