26
THE STEEP SIDES of the canyon were thickly covered, mostly with old-growth eucalyptus, and this kept a great deal of the park permanently and deeply shaded. The ground cover was likewise dense with the barbs of blackberry bushes, a myriad of other low-lying shrubbery, and a good sprinkling of poison oak. Sometimes a daring hiker or jogger would take one of the slippery deer trails on the way to or from Mount Sutro, but for the most part, the Interior Park Belt remained a desolate place: dark, cold, wet, and generally forbidding.
JaMorris and Abby parked on Stanyan—Hal’s street, about two blocks south of his house—and walked up to where the crime scene was marked by yellow tape, three black-and-white SFPD vehicles, a couple of news vans, an unnecessary ambulance, and the coroner’s van. They showed their credentials to the pair of uniformed cops securing the scene, and then started uphill on a narrow trail of duff and mud to where another knot of officials huddled at a fork a hundred feet along.
The coroner’s assistant, Angie Morena, took a step toward the Homicide inspectors and held up a hand, stopping them. “You’re a little early. Crime Scene hasn’t processed the path. Be careful where you walk.” She pointed to a third spot where the indicated trail, half the width of the one they’d come up, split off to the right through the waist-high shrubbery.
“Who found her?” Abby asked.
“A neighbor kid,” Morena answered, “playing in the woods. The little clearing back in there was one of his hiding places. It’s a pretty good one.”
Both inspectors looked over. The Crime Scene personnel photographing and measuring and looking for clues were visible over the low expanse of greenery, but the object of their attention could not be seen from the main trail.
JaMorris asked, “Any ID on her?”
“Not definite, but she’s the right age and has on what Katie Chase was wearing the last time anybody saw her: jeans, a red pullover, tennis shoes. There’s not much doubt.”
Abby indicated the workers in the clearing. “How long before they’re done?”
“You know as much as me. However long it takes. At least several hours.”
“What if we brought around the husband?” Abby asked. “He’s local, a couple of blocks.”
Morena glanced back over at the crime scene. “Not to protocol,” she said. “We ought to get her to the coroner’s office first. You don’t show the next of kin a body lying in a clearing.”
“I know,” JaMorris said, “but maybe it’s time for some hardball. If he didn’t do it, I’ll apologize later. If he did, maybe this will shake him up and he’ll give us something.”
Fifteen minutes later, the two inspectors and a haggard-looking, stoop-shouldered Hal Chase broke through the cordon of police cars. By now four television vans clogged the street where the trail led up into the shaded canopy. When they got to the trail, Hal stopped and took a deep breath, then looked up the path as though it were a gallows he had to ascend.
“All right,” he said to no one. He stepped up on the curb and over the sidewalk and into the park. From when the inspectors had first shown up at his house through the length of the uphill walk, Hal had projected impatience. He wanted to know; he had to know. But now, as he moved up the path, the urgency was gone. If anything, he seemed reluctant to keep moving.
Or, Abby thought for the tenth time, maybe he was just a fine actor.
They followed him up to where Morena waited. The ever nattily attired Len Faro of the Crime Scene Unit had come out to join her, talking with what looked from the distance to be enthusiasm; maybe he’d found a clue, some fabric snagged on one of the blackberry brambles. He had a plastic bag in his hand; as they got closer, he squared to face the small party and then put both hand and bag in his pocket.
“This is Hal Chase,” JaMorris said when they got up to the other two.
Morena had obviously prepped Faro. He nodded a perfunctory greeting, then added, “We’re all finished in there, if you’d like to follow me. Watch out for the stickers.”
The smaller trail went back into the dense undergrowth for about thirty feet, then turned slightly to the right before it opened into a cleared area perhaps ten feet in diameter. Faro, in the lead, blocked an early visual of the body on the ground, but when he got to the clearing, he stepped to one side. Directly behind him, Hal stopped and drew in a sharp breath.
In the shade, the light was not good, though it was a long way from true dusk. The body lay facing away from them. The cause of death appeared to be a single gunshot wound to the back of the head, as though she’d been walking and, shot from behind at close range, simply fell forward onto her face.
Hal moved up next to the body, on the side her face had turned—one step, then two. He went to a knee, stared at the profile, hung his head. “Oh, Jesus,” he said.
Nobody else said anything.
After a small eternity, he straightened up and turned to face Abby and JaMorris. Even in the dim light, his eyes glistened. Nodding once, he managed to whisper, “Yes, it’s my wife,” before he pushed to one side of the trail and squeezed past the people who’d trooped up behind him. When he got back to the main intersection where they’d hooked up with Morena and Faro, he stopped again and drew another breath, an unconscious moan escaping. He put his hands in his pockets, turned left, and one foot after another, slowly walked downhill.