Alex rested his hand on the small of my back. “Are you okay, Lawson?”
I used the back of my hand to swipe at my eyes and nose, then spat on the ground and used the bottom of my shirt to wipe my mouth. I nodded, still bent over, hands still on my knees. “Yeah.”
When I straightened up I saw that Alex’s face was pale and his eyes were glassy. He had been a detective for a long time and the crime scenes he was privy to were some of the most gruesome, but this destruction was overwhelming.
“You don’t have to stay out here,” he said, shaking his head. “There’s nothing UDA about this.”
“So you think this was, what? A mountain lion, black bear?”
Alex put his hands on his hips and looked at Detective Campbell, who shrugged, his meaty shoulders brushing his earlobes. “We don’t have many details. A runner found them.” He nodded toward a thin man in papery-looking running shorts, the goose bumps visible on his legs. The man had his hands clasped behind his back and was fidgeting or shivering—I couldn’t tell which—as he gave a statement to two officers.
“The guy runs here every morning, usually heads out about five, five-thirty a.m.”
“He runs the Sutro trail?” Alex asked.
The detective nodded.
“What’s he doing here now?” I wondered. “It’s almost four.”
Detective Campbell sucked on his teeth. “Guy said he missed his run this morning, so he came out on his lunch hour. Put a call into his office and his story checks out. He was working this morning and checked out around eleven-forty.”
“Okay, so he heads off for a run.” Alex turned, his cornflower-blue eyes scanning the trail we had just come from. “He would have been up there. Why did he cut off the trail? What made him come down here?”
I looked up toward the top of the ridge where the trail cut in. The tops of the heads of the onlookers and officers barricading them could just barely be seen. “He probably couldn’t have seen much if he was on the trail. Especially if he was running.”
“The guy said he heard something.”
“Heard something?”
“A rustle, something. He didn’t really say, other than something distracted him from his course.
“He wasn’t wearing earphones, an iPod, anything?”
Detective Campbell shrugged again. “Nah. He’s a real nature type. Says he likes to run first thing in the morning because it’s quiet or just before the lunch rush. He likes the peace.”
I wasn’t a runner—far from it, often considering my other options even when something is chasing me—but something seemed wrong about the runner’s story.
“Excuse me for a second.” Detective Campbell slipped away from us and toward another officer who was chatting comfortably with a newscaster.
I put my hands on my hips, biting my bottom lip. “This smells fishy to me.”
Alex scanned the horizon. “Yeah, well, we are surrounded by the ocean.”
I rolled my eyes. “Who goes running at five a.m.? It’s still dark. And then running at noon? Was he going to go back to work all sweaty?”
Alex wasn’t looking at me. “I don’t know, Lawson.”
“Like I said, fishy. I think this guy is searching for an alibi.”
“Going running is a pretty weak one.”
“Right. And who goes running without an iPod?”
“Someone smart, who knows that he may be relatively alone on this trail, so it’s best to listen to his surroundings rather than the Spice Girls.”
“So sue me for liking classic pop.” I tapped my foot, still unsettled, until it hit me. I spun to face Alex and leaned in close. “Okay, then. You don’t listen to music so you can listen for cars, ax murderers, amphibians, sea-creatures, or whatever. That means the guy takes precautions, right?”
“Lawson, I told you. This is pretty clean,” he gulped, his eyes flitting over the rapidly soiling sheet. “A relatively cut and dry murder case.”
I looked back at Alex, flicked my gaze over the bodies. “It’s anything but cut and dry. Did you see those bodies, Alex?”
His eyes flashed and I practically growled. “Don’t you dare tell me this was probably gangbangers.”
“It’s not your jurisdiction, Lawson.”
“Just tell me this, Alex. What kind of guy takes precautions and runs toward a rustle in the bushes?”
Alex paused, but still didn’t look at me.
“Look at him, Alex. The guy is practically naked.”
Alex glanced over to the runner—his legs were bare, his shorts covering little more than his rear and the tops of his thighs. They were so tight that I could make out a key ring with a single key on it and something small and rectangular—a cell phone or a wallet—pressed into the zipped back pocket. He wore a long-sleeved shirt that was fitted against his thin torso, and sneakers and no socks.
“He’s got no protection and he’s running into the bushes on a practically deserted trail? Explain that.”