Barstow’s partner gave a half smile. He’d caught the sarcasm. Flores was in his early forties, bulky but not fat, an ungainly nose away from being darkly handsome.
“Well, that’s close enough for now,” Barstow said. “Were you working in Malibu on Monday?”
“No, I was here, but I’ve lived in Malibu all my life and I know how fast a brushfire moves in a Santa Ana wind. I had horses in Ramirez Canyon and was worried about getting them out. And my dog was locked inside my house.”
“That’s the house on Malibu Road?” Barstow asked. He produced a small notebook from the inside pocket on his jacket.
Matt nodded. “That’s right.”
“You say you found the baby several miles north of that location between four and five o’clock. By noon the entire area had been evacuated, the highway was closed in both directions from Topanga Canyon in the south, and Trancas Canyon in the north. How was it you managed to be on that particular part of the beach at that particular time? Can you explain that?”
“I drove—”
“Wait a minute,” Ned said. “What is this? An interrogation? He’s already reported this to—”
“It’s okay, Ned, let me handle it,” Matt said. He held a tight rein on his irritation. Ned could be a pain sometimes with his big brother concern. Ginn thought it was guilt because Ned had been at Wharton in Philadelphia when their mother was killed, and had gone back to school the day after she was buried, leaving Matt alone with their father in a house that contained only shadows where she had been.
“You’re right,” he said to Barstow. “The Pacific Coast Highway was closed when I got to Topanga Canyon.”
“What time was that?”
“About two, two-thirty.”
Barstow made a note on his pad. He looked up, nodded for Matt to continue.
“I turned around and went back to the Santa Monica Freeway, took the 405 north across the Sepulveda Pass to the 101 in the San Fernando Valley.” Deliberately, Matt went through every detail of the long circuitous route back to Malibu. “The 101 west was pretty clogged because of fire closures, but I was able to make it to Las Posas Road below Oxnard. I turned off there and drove toward the ocean through the berry fields and came down the PCH that way.”
Barstow flipped through the pages of his notebook.
“On your way down the PCH you had to pass Encinal Canyon, right?”
Matt felt his gut clench. “Yes.”
“Did you drive up into Encinal Canyon?”
“Of course not. I was trying to get home.”
“And the Pacific Coast Highway was already closed at Trancas Canyon when you got there?”
“That’s right. They were pretty busy in the market parking lot, getting a convoy together to go over the Kanan Dume Road while it was still open. It wasn’t difficult to drive around the roadblock.”
“What were you driving?”
“I had a pickup and a horse trailer.”
Flores spoke for the first time. “Do you usually commute to work here in Brentwood with a horse trailer, Mr. Lowell?”
“No. I picked it up at Malibu Riding Club on Pacific Coast Highway.”
“That’s just before Encinal Canyon, is that right?”
“Yes.” The enchiladas he’d eaten at lunch suddenly felt like a lead weight in his stomach. They thought he had used the trailer to transport the body of the dead girl.
“Why didn’t you take the Kanan Dume Road from the 101? Why go all the way up to Las Posas?”
“I wasn’t sure Kanan Dume was open. I didn’t want to run into another roadblock and have to turn back. I didn’t have that kind of time.”
“Are you saying that in the middle of a fire, an equestrian center loaned you a pickup and horse trailer? I would’ve thought they’d need vehicles like that to evacuate their own animals.”
“The truck and trailer didn’t belong to the riding club, they belonged to me. I boarded my horses there until a couple of weeks before the fire. I left some tack and the pickup and trailer there until I could pick them up.”
“Where are they now, this pickup and trailer?”
“At A-1 Auto Wrecking in Oxnard.”
Barstow raised his eyebrows. “What happened to them?”
Matt held on to his temper. What did this bozo think happened to them in the middle of a goddamn fire? “I was trying to get into Ramirez Canyon at Paradise Cove but the gates to the tunnel under the road were closed. The fire came through the tunnel, caught the trailer and pickup. I made a run for it to the Cove restaurant. The trailer and pickup are a total loss. I had to have them towed.”
Barstow continued making notes. “I see. What happened then?”
“I got some water from the restaurant, and started south along the beach. It’s about seven miles to my place from the Cove. I was more than halfway there, just past the Edwards estate, when I spotted what looked like a downed pelican lying near the water. I got closer, and saw it was a baby.”
“And the baby was alive when you picked it up?”
Matt had to force himself not to look away. “Yes. I thought I just said that.”
“No, you didn’t. So then?”
“I felt a faint pulse. I wrapped her in my shirt and went back to some stairs that I’d seen still standing. I thought maybe I could get some help there, but when I got back the stairs had burned and the wind had blown them apart, so I turned around and continued toward home.”
“It didn’t occur to you to go back to the restaurant?”
“Of course it did, but what for? Fire blocked the road, the restaurant was empty, no one was coming, no fire crews. Plus I was more than halfway home.”
“When did you realize she was dead?”
“When I got home. I put her on the couch. She seemed cold. I tried to feel a pulse and couldn’t. I tried to give her CPR, holding her nose and breathing into her mouth, but it was too late. She was dead.” He’d been reliving that moment over and over ever since.
“You’ve got a bandage on your arm, Mr. Lowell. What happened?” Flores asked this question. Matt guessed they were taking turns.
Instinctively, Matt looked down at his wrist. He’d dropped by his doctor’s office, Phil had put a couple of stitches in, and covered it with gauze and a Band-Aid. That was the day after the fire.
“I broke a window at the restaurant to get some water and I guess I cut it. I didn’t notice it until later.”
“You didn’t notice a cut that was bad enough to need stitches and bandaging?”
“A hell of a lot more was going on then than a cut on my arm, Detective Flores. Half of Malibu was on fire.”
Flores nodded and gave him that thin smile again. “So is that your blood on the blue shirt the baby was wrapped in?”
“Yes.”
“So why didn’t you get help for this baby right away?”
“Where? It was in the middle of a wildfire. The phones were down. I’d dropped my cell on the beach. Where was I supposed to find help?”
“You could’ve taken