As I neared the turnaround, where the tracks looped back, I saw other signs of disturbance: sandy heaps and hollows, which I suspected had been sculpted by the scuffing of feet. Then I spotted something that made my heart race: a midden of cigarette butts strewn beside the tire tracks, as if someone had emptied an ashtray there . . . or had parked and waited for an hour or two, chain-smoking an entire pack, using each cigarette’s final embers to light the next, then dropping the dying butt to the ground beneath the car’s open window.
Suddenly I stopped, my eye caught by what appeared to be another artifact—an odd, enigmatic, and therefore electrifying creation. At the center of the wide turnaround, five fat cigar butts, each as thick as my thumb, jutted upward from the sand a couple of inches apiece. With one at the center and the other four radiating outward from it—each five feet or so from the center—they formed a large, precise geometric shape: like the five dots on dominos or dice . . . or like a giant + sign, measuring ten or twelve feet from tip to tip. A small circle of sand at the base of each stub was black with soot, and as I edged closer, I saw that the cigar butts weren’t cigar butts at all, but the remnants of signal flares stuck into the ground. Set alight in the blackness of this wilderness, they would have created a blazing bull’s-eye here: here in the softest, safest spot for a parachutist leaping into the blackness from a streaking jet.
Hands shaking, I dialed Skidder’s number. Deputy Skidder’s number. Given that he was briefing the sheriff—had probably briefed the sheriff the day before—about the piece of skull, he’d need to relay this information, too. But my call didn’t go through, and when I looked at my phone I saw why. Down in this hollow, miles from town, I had no signal. Zero bars. “Crap,” I muttered; I’d need to return to civilization to make the call. As I turned back toward my car, I spotted signs of civilization—a grim sort of civilization—on the skyline only a few miles away: the guard towers of the state prison. My first thought was a bad pun: plenty of bars at a prison. My second thought was less silly, and maybe even useful: Maybe one of the guards saw something that night.
It took every particle of patience I had to thread the car slowly back down the rocky road and out of the hollow. Once I reached the main road, I floored the gas pedal, gunning the small-caliber engine. I made a skidding turn at the sign pointing toward the prison, then—glancing at my phone and seeing that I had four signal bars—I pulled to the side and phoned the deputy to tell him what I’d found. “This is Skidder,” said the voice-mail greeting. “Leave me a message and I’ll call you back.”
“Deputy, this is Bill Brockton,” I said. “I think I found where Richard’s killer came down when he bailed out that night. Call me back soon as you can.”
Next I scrolled down my list of contacts until I found Special Agent Miles Prescott. I debated the pros and cons of calling him. On the one hand—the call-now hand—an FBI Evidence Response Team would have the best shot at finding any significant evidence, if indeed I was right about what I’d seen; with luck, there might even be recoverable DNA on the cigarette butts, and possibly fingerprints on the unburned bases of the flares. On the other hand—the slow-down hand—the San Diego County sheriff was supposedly engaged in some delicate interagency diplomacy with the FBI, possibly even at this very moment; if I called Prescott directly, rather than letting the sheriff finesse things, I might accidentally sabotage his efforts to refocus the investigation.
I decided to seek a second opinion. This time the call was answered by a human, not a recording. “Safety Board. Maddox.”
“Pat,” I said. “Bill Brockton here.”
“Doc,” he said heartily. “How the hell are you?”
“Well, I’m okay,” I said. “It’s been rocky lately. My wife passed away recently. Unexpectedly.”
“What? Did you just say your wife died?”
“Yes. But—”
“My God, Doc, I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“Thanks, Pat. I appreciate that. But that’s not what I’m calling about.”
“Well, no,” he said, “I realize I might not be your main go-to guy for emotional support. What’s up?”
“You’ll be very interested in this,” I told him. “And I’d appreciate your advice.”
“Advice? Hell, Doc, I stopped giving advice a long damn time ago. I noticed I was nearly always wrong, but even when I was right—especially when I was right—people ended up getting pissed off at me.”
I laughed. “I promise not to get pissed off.”
“I’ll hold you to it, Doc. So to paraphrase the 911 dispatchers, what’s the nature of your advice emergency?”
“So, remember when we talked a few weeks ago? When you said there was a way to bail out of a Citation—out of that Citation—in flight?”
“Sure,” he said. “I don’t surprise that easy anymore, old as I am, but I gotta admit, you coulda knocked me over with a feather when I found out about those belly doors.”
“Well, get ready for another surprise. I found where the guy landed.”
“Come again?”
“I found where he landed. The guy that bailed out.”