The Girl Buried in the Woods

by Robert Ellis

  Cabrera leaned closer. “Something small enough that it turned his brain into scrambled eggs.”

  A moment passed in that eerie purple light. Everyone watched as Gainer and his assistant rolled the body over on its back and the corpse settled into the table.

  “Okay,” Matt said finally. “Okay. So what we’re looking at is a hit. An execution that Sophia Ramirez more than likely witnessed. Odds are that that’s why she’s dead right now. The girl saw it. She saw everything, and that’s why she’s dead.”

  Matt didn’t think that what he’d just said was a surprise to anyone. But there was an image that went with the words once they’d been spoken aloud. An image so palpable that Matt imagined everyone in the tent could grasp it. See it. Feel it.

  A man was forced to dig his own grave on his hands and knees, then shot in the back of the head with a single bullet. A fifteen-year-old girl witnessed the murder and tried to run away but fell short.

  Matt tossed it over. It could account for the rage they associated with the girl’s murder. The idea that the killer had been surprised by a witness. A teenage girl hiding in the darkness. An innocent child overcome by the sight of watching one man kill another man. Someone who saw enough of the heinous act that she could more than likely identify the killer.

  It could account for a lot of things.

  Matt’s mind flicked back to the video Trey Washington had shown him just a few hours ago. He could remember the way Robert Gambini had acted when the two teens startled him. The rage he’d demonstrated as he chased them across the lawn and through the woods.

  Robert Gambini.

  What would he have done if he’d caught up to them?

  Robert Gambini. The new breed.

  Someone tapped Matt on the shoulder from behind. When he turned, he saw one of Speeks’s techs, a young woman who had been assisting with the excavation all afternoon, standing before him with a flashlight.

  “Two officers are outside,” she whispered. “They want to see you and your partner. They said it’s important.”

  Matt traded a quick look with Cabrera, then turned back to the tech. “Thanks,” he said. “We’ll follow you out.”

  Matt switched off his UV light, removed his safety glasses, and handed them back to Speeks. He watched Cabrera do the same, then stepped outside with the tech. He’d lost track of time and was surprised when he found the sun had set, the sky filled with clouds and a handful of stars. He looked back at the tech, who pointed to two cops standing beside a work light. Leading the way across the lawn, Matt realized that it was Alvin Marcs and Bill Guy. Both wore bleak expressions on their faces. Both seemed caught up in the moment.

  “What’s up, fellas?”

  Marcs glanced over at his partner, then back. “We might have something.”

  “Something real?” Cabrera said.

  Marcs nodded slowly. “A car with a week’s worth of parking tickets.”

  “Where?” Matt asked.

  “Down the hill on Elysian Park Drive. The first ticket is dated the same day the girl was murdered.”

  Matt gave him a look. “You run the plates?”

  Marcs’s partner opened his notepad and tilted it into the work light. “The car’s registered to a Moe Rey, Detective. Thirty-nine years old from Venice Beach. A white guy. Five nine, medium build, with brown eyes and brown hair.”

  Matt tossed it over. The body had been in the ground too long to tell what color his eyes were.

  “What about a picture off his driver’s license?”

  Marcs nodded again. “I had them send a text message to your cell about five minutes ago.”

  Matt remembered the single pulse his cell phone had let out while they were examining the victim’s head wound. At the time he’d ignored it. Now he dug his phone out—the message waiting for him with a photograph attached. As he highlighted the image, Cabrera looked over his shoulder.

  “That’s him,” Cabrera said. “That’s got to be him.”

  Matt eyeballed the photo and grimaced. “It’s him, all right. Moe Rey. On a better day, maybe, but that’s our guy.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Moe Rey’s house was just a block from the Venice canals. Local police had pushed the media to the walkway on the other side of Twenty-Eighth Street. While the first responders seemed to have everything well organized, the roads in the neighborhood were exceedingly narrow and only allowed for one car to pass at a time.

  Matt pulled in behind a police cruiser parked in the middle of the street and killed the engine. Ignoring the lights and cameras, he fished through his laptop case, pushed the oxycodone aside, and opened the bottle of high-dose ibuprofen his doctor had prescribed. Slamming the pill back, he downed half a bottle of water and got out of the car—stoked that the case was beginning to show daylight.

  He turned and gave Moe Rey’s house a long look.

  It was a small white bungalow on the corner surrounded by a low wall and fence. When he gazed down the sidewalk, he could see that the property extended over to the next street and included a two-car garage that wasn’t attached to the house. A new wall at least ten feet high enclosed the backyard, along with an electronic driveway gate made of solid metal sheets that couldn’t be seen through.

  Matt had worked narcotics before homicide. People who ended up dead by execution usually hung with their own kind and had to earn their way to oblivion. Everything he was looking at felt like another sign that Moe Rey might be connected to Robert Gambini in some fundamental way.

  He heard a car screech to a stop and saw his partner jump out of his SUV.

  “We need to call McKensie,” Cabrera said in a shaky voice. “I was thinking about it on the drive over. Two days and every step of the way’s another nightmare. We need help.”

  Matt turned back to the bungalow. “Knock it off, Denny. All we’re doing is searching a house. A dead guy’s house. Now let’s go.”

  Matt started toward the house, leaving Cabrera in the street. But even before he reached the porch, he could feel his partner catch up from behind. He didn’t understand where Cabrera was coming from and, all things being equal, didn’t really care right now. He was too anxious to find out who Moe Rey had been in real life. Too jacked up to see how all these odd pieces were going to fit.

  He gave Cabrera a quick look as he crossed the porch. The front door was standing open, and inside the foyer he could see the two first responders waiting for them. While Matt clipped his ID to his jacket, he glanced at their name tags—Roy White and Linda Ragetti—surprised that when he’d worked in Venice, they’d never met.

  “Tell me what we need to know,” Matt said.

  Ragetti stepped forward. “Moe Rey’s neighbor says he kept to himself. He used to be a teacher, but she doesn’t know where.”

  Matt gave her a look. “Moe Rey didn’t strike me as the teacher type. He didn’t die like one either.”

  Ragetti nodded and took a deep breath. “The neighbor said he got a new job doing something else. She told us that he seemed all worked up about it. Excited, like he was holding in a secret.”

  Matt thought about Robert Gambini again and what it must be like to work a job that has to be kept secret. He turned to Ragetti’s partner.

  “Did you guys ask the neighbor what the new job was?”

  White glanced at his partner, then turned back. “He never told her, but I think you should take a look at the garage before we get started tossing this place.”

  “What’s in the garage?”

  “A picture’s worth a thousand words,” White said, flashing an ironic smile. “I’ll lead the way.”

  They stepped into a living room that had the feel of being furnished from weekend tag sales at the beach, passed through a nondescript kitchen, and went out the back door. Matt noticed that the small backyard was used as a parking area, the grass replaced with gravel. A path of flagstones led to a side door in the garage, which was standing open.

  Ragetti walked ahead and switched on the over
head lights. Once Matt stepped down onto the concrete floor, he took a moment to process what he was seeing.

  Moe Rey’s two-car garage had been turned into a warehouse for what Matt guessed were stolen goods. He counted three aisles of merchandise—the shelving six feet high. Cell phones, cameras and camcorders, home theater systems, computer gaming consoles and video games—all in their original packaging. Matt eyed the inventory, checking labels and wondering what the value might have been when Rey brought everything home.

  “What’s wrong?” Cabrera said from the first aisle.

  “Check out the labels, Denny. See for yourself. Everything we’re looking at is three, maybe four years old. It’s worthless.”

  “And that tells you what, Detective?”

  Matt froze, realizing that the question had come from Lieutenant McKensie. He turned and saw the big man with the shock of white hair staring at him from the doorway. Behind the lieutenant he could see Speeks and a handful of techs walking toward them from the bungalow.

  Matt looked back at his supervisor. “It tells me that Moe Rey was small time, Lieutenant. He was sitting on product no one wants anymore.”

  McKensie’s eyes were still pinned on him. “Anything else?”

  “It tells me that this isn’t what we’re looking for tonight. Moe Rey’s execution has to be about something else.”

  “I agree,” McKensie said. “Something else. So let’s get started looking for it.”

  Matt nodded. He knew from experience that the two most likely places to find anything hidden in anyone’s home were the master bedroom and the kitchen. He glanced at Cabrera and took charge, asking his partner to concentrate on the bedroom while he combed through the kitchen. By necessity, the forensic team would overlap everyone else and work the entire house. McKensie seemed to be here to stay and, for reasons never explained, stuck close to Matt.

  In the past Matt had found that the freezer always seemed like a good place to start. But after half an hour of inspecting everything wrapped in aluminum foil, he and McKensie came up empty. Like the freezer, the refrigerator and cabinets yielded nothing of interest.

  Matt opened a set of louvered doors and found a small pantry. There was a cutting board there, along with a counter and sink for food prep. Built-in shelves lined the wall on the left from floor to ceiling. Matt guessed that Rey had shopped at one of the warehouse stores, probably the Costco over on Washington Boulevard in Marina del Rey. The shelves were overflowing with oversize pasta and cereal boxes, canned goods and olive oil, paper towels and enough cleaning supplies to cover a crew working an office building. Matt started with the boxes of rigatoni, picking them up and shaking them. A few minutes later, he could feel McKensie move in behind him.

  “How you doing, Detective?”

  Matt lowered a box of pasta to the counter, turned around, and gave his supervisor a look. The big man was standing on top of him, and Matt took a step back.

  “What is it, Lieutenant? What’s wrong?”

  “I just wanted to know how you’re making out, Jones. How all those monsters are doing inside your head. I’m guessing they’re awake now. Awake and probably hungry.”

  Matt didn’t say anything right away. He just stood there and looked the man over. When he spoke finally, his voice was cool, calm, and steady.

  “Things didn’t turn out the way you hoped, Lieutenant. It’s not exactly murder lite, sir.”

  McKensie’s face flushed with color and he laughed. “That’s the great part about working for the LAPD, Jones. Every day’s a goddamn adventure.”

  Matt picked up another box of pasta, gave it a shake, and lowered it to the counter beside the last box.

  “We’re on the right track now,” he said carefully.

  McKensie shook his head. “Chief Logan doesn’t think so.”

  A long moment passed. It wasn’t what McKensie had been saying that lit up the warning sirens in Matt’s head. It was his supervisor’s tone of voice. McKensie had come up the hard way. Despite his age, he was still tough, with a voice that matched his demeanor. But now the big man was whispering.

  “I just came from the chief’s office,” he said. “He’s not happy.”

  “But we’re beginning to see daylight.”

  “Daylight, Jones? Is that what you call leaving a dead body in the ground for two days?”

  Matt tried to get a read on McKensie, but nothing was showing on the man’s face. He had a bad feeling about it. Like maybe he was about to be thrown off the case.

  McKensie didn’t say anything for a while. Instead, he gazed out the door into the kitchen as if to confirm that they were still alone, then turned back.

  “The chief agrees with your shrink, Jones. He talked to her. You look tired. You’re not ready. He doesn’t think you can handle this one. He thinks I made a mistake.”

  The big man’s words settled into the room hard and heavy. Matt didn’t think there was anything more he could say that wouldn’t seem defensive or weak. He heard someone in the house call out his name. It sounded like Speeks. He looked back at McKensie, who nodded and waved him off. But as Matt started to leave, he turned back and pushed the last two boxes of pasta he’d checked across the counter.

  “There’s something wrong with these,” he said. “They look good, but they don’t match the rest. They’re too heavy.”

  McKensie didn’t say anything. Instead, he eyeballed the boxes with suspicion, then picked one up with great care, measured the weight in his hands, and gave the box a light shake.

  Matt walked out, resigned to the fact that he couldn’t control his fate. That whatever may have been said between Chief Logan and Dr. May, whatever the chief and McKensie decided, was a decision he had no power to change. All he knew was that the trail felt hot now, and all of them were wrong.

  He was back. And even though the heavy dose of ibuprofen hadn’t kicked in and he could still feel the gunshot wounds in his chest, his mind was clear.

  He found Speeks in the laundry room. The dryer was stacked on top of the washer, the door open. Speeks was holding what looked like a bright yellow rain jacket.

  “Jones,” he said excitedly. “I think I found it.”

  “Found what, Speeks?”

  “Watch.”

  Speeks slid his arm into the sleeve of the jacket, gave it a hard twist, and yanked it out. Tossing the jacket back into the dryer, he switched on his UV light and pointed the beam at his shirt. Matt saw it immediately. The white lint-like specks that they had found all over Moe Rey’s body. To the eye, they looked identical in shape and size.

  Speeks switched off his UV light, pulled the jacket out of the dryer, and opened an evidence bag.

  “Let me see it,” Matt said.

  The criminalist held up the yellow jacket. “He’s got a pair of pants that go with it,” he said.

  Matt pulled the pants out of the dryer, examined the lining carefully, and read the label. It was a hazmat suit. The top and bottom halves of a hazmat suit. Exactly like the hazmat suits he’d seen the people wearing at the waste management company.

  He felt someone grab his arm.

  “In here,” Cabrera said. “Hurry.”

  Matt followed his partner through the kitchen and into the master bedroom. A cigar box was open on the bed, and he could see what looked like three or four grams of cocaine and roughly an ounce of weed, with papers and a roach clip.

  “Not that,” Cabrera said. “Here.”

  Standing over the bedside table, Cabrera opened Moe Rey’s checkbook and slipped a pay stub out of the register. As he passed it over, Matt could feel his gut churning.

  Moe Rey had a new job, a new employer, and a nosy neighbor who thought he might be trying to keep it secret.

  DMG Waste Management.

  Matt examined both sides of the pay stub and read the company’s logo a second time.

  “How long’s he worked there? Can you tell?”

  Cabrera opened the checkbook and skimmed through the register. �
�He’s been paid twice. The checks were deposited two weeks apart.”

  Matt stared back at his partner, who seemed just as staggered by the news as he was. After a moment, he reached for the checkbook.

  “We need to show this to McKensie,” Matt said.

  “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  They stormed out of the bedroom and through the kitchen, then came to an abrupt stop when they hit the pantry. A photographer stood close by waiting to get a shot. McKensie appeared stiff as a statue and more than edgy. From the look on the big man’s face, nothing needed to be said or written down.

  The lieutenant had opened the first box of pasta and laid out its contents on the counter by the sink. It was cash—a lot of it—wrapped in a Cryovac bag that had been vacuum-sealed. Matt grabbed the second box, ripped open the packaging, and dumped another Cryovac bag on the counter. His eyes cut through the plastic and locked in on all those bundles of hundred-dollar bills wrapped in bands the color of mustard. All that money.

  Enough to kill for. Enough to die for.

  Daylight.

  NINETEEN

  Enough of everything for Matt and everybody else to survive for at least a few more days, but with strings attached.

  They had counted the money. Each Cryovac bag contained ten bundles of hundred-dollar bills, and when added together, amounted to a cool two-hundred grand. Crisp, new bills—the ink so fresh it filled the air with a scent only that much paper money can buy.

  But now it was 3:00 a.m., the cash entered into evidence, taken away, and locked up.

  Matt crossed over the Grand Canal on Washington Boulevard, then made a right onto Pacific Avenue. The marine layer had rolled in off the ocean. Traffic was light to dead, but Matt kept his speed down, stopped at red lights, and wasn’t in a rush. Home was only ten, maybe fifteen minutes away, and he found the cool air breezing through the open windows more than refreshing.

  He glanced to his left and right, passing a hodgepodge of buildings cloaked in street murals and graffiti that didn’t seem to belong just two blocks from the beach. Dated apartment buildings and small bungalows whizzed by, warehouses that may or may not have been abandoned, stores here and there that either looked closed for the night or shut down forever.