Читать книгу A Body To Die For - G. A. McKevett - Страница 11

“I can’t believe we’re driving down Sulphur Creek Road, and you’re not accusing me of eating chili for dinner last night,” Dirk said.

Savannah looked out the passenger side window at the moonlit, prickly cactus-covered hills and tried not to breathe. This area of the foothills was known for its sulphur deposits and its distinctive odor. It smelled a bit like rotten eggs, week-old cabbage soup, and Dirk after a night of chili, tacos, or anything containing beans.

For the past eighteen years, whenever they had ventured this way, she had accused him of polluting her personal airspace.

But with age she had become wiser. Less judgmental. Less accusatory. Kinder and milder.

“I know it’s not you,” she said, “it’s the creek.”

“Damn right it’s not me. Glad you finally got that straight.”

“Oh, yeah. Like you’re above it, you gaseous, odious beast.”

Okay. Just wiser.

Savannah glanced at her watch. 9:48. This was destined to be another one of those exhausting, draining, all-nighters, for which her only compensation would be the pleasure of Dirk’s scintillating wit and the warmth of his companionship.

She could be home right now cuddled up in her bed with a steamy novel, Cleo draped across her feet, Diamante tucked under her left arm, a piece of Death by Chocolate cake heaped with whipped cream sitting on her nightstand.

Someday she’d learn to say “no” to these invitations of working for nothing.

But it wasn’t going to be tonight. Because a moment later, they rounded a curve and she saw the blue and red flashing lights from the police cruisers parked around their crime scene. The sight of the guys in uniform milling around, checking out the area, caused a major rush of adrenaline to hit her system.

It was a hit that was stronger than any shot of espresso or slice of Death by Chocolate cake. And she knew she wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world right now.

Dirk pulled the Buick off the road, onto the shoulder. There was barely enough room to park the car between the pavement and the steep, rocky hill that rose to their right. And to the left, on the other side of the road was a reinforced guardrail and less than two feet beyond that, a sharp drop of at least five hundred feet.

All too well, Savannah remembered when they had responded to a call out here about ten years ago because a carload of drunken teenagers had gone off this cliff.

That’s when the guardrail had been reinforced. Too late, of course.

She had hated this crook in the road ever since.

The locals had given it the terribly original name of Deadman’s Curve, and apparently, the notorious spot was living up to its name again. About sixty feet ahead of them, a bright red Jaguar convertible sat on the left side of the road nearest the cliff, only inches from the guardrail. It was facing the opposite direction.

They got out of the Buick and walked down the road toward the Jaguar. “Looks like somebody’s awake enough to play the yellow tape,” Dirk said as they stepped over the yellow plastic ribbon that was strung around the scene.

Savannah was glad that the area had been cordoned off, too, but for a different reason than Dirk. She had better, more pleasant, things to do than listen to him chew out his insubordinates—like clean her oven or visit her dentist. And since Dirk had been on the SCPD longer than almost everyone, including the captain and chief of police, the list of insubordinates he could abuse was a long one.

As they approached the Jaguar, several of the policemen nodded to Dirk and greeted Savannah. They didn’t appear to be doing much except providing a “presence,” meandering around the scene, chatting with each other.

Savannah knew the drill all too well. Cops were just as nosy as anybody else. Hanging out at a crime scene provided a lot better entertainment than sitting in your squad car in an all-night convenience store parking lot, sipping free coffee.

A middle-aged cop wearing a uniform that was stretched tight across his ample belly walked over to them and put out his hand to Dirk.

“Sergeant Coulter. Good to see you,” he said with a modicum of enthusiasm.

Dirk gave him a grunt and a brief handshake that was dismissive at best.

The cop turned to Savannah, perhaps searching for a warmer form of communication. “Hi, Savannah. You’re looking mighty fine tonight.”

Savannah gave him a quick once-over, thinking that, even though he was totally bald—not a hint of a hair on his head—his appearance wouldn’t have been improved one iota if he’d had a world-class toupee.

“Why, thank you, darlin’,” she replied, desperately trying to remember the guy’s name. “You’re pretty easy on the eyes yourself.”

He flushed with pleasure at the compliment. In fact, he was so pleased that she felt only half-guilty for lying to him.

If Granny Reid’s predictions were right, any minute now her nose would begin to grow, and her tongue would turn black and fall out.

“Are you senior officer here, Wiggins?” Dirk asked him, waves of impatience rolling off him.

“Yeah,” was the equally curt reply.

“Start a log yet?”

Rather than answer, Wiggins held up a clipboard with some forms attached.

“Okay.” Dirk nodded toward the mob of blue uniforms crowding around the Jaguar. “Get all their names and tell them to stay at least twenty feet from the vehicle. Did you call CSI yet?”

“Um…not yet.”

“What are you waiting for? Do it! They should’ve been halfway here by now.”

Wiggins walked away and once he was out of earshot, Dirk said, “Easy on the eyes, my ass. Herb Wiggins is as ugly as a junkyard dog, but not nearly as smart.”

“Herb. That’s his first name.”

“He’s fat and bald.”

“He’s sweet.”

“Hurrumph.”

She could have added that Dirk wasn’t as svelte around the middle as he’d once been, not to mention a little thin on top. But in all the years she’d known him, he had never once criticized her midlife spread, so…

Once Wiggins had delivered Dirk’s message, the uniforms scattered, standing a respectable distance away, and watched, eager to see what was going to happen next.

“Tromped all over my crime scene,” Dirk mumbled as he and Savannah approached the Jaguar. Then, loudly, he said, “You bunch of morons. Don’t you know to respect the perimeter of a scene? All of you…check the treads of your shoes before you leave here. I don’t want anybody walking off with evidence, like a spent shell.”

Immediately, fifteen to twenty policemen began hopping on one leg, then the other, as they lifted their feet and examined their soles. It reminded Savannah of a really bad Riverdance routine, and she had to suppress a giggle.

Her moment of humor faded, though, as they neared the convertible.

The car was only dimly illuminated by the headlights and flashing lights of the squad cars. Momentarily, the moon had gone behind some clouds, and there were no streetlights of any kind up in the foothills outside of town. The red and blue lights playing over the glistening surface of the expensive automobile gave it an eerie, sinister appearance.

She felt a prickling feeling that ran along the back of her neck and down her arms, a sensation she’d had many times when approaching the scene of a violent crime.

She was prepared to admit that some of the creepy feeling she was experiencing might have been due to what she had been told about the car’s interior. But many times when approaching an area—even before she knew it was the scene of a crime—she had felt the same instinctive revulsion sweep over her, warning her that all wasn’t well.

And all wasn’t well with the Jaguar. The top was down on the convertible and even in the poor lighting, the gory evidence was obvious.

The blood spray on the passenger’s side of the windshield and the other biological matter on the fine, burled walnut trimmed dash, told the story all too clearly; someone had been murdered in that vehicle.

“Ee-e-ew,” she said, feeling her stomach turn.

“Yeah,” he replied. “At moments like this I wish I’d followed my dream and gone into another line of work.”

“Dream? You had a dream?”

“Well, don’t look so damned surprised.”

“What was it?”

“I’m not telling you.”

She gouged him in the ribs. “Tell me.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“You’ll laugh, and I’m busy.”

He had her there. They were busy. With Bill Jardin’s brains on his dash, there were more important things to attend to.

She flipped a mental switch and went into professional mode.

A young policeman walked by, and she asked to borrow his flashlight. He handed it to her with a flirtatious smile, and as he walked away, it occurred to her that she did miss being a cop, being surrounded by gorgeous, virile and…okay…seriously horny…men all day.

She sighed and mentally flipped that switch again.

Playing the beam of the flashlight over the exterior of the car, she said, “This vehicle hasn’t been sitting here for any five days. It’s dusty and dirty up in these hills, but the outside of this car is as clean as a whistle.” She trailed the light over the seats and doors. “And other than the blood spatter, it’s clean inside, too.”

“Of course it hasn’t been here,” Dirk said, slightly miffed.

She had paid attention to two other males in less than five minutes and that was bound to put him in a huff every time.

“You don’t have to be snippy about it,” she said.

“It’s just obvious. This car cost more than my trailer and—”

“Well, ye-e-eah. More than your whole trailer park.”

“Be that as it may. My point is: A car like this one doesn’t sit abandoned without people noticing and reporting it, or stealing it, or stripping it, or God knows what. I don’t know where it’s been before, but it’s been sitting here only a few hours, I can guarantee you.”

She had to agree with him. While Sulphur Creek Road wasn’t as heavily traveled as your average Southern California freeway, it was the main road connecting San Carmelita with Twin Oaks, a smaller inland community of about three thousand people.

“That’s true,” she said. “A red Jaguar convertible sitting on Deadman’s Curve would have raised a ruckus, even if no one had noticed the bloodstained interior.”

“Lemme borrow that flashlight,” Dirk said.

She handed it to him, and he walked slowly toward the guardrail.

Knowing his fear of heights, Savannah couldn’t help admiring him and snickering just a little, as she watched him tiptoe up to the edge and peek over. Her thing was snakes. His was heights. She freaked out at the sight of an over-grown worm; he couldn’t go more than three rungs up a ladder.

Hey, you couldn’t be a superhero twenty-four hours a day.

She joined him at the railing as he trailed the beam of the flashlight back and forth over the thick sagebrush, cacti, and large craggy rocks that covered the steep cliff.

At the very bottom, far beyond the reach of the simple flashlight, was a river. She could hear it, rushing over its rocky bed and she had seen it before—the day the kids had gone over the cliff and landed in the water, upside down.

That was a day she would never be able to forget.

“Hell of a thing,” Dirk muttered. “This happening here of all places. I thought we were done with this friggen place.”

She reached for his hand and for a moment, her fingers entwined with his. She squeezed them gently. “I know, buddy,” she said. “I was thinking the same thing.”

She released his hand before any of the other cops could see. No point in starting rumors. And policemen gossiped worse than anybody she knew. Probably because they had more exciting tales to tell than the average accountant or store clerk.

“There’s a lot of water down there,” she said, stating the obvious in an attempt to change the subject. “All those rains we’ve had. One storm after the other last week.”

“And that one last night was a doozy,” he replied, playing along.

Yeah, she thought, when all else fails, discuss the weather.

After a few more awkward moments of reminiscing, Savannah said, “If they took his body out of that car and threw it off this cliff…do you think he’d hit the water down there?”

Dirk leaned forward, ever so slightly, and took a quick look. “Yeah. I do. It’s pretty much straight down.” He took a couple of steps back from the guardrail. “I really wish it wasn’t this spot,” he said. “For more reasons than one.”

“I hear you.”

Gently, with her best fake-nonchalant look on her face, she took the flashlight from his hand.

Stepping around him, she moved closer to the railing and shone the light down the cliff.

Unlike him, she was fine with cliffs. As long as those cliffs were certifiably snake-free.

Swinging the light back and forth, she peered into the darkness and saw nothing at the bottom but a black void. However, as she trained the light on the cliff itself, she saw something interesting.

“I think he’s down there,” she said.

Phobia or no phobia, Dirk was instantly alert. He took a few steps, closing the gap between them.

“Why? What do you see?”

“Some broken cactuses, I mean, cacti or whatever. Right down there. See?”

He did see. It was obvious, several large clumps of prickly pear about ten feet down from the edge, broken—their pads torn off or crushed. And all around the smashed cacti was equally damaged sagebrush.

“Something definitely went down through there. Recently,” he said. “Something big.”

“Like a human being,” Savannah added.

“Exactly like a human being. And even if he was alive when he went over that cliff, he sure wouldn’t be by the time he hit the bottom.”

Savannah winced at the very thought. The cliff with its sharp, jagged rocks and nettled vegetation, that terrible drop, and of course the river at the bottom with its rushing water and stone-covered banks and bed.

She glanced back at the luxury car, fouled by its gruesome biological evidence. “I guess the good news for Bill Jardin is…” she said, “…he wasn’t alive when he went over.”

Dirk shook his head. “Yeah, right. Goody for him.”

Savannah looked at her watch. 10:15. “It won’t be dawn for hours,” she said. “And there’s no way we’re going to find him until we’ve got some daylight.”

“That’s for sure. We’ll get the crime scene unit out here as soon as it’s light to process that car, the road, and as much of this cliff as they can get to. That’s gonna be great fun for them, processing a scene while hanging from ropes.”

“And of course, we have to go down there to search the river—either rappel down the cliff or have a chopper drop us.”

He didn’t answer, and she knew he was searching his mind for any excuse to get out of doing either of those.

“Your mom could have another emergency appendectomy,” she suggested.

“Naw.” He sighed. “They wouldn’t buy it. She’s already had three in the past five years.”

“That’s gotta be some sort of record.”

“Yeah, especially for a woman who’s been dead twenty years.”

She stifled a giggle. “This time you might have to fake an attack yourself.”

He took another tentative look over the cliff. “Hell, if it comes down to it, I’d rather actually have the operation. Anything would be better than going over that cliff on a rope or hanging from a helicopter by a thread.”

Turning away from the guardrail, he shuddered and added, “I hear you don’t really need an appendix.”

“Yeah,” Savannah replied. “They’re just for decoration anyway.”

Savannah had considered going home and grabbing a few hours of sleep before daybreak came and the next step in the search for Bill Jardin would begin. Certainly, it would have been the sensible thing to do.

But she hadn’t considered it seriously. Of all her many virtues—which, of course, included humility—“sensible” wasn’t at the top of the list.

Years ago, she had discovered that she could usually circumvent the biological need to sleep, if she only had enough adrenaline, caffeine, and simple carbs in the form of baked goods or chocolate.

Now, after hours of hanging around the abandoned Jaguar, shooting the breeze with every uniformed cop on the scene, and ignoring the increasingly testy Dirk, she was running low on adrenaline. So, she was delighted to see the hot pink Volkswagen bug pull up to the perimeter edge and a bouncy blonde pop out.

“Tammy!” Savannah shouted, as though greeting a long-lost relative at the airport. Actually, she was happier to see Tammy than she would have been to see any of her Georgia family, with the exception of her beloved Granny Reid.

And one of the reasons for her elation was the bag in her assistant’s hand.

It was a white bag, with “Patty Cake Bakery” printed in red on the side. The much needed nutrition-free simple carbs and caffeine had arrived!

“Dirk! Hey, Dirk, get over here,” Savannah yelled to him.

He was sitting in the front seat of his Buick, his arms crossed over the top of the steering wheel, his head resting on his forearms.

He looked the picture of dejection. But Savannah knew it was more like the epitome of barely repressed terror.

Dawn was breaking, and he still hadn’t come up with a good excuse not to lead his investigation team over the side of that cliff. She was relieved that he didn’t have any cyanide capsules in the Buick’s glove box.

He needed food. Free food.

If that couldn’t cheer him up and take his mind off his troubles, nothing could.

Oh-so-slowly, he raised his head. Just an inch at first. Then, enough to peek at her over his burly forearms.

She tried not to laugh. Big, bad Dirk, my butt, she thought. He’d run headlong into a room full of “considered armed and dangerous” perps, Smith & Wesson drawn, a Clint Eastwood scowl on his face. But ask him to climb up a ladder to paint some window trim? Forget about it. He wouldn’t show his face at painting parties, not even for a free keg of beer and all-you-can-eat pepperoni pizza.

She knew. She had tried.

“Come here!” she told him again.

When he didn’t budge, she pointed to Tammy.

He looked that way and when he saw the Patty Cake bag, he came alive, jumping out of the car and hurrying over to them.

Savannah felt a surge of affection toward him. She had often thought that the basis of their long-standing friendship was their mutual love of junk food and artificial stimulants.

But Tammy appeared less happy. By the dim light of the early dawn, Savannah could see a half-smile, half-grimace on her pretty face, and she knew exactly why. Tammy was thrilled to be here, to be part of the action. And the grimace was because…

“You know I hate having to buy this crap for you,” she said as she held the sack out to Savannah with two fingers, like a dog walker holding a plastic bag with their Fido’s dumpings inside. “It goes against my principles to even step into an establishment that sells poison like that to human beings and calls it ‘food.’ Who—”

“Smells great in there, though, doesn’t it?” Dirk said, trying to pull the bag out of Savannah’s hand. “I mean, you have to admit the smell of the coffee brewing, along with the fresh-baked muffins and stuff.”

Tammy grinned. “Yeah, okay, it smelled great, but what’s to keep them from selling at least one whole-bran muffin or something with an actual nutrient in it?”

Savannah handed Dirk his usual oversized apple fritter and a cup of black coffee. “I think Patty gets a lot more pigs like Dirk and me in her place than she does intelligent, health-conscious people like you.”

Tammy opened her mouth to retort, then snapped it closed. Why continue to argue when you’ve already won?

She glanced around, taking in all the activity. The van with the Crime Scene Unit’s logo on the side had just arrived. Technicians in their spotless white lab coats, cases in hand, were descending on the Jaguar.

But the county coroner’s van was conspicuously absent.

“No body yet?” she asked.

“No,” Savannah said. “Plenty of biological matter for CSU to process, but no actual DB yet.”

“Are we sure he’s dead?” Tammy asked.

“Oh yeah,” Dirk said. “At least, if the spatter is Jardin’s, it’s a lock he ain’t among the living no more.”

Tammy brightened—far more than was decent under the circumstances. “So, we get to go mountain climbing and look for the body! Cool!”

What a ghoul, Savannah thought. Maybe she had over-trained the kid. Tammy cried at the thought of chickens losing their lives and being made into nuggets, but finding a human corpse…that was cool stuff?

“Yeah, yeah, mountain climbing. Yippee,” Dirk grumbled. He took a long drink of his coffee and sauntered back to the Buick.

“What’s the matter with him?” Tammy asked.

Savannah bit into a maple bar and closed her eyes to savor it just a moment before answering. She swallowed, opened her eyes and said, “Dirk, heights, remember?”

“Oh, right. He won’t even climb onto a chair to change a lightbulb. I guess he’s not big on rappelling down a cliff.”

“You think?”

“I’ll go. I’m into that stuff.”

Savannah smiled, basking in the sunshine energy that her dear friend exuded. Tammy was into anything. Tammy was into life.

Nodding toward the Jaguar, Tammy said, “May I look?”

“Sure. Don’t get in anybody’s way and if anybody says anything to you, tell them you’re Dirk’s kid sister.”

Tammy’s face fell. “You think that would actually score me points? I mean, Dirk hasn’t won any Mr. Congeniality contests in the department.”

“True. Tell them you’re Miss July on this year’s National Law Enforcement Calendar.”

“National Law Enforcement Calendar?”

“Yeah, the one they sell to benefit cops going through divorces because they availed themselves of the free services of sex workers while on the job.”

“What?” Tammy’s eyes widened. “They have a charity fund for that?”

“Of course not. Well, not that I know of. But once you say, ‘Miss July,’ their brains will lock up and freeze, so it doesn’t matter what you say after that.”

“Okay.”

Savannah chuckled as Tammy strolled away, looking particularly fetching in her snug red T-shirt, denim shorts, and espadrilles, her long golden hair shining in the early morning light. No, Tammy wouldn’t have any problem getting around this scene or any other scene where the population was predominately male.

As Savannah walked over to the Buick to join Dirk, she heard a familiar sound in the distance—helicopter blades, beating the air, in a distinctive staccato rhythm, rapidly approaching.

“Sounds like our ‘eye in the sky’ has arrived,” she said as she opened the passenger’s door and slid into the car beside him.

“Yes, and please, please, God, let them find him,” Dirk said.

“Wouldn’t that be good?” Savannah said. “Then you wouldn’t have to go over the edge on a rope and get all nervous and barf and embarrass yourself in front of everybody? Wouldn’t that be peachy keen?”

Dirk responded with a “drop dead” look.

She took a bite of her maple bar, chewed it, savored it, swallowed, and said, “Too bad nothing good like that ever happens to you.”

“Screw you.”

She laughed.

He slid lower in his seat, and once again, draped his arms across the steering wheel and leaned his head on them.

“Want half of my other maple bar?” she asked, reaching out to snatch him from the gaping jaws of depression.

He was instantly alert, but indignant. “Other? Other maple bar? She got you two? How come she got you two maple bars? She only got me one lousy fritter.”

“’Cause she likes me best.” She tore the pastry in two and held the half out to him. “Do you want it or not?”

Before he could reach for it, his cell phone rang. It was a ringtone she didn’t recognize, a standard, generic buzz. Very unlike Dirk, who had assigned some kind of a song, usually rock-and-roll, to everyone he knew.

“Coulter,” he barked. “Who’s this?” He dropped his gruffness instantly and became Sunshine and Light. “Oh, right. Hi! How are you today?”

A beloved family member, maybe? Savannah mused. No, Dirk didn’t have family, beloved or not.

His smile broadened. He was practically dancing in his jeans. “Wow! Fantastic!”

Perhaps someone saying he’d won some lottery money…or better yet, a free trip to a buffet?

“Oh, man, that’s great! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”

Holy cow! Savannah thought. He hadn’t been this happy when she’d given him that Harley-Davidson T-shirt eighteen years ago. And she was pretty sure he’d insist on being buried in that ratty shirt.

“Okay. Again, thank you so-o-o much. I owe you one, man. I do. I won’t forget this!”

He punched the “off” button, turned and gave her a big, nanny-nanny-boo-boo-smirk. “So! Good things don’t happen to me, huh? Isn’t that what you just said? I could have sworn that was just what you said. I heard you say—”

“Oh, shut up and tell me. What is it? You won a lifetime subscription to the Victoria’s Secret catalog?”

“Better than that. Way better than that.”

It must be good, she thought. Dirk’s nuts about Victoria’s girlies.

“Spit it out,” she said. “Now.”

He rolled down the Buick’s window, stuck his arm out, and waved wildly to the helicopter as it flew slowly by.

She noticed that the chopper wasn’t a law enforcement copter, as she had expected. It had the call letters of a Los Angeles television station emblazoned on its side. It was a news helicopter.

“It was them,” he told her. “The guys in that chopper. They found him! They spotted the body about a quarter mile from here. They said it’s in the middle of the river, caught on a log. We might even be able to see it from the road if we go down there!”

“Hey, that is good news! You don’t have to send out search teams, just a couple of firemen and a CSU investigator or two with a gurney to hoist him up and out of there. Job done.”

“And most important,” he said with a deep sigh, “I don’t have to go over the cliff myself and lead a search team, now that we know where he’s at. I don’t really have to even look over that damned cliff again if I don’t want to. Well, at least not here at Deadman’s Curve.”

“It’s your lucky day, buddy,” she said, slapping him on the shoulder. “You dodged a high caliber bullet on that one, big-time.”

“I know it.” He wiped his hand across his brow. “Believe me, I know it.”

“What’s next?”

“Are you kidding? I’m gonna send a team over that cliff, and then I’m outta here. I’m gonna go buy a lotto ticket, while I’m on a roll!”