'I'll bet. Tell them I'm occupied up here. No, don't say that, they'll drive up here and we'll have a circus on our hands. Tell Mrs. Donaldson I'll telephone her tonight at her home.'
Trujillo pulled a maroon leather pad from his trouser pocket and a gold pen from inside his jacket and made a note.
'Deputy Harris will be at the morgue, too—' he began.
'Who?'
'Harris, the man in charge of investigations from Santa Clara County. If she died there, which the doc thought likely, there's the question of jurisdiction.'
'God, you'd think they'd all be wanting to give it away, and instead of that we've got four counties fighting for it. I'm surprised the FBI hasn't grabbed it away from us.'
'Well, sir, Agent Pickard has been—'
'Oh, Christ, Pickhead himself is in on it now, is he? Okay, let's see.' Hawkin put his thumbs through his belt and drew in a deep breath of air that carried equal parts of salt, evergreen tree, wet rust, and fumes from the van generators across the way. 'Right. We'll arrange a meeting with you, Martinelli, and me, and Alameda, Santa Clara, the FBI, Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all.' Trujillo made another note. 'Let's just hope we can keep Mrs. Donaldson out of it. Tell them all that I want them to bring complete reports to the meeting, so we're not just making noise. We'll want the postmortem results, the Crime Scene findings, and anything the lab has ready. Also the complete interviews with the families and all the neighbors of all three girls, diagrams of the kidnap sites, and psychological profiles of all three victims.'
Trujillo looked up, aghast.
'But, that'll take days.'
'So much the better. Now, what can we give Pickhead to keep him out of our hair? Ah, VICAP. Tell him I want a list of every child dead or kidnapped across the country who fits the description of our three. Limit it to the last ten years. I also want a detailed profile of the killer. Have you ever talked to VICAP, Casey?'
'I submitted a case to them last year.'
'The Violent Criminal Apprehension Program,' he mouthed scornfully. 'Submit the completed form to your local Criminal Profile Coordinator, who forwards it to the Behavioral Sciences Investigative Support Unit, who feed it into the Almighty Central Adding Machine. And do you know what the profile will read? 'White male, middle income, above average intelligence, grew up in a dysfunctional family, juvenile record of minor crimes involving fire-setting and cruelty to animals, may or may not be married, all his neighbors find him likeable but quiet.' End quote.'
Kate wondered if she was expected to say something along the lines of, 'Remarkable, Holmes!' It was just a bit too easy to mock the FBI's profile system, which, give it credit, occasionally pulled off a real coup of identification. Hawkin seemed to realize this, because he shook himself and subsided, and cleared his throat.
'As I was saying. A meeting of all and sundry when we have the paperwork together. Use the word 'brainstorming,' Trujillo,' he directed. 'They'll like that. Press conference so we can all prove to the taxpayers how busy we are. Find out how long it's going to take them to assemble their reports, and I'll work it in. Thursday or Friday, the early afternoon.'
'Great,' said Trujillo, and snapped his notepad shut. 'Did you want to see Tyler now, or go straight up to the scene?'
'I'd better see him first, it'll only take a minute.'
'He's in his workshop, around back of the barn.'
'I know where it is,' said Hawkin, and walked off across the gravel.
Kate and Trujillo followed him through the door into the little building, where two men looked up from their contemplation of the object on the workbench in front of them. For a wild instant Kate thought it was a dismembered arm, until her eyes took in the metallic gleam and she recognized it as the detached arm of the suit of armor that stood in the corner. The Japanese man remained seated, but the other, older man stood up and, wiping his hands on a white cloth, came around to meet them. He was a small man, barely taller than Kate, about forty years old, and he moved with a heavy, twisting limp. His shoulder length hair, brown streaked with gray, was gathered into a pony tail, and his beard was trimmed low on his jaw. He wore a loose homespun shirt, more nearly a blouse, tucked into faded but ironed blue jeans, and soft leather boot-moccasins on his small feet.
'Hello, Inspector Hawkin,' he said. 'I cannot say I am exactly glad to see you again, considering the reason you're here, but you are welcome.'
'Thank you, Mr. Tyler. This is my assistant, Inspector Casey Martinelli. I appreciate your allowing us to bring half the county to your house.'
Tyler waved it aside. 'The house is used to it. Some of the residents are setting up the tables Paul asked for. I left it to them; hauling furniture around isn't my specialty, and I had to come out here and get Toshiro started.' He looked embarrassed. 'I would have asked him to come some other time, but I made the arrangements months ago for him to be here, and I couldn't reach him this morning to cancel them. I hope it doesn't—.' He broke off, though Kate could finish the sentence in her head: '—seem callous.'
Hawkin spoke calmly. 'No, of course not, no reason for everything to come to a halt. You go on with it. I have to go up the Road now, but I'll need to talk with you later.'
Tyler looked relieved at this forgiving attitude, and Kate wondered if Hawkin was trying to soften him up. They left the two men and went back into the half-drizzle, and before they were out the door Tyler had resumed his conversation with Toshiro the armorer.
'It's the vambrace, you see, that binds when I raise my sword…'
Hawkin took no notice but spoke unceremoniously to Trujillo.
'What have you got to take us up in?'
Kate was relieved that it was not to be her car that tackled the dirt track and stood with him as he looked past the obviously inadequate cars near the house and toward the shed, with its row upon row of bumpers fronting a mind-boggling collection of rust and dents—two, four, and six wheels, round bodies and square, old school buses, campers, pickups, Volkswagen vans and bugs—and half a dozen shapes covered tightly with dusty canvas shrouds.
'The county cars are all pretty busy but Tyler's loaning us his wagon. It'll go anywhere.'
He pointed to an object so large, so old, and so apparently immobile that Kate had assumed it was a display, useful for entertaining children, like the hulls of planes and trains that occasionally grace playgrounds. It looked thoroughly rooted to the ground, resting on cracked tires as high as Kate's waist, doors sagging, windows cloudy with the abrasions of the decades. It had once been red.
'That?' Hawkin stared in disbelief.
'Yes, it's great,' said Trujillo with enthusiasm. 'It used to be a fire wagon in the thirties, and Tyler keeps it up something great. Of course, parts are hard to get, and it won't go more than forty without the doors flying open, but for getting up the hill there's nothing like it.'
Hawkin turned his attention from the vehicle to the man.
'I didn't realize you knew him so well.'
'Tyler? Known him for years.'
'Maybe they should've put somebody else on this case, then.'
Trujillo smiled gently. 'Inspector, you'd be hard put to find a cop in the county who doesn't know Tyler and consider him a friend. It's a small place.'
'I see. Okay, let's get on with it. Are you going to drive this thing?'
'Good God, no. Tyler wouldn't trust me with his baby. Mark Detweiler's the only one who's allowed to touch it. He'll be driving. Mark?' He went to the door and stuck his head inside. 'Mark! Anybody seen Mark?'
After a few minutes of confusion a slow mountain of a man, gray braids reaching to the waist of his ancient jeans, plaid shirt hidden by a beard nearly as long, emerged to plant his heavy boots on the plank steps and survey the yard through a pair of smudged horn-rimmed glasses held together by a twist of wire and dirty duct tape. One gold earring glinted through the foliage.
'I'm coming,' he rumbled. 'Just hold your horses. Just wanted to use the John. Kinda fun to be able to flush.' He grinned merrily at them, revealing a missing front tooth amidst the gray fringe, and climbed up into the driver's seat. Hawkin watched, openmouthed, as the man methodically tied the door shut with a hunk of frayed rope, jerked the window up with a pair of pliers and inserted a wedge to hold it almost shut, and fished around in the mends of his jeans for a pocket, from which he pulled a key.
