by Steve Gannon
Again and again I was forced to dismount and push my bike past washed-out sections of trail—interludes that provided little respite but at least gave me an opportunity to drink from my water bottle, something Mike managed to do while still riding. Twice he called back to ask whether I wanted to rest; each time I doggedly refused, insisting I was fine. My goal, however, had changed. No longer was I obsessed with keeping up. Now I simply wanted to make it to the top.
After forty minutes of steady climbing, Mike and I began ascending the right bank of the canyon, finally leaving the cooling shade of the streambed. Once more in the sun, we climbed a series of punishingly steep switchbacks to a rutted fire road topping the ridge, emerging from shoulder-high banks of yellow mustard weed on both sides of the trail. Mike stopped on a level section that offered a panorama of the canyon below. Heart thudding, lungs burning, shoulders aching, thighs cramping, I pulled up beside him.
Mike raised his water bottle and took a long pull. “Nice going,” he said. “Not many could have made that climb their first time out.”
I grabbed my own bottle, greedily guzzling the last of my water. “Not many girls, you mean,” I gasped, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.
“Not many, period.”
“It wasn’t so bad,” I puffed. Heart still pounding, I looked down the way we had come. A swath of green marked the bottom of the narrow canyon, tracing the course of the streambed as it snaked toward the ocean. Ahead, the fire road we had joined climbed at a much gentler pace. “Where to now?” I asked when I had finally caught my breath.
“You still want to do the loop that Mr. French took back to Mandeville Canyon?”
I nodded.
“Then we go up.”
Ten minutes of easier climbing brought us to the crest of an east-west ridge guarding the lower San Fernando Valley. Here the fire road exited through a gate onto an improved dirt road, its graded surface over twenty feet wide. After taking a single-track trail skirting the metal barrier, we again stopped to rest. “I didn’t even know this road was here,” I noted, surveying the sprawling cityscape below.
“Few people do,” said Mike. “We’re now on a portion of Mulholland Drive that’s never been paved, thanks in part to lobbying by several equestrian groups that ride up here.”
“Can you drive a car up here?”
“Sure. It connects with paved sections at both ends. But as I said, hardly anyone knows it’s here. Great view, huh?”
“Gorgeous,” I agreed, my eyes sweeping the distant valley. “What’s that lake down there?” I asked, pointing to an irregularly shaped body of water nestled in the foothills a mile or so north.
“Encino Reservoir.”
At Mike’s words, my blood ran cold. “That’s where …”
“Yeah,” said Mike, picking up my train of thought. “Pretty inaccessible, huh? You can see why someone would consider it a good place to dump a body.”
I stared down at the reservoir. As Mike had noted, it appeared unapproachable. Steep, brush-covered ridges formed its eastern and western flanks; an earthen dam comprised the northern terminus. Smatterings of housing developments dotted the hillside lower down—all clearly out of sight of the water. Because of its lofty location, Encino Reservoir was visible only from the air … and the section of dirt road on which we now stood. “It’s a great place for someone to dump a body,” I agreed. “But first that certain someone would have to know the reservoir was there.”
“Ali, you don’t think …”
“I don’t know what I think,” I said. And in truth, I didn’t. After meeting Jordan’s mother and hearing her emotional denials, I, like most in the media, had come to believe that Mr. and Mrs. French couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with their daughter’s death. Now I wasn’t so sure.
Mike looked at me doubtfully. “Just because Mr. French rides up here doesn’t mean anything.”
“I know. On the other hand, as you pointed out, not many people even know that this road is here. I hate to say this, but now I can think of one person who does. And he’s connected to the case.”
Mike nodded thoughtfully. “Is that why you wanted to retrace Mr. French’s bike route?”
“Maybe. Call it a hunch,” I replied. Raking my eyes over the ridge, I spotted a cut in the hillside beneath a line of high-voltage power stanchions. I traced the trail as it snaked down the mountain, losing it behind a hill before it reached the water. “I think there’s a way down to the reservoir over there,” I added. “Let’s check it out.”
“It’s an old access road. A locked gate is at the top. You can’t get down that way.”
I remounted my bike. “Let’s check it out anyway.”
After cranking past a small rise, I located the beginning of a narrow dirt road intersecting our unimproved section of Mulholland. An iron gate topped with outward-curving spikes blocked the road’s entrance; a thick chain and a handful of interlinked padlocks secured the gate to a stout metal pole. Unlike the fire road gate we had encountered earlier, this barrier was accompanied on either side by an eight-foot-high fence topped with barbed wire.
I dismounted, leaning my bike against the fence. Disappointed that we couldn’t continue to the water, I examined the locks on the gate. Two identical, circular-shaped padlocks at either end displayed Department of Water and Power markings—with one of the DWP locks hooked through a gate chain. Linked between the DWP locks were three smaller padlocks of various makes and shapes. A final padlock connected the second DWP lock to the opposite end of the chain, securing the gate. All the locks exhibited a reddish patina of rust and had probably been put there, I suspected, by different county agencies for their own use. None of the locks appeared to have been disturbed. The gate itself looked as if it hadn’t been opened for years.
“Told you,” said Mike, who had followed me to the locked entrance. “C’mon, let’s hit the trail. We still have a lot of distance to cover.”
“Hold on a sec.” I peered through the gate, searching for signs of recent passage. Like the gate, the ground on the other side looked undisturbed, although I realized the rocky roadbed might not be soft enough to show tire tracks. Furthermore, any of the infrequent rainstorms that had blown across the Southland over the past weeks could have erased any tracks or footprints that had been left.
“I don’t want to burst your bubble, Ali, but I’m sure the police investigated all this,” Mike pointed out. “It’s not something they would be likely to miss.”
“No, it isn’t,” I conceded. “On the other hand, I’m not at all certain they know that Mr. French’s morning bike ride takes him in plain view of the reservoir down there. For the time being, let’s keep this between us.”
“If you want.”
“Promise?”
Mike smiled. “Cross my heart. Anyway, it’s probably just coincidence.”
“Maybe.” With one last glance at the reservoir, I remounted my bike.
“You have something in mind, don’t you?” Mike looked at me curiously. “What are you going to do?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Yet.”
23
After Mike dropped me off at UCLA, I lay on my dorm room bed, contemplating my discovery. True, Mr. French’s knowledge of the reservoir’s presence might be coincidental, as Mike had suggested. On the other hand, like my father, I accepted coincidence as an explanation only when all other avenues had been exhausted. Yet no matter how I racked my brain, I couldn’t decide how to proceed. In the end I resolved that my best course lay in simply turning over the information to my dad and letting him take it from there. And if I were lucky, maybe there would be something in it for me. Having made that decision, I couldn’t wait to talk with Dad.
Later that evening I drove to Malibu for dinner with my family, arriving at the beach at a little past six. Although the dining room table was set and a pot of a delicious-smelling stew sat simmering on the stove, the house appeared deserted. Wondering where everyone was, I made my way
to my parents’ bedroom. “Mom?” I called through the open door. “Dad?”
No answer.
Thinking they must be downstairs on the deck, or possibly taking a walk on the beach, I entered their bedroom and stuck my head out an open window near the bed. Not spotting them on the deck, I scanned the beach, failing to see them there, either. Disappointed, I decided to check the music room downstairs. As I left the bedroom, I passed my parents’ desk—an oak secretary where Mom paid bills and Dad, though complaining the desk was too fancy for his taste, occasionally worked as well. A thick, three-ring binder on the desk caught my eye. A single word, inscribed in my father’s bold cursive, was written on the binder’s spine: French.
Over the years Dad had brought home similar books. Though I had never looked into one, I knew that LAPD homicide detectives referred to them as murder books. I also knew that they contained all pertinent documents and information relating to a case.
Curious, I returned to the bedroom and looked out the window again. Then, on impulse, I went to the desk and picked up the binder, not really intending to open it. It felt heavy, the files and reports crammed between its blue plastic covers as thick as a dictionary. I hesitated, my curiosity building.
Against my better judgment, I opened the book. Ignoring a surge of guilt, I quickly flipped through its contents, pausing on a grisly photo taken at the reservoir. Nauseated, I continued turning pages. I stopped when I came to the coroner’s findings, a pivotal report that had been sealed at my father’s request.
Most of the autopsy protocol—a multipage document containing anatomical drawings, photographs, swab results, histological summaries, and laboratory findings—proved too dry to hold my interest, and I skimmed through the pages rapidly. As reported in the sketchy details given to the press, the cause of Jordan’s death had been a subdural hematoma. Details that had not been disclosed to the public included the absence of water in her lungs and stomach, as well as the presence of areas of vaginal erosion and tissue inflammation. Someone had underlined the latter, penning “chronic sexual abuse?” in the margin. As I was about to move on, another underlined section caught my eye—an autopsy analysis of the gastric contents. Jordan’s last meal, pasta with a red seafood sauce, had undergone a period of digestion of three to four hours before she’d died. The digestion duration had been circled twice, with the addition of another question mark.
“What the hell are you doing?”
I turned, my heart dropping. “Uh, hi, Dad.”
My father’s eyes narrowed. Furious, he strode across the room and ripped the murder book from my hands. “Damn it, Allison!” he thundered.
“Dad …”
“What gives you the right to go through my files?”
“I … I didn’t mean to pry,” I stammered. “I came in here to find you and Mom. When I saw the book, I just thought I’d take a peek. I apologize, Dad. I have no excuse for going through your stuff. None at all. I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it.”
I looked down, unable to meet my father’s glare.
“If details in these files are made public, it could ruin any chance I have of closing the investigation. Not to mention getting me fired.”
“I won’t say anything.”
“How much did you see?”
“Not much.”
“The truth, Ali! What did you see?”
“I looked at a few pictures, read a bit of the autopsy report.”
“What part of the autopsy report?”
“The part about there being signs of chronic sexual abuse.”
“What else?”
“That the stomach contents had been digested three to four hours before she died.”
“Damn!” Dad exploded.
“Dad, I won’t say anything about this to anyone. It’s off the record.”
“Like the last time?”
“No, not like the last time. I screwed up then. I won’t do it again.”
“You may not live to do it again,” Dad warned. Then, as if struck by something in his own words, his thoughts seemed to turn inward. Slowly, the anger bled out of him.
I hesitated, puzzled by his abrupt change of mood. “Dad, I really am sorry,” I repeated. “I was wrong to look through your files. But now that we’re on the subject, can I ask you a question?”
“No.”
I continued anyway. “I understand how releasing the sexual-abuse material could compromise your case, but what do the gastric contents have to do with anything?” When Dad didn’t reply, I pondered a moment. “I suppose if you know when a final meal was eaten, the degree of digestion could be used to determine when someone died,” I reasoned, answering my own question.
“Drop it,” Dad ordered.
“So the stomach contents are important, and your circling the digestion duration could mean there’s a discrepancy in the time of death,” I went on.
“I said drop it.”
“Yes, sir.”
My father scowled at me, then turned toward the door. “C’mon. Time for dinner. We’ve been waiting to eat till you got here.”
“Dad? You think they did it, don’t you? Off the record?”
My father turned back. Wearily, he passed a hand across his face. “To tell you the God’s honest truth, I don’t know,” he replied, still seeming oddly distracted. “My head’s telling me one thing; my gut’s saying something else. Now, let it go, Allison. Please.”
“There’s a reason I asked,” I said. “I learned something today about Mr. French.”
“And that is?”
“First of all, he’s a mountain biker. He rides the trails and fire roads behind his estate. At least he did before he and his wife moved out of their house.”
“Deluca mentioned that. So?”
“So I went up there this morning with a friend and retraced one of the routes Mr. French rides,” I explained, having trouble containing my excitement. “Guess what? The dirt trail he takes runs in plain sight of Encino Reservoir.”
Dad shook his head. “Just because he knows the reservoir is there doesn’t prove a damn thing.”
“But there’s a road from Mulholland down to the water.”
“A locked gate is at the top. Nothing was touched.”
“It looked that way to me, too,” I admitted, disappointed at my father’s reaction. “There were no tracks on the other side, and none of the six or so padlocks on the chain appeared to have been tampered with, either. But I got to thinking. What if someone had a key to one of those locks?”
“We interviewed everybody who has or could possibly get a key,” Dad replied impatiently. “Southern California Edison personnel, fire department workers—even LAPD cops. We came up empty.”
“Oh.”
Dad again started for the door, then turned back. “How many locks did you say?” he demanded, his eyes suddenly gleaming like a gun barrels.
Puzzled, I pictured the gate in my mind. “There were two big ones,” I answered. “They had DWP stamped on them. Three smaller locks were linked between those two big DWP locks, and a final padlock at one end.”
“So that makes six total? You’re absolutely certain?”
I nodded. “I’m positive.”
My father’s expression hardened. “Damn. I should have checked that myself.”
“What’s wrong?”
Dad didn’t answer.
All at once I understood. Two DWP locks plus three more for the other agencies that Dad had mentioned—SCE, the fire department, and the LAPD—made five locks, not six. “Someone cut the chain,” I reasoned aloud, everything falling into place. “Then he repaired the cut chain by inserting an extra padlock. Whoever did it even used an old lock so it would match.”
“This is off the record. All of it. You understand that,” said Dad. It wasn’t a question.
“Of course,” I agreed. “But when the time comes, can I break the story about the locks? I’m the one who—”
&n
bsp; “Allison, is your new job all you think about?”
“What’s wrong with that? If I don’t report this, someone else will. It might as well be me.”
“And how is it supposed to look when it’s my daughter breaking an exclusive story on my case?” Dad demanded angrily. “I’d have hell to pay explaining it to the department. What’s more, every other news agency would scream foul.”
“That’s their problem,” I countered stubbornly. “I came up with this. And if they don’t like it—tough.”
Dad scowled. “It will still look bad, no matter how it happened.”
“So when have you ever cared about how things looked?” I pointed out. “Especially to the press.”
“You have a point there,” Dad conceded with a slight smile. He thought a moment. “You want to break the story when the time comes? Fine, as it’s eventually going to come out anyway, you have a deal. Provided you keep your mouth shut till I say.”
“Agreed,” I said. “Now, what about tomorrow?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’re going back to the reservoir, aren’t you? I want to be there.”
“Out of the question.”
“I won’t reveal the part about the locks. How about if—”
“No.”
“Think about it, Dad. Some positive coverage right now could help your investigation. You know—police are working hard to uncover new leads, and so forth. And wouldn’t having me there on the ground be preferable to having some news helicopter circling around overhead?”
Dad glared. “What do you mean, news helicopter?”
“Forget I said that,” I backtracked. “C’mon, Dad. Please?”
“You’re not going anywhere near that site.” Dad hesitated, then continued. “But if you want to do something from a public road, I guess there’s nothing I can do to stop you. But I still don’t like it.”
“Thanks, Dad.”