‘Can you spell that?’
‘Left femur will be fine,’ Steelie clarified.
Jayne looked at the fluoroscope screen and felt a surge of excitement to see that pale jagged line. An identifying marker to narrow the search. A start.
Tony tapped buttons at a keyboard beneath the screen, then raised the fluoroscope’s neck to make space to turn over the leg.
He handled the leg carefully, supporting it at each end, barely raising it off of the gurney before laying it back down. He put it on a section of body bag that wasn’t bloody, then removed one of his two layers of gloves and returned to maneuver the fluoroscope towards the back side of the knee.
Similar pale lines were again visible on the fluoroscope screen, this time clearer without the patella in the foreground.
‘I think it’s either close to fully fused or it finished fusing not long before death, and that’s why we can still see the line,’ said Steelie. ‘Another shot, Tony.’
He worked with the machine, then asked, ‘Want to take it from the top again?’
‘Yep,’ said Steelie, ‘then let’s move on to the next bag.’
Nothing remarkable came up on this second pass. Tony re-bagged the leg and Steelie and Jayne watched him discard his dirty gloves and double-glove again with clean ones. Tony then switched that gurney for the next one. Jayne was no longer apprehensive about how the contents of the next body bag would affect her. She had moved on to thinking about the person who made the cuts and did the killing. She was thinking about bringing them down.
Scott and Eric barely talked until they were at the base of Jeffdale Avenue in Woodland Hills. The street didn’t extend far up the slope before making a sharp turn but the matching pastel split-level houses gave it a sense of suburban uniformity. 3180 Jeffdale was on the left side of the street. The double garage door was closed but there was an oil mark in the driveway concrete as though a vehicle that leaked fluids usually sat there.
‘OK,’ said Scott, his eyes on the oil stain. ‘It’s either in the garage or it’s on the road right now. Let’s get a look in the garage first.’
‘Then you’re on the front and I’m on back duty?’
Scott nodded and jutted his chin at the glove box in front of Eric. Eric unlocked it and removed two guns in their holsters and two pieces of small electronic equipment. They strapped the gear on to their waistbands. Before they got out of the car, they put on FBI-marked windbreakers that covered their waistlines.
They approached the side of the garage and looked in the window. The glass was dusty and had cobwebs in the corners but the van inside was clearly visible. It was white with a blue stripe down the side and sported a roof rack.
Eric nodded to Scott and they put in the single earpieces that would allow them to communicate with each other through transmitters once they were separated. Eric started moving quietly down the side of the house. Scott waited until Eric said he was in position by a rear entrance, then he stepped out from the side of the house and rang the front doorbell.
The woman who eventually answered the door looked like she’d been sleeping. Her strawberry-blonde hair was pushed up at the crown and the cut-off denim shorts she wore were creased. Scott waited for her to stop yawning in his face before he opened up his badge wallet.
‘Ma’am, Special Agent Houston, FBI. Are you Tracey Ellen Redding?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Does anyone besides you reside at this address, ma’am?’
‘No . . . I’ve got a friend here visiting, though.’
‘Is he or she at home with you right now?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Ma’am, could I step inside and speak with you, please?’
She shrugged, apparently uninterested. ‘Sure.’
The woman turned, leaving the door open behind her, and walked through the house, her flip-flops slapping against the floor tiles.
Scott followed her to the kitchen, noting the rear entrance to the house, which was a sliding glass door from a patio. The sliding door was also visible from the kitchen counter where the woman was pouring herself a glass of flat Coca-Cola out of a two-liter bottle.
Lighting a cigarette, she asked, ‘What’s this about?’
‘Is the van parked in the garage yours, Ms Redding?’
‘Yeah. I own it. It’s paid off.’
‘And have you been fully cognizant of its whereabouts for the past several days?’
She squinted at him through a haze of smoke. ‘You asking if I know where it was?’
Scott nodded.
‘Sure I know. I mean, I let Sky use it the other day, but I know where he was.’
‘Who is Sky?’
‘My friend who’s visiting.’
‘Were you aware that the van was recently involved in an accident that required repair work, Ms Redding?’
For the first time, the woman looked more alert and exhaled the smoke faster than she had been up to that point. ‘No . . .’
She looked at the kitchen cabinets as though she could see through them into the garage, then shook her head. ‘I think you’re wrong about that. Sky would have told me.’
‘Where is Sky at the moment?’
She hesitated, then took a deep drag on her cigarette. ‘Actually, I don’t know where he is. I was taking a nap before you rang the doorbell and woke me up.’
She stubbed the cigarette out in a small plate that held some toast crumbs. ‘He could be anywhere. He takes walks in the hills.’ She gestured with her hand as though waving away flies.
Just then Scott’s earpiece reverberated and he heard Eric say, ‘FBI. Identify yourself, Sir,’ then a grunt followed by, ‘Code four!’
This meant Eric was OK but Scott didn’t like what he’d heard. He ran to the sliding door while pulling his gun from its holster. He opened the door, quickly put his head out, pulled it back in and then stepped out fully, holding the gun at the ready by his shoulder.
Eric was between a rangy evergreen bush and the stucco wall of the house, his knee squarely in the center of the back of a man who was facedown in the dirt, struggling and cursing. Eric was already handcuffing him so Scott holstered his own gun. He turned to locate the woman. She was coming to the door, eyes wide.
‘Sky?’ She looked at the man Eric was pulling to his feet. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were in an accident in my van? Huh?’
The man she was addressing was spitting dirt out of his mouth, his face red with anger and exertion. His hair was pale next to the red of his forehead and the veins of his neck were twitching above the collar of his NASCAR logo T-shirt. ‘Shut up! For once, woman, shut your trap.’ He spat once more, directing the spittle to the wall of the house but some of it flew toward the woman.
She ran to him, got on tiptoe, and slapped him hard across the face. He reared back into Eric, who instinctively shoved him forward.
‘Bitch!’ The man tried to kick out with his legs but she was too quick for him and was running inside the house, shouting that he would find his things on the front lawn.
‘Enough!’ Scott’s voice was authoritative and the man stopped struggling in Eric’s hold but he still looked angry. ‘What’s your name?’ Scott demanded.
The man focused on Scott. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot and when he spoke, the ripe smell of alcohol wafted into the air. ‘Sky Horton.’
‘You got any aliases, Mr Horton?’
The man shook his head.
‘What about time inside? We’re going to check on that, so you may as well speak up instead of looking like you’re trying to hide something.’
