He held out his hand and Chen knew he meant the diagram. Chen passed it over. It didn't occur to him not to.
First thing the man said was, 'Where's the shooter?'
Chen felt himself darken. 'I can't place him. There's too much obscuration.' He sounded whiny when he said it, and that made him even more embarrassed. 'The police are up on the road. They'll be down any minute.'
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The man stayed with the diagram and seemed not to hear him. Chen wondered if he should make a run for it.
The man handed back the diagram. 'Step off the trail, John.'
'How'd you know my name?'
'It's on the document form.'
'Oh.' Chen felt five years old and ashamed of himself. He was certain he would never get that Porsche. 'Do you have any business being here? Who are you?'
The man bent close to the trail, looking at it from a sharp angle. The man stared at the scuffmark for a time, then moved up the trail a few feet where he went down into a push-up position. He held himself like that without effort, and Chen thought that he must be very strong. Worse, Chen decided that this guy probably got all the poon he could handle. Chen was just beginning to think that maybe he should join a gym (this guy obviously lived in one) when the man stepped to the side of the trail, and looked in the brush and weeds.
John said, 'What are you looking for?'
The man didn't answer, just patiently turned up leaves and twigs, and lifted the ivy.
John took one step closer and the man raised a finger, the ringer saying: Don't.
John froze.
The man continued looking, his search area growing, and John never moved. He stood frozen there, wondering if maybe he should shout for help, sourly thinking that those two up in the radio car were so busy huffing and puffing that they'd never hear his cries.
The man said, 'Your evidence kit.'
John picked up his evidence kit and started forward.
The man raised the finger again, then pointed out a long half-moon route off the trail. 'That way.'
John crashed through the low brush where the man told him, ripping his pants in two places and picking up a ton of little scratches that pissed him off, but when he arrived, the man said, 'Here.'
A brass .22 casing was resting under an olive leaf.
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John said, 'Holy jumpin' Jesus.' He stared at the man, who seemed to be staring back, though John couldn't tell for sure because of the dark glasses. 'How'd you find this?'
'Mark it.'
The man went back to the trail, this time squatting. John jammed a wire into the ground by the casing, then hurried to join him. The man pointed. 'Look. Here to the side.'
John looked, but saw nothing. 'What?'
'Shoe.' The man pointed closer. 'Here.'
John saw little bits and pieces of many prints, but couldn't imagine what this guy was talking about. 'I don't see anything.'
The man didn't say anything for a moment.
'Lean close, John. Use the sun. Let the light catch it, and you'll see the depression. A three-quarter print.' His voice was infinitely patient, and John was thankful for that.
John rested with his belly in the brush alongside the trail, and looked for the longest time where the man pointed. He was just about to admit that he couldn't see a goddamned thing when he finally saw it: Three-quarters of a print, partially obscured by a runner's shoe print, and so shallow on the hard edge of the trail that it couldn't have been more than three grains of dust deep. It appeared to have been made by a casual dress shoe of some kind, like that worn by a cop, but maybe not.
John said, 'The shooter?'
'It's pointing in the right direction. It's where the shooter had to be.'
John glanced back toward the shell casing. 'So you figured an automatic? That's why you looked over there?' An automatic would eject to the right, and would toss a .22 casing about four feet. Then John thought of something and squinted at the man. 'But what if the guy had used a revolver? A revolver wouldn't leave anything behind.'
'Then I wouldn't have found anything.' The man cocked his head almost as if he was amused. 'All the people around, and no one heard it. Can't silence a revolver, John.'
John felt a blush creeping up his face again. 'I know that.'
The man moved along the trail, dropping into his push-up
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position every few feet before rising and moving on. John thought that now would be an ideal time to run for the two uniforms, but instead jammed a wire into the ground to mark the print, and followed the man to a stand of leafy scrub sumac at the edge of the little clearing just up the trail. The man circled the trees, first one way, then another, twice bending low to the ground.
'He waited here until he saw her.'
John moved closer, careful to stay behind the man, and, sure enough, there were three perfect prints in the hard dirt that appeared to match the partial by the shell casing. As before, the prints were slight, and damn near invisible even after the man pointed them out, but John was getting better at this.
By the time John had taken it all in, the man was moving again. John hurried to wire the site before hustling to catch up.
They came to the chain-link fence that paralleled the road, and stopped at the gate. John guessed that the paved road would be as far as they could go, but the man stared across the road as if the slope on the other side was speaking to him. The radio car was to their left at the curve, but judging by the way the two cops were wrestling around in the back seat, they wouldn't notice an atom bomb going off behind them. Sluts.
The man looked up at the ridge. Off to their left were houses; to their right, nothing. The man's gaze went to a little stand of jacaranda trees at the edge of the road to their right, and then he was crossing and John was following.
John said, 'You think he crossed there?'
The man didn't answer. Okay. He wasn't talkative. John could live with that.
The man searched the slope in front of the jacarandas and found something that made his mouth twitch.
John said, 'What? C'mon?'
The man pointed to a small fan of loose dirt that had tumbled onto the shoulder of the road. 'Hid behind the trees until people passed, then went through the gate.'
'Cool.' John Chen was liking this. Big time.
They climbed the slope, the shooter's prints now pronounced in the loose soil of the side hill. They worked their way to the
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ridgeline, then went over the top to a fire road. John hadn't even known that a fire road was up here.
He said, 'I'll be damned.'
The man followed the fire road about thirty yards before he stopped and stared at nothing again. John waited, biting the inside of his mouth rather than again asking what the man was looking at.
