Look outside. A circus! Dead body in the grove!
Fear jolts through me as I reread the words. It’s a good thing Travis has already left for work. He hates it when I hop on the phone first thing in the morning. When Lora picks up, she’s out of breath. Borderline hysterical.
“About time, Sleeping Beauty,” she shouts. “Get to your front window. You’re not going to believe it. Nothing ever happens here. Nothing! Now this. It’s like a CSI episode, and we have a front row seat—look!”
Clutching the sheet to cover my breasts, I race down the hall and stare at the grove of gnarled cypress trees not a hundred feet away. On any given day, Cypress Street is quiet, the sidewalk often empty—save for a few dog walkers, stay-at-home mothers strolling with their infants, or tide poolers using the Bluff Trail to trek to the beach below. Today though, Lora’s right: it is a circus. Neighbors cluster on each side of the street, whispering and pointing. Yellow police tape flutters from a tree near the cliff to one on the opposite side of the trail. Police buzz like bees circling a hive, talking to reporters and neighbors and waving traffic along.
The pavement is still wet from last night’s rainstorm, and the forest floor across the street has turned to mud. The sky is still flat gray—which is not a surprise for the coast. Looks like it might rain again.
Traffic—there’s something I’ve never seen in Point Reina. Everyone in the area is desperate to see what’s going on. A line of Mercedes and BMWs weaves along the narrow road, and—oh, look, there’s Amanda Patel, turning the corner in her brand-new, fire-engine-red Jaguar. I try to duck out of sight, but she spots me in the window, flashes a smile, and waves. I return the gesture and quickly escape back into my room. Damn, I can’t stand that woman. Thinks she’s better than everyone else in the neighborhood just because she went to medical school and married a detective. How do they afford a home in this neighborhood on his salary?
“What happened?” I ask into the phone, clearing my throat to get rid of the morning rasp.
“I don’t know all the details.” Lora huffs, as if she’s walking fast. “And no one knows exactly what happened yet, but around seven this morning, Sarah was walking a couple dogs, and one of them came unleashed. She said it pulled and jerked free and headed straight toward a tree near the bluff.”
“Oh my God.” Taking a chance at being spotted again, I peek around the doorjamb as a news van pulls up and parks across the street. Behind the van, half a dozen police cruisers are parked, one after another. “You weren’t kidding. It’s madness.”
“You haven’t heard the worst of it,” Lora babbles on. “When Sarah finally caught up to her pup—remember, she’s still not up to full speed, not since her knee surgery—she discovered that he’d dug up a bone. A partially decomposed human femur. Sarah was totally grossed out, and showed it to Amanda, who called her husband and the sheriff right away.”
“Oh, how terrible! Look, here comes another news van. Where do they think they’re going to park? There’s no more room.”
“I bet they’re going to try to park in your driveway.”
“That’s not happening.” I race downstairs and press my face against the glass, watching as the second van squeezes between two police cars. “Do they know anything else?” How did I sleep through all this?
“Well, from what I hear, the police have already started interviewing people in the area. Really informal, you know, but Sarah overheard Don from the distillery saying it’s a woman, though you know how reliable he is. They’ve already started digging, and from what Sarah says, they’re going deep.”
“God, please stop.” Nausea cramps my stomach. “I can’t hear any more.”
“I have to take off. I’m already late for my massage. Rachael, all I know is this: if you ever wanted to be on television,” she goes on, and I can tell from her tone she’s smiling, “now’s your chance.”
“Exactly how shallow do you think I am?”
Nineteen minutes later, after I’m dressed in my cutest hoodie, a pair of black leggings, and my new Nikes, I set the security system and head out. For the first time in my life, I wish I had a dog, so this would look natural. As if I went out every day for a run with hyperactive Spot or floppy-eared Fudge. But when I step outside into the plumes of ocean mist and start stretching, my muscles scream in protest. I zigzag over puddles and weave around splotches of mud as if this is part of my normal routine. No way these Nikes are stamping my carpet again.
I’m not a runner. I don’t do this. But I’m itching to know what people are hearing and saying. Do the cops know who the victim is? I wish I’d spent more time with the people in this sleepy town. Wish I’d made more friends, or gone to more Bunco nights. That’d make it easy to walk up to any of the people gathering on the street and start asking questions. Although I see many familiar faces, I’m not comfortable enough with any of them to strike up a conversation.
And then I see her.
Colleen, talking with a bright-eyed news reporter near the start of the Bluff Trail, all dewy-faced and pretty in a tight maternity outfit. I recognize the woman she’s conversing with instantly: Melissa Mendes from the six o’clock news. I’ve watched her for years.
There’s my way in.
“Morning, Sunshine,” I say, jogging to Colleen’s side. I’m winded. My chest is tight, my legs screaming. But Colleen and Melissa Mendes turn my way and smile, oblivious to the fact that I haven’t run that far since I was in high school and forced to take physical education classes. “What’s going on?”
Colleen’s gaze lowers to my shoes before she meets my eyes again. “I was going for a walk when she approached me.” She motions to Melissa Mendes, who seems to be feverishly taking notes on a pad of paper crammed in her palm. “This is Rachael Martin. She lives next door to us, right over there.”
“Nice to meet you, Rachael.” Melissa shakes my hand limply before diving back to her notes. In person, she’s not nearly as smiley as on TV. Or maybe it’s the corpse that’s putting a damper on her normally bubbly mood. “How far do you usually go?”
“Excuse me?”
She points to my shoes with her pen. “When you run. How far?”
“Oh.” I flip my hair over my shoulder. And realize I’d forgotten to tie it back. Rookie mistake. “About a mile. Just enough to get my blood pumping.”
Sounds like something a runner would say, doesn’t it?
“Do you run along the Bluff Trail?” Melissa just won’t let this go.
How do I answer? If I say I usually run through the grove, it’ll put me running through the area where a body was just found. The next question would inevitably be, “When was the last time you ran through?” One untruth would lead to another.
“No, I’m a street runner,” I say quickly, drawing my ankle up behind me in a stretch. “The grove gives me the creeps.”
Not totally a lie. Once the sun dips below the horizon, the grove is shrouded in shadows. The trail gets treacherous, and even if you’ve walked it a million times before, it’s easy to get lost. You’ll find your way out—it’s not that large—but you might have to stumble or climb over a couple fallen branches to get there.
I lose my balance, topple a bit, and catch myself on Colleen’s shoulder. “Do they know anything yet?” I ask her.
“They’re in the early stages of the investigation,” the reporter answers for her. “So the police will keep everything on lockdown until identification is established.”
“And then what?”
“They’ll notify next of kin before they make any public announcements.”
“It’s terrible,” Colleen says, her hands on her stomach. “Just terrible. I can’t believe it. Right across the street. And you said this place is quiet.”
I can’t help but laugh. “It is—or, it was.”
For the next fifteen minutes or so, Melissa asks a ton of questions about where we’re from, how long we’ve lived here, and how busy the grove might be on any given day. They’re harmless, getting-to-know-you questions, and I can’t help but wonder when she’s going to pull out the camera.
She never does.
Maybe there’s another crew out here who’ll want to record my interview. As my gaze tracks around the grassy area in front of the grove, two men in white coats catch my eye. One is over six feet tall, lean, with glasses and slicked-back hair. The other is shorter and stockier, with reddish hair cut short, military-style. Both duck beneath the stretch of yellow tape and talk for a moment.
“Who are they?” I ask, pointing.
Melissa and Colleen both turn.
“Detectives,” Melissa says bluntly, watching them step into the shadows. “There’ll be more where those came from. I need to run, but it was really great talking with you two.”
“That was disappointing,” I say, thinking aloud, as Melissa hurries back to her van.
Colleen is watching the grove. “What was?”
“Nothing.” But I’d been hoping for some kind of excitement. It would’ve been fun to record myself on television and show it back to Travis. We could’ve drunk wine and laughed at how foolish I looked in my workout gear. “Are you headed back home?”
“I probably should,” Colleen says, finally turning toward me. “We still on for dinner tonight?”
“Of course. Won’t let a murder keep us from living it up. Oh, by the way, be a doll and tell Dean I’m still waiting for that beignet recipe. I know he’s already gone for the day, but he won’t mind if you call and ask him to make something special, especially if he knows it’s for me. I’d simply die if he could whip up those beignets for you to bring tonight.”
“Sure, I’ll give him a call. Wait, murder?” Colleen’s voice kicks up a notch as she clutches the scarf around her neck. “You really think someone was killed out there?” She’s gone very pale. Poor kid. Welcome to the neighborhood.
“I’m no detective, but people committing suicide or dying by natural causes generally have problems burying themselves.”
DETECTIVE SHAW
“You’ve been working on that thing for months,” Patel says, unfastening his seat belt before the car rolls to a stop. “You’re never going to get it.”
Spinning the sides of the Rubik’s Cube in my fingers, I stare at the scene unfolding out the windshield. A narrow street winds between a row of houses and the cypress grove. The crime scene has been taped off, with a crew swarming around it. The coroner’s already here, along with two paramedics and a cluster of news rats.
“Want to put money on it?” I toss the unsolved cube in my bag and exit the car as soon as it stops.
“Fifty bucks you don’t solve it by Valentine’s Day.”
“Done.”
“I’ll tell Amanda to make reservations somewhere nice. We’ll drink to your loss,” Patel says, following on my heels.
He doesn’t mean the comment to be an insult; Patel doesn’t have a malicious bone in his body. Working with him for the last five years has solidified my early conclusions about his character. But he doesn’t know how badly I wish I could be making reservations with my wife. How I ache to pop open a bottle of champagne and celebrate our most recent birthday, anniversary, or promotion. For the rest of my life I’ll have to settle for a toast with a concrete headstone, and something inside me dies a little more every time I think about it.
The sound of Patel’s boots plodding through the muddy grass shakes me from thinking about Karen, and I’m thankful for the shift of focus.
Back to the crime.
We’re not going to walk down the trail. It’s closed off so we can take photographs of footprints. If early reports of the body’s decomposition are correct, it’s been buried for months, so I doubt any footprints we find will be of much use. But we have to unearth every secret of this place, look under every rock, to lock down the crime scene before we leave.
Thick ocean air rolls over the bluff, ruffling my coat, chilling me to the bone, and dragging with it the smell of sea and salt. Before disappearing into the cover of the grove, I take note of the trail up ahead. Wooden stairs zigzag down to the beach and the Williamson Wildlife Reserve. The dirt trail, muddy and potholed, is like a tongue lolling out onto the grass. We duck beneath caution tape and enter between two towering trees.
The trail is wide, clean, and well maintained, and the spindly branches of the trees arch overhead, creating the sensation of being in a cave. It’s surprisingly peaceful, like a cemetery at twilight.
“Still don’t know why you just don’t look up the formula on YouTube,” Patel says as we approach the crime scene. “You’d solve it much faster, and you’d be fifty dollars richer.”
Since I first decided to tackle the Rubik’s Cube—as a way to tolerate the eternal stretch of the late-night hours—I’ve come to realize that there are two kinds of people in this world. Those who want to solve it for the sake of saying they’ve done it, and the ones who want to understand how and why the advanced algorithms work. At first, when I held the multicolored square in my hands, I fell into the former category. I wanted to solve it as fast as I could. It was a challenge. Although I haven’t told Patel, I did look up the videos on YouTube. I solved it, but only by learning an existing solution. I didn’t find an answer to the problem myself.
I’d stared at that damn cube for hours. Its sides matched up perfectly. Blue with blue. Red with red. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that it’d gotten the better of me. I hadn’t conquered it, hadn’t figured out how it worked. Not really.
So I’d gotten up in the middle of the night, scrambled the sucker up, and gone for it again.
“Guess I’m a glutton for punishment,” I say, giving Patel an answer he’ll accept.
But I know the truth, deep down in my gut: I won’t let it beat me, and I won’t stop until I figure it out for myself. Some questions in this world can’t be answered. Problems won’t be solved. Cures won’t be found. I’ve learned that lesson the hard way. But this six-sided puzzle has a solution, and I’ll find it.
As we approach the scene, the uniformed deputy calls everyone over, away from the body. He’s just completed an initial full-body examination and is prepared to give us the rundown. Patel is on the bubble, which means he’s the lead detective on this one. I mentally log the details as the deputy talks fast. Female body found at approximately seven this morning by Sarah Rhys, a local dog walker. Four feet deep. Back of her skull bashed in. No weapon found yet. No wallet or keys. No cellphone. Time of death is estimated to be six months ago, judging by an early assessment of the tissues, but the coroner will nail it down. The moistness of the soil in the grove will affect the rate of decomposition, so he’ll take that into account.
Another deputy approaches holding an evidence bag. There’s a dirty gold medallion inside. “This was found on her chest,” he says, handing it over. Rolling the grains of dirt around, the deputy eyes the gold necklace. “Looks like the Virgin Mary. No other jewelry found on her.”
I nod. “There’s some kind of stone on it. It’s a start for ID.”
When he’s finished giving the briefing, Patel goes to work assigning tasks to the officers on scene. Within two hours, a pop-up tent is erected over the grave to protect it from rain. And then, for most of the day, soil is shoveled and sifted to ensure not a single thing is missed. Everyone who has tramped through the scene has the bottom of their shoes photographed.
Hands on his hips, Patel circles the shallow grave, shouting orders to the deputies on scene.
“I want every license plate on that street photographed.”
“Everyone who comes in and out of this grove uses this path right here, the one we just trampled on.”
&nbs
p; “I want identification and I want it fast.”
As he goes on, barking orders and processing the scene, I move toward the edge of the cliff, to where the dog walker stands talking with a young deputy. She’s clutching a shawl around her shoulders, staring at the ground over the rim of her glasses. She can’t be more than forty, though her hair is so gray it’s almost silver.
“Good morning,” I say when I reach them. “I’m Detective Shaw. Were you the one who discovered the body?” Though I already know the truth.
She looks up at me, worry plaguing her eyes. “Yes, that’s me. Sarah Rhys.”
“Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“He said I’d be taken to the station to give my formal statement.” She gestures to the deputy at her side.
“Right,” I say, moving beside her so I can face the scene. “But I’d like to talk to you informally, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“All right.”
The deputy nods in my direction, as if to tell me to keep my eye on the witness, before he heads back to the scene.
“What happened to your dogs?” I ask Ms. Rhys.
“My husband came and took them home. One of the deputies said he didn’t want them messing up the scene.”
“What kind are they?”
Her thin eyebrows arch. “Today I was walking a Chihuahua and a beagle. The Chihuahua is mine, the beagle, Rufus, belongs to my neighbor. Rufus is the one who pulled the bone out of the mud.”
I clear my throat as memories of my wife begin to flicker through my head. Karen had a Chihuahua named Cookie—the damn dog didn’t want me near her. Especially at the very end, when it sensed she was sick. The pup died a month after Karen, probably of a broken heart, and I was left to pick up the pieces alone. Guess I can’t hate Cookie for loving her as much as I did. “Do you live on this street?”
“No, the next one over.” Ms. Rhys points through the trees, though from here, the street is hidden from view. “Terrace Avenue.”
In Her Shadow Page 6