Police found traces of acepromazine, a tranquilizer used for animals, on her pillow, and on the carpet flecks of grass that matched the lawn. There were no fingerprints other than those of the girls and the sleep-over family. No one saw a car, no neighbors heard or saw anything. No one heard a dog bark. The family dog, who slept in the fenced yard, and three dogs on the same street had been tranquilized. There were no follow-up sightings of the child. There was no request for ransom.
Juana rose to refill her coffee mug. Unusually bright children and no request for ransom. A dangerous nutcase; dangerous, irreparably twisted. If these were the children found in the senior ladies' garden, they had to consider that the killer had lived in or near Molena Point. She sat looking at the reports, wondering. Could he have lived in the house that now belonged to the seniors? She had already been through the old tax records, she had the names of the two previous owners. That took her back twenty years. There was no record of the tenants; most of those rentals were illegal. All such small illegal apartments, termed granny flats, were presumably kept for family members. She planned to talk with the neighbors this morning. Rising, she was headed out, had stopped at the dispatcher's counter when Garza and Harper came in, the chief carrying a couple of full-size brown envelopes and both of them wearing smug grins.
"Come on," Harper told her, and moved down the hall to Garza's office. Davis followed. Garza sat down at his desk and booted up the computer. Davis and Harper stood in the doorway. Both the chief and Dallas were still grinning. Harper said, "Those old L.A. cases, when Patty's grandchild was murdered?"
Juana nodded.
Harper opened the two brown envelopes, shook the contents out on the desk. She looked down at the newspaper clippings, read them, picked up the photographs. Patty, young and smiling. Looked again at the small man in the clippings, then was grinning like the two of them. Like the cat that ate the canary.
"Sick," she said. "Those poor, bright children. All five, way ahead in school." She picked up one of the old newspaper photographs of Irving Fenner.
Harper said, "We have Fenner's car. He's staying in a rental cottage. Envelopes were under the foundation."
Juana looked at him. "The snitch?"
Harper nodded. "Landlady says Fenner was there last night, at least she heard him come in. Place reeks of booze. And there's more," he said, frowning. "You had breakfast?"
She nodded.
Harper picked up a single doughnut from beside Garza's empty coffeepot, stared at it, entombed in its plastic wrap, and tapped it on the desk. It sounded like a rock. Picking up Garza's phone, he asked Mabel to call Jolly's, see if they could send over some breakfast. He looked at Juana. "Anything from Hyden this morning?"
She shook her head.
He told Mabel, "If Hyden or Anderson calls, put them through."
Juana went down the hall, brought back her pot of fresh coffee. Pouring three mugs, she settled across from the chief in one of Dallas's two worn leather chairs. Reaching to Dallas's desk for the news clippings, she began to read them as Dallas set in motion retrieval of the files from L.A.
Searching for Dulcie, Joe found not the smallest scent of his tabby lady, no hint of a trail until, giving up and heading for the seniors' backyard, he stopped suddenly, sniffing the black iron grill work of a wrought-iron gate.
Yes, Dulcie had gone in there, sometime early this morning; had leaped through the gate into Genelle Yardley's garden. And a child had gone in, too, a little girl. He caught Cora Lee's scent, and then he found Dulcie's second trail, very fresh, coming out again. He followed it up the street toward the seniors' house, and it vanished up a jasmine vine two doors away. When, staring up at the rooftops, he didn't see her, he trotted into the seniors' garden, down the cracked driveway, and around the house. Looking around for her, he approached the tent that had been erected over the dig; he preferred thinking of this crime scene as a dig. He'd never before felt this revulsion at a scene of human death. He didn't see Dulcie. Approaching the tent, he could hear the two scientists inside, softly digging. And a faint swishing sound that told him they were brushing earth from the buried bones.
The first child had been taken away, so he guessed they were still working on the second. Sticking his nose under the canvas, hunched low beneath its heavy folds, he peered at Dr. Anderson's thin, denim-clad posterior where the scientist knelt brushing away earth with a small paintbrush. Joe tried to see around him. Looked like they'd found a third grave. Slipping out and moving farther to the side, peering under again, he could see that two little skeletons lay there. The one that was still here from last night, after the first body was taken away, and now a new victim. Most of the child's side had been uncovered. Anderson was brushing soil from the leg and the little foot. Hyden crouched just a few feet away also using a small paintbrush, removing loose soil from the child's shoulder. This body was smaller than the others. Compared to the heft of the two grown men, it seemed as frail as a baby mouse.
Joe had seldom seen a baby mouse clearly before he gulped it-until recently. The last nest of baby mice he'd encountered, he had turned away, leaving them. Leaving them to grow big, he told himself. Sensible game management, more for later. He did not acknowledge the more compassionate, human side of his nature, except to snarl at his own foolishness and tell himself he was getting soft. Now, when suddenly something pressed against his flank, he went rigid.
A breath tickled his ear.
He turned his head slowly, so not to attract the doctors' attention. Even though he was crouched behind them, he still felt as conspicuous as an elephant in a fishbowl; and these guys were not fond of cats. As he turned, Dulcie's green eyes met his so intently that he had a sharp memory flash of the first time he'd ever seen her. Her green gaze was just as wide then, and intent. That moment when they'd first met, the gleam in her eyes had turned him giddy; it was at that instant that he fell head over paws in love.
Now her little pink mouth curved up in the same secret smile, that smile that still turned him helpless. She nuzzled his shoulder, but then gave him a very businesslike stare, and backed out from under the tent.
He followed her toward the far bushes where they wouldn't be heard. Beneath a bottlebrush bush, they crouched together in the chill shadows. Her voice was faint, but tense with excitement. "Did you check at the PD? Are the reports in yet on those old cases? Any fix on when these children died?"
"You're in a hell of a swivet. What…?"
She didn't answer him, but plunged on, her tail lashing, her paws shifting, her ears and whiskers rigid. "What about the old case files? Surely by this time they-"
"What, Dulcie?"
Her eyes blazed.
"The reports are coming in," Joe said patiently. "I don't think these forensics guys'll have any kind of fix on the dates until they do the lab work. What, Dulcie? What do you have?"
"Were there missing cases, say, around six to eight years ago?"
"Yes. Quite a few." He stared hard at her. "What?"
She was dancing from paw to paw, her green eyes like searchlights, nearly exploding with excitement. "Children from the Pacific Northwest? Seattle? Tacoma?" She was so wired that her tail lashed against the twiggy bushes like a high-powered weed eater.
"Yes, that area."
"Did he kill those children, and then run?"
"Did who kill them? Slow down." He glared at her until she calmed, slowed her lashing tail, and turned away to wash.
Sitting with her back to him, she had a thorough wash before she was cool again, before she turned to look at him once more. "Lori has been to visit Genelle Yardley," she said. "To the old lady's house."
"I know that. I caught your scent, coming up the hill. And a little girl's scent."