“Oh, he drove it—” I begin, but Jimmy stops me with a furtive hand motion and indicates to the left with his eyes. I see Danny coming back toward us.
“You find what you’re looking for?” Officer Coors asks, looking from me to Jimmy, then back to me.
“Typical doper ride,” I say, giving him a crooked smile and thumbing toward the car. “Hard to tell how much of this mess was Ashley’s and how much was Jacob’s.”
“I hear ya. The worst of it was cleared out when it was impounded—moldy hamburger, used syringes, used condoms, stuff like that. About twenty pounds of pure nasty. I don’t know how they live like that.”
“I don’t call it living,” Jimmy says in a tired voice.
“I just pulled the property sheet,” Danny says, waving a lined and columned page in his hand. “It looks like they took about fifteen pieces of stolen property from the interior and the trunk. I don’t think any of that had to do with Ashley, though. Most of it was linked back to several burglaries we had a few months back. A couple items that weren’t claimed are still in evidence, including … let’s see.” He scans quickly down the list. “A ring—a dolphin ring, it looks like. Plus there’s a package of brand-new unopened men’s socks that were probably shoplifted, and … here it is, a TomTom GPS.”
“The GPS might be worth a look,” Jimmy says. “Remember Quillan?”
“Yeah, not a chance,” I say. “We’re not that lucky.”
We take a chance anyway.
Danny leads us into the main warehouse, where, with the help of an evidence technician, he retrieves the impounded GPS. The batteries are dead, so it takes a few more minutes to find and cannibalize a desk clock in the office that has the required AAA batteries.
“Try holding the button down for five seconds,” Jimmy says after the new batteries have no effect.
“That only works on a frozen computer,” I say, “and only when you’re trying to shut it down, not turn it on.” But I hold the button anyway.
Nothing.
And still nothing. Technology is a marvelous apocalypse of electricity. No wonder people sometimes lose their mind and pump some twelve-gauge slugs into their computer. In most cases it’s justifiable.
Danny retrieves the clock batteries and seals the GPS back in the evidence bag. “I’ll send it to the lab. Maybe they can retrieve something from the chip.” I hand him my card—Magnus Craig, Operations Specialist, Special Tracking Unit, FBI—and he promises to call in a day or two.
Back in the car, Jimmy scribbles some comments in his notebook … again. He hasn’t even hinted at what he’s working on, which has me curious, and therefore irritated. He knows it’s killing me, but I’ll let him do his thing, play his little game. He’ll tell me eventually. He has to. I mean, it has to be something related to the case, he just wants to make sure he’s right before he pops it on me.
I can wait. Sure I can wait. Patience is a virtue and the sign of a calm, mature mind. He’ll tell me soon enough, no sense in getting all spun up over it.
“What do you keep writing in that notebook?” I blurt as he closes the cover and stuffs it back into his dark brown Fossil Estate leather portfolio briefcase.
Damnation!
Virtue—gone.
Patience—gone.
Jimmy doesn’t answer right away, but pushes back in his seat, fishes the keys out of his pocket, starts the car, adjusts the radio, checks his hair in the mirror. After spending forever adjusting his seat—seriously, he could have built a new one faster—he lifts his sunglasses just enough so I can see his eyes and says, “Patience is a virtue,” then throws the car in gear.
Damnation!
The rest of the day goes quickly. First to Weed for Sarah Wells, where we don’t find any of Sad Face’s shine on her car, but we do find his mark on her mailbox in pink crayon. Her body was dumped in the Shasta National Forest west of Weed, along a hiking trail but obscured by bushes. The park rangers were able to take us to the exact spot: a dim, oppressive patch of wood with violence spilled upon the ground in a rainbow of color.
I could feel the trees pressing in …
… leaning over me.
Whispering.
Always whispering.
We finally make our way back to Millville, a small community just east of Redding, for the first victim, Valerie Heagle, whose body was dumped in the Odd Fellows Cemetery off Brookdale Road. There was no attempt to hide her body and the story got a lot of local attention, probably more than Sad Face wanted.
He was more careful after that.
Since the body was found outside the Redding city limits, the case landed in the lap of the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office. Everything in the case report shows a competent, well-executed investigation, but there was no DNA, no hair follicles, no prints, nothing to point to a suspect or even hint at one.
The killer had done his homework; forensics revealed that the body had been washed down in bleach. The interior of Valerie’s car, a 1992 Jeep Cherokee, had also been wiped free of prints and spritzed with a bleach solution.
The only good news is the vehicle is still in police impound. It’s locked away in a storage building protected from the elements, the same building that holds Alison Lister’s Honda, but in a separate room. When we arrive and walk through the roll-up door, I see it tucked away in a corner, the sad relic of a heinous crime now collecting dust and years.
Sad Face is all over the Jeep: the driver’s seat, the cargo area, the glove box, and, once more, the gas cap. Cut into the grime on the back window, almost indistinguishable now, is his mark. The eyes have blurred out to hazy smudges, but most of the circle is intact, along with the nose and half of the ugly, downturned mouth.
I see it all in neon amaranth and rust.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Redding, 8:13 P.M.