The tall grass behind her rustled. Wayne’s voice said, “Grossman just told me he wants both of us on this.”
“Yeah, he said the same to me.” She pointed to the detective and his partner as they descended to the cove with a pair of her colleagues.
Wayne asked, “What do they think they’re gonna find down there? Won’t be any evidence. She didn’t go into the water here.”
“No.” Rho consulted her knowledge of the currents, pictured this week’s tide table. “It would have to be someplace north, no farther than Deer Harbor and no earlier than last night. She isn’t bloated or banged up enough to have been in the water any longer.”
“Yeah. You know, I liked this better when I thought it was a simple case of a stranded tourist wandering out here in the dark and falling off the cliff.”
“But the fact that all she’s wearing is that tube top, plus those bruises on her wrists, throat, and thighs — we’re looking at murder here. Probably rape-and-murder. Kidnapping too.”
“So you think she was the woman that gook poacher saw getting snatched?”
“It’d be a big coincidence if she wasn’t.”
“And her murder was connected with the poaching?”
“Maybe. Did you hear that Zhi Phung was strangled by one of his cellmates last night?”
Wayne frowned. “No. Why wasn’t I told?”
“Central reported the death to DFG, who tried to reach you. When you weren’t available, they called me.”
His eyes flicked away from hers and scanned the horizon. Rho knew him well enough to guess that he’d been unavailable because he’d hit the bars after the scene in the hotel.
She went on, “Zhi may have been killed because someone from the poaching ring abducted the woman. Or his murder may have been simple retaliation for breaking their code of honor. I doubt we’ll find out soon, if ever, because none of the cellmates is talking.”
Wayne compressed his lips and shook his head. “Jesus, something like this couldn’t’ve happened at a worse time. With the anniversary coming up, it’ll revive all the old fears and suspicions.”
The anniversary of the canyon murders. The fears and suspicions that a monster still lived among them.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” she said. “Grossman’s a good detective, and discreet. He’ll keep a lid on this. Nobody’s going to know much of anything till Santa Carla releases the autopsy results. In the meantime, I’ve already gotten started on the Mercedes angle. Once I locate its owner, I can get an ID on our victim.”
“A little while ago you said it might be her.”
“I know, I was being cautious. But what’re the chances it’s not?”
“Slim.”
“Okay, we’ll talk with Grossman once he gets back up here and get rolling. I’ll handle the ID. You start asking around for anybody who might’ve seen her, see if you can get a handle on the chain of events, establish a time line. An appeal on the public-access TV station could help.”
The big deputy didn’t respond. Rho looked at him, saw his conflicted expression.
“What?” she asked.
He shook his head.
Earlier he’d mentioned the old fears and suspicions. Now they were working on her. “Wayne, how’d you know she was still at the turnout after nightfall?”
“What?”
“You said you liked it better when you thought it was a case of a stranded motorist wandering out here in the dark.”
“You would catch that.” His mouth twisted wryly. “Okay, Friday night I was... seeing somebody down in Westhaven. On my way back I spotted the woman in my truck’s headlights. She was wearing a long sweater, down to her knees, but her legs were bare, and she must’ve been cold. Normally I would’ve stopped, but I was late getting home and worried about catching hell from Janie. So I didn’t.”
He paused, shaking his head. “Dammit, Rho, it’s my job to look out for people, but I just left her standing there. What the hell does that make me?”
Guy crept along in the line of rubberneckers past the turnout where he’d seen the girl on Friday afternoon. Her black Mercedes was still there, but now it was being winched up onto a flatbed tow truck, and the turnout was clogged with emergency vehicles and sheriff’s department cruisers. The helicopter he’d seen earlier had put down beyond the fence. Yellow crime-scene tape cordoned off the area, and highway patrol officers waved the traffic on.
He pictured the girl, her long blonde hair stirring in the sea breeze. How long had it taken before Diana’s conscience-prodding voice forced him to U-turn? Five minutes, max. A brief interval, but enough time for something to have happened to the girl. If this commotion had anything to do with her. They might simply be towing the abandoned car to make room for the other vehicles.
Still, he felt a twinge, as well as a certain curiosity, mainly because he suspected that Rhoda Swift might be one of the officers on the scene. But there was no escaping this endless line of traffic—
He spotted a dirt track to his right, house numbers hanging crooked on a fencepost. When he braked and turned in there the driver of the car behind him leaned on his horn. The rutted track wound through a thick stand of pines and terminated at a clearing where a weather-beaten two-story farmhouse slumped. A barn and some outbuildings lay in a state of disrepair to the south, and an old pickup was pulled into a makeshift shed. Guy stopped his car and got out, eyeing the house warily. No smoke came from its brick chimney, no dogs barked, no one appeared at the door or windows.
He remained by the car for a moment, getting his bearings, then began walking through the pines toward the sea. On their far side a barren bluff stretched toward cliffs that fell away to whitewater. Guy angled north, past burned trees and huge clumps of those strange plants with fluffy beige plumes that he’d observed on Friday. At the cliff’s edge he braced himself against the wind and looked down.
It was low tide, and the rocks on the floor of the cove lay exposed, slick and slimy-looking in the gray light. Larger birdlimed formations rose above the placid offshore water, thick layers of black kelp swaying around them like submerged shag carpeting. Guy could smell the kelp: pungent, herbaceous, briny. Then the wind shifted, and he heard sounds that drew his attention to the downslope.
Sheriff’s deputies, two of them, and a pair of men in plainclothes were descending to the cove, probably to search for evidence of whatever mishap had occurred there. Guy had a familiarity with crime scenes, as he’d once covered the police beat for a now defunct New York State daily, and the sight stirred memories. Many of them bittersweet, because it was at one of those scenes that he’d met Diana, then a television camerawoman. He quickly filed them away so he could concentrate on the present.
“You’re trespassing, young man.”
The voice, cracked with age, came from behind him. He turned slowly, saw a man whose eroded face matched the voice, standing some five feet away with a shotgun cradled in his arms. In his seventies, perhaps his eighties, with wispy gray hair and a gap-toothed mouth, dressed in plaid wool and denim.
Guy said, “I thought this was public land.”
“Bullshit,” the man replied, not unpleasantly. “You had to come up my driveway to get here.”
“How much acreage do you own?”
“One hundred ninety-seven on this side of the highway, and a small parcel on the other, where my well house is. Was my grandfather’s, my father’s, mine. When I’m gone it’ll be the bank’s, and good riddance.”
“Why good riddance?”
“Place is cursed, God’s truth.”
“How?”
“Ask a lot of questions, don’t you? What’s your name?”
“Guy Newberry.”
“I’m Gregory Cordova. Now, Mr. Newberry, why’d you come out here?”