That had been the situation in two of the other cases, where personal items had come to light only in the course of the autopsy.
Just then a smiling waitress came to my table to deliver what turned out to be a gigantic hamburger. Early in my career as a homicide detective, the grisly discussion at hand might well have wrecked my appetite. I’m beyond that now. Lunch is lunch, whatever the topic of conversation.
“All right,”I said to Harry. “My food’s here. Have to go. Have Barbara send me the info.”
As soon as I finished my lunch, I paid the tab and headed back over to the M.E.’s office. I wanted to be there, Johnny-on-the-spot, when Dr. Laura Hopewell was ready to rumble. Over the years I’ve learned that most medical examiners have one thing in common with a live theater performance: Don’t show up after the opening curtain and expect the usher to hand you a program and show you to your seat.
It isn’t going to happen.
JOANNA ARRIVED in time to be in on part of Detective Howell’s interview with Mr. Maury Robbins. Clearly much of it was a repeat of what Ernie had already asked him. But that was standard in a homicide investigation—to ask the same questions several different times to see if there were any discrepancies.
“Like I told that Detective Carpenter,”Robbins said. “When I come here after work, I usually arrive somewhere between two and three in the morning.”
“And the gate was open when you got here?”Deb asked.
“Right,”Maury said, “wide open. At the time I thought, why bother buying a season pass when anyone who wanted to could just drive right in?”
“Besides the gate, did you notice anything else that was out of the ordinary?”
“The dog,”Maury said. “Lester’s dog usually raises hell. I forget what his name is, something that starts with an M, I think. I always hear him barking when I roll down the window to open the gate. Last night he didn’t make a peep.”
“Can you tell me anything in particular about Lester Attwood?”
“That’s his last name, Attwood?”
Debra nodded.
“Not much,”Maury said. “I mean, I knew him. Everybody who comes here knows Les. I’m here a couple of times a month. He’d usually meander around the place a couple of times a day, to make sure everything was okay. Sometimes people would get stuck, and he’d help drag ’em out. Sometimes we’d talk. He struck me as a good enough guy, but one who’d put in some hard miles. I asked him once how many times he’d had his nose broken. Said he couldn’t remember.”
“So he was a fighter, then?”Debra asked. “A brawler?”
“Probably, but by the time I met Les, he seemed to have put his demons behind him and had his life back on track.”
“About last night,”Debra said. “Aside from the open gate and missing dog, did you notice anything else amiss?”
“Nope,”Robbins answered. “That about covers it.”
“Tell me about this morning,”Deb asked.
“I got up, made some breakfast, unloaded Moxie—that’s what I call my ATV. It was while I was doing that that I heard the dog barking. I looked off in that direction, and that’s when I first saw the buzzards circling overhead. They were gliding around and around, just like they do in cartoons. I’m sure now the poor dog was barking his head off trying to keep them away. But seeing the birds made me curious. A little later, when I was ready to take my first ride, the dog was still barking, so I headed here to check it out.”
“You suspected something was dead?”Joanna asked, inserting her own question into the conversation.
“Yeah,”Maury said. “I figured it would turn out to be a cow or a coyote or a jackrabbit. There are a lot of those around here. I sure as hell didn’t expect it to be a person.”
“When you realized the victim was a person, did you recognize him?”
“Are you kidding? That dog wouldn’t let me close enough to see anything, much less touch him.”
Dave Hollicker arrived on the scene. After surveying the situation, he dragged something that looked like a stack of plastic pavers out of the back of his van. The twenty-by-twenty-inch grid pieces can be clicked together and used to create temporary parking. In this case Dave laid them out across the debris field where they formed a two-inch-thick firm pathway that investigators could use to come and go from the body without further disturbing the field of churned sand that surrounded the victim.
“Is that all then?”Robbins asked, glancing first at the two detectives and then at Joanna. “No more questions?”
“Not right now,”Deb said.
“If you don’t mind, then,”Maury said, “I’ll pack up and head out. I was looking forward to having some quiet time to myself to relax. I wasn’t planning on finding a homicide victim. Detective Howell has all my numbers. I’m not due back at work until Wednesday afternoon, though,”he added. “I work four P.M. to midnight. If you need anything at all, feel free to give me a call.”
His last comment seemed to be aimed directly at Detective Howell rather than anyone else. The way he said it made Joanna think he wasn’t just wanting to talk about the case.
“Good,”Deb told him. “We’ll be in touch.”
“I saw the way he was looking at you,”Ernie said to Deb as Robbins sped away on his ATV. “I think you made yourself a conquest.”Joanna suppressed a smile when she realized Ernie had shared that same impression.
“Leave me alone,”Debra said impatiently. “All I did was interview the man. I was just doing my job.”
“Sure you were,”Ernie said, “but he sounded like he was more interested in you than he was in answering your questions.”
There was a squawk from the radio in Ernie’s Yukon. He was still talking on the radio when Joanna heard the sound of another approaching vehicle. Ernie reemerged, waving in the direction of the new arrival. “Victim’s sister is on her way,”he called to Joanna. “Natalie tried to give us a heads-up, but it took this long to relay the message.”
When Animal Control had been folded into Joanna’s department on a “temporary”basis, she had soon discovered that the two radio systems involved were incompatible. Requests to replace Animal Control’s system with new and compatible equipment had been disallowed on the grounds that the situation was “temporary.”Permanently temporary. Relaying messages back and forth was cumbersome, time-consuming, and, in this case, pointless. By the time Joanna knew someone was coming, she was pretty much there.
The three officers watched as an antique jeep careened over the top of the dune behind them. Ernie moved forward to flag down the vehicle. For a time it appeared that the jeep was going to plow right into him. The female driver stopped only a couple of feet from where Ernie was standing. The woman, tanned and weather-beaten, wore a man’s Western shirt and a faded baseball cap. A foot-long gray ponytail stuck out through the hole in the back of the cap. Looking at her, Joanna estimated the woman to be in her late sixties or early seventies. There was no need to guess about her state of mind. She was mad as hell.
“Where’s my brother?”she demanded. “What’s happened and what have you done with him? That’s Lester’s ATV over there. It looks like it’s been wrecked.”She pointed at the fallen ATV. “Is he all right? And who the hell are all of you?”
Since Ernie was right in front of the bumper, he was closer to the