THE area known to most locals as the “old Sheffield place” is surrounded by a chain-link fence, and has been since the house on the old estate burned down. I pulled up to a gate normally used by construction crews, where I was recognized by a friend of Frank’s, an old cop who was close to retirement. He regularly angered his bosses, which is probably why he drew this duty on a cold, wet day. He gave me the usual set of warnings about not wandering onto the crime scene itself, and made me sign in-an old hand, he gave me a fresh sheet.
“Trying to keep me from knowing who else has been here?” I asked.
“You already missed the meat wagon,” he said with a wink, and told me my friend Ben Sheridan was the forensic anthropologist on the case. He shook his head. “I don’t know how that guy gets up those slopes with one leg.”
“He’s in better shape than you,” I said, “and with the prosthesis he has, he can manage just about anything he could do before the amputation.”
“Yeah, that’s what Frank says,” he said, but he was still shaking his head. He took the sheet back, radioed his coworkers to warn them I was on the way, and told me to go slow because the road down to the site was “slicker than owl shit.”
His comment about the meat wagon was not lost on me. The coroner had already removed the body. And there had been a body, not just a hand, or they wouldn’t have needed the full-on “wagon.”
I passed what had once been the main road into the estate. As I went by, I caught a glimpse of new construction, rising over what had been charred ruins. The lost structure, the grand Sheffield home, had been owned by one of Las Piernas’s oldest and richest families, and built above the leg-shaped cliffs that gave Las Piernas its name. The Sheffields had once owned vast amounts of land in Las Piernas, and although most of it had been sold off, about six hundred wooded acres remained around the family home at the time it burned down.
The heir donated half of the property to the city on the condition that it be developed into a park. He had worked with the city to create a specific plan before finalizing the donation. Legal and budgetary problems had led to delays, but the mayor was ensuring that development of the park went forward as quickly as possible now.
The rain wasn’t helping.
I eased around a curve in the muddy construction road and thought of something Ben Sheridan once told me: Rain brings the bodies out.
In the forests, in fields, and in vacant lots; in open desert spaces, on mountain slopes, near riverbeds, near creeks. Once in a while, in a backyard. A good rainstorm would reveal the secrets of a shallow grave, wash away whatever hid a body from view, or carry remains to a place where discovery was more likely, if not inevitable.
In the days after a storm, Ben often got calls from sheriff’s departments and coroners, police departments and forest rangers. On this April morning, it had been the Las Piernas County Coroner’s Office.
I negotiated another turn on the access road and was just heading past a turnout when a huge SUV came roaring toward me. I swerved hard to the side to avoid being hit head-on, sliding into the turnout with less-than- perfect control before I came to a halt. The SUV didn’t slow, the driver didn’t so much as glance back.
I had only caught a glimpse of her, but I knew who she was. She was a person who always made sure she stood out in a crowd. She was in her late twenties, but there was a hardness in her features that made her look much older. Chain-smoking probably didn’t help her skin, either. Her hair was cropped close to her skull and was the kind of orange you sometimes see on tigers. It looks better on tigers.
I wouldn’t have minded driving Sheila Dolson off the road, but I would have felt damned bad about harming the other passenger-her search dog, Altair.
I sat in my Jeep Cherokee at the side of the road, a little shaken. I’m sure Sheila, who had been courting my attention from the moment she learned I worked for the newspaper, would have been appalled to realize that she had just missed killing the goose she hoped would lay the golden PR egg-she had been urging me to write about her and her wonder dog.
If I could have written about Altair and not his handler, I might have gone for it.
Sheila had returned to Las Piernas after living in Illinois. In the short time she had been back, she had all but taken over the Las Piernas SAR-search-and-rescue-dog group. Ben and his dogs were in the same group, and Sheila’s presence in it was a source of irritation to him. Ben’s girlfriend-no, recent ex-girlfriend, I reminded myself-was also in the group, and apparently she thought Sheila could do no wrong. I wouldn’t say that Sheila caused their recent breakup, but she definitely hastened it.
I wondered what Sheila was doing here, then remembered that one of the things Ben didn’t like about her was that she didn’t wait to be invited to search scenes.
I carefully pulled out again and slowly made my way to a gravel parking lot at the end of the road. The lot lay at the bottom of a slope. Another small access road ran along the top of the slope. Ben and a young man who looked vaguely familiar to me were studying an area along the slope itself-steep, uneven, and muddy terrain covered with trees, rocks, wet leaves and vines. A scattered set of little flags formed a spill of artificial color down one of the gullies in the face of the slope. Evidence or possible evidence had been found at each of those points along the spill.
Despite my bragging about him at the gate, I wondered if the slope had given Ben any trouble. I worry like this even though it pisses him off.
I noticed that the six men at this site all had some of the landscape on their clothing-although Ben and his assistant had been smart enough to don coveralls. I also noticed that the only person who didn’t have mud stains all over the seat of his pants was Ben. He was being careful. I let go of my concerns for his safety.
They had all looked up when they heard the Jeep approach. Vince Adams, one of the homicide detectives who had caught this case, was standing not far from where I parked, going over some notes. A couple of guys in uniform were present, one standing at the very top of the slope, the other down in the lot, having a cup of coffee from a thermos. Ben glanced up at me, then went back to work with a look of resignation on his face.
From what I could see, things were winding up. Several of the flags were near places along the slope that had been dug out-the remains were already on their way to the coroner’s office, and most of what was happening now had the appearance of the end of an initial search.
Vince greeted me warmly. I hid my surprise. Vince and my husband both work in Homicide, and are friends, but Vince is usually fairly tight-lipped around me. I didn’t take his cordiality to mean I was his new best friend. The police were in need of help from the public on this one.
“Your partner not around?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “Back at headquarters, getting some of the paperwork started.”
“So you drew the short straw.”
He laughed and said I must have, too. I explained that I was just here to get some notes together for Mark Baker, who would be writing the story. “He’ll probably call you a little later today.” That was fine with Vince, who began to give me a basic idea of what had gone on before my arrival.
A pair of workers, beginning the task of setting up a jogging path through the woods, discovered that someone had used this slope as a dumping ground-seven mud-coated green plastic trash bags lay scattered down it. As they drew closer, they noticed a strong smell of decay. The nearest bag had torn open, and some of its contents spilled out onto the damp ground-the workers were horrified to see a decaying human hand lying among some leaves not far from it. The hand was not attached to an arm.
“One of them said he almost puked right then and there,” Vince told me. “And I’m glad he didn’t, ’cause I’ve fallen in every other damned thing on this slope.”
Luckily, the workers had called the police without trying to touch or further examine the bags. Training sessions by the police department’s new lab director had paid off as well-the first officer on the scene didn’t do any exploring, either. This meant the search for the remains and evidence could take place with little disturbance to the scene.
The coroner was tied up on the case out at the oil island, but Ben probably would have been called in, anyway. All of the bags contained body parts. Ben thought they were from one adult male victim.
“That’s not for publication,” Ben said, walking up to us. “I haven’t verified that yet.”
“At least one adult male?” I asked.
He hesitated, but Vince said, “Yes.”
“Found his head,” Vince went on, earning a frown from Ben. “We’re hoping a forensic artist will be able to get
