“Bradley,” I gasped. I spent some time just staring. After all the uncertainty if he was dead or alive, finally I was seeing him with my own eyes. He wore jeans and a leather jacket. His face looked florid, as if he’d been spending a lot of time outside. Emily rushed toward him and threw her arms around him.
Quickly my wonder at seeing a living, breathing Bradley turned to anger. Thanks to him the bookstore and my future were in jeopardy. People like that woman on the news had lost their life savings. All the nice stuff he’d done, like coach the girls’ soccer team, had just been a way for him to get clients. He was a bad man and he shouldn’t be able to walk away from what he’d done.
I still had the BlackBerry in my hand. But who to call? It was too convoluted a story to try to tell to a 911 dispatcher. Better to call Barry. I clicked on his number, but nothing happened. True we were only a few minutes from civilization, but there was no cell signal.
Dinah saw me fiddling with the phone and I showed her the screen. “We have to do something,” she whispered.
“I have an idea,” I said, holding up the BlackBerry. “I’ll take some pictures of him. At least we’ll have proof we saw him and I can send them to Barry.”
I quickly took a number of photos before we slipped down the path and retraced our steps, checking my phone every few moments to see if I’d gotten service.
We were practically back to Dinah’s car before I got a signal. As soon as I talked to Barry and sent the photos, despite his telling us to stay put, we rushed back toward where we’d seen Bradley.
“What are we going to do when we get there?” Dinah asked as we made our way back. “We can’t make him stay there until the cops show up.”
It turned out not to be a problem.
CHAPTER 20
WHEN WE GOT BACK TO OUR VANTAGE POINT, WE looked over at the bushes and tree and the surrounding tall grassy area. There was no Bradley and no Emily. The only activity was a hawk flying overhead.
“Where’d they go?” I said, looking around. It was more of a rhetorical question or at least that’s how Dinah took it and didn’t answer. Brushing past sparse sage plants, we kept moving closer until we ended up at the tree where they’d been standing. The pungent-smelling bushes that hugged the California oak formed an enclosure with an opening at the front.
Dinah peeked in and pointed at the ground. “Look at this.” I looked over her shoulder. It was hard to see because of the darkness, but there was a pile of dirt and a hole in the ground.
“I wonder if there’s anything in it?” I said. I was hopeful Dinah would pick up on the question and offer to stick her hand in. She didn’t and I really wished I had the Pinchy-Winchy with me. The toy claw hand would have been perfect to stick down the hole. Finally curiosity overcame my concern over crawly and slithery things that might be in there and I knelt down and put my hand in. I’d reached all the way to my elbow before I hit the bottom. The dirt was cold and damp and empty. I sat back on my heels and examined the nearby area. The afternoon was fading and it seemed like the sun had come out just in time to go down. I noticed something dark in the tall grass. When I touched it, it felt slippery.
“It’s a plastic garbage bag,” Dinah said, bending next to me. We opened it with a fair amount of trepidation. Instead of reaching in, we decided to dump out the contents. We stood and I held the bottom at arm’s length and shook. A couple of hundred-dollar bills fluttered out along with what looked like a small booklet. I gathered them off the ground where they’d fallen.
“It’s a passport,” I said, opening the booklet. The photo was Bradley, but the name was listed as Allen Richman. “I wonder what that’s about.” We stuck the money in the passport and kept examining the ground. Around the side of the tree we found a motorcycle helmet and a backpack. I opened the backpack and looked inside. A map of northern Mexico fell out. Below there just seemed to be some clothes and a bottle of water and some energy bars.
“I wonder why they left this stuff,” Dinah said.
“And I wonder why we didn’t pass them on Dirt Mulholland.” I stood up and surveyed the area. The narrow path we’d been on continued up a hill. Dinah and I followed it up to the top, which was flat and mostly rocks with some short grass. From there we could see that the path continued on down into a valley and roughly paralleled Dirt Mulholland. “I think that explains why we didn’t see them,” I said. The path was an alternative to the unpaved road and joined Mulholland in the vicinity of the short road we’d taken up from the street.
“Maybe we weren’t as stealthy as we thought and they saw us,” Dinah said. The hilltop gave a good view of the whole area. We could see the Dirt Mulholland as it passed the concrete pad, which from here seemed postage stamp- size, and continued on to the road that ran down to the street. Turning the other way, the water tank seemed far away and small, too. From here we got a different view of the area around the oak tree. As I looked down on it, my breath caught. There was something partially hidden by the wild growth.
I rushed down the narrow path so quickly I lost my footing and slid. Dinah came behind me and helped me get up. We pushed through the bushes and tall grass until we found what I’d seen. Bradley Perkins was sprawled on the ground. His pale blue tee shirt was spattered with blood and his eyes were wide open as if he’d been caught in surprise.
For a moment, I froze at the shock of the discovery. Then autopilot kicked in and I reached to touch his neck and check for a pulse. He was still warm.
I knelt down to get closer, but I didn’t feel any sign of life. Dinah got down next to me as the reality began to sink in. I wanted to look away, but I felt compelled to do something. I had seen the new method of CPR on television. The directions were simple and there was no need to do mouth-to-mouth. I put my palms together and began to do the pumping motion on his breast bone. I tried for several minutes, but nothing was changing, and Dinah touched my arm.
“He’s gone,” she said.
I pulled away and looked at my hands. There was blood all over them, and I thought I was going to throw up. I started to frantically wipe my hands on my clothes.
“Whoever did this had to be very angry and able to get close to him,” I said, noting the slashes in the shirt. I wasn’t an expert, but they looked like they’d been made by a knife.
“Is there any doubt who did it?” Dinah said. “Emily was with him when we left and he was alive. We come back a little while later and he’s dead.” I couldn’t deny her point.
Looking down his body, I saw a leather sheath hanging off his belt. The size and shape made it seem right for some kind of big knife. It was empty. Something about the sheath stirred a memory and I stared at it for a moment, but only a moment. The sound of a motor broke the quiet and I looked up as a helicopter approached. Within seconds it was overhead, circling low above us and I recognized the police markings. A voice over a loud speaker ordered us to step away from the body and put our hands on our heads.
Dinah and I looked at each other. “This doesn’t look good for us, does it?” she said as we followed their orders.
I saw a cloud of dust when I looked back toward Dirt Mulholland. Traffic wasn’t allowed on this section, but that didn’t count cops. The tip of the black Crown Victoria showed as it stopped on the paved road near the water tank. A moment later, Barry came up the path, pushing through the twigs and foliage.
Barry must have walked into scenes like this countless times and kept his cool, but when he looked at me, he lost it.
“What happened? What did you do, try to stop him?” he said. He didn’t wait for an answer. He went to check Bradley for a pulse. “Tell me you didn’t do this,” he said.
Dinah stepped in front of me. “What kind of question is that? Are you out of your mind?” I calmed her down and said I could speak for myself.
“What kind of question is that? Are you out of your mind?” I said. “We came back here to keep an eye on him and this is what we found.” Barry pointed at my hands and arms, which even with the wiping were still bloodstained. I explained the CPR.
Barry kept shaking his head.
Apparently the cops in the helicopter had called for the paramedics and backup. All of them stirred up the dirt
