'I dislike telling you this kind of thing.'
'If you didn't it could hurt me.'
'I see what I see. I think I detect unhappiness in Gilliam, for what it's worth. He… well, you know how he likes you.'
'The proud, the few.'
He smiled again, shook his head to get his hair back. 'You say what you think and you're the best detective in Homicide Detail.'
'Thanks.'
'I see what I see.'
'You'll be making more footprint casts tonight.'
'I'll be up a while. Gravel and sand are tough. I hope the breeze stays down.'
'What are your chances of matching them to the Wildcraft’s ones, if they came from the same shoes?'
He thought about that a moment. 'I'd need luck-some visible anomaly that would make that pair of shoes unique. Or almost unique.
'You're lucky, Ike.'
'I try to be.'
Merci looked into the car. She noted that the front passenger seat was adjusted far back.
Very far back, she thought.
'Did you move the seat to get at the floor mats?'
'Not yet.'
Right where Size Sixteen left it.
Don Leitzel was doing the photography. He'd opened the drive door for the interior shots, which he took with the limitless patient of a professional cameraman.
'Be sure to shoot the front passenger's seat,' she said.
'Already done, Sergeant.'
'And make a written note of the height adjustment before you change it, okay?'
'I've got all the light, window, door and seat positions written down. Lights to lighter.'
'Where was it?'
'Height-wise? All the way down. And the back was reclined to about forty degrees. If you need the seat all the way back and forty degrees of recline in a car this big, you're a very large person.'
About what you'd figure for Size Sixteen, she thought. 'Did you guys find anything good in here?'
'You mean like a driver's license or a checkbook? No.'
Merci ran her light over the dashboard and the puffy-looking leather seats. Pale gray interior. Some shiny wood. It looked almost familiar, though, and she realized it was like a fancy version of her Impala. The keys hung in the ignition.
Her light beam caught the LCD face of an onboard navigation unit. That was one thing the Impala sure didn't have.
'Can you program that navigator thing to bring up the last map it was asked for?'
'Sure. And I definitely will.'
'How about right now?'
'Might have to get in for that.'
'No. Get Ike to hold you.' Ike held Leitzel and Merci braced Ike and Leitzel leaned in, switched on the key and had the navigator showing the last requested map in about thirty seconds. He never touched a thing but the buttons. Merci loved guys who could figure out basic stuff like this: gadgetry usually threw her, though she could fieldstrip and reassemble her nine-blindfolded-as fast as anyone she knew.
'Some place down in La Jolla,' said Leitzel. 'It looks residential.'
'Go back one more.'
He leaned in again, did his thing, looked back over his shoulder at her. 'Newport Beach,' he said. 'Up on the bluff there, above the bay.'
'Go back another,' she said.
A moment later she saw the Newport map vanish, replaced by a new one.
'University of California, San Diego,' he called back. 'The School of Medicine.'
Merci thought about those three specific geographical points, came up with nothing whatsoever. 'That gadget will give you address, won't it?'
'Yeah, sure,' said Leitzel. 'That's how you cue up the map in first place.'
Leitzel gave Ike his hand and Ike gave Merci his other and Lei leaned in again. She heard the click of the controls, could see changing lights on the LCD screen.
'Here's the UCSD address.'
He started to read it to her, but she stopped him and called Zamorra over. He looked at them with some amusement as Merci told him get the blue notebook and pen from her windbreaker pocket, take do some addresses and wipe the smirk off his face.
Merci could find no useful tracks left by a pickup vehicle. Tracks, yes, but too many of them. And too faint, also, with the gravel content high and the summer too dry to let the shoulder pack down hard enough hold a pattern. Dust to dust. She had to figure that Ike's foot casts would also be too vague to help.
Still, she had Leitzel photograph what looked like two distinct set of tire tracks.
Then, with her flashlight quartering the darkness in front of her, she walked to the culvert that ran along the road between the dirt and the strawberry fields. The ditch was wide and steep and she could see a trickle of liquid down at the bottom. The moon was behind the hill now. The smell of the fruit hit her again. Funny how it comes and goes, she thought-not like the oranges.
She took two long steps down the bank and stopped again, surrounded by the dank rounded smell of old water. Quiet here. Brush and weeds to her left and right, cattails down near the stream. She could hear the frogs and crickets now, with the noise of the blast generator trapped above her. Something rustled in the grass, then splashed.
She took four more long sideways strides, which brought her the bed. The scar on her side felt tight and irritating. She thought being surprised from behind, remembered the awful realization that she was about to get shot and how long it took to go down.
The culvert was lined with concrete. Her light picked up the dark shimmer of water and the black shine of mud. She slowly turned a circle with the flashlight beam leading the way. A soft drink can, smashed. A foam fast- food container, partial. One tire, automobile. One refrigerator, doorless. One garden hose, cracked and faded.
On her way back up the side, Merci kept moving her flashlight beam left to right, then back again, hoping to find a little swatch of red in the darkness and the brush.
Near the top of the embankment, she did. She climbed her way through the brush, then settled on her knees for a better look. It was a red shop rag. Half wadded, half loose. When she lifted it with a stick the wadded part stayed together, like it was held with glue. Or God knew what, thought Merci.
She slipped a new paper lunch bag from one of her hip pocketsalways carried three on a crime scene investigation-and popped it open with one hand. It took five tries. Then she teased the shop rag inside with the stick. Dropped in the stick for good measure.
Too bad you can't get fingerprints off a rag used to wipe fingerprints, she thought. But there was plenty else Size Sixteen might not have thought of when he tossed the rag: skin particles, hair, fiber from clothing or furniture or carpet or cars, dandruff, sweat. And what's holding the wadded-up cloth together, Size Sixteen? Did you blow your fat murderous nose before you chucked the rag into the bushes? Maybe I can send you to death row on snot evidence.
She stood on top of the embankment, a few yards back from the edge, looking again for footprints. None. Too much brush, too many weeds. And the generator noise again, rattling her nerves.
Suddenly a shadow rose behind her, clear in the floodlights. Her heart jumped and she wheeled. Her hand found the nine but she caught herself.
'Oh, Paul!'
He stopped dead, hands up. 'You okay?'
'Perfect.'
