Though he was a bit of a fanatic about it and therefore, occasionally, irritating. Especially to someone as irritable as Dirk.
Frank’s round, rosy-cheeked face was beaming as he hurried over to them and said, “Hi, Savannah, Detective Coulter. I found it! I just had a feeling I should look down here, and sure enough, there it was!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Dirk muttered under his breath. “Fricken Columbo here.”
Savannah knew he was irked because during his night of cruising the streets, he hadn’t thought of checking here. And poor Frank would pay the price.
Sometimes, it was painfully obvious why Dirk was respected but not particularly loved in his own police department.
“Why did you park so close to the vehicle like that?” Dirk barked as they walked over to the Honda. “What if we wanted to check around it for tire impressions or footprints? You probably drove right over anything that was there. Or walked on it.”
Frank blushed and sputtered. “Well...I...tire impressions? Footprints? On asphalt?”
“It rained recently. Ever heard of mud prints?”
“Uh... okay.”
Poor Frank, Savannah thought. How dare he find Dirk’s possible crime scene before he did!
“So, whatcha got here, buddy?” Savannah asked too brightly. “No sign of the girl, huh?”
“No. Car’s unlocked. Keys are gone. No signs of violence inside the vehicle.”
Dirk sniffed. “And just what ‘signs of violence’ were you looking for, Donaldson? Overturned furniture? Broken lamps?”
Frank was an easygoing sweetheart, but this was a bit much even for him. Anger flashed in his pale gray eyes. “No, sir. What I meant was, I saw no blood spatter on the seats or headliner. No brain matter or bone fragments on the windows...sir.”
Dirk glared at him for a few long, tense seconds, then grinned and nodded. “Okay, Donaldson. Thank you for assessing and securing the scene for me.”
He glanced over at the yellow “Do Not Cross” crime scene tape that had been strung in a wide, wide circle around the car and the surrounding area—a much wider area than was necessary . . . even if the secured area did include the young cop’s own squad car. “Good job with the tape, too.”
Frank grinned. “Thank you, sir.”
“Did you start a log?”
Frank produced a notebook and proudly presented it to Dirk. “I did. I found the vehicle at 0900 hours and—”
“Thank you, Donaldson.” Dirk snatched the notebook out of his hand, glanced at it, and tucked it under his arm.
As the threesome walked toward the Honda, Dirk told Frank, “Let me give you a couple of tips about how I’d like you to secure my scenes in the future.”
Frank perked up, all ears. “Yes, sir. I’d like that, sir.”
“First, secure the primary scene itself. The vehicle, the body, whatever. And that area is not to be entered by you, or anyone else, until I, or another detective, arrives. You keep your car, your feet, and your mitts off that area.”
“Ten-four, sir.”
Savannah repressed a snicker as Dirk rolled his eyes.
“Then,” Dirk said, “you string a second, wider perimeter around that, which will provide a secondary containment, protecting any evidence that, say, the perpetrator may have dropped or created making his getaway: footwear impressions, tire impressions, cigarette butts . . . or if they’re incredibly stupid, a dropped business card or driver’s license. Hey, it’s happened.”
“I believe you, sir.”
“And finally,” Dirk continued, “if it’s a particularly hot scene, like a murder, and if you have lookie loos or press around, string a third tape wide around the other two, creating a third level of containment.”
“Really?” Frank was impressed but mystified. “If I may ask, why a third one, sir?”
“So that you can eat a burger or smoke a cigarette without contaminating your own scene and without some ‘film at eleven’ chickie-pooh and her cameraman leaning over your shoulder asking you for a statement.”
Frank grinned from ear to ear. “Thank you, sir. But what if she’s a really hot chickie-pooh?”
Dirk gave Savannah a sideways look and lowered his voice a notch. “Then you put down the burger, step over the tape, and give her an exclusive. Duh, Donaldson. You gotta learn to think for yourself on this job, or you’ll never soar to the high ranks of detectivedom.”
Savannah cleared her throat. “Uh, can we get on with the business at hand, you two? Or do you want to trade smarmy pickup lines first?”
As they approached the car, she heard Dirk whisper to Frank, “Did they just take you out of the oven, girl, ’cause you are hot!”
Frank whispered back, “Hey, all those curves and me with no brakes.”
She groaned and added, “ ‘You’re the best-looking woman who’s walked through that door in the past twenty years, and I should know. My lazy ass hasn’t left this bar stool once in all that time.’ That one always did it for me.”
When they reached the car, levity ceased, and the looks on all three faces were all business.
With a practiced eye, Savannah scanned the automobile exterior, looking for anything, new scratches, smears, prints, leaves or any other sort of vegetation, debris of any kind... and, of course, blood.
The car was dusty and dirty, as though it hadn’t been washed in quite a while. It had a few scratches and a couple of fairly deep dents, but they were rusty and old. Nothing fresh.
The tires were free of any extraordinary amount of mud or beach sand.
“Did you open the door with your bare hand?” Dirk asked Frank.
“No, sir. I didn’t have any gloves, but I used a clean tissue on the handle so that I wouldn’t touch it.”
“Get yourself some gloves, and carry them at all times,” Dirk said. “If for no other reason than so that you can protect yourself when you’re handling somebody who’s bleeding. I shouldn’t have to tell you that. That’s 101.”
“Yes, sir. I usually do, but my fiancée took them without telling me to protect her hands when she was dying her hair red last week.”
Savannah winced.
Dirk let him have it. “Ask your stupid girlfriend how she’d feel having you bring AIDS home to her.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dirk pulled three pairs of latex gloves from his jacket pocket and gave one pair to Frank and another to Savannah. When they were all appropriately clad, Dirk carefully opened the driver’s door of the Honda and leaned inside.
“Keys are gone,” he said. “And Patrolman Donaldson here is right...no blood or gore immediately apparent. Nobody got shot, stabbed, or severely bludgeoned in here.”
Savannah opened the passenger’s door and checked the glove box. She found nothing unusual inside, just the standard registration and insurance cards, a pair of sunglasses, a tube of lip balm, and a packet of mints.
They looked under the seats but saw nothing at all. Not even a gas receipt, a soda can, or a candy wrapper. Compared to the thousands of vehicles they had searched in their day, this one was pristine.
“Hm-m-m,” Savannah said.
“Hm-m-m, what?” Dirk wanted to know.
“I was just thinking—the outside of this car is pretty grubby. But the inside, at least up front, is really clean.”
“So?”
“It’s usually the other way around. Clean cars are usually clean, and dirty ones are dirty—inside and out. But if a car is both clean and dirty, it’s usually the outside that’s clean and the inside that’s dirty. People run it through the car wash for a quickie so that everybody will think they’re driving a clean car. And they don’t take time to wipe down the dash.”
“Okay. And...?”
“And look at this car. It’s dirty on the outside and inside, but this area around the driver’s seat is spotless. Who would run a car through a wash and only have them clean the front interior?”
“Maybe she cleaned the inside herself at home.”
“Maybe. But really, look at this. There isn’t a spot of dust on the dash, the steering wheel, the armrests. And yet, there in the back—the armrests, the door handles, dusty and dirty. Somebody cleaned up front and not the back or the exterior.”
“Yeah, right. That’s not right.” Dirk nodded. “How much you wanna bet that we’re not going to find a single fingerprint up here?”
Savannah lost that momentary warm feeling she’d gotten when they’d first looked inside and found an interior sans blood spatter.
Dirk took out his cell phone, punched in a number. “Yeah, Coulter here. I need a CSI out here right now. Yeah, in the park. We need this car printed as soon as we can get it. It’s a rush.”
He hung up, reached down, and fiddled with the trunk release lever. It wasn’t working.
He gave Savannah and Frank a troubled look. “We’re going to have to get into that trunk,” he said.
“I’m pretty good at popping them,” Frank volunteered. “I’ve got this tool in my car that—”
“Get it.”
Dirk and Savannah waited for him at the back of the car. Reluctantly, Savannah leaned over, put her face near the trunk lid, and took a tentative sniff.
“Are you smelling for drugs?” Frank asked as he hurried back to them. “You smell pot or something?”
“No,” Savannah replied softly.
“She’s sniffin’ for decomp, you dingbat,” Dirk replied far less softly.
“Oh God. You don’t think . . .”
“Just open it, would you?”
True to his word, Frank had the trunk open in less than ten seconds.
When she saw the relatively empty interior, Savannah felt a rush of relief so strong that it made her knees weak. The only things inside were a gas can half-filled with gas, a flashlight, a bag of potting soil, and a gym bag with the initials SCHS embroidered on it.
And one other item that was less encouraging.
A well-worn denim purse.
Savannah took it out, opened it, and found Daisy O’Neil’s cell phone, her driver’s license, a library card, a discount card from a local nursery, an employee’s ID from Drug Mart, and the credit card that they had checked less than an hour ago. And three pictures. One of Daisy and Stan, one of her mother, and one of a lop-eared red boxer.
Savannah felt tears well up in her eyes. There was just something about handling a victim’s personal items that always got to her, tugged at her heartstrings like little else did.
And what was more personal than a woman’s purse?
Immediately, she turned on the cell phone and checked the incoming calls. There were a bunch from Daisy’s mother, an old one from Stan, and a flurry of them made in the past few hours that were also from Stan.
The rest of the incoming and outgoing history had been cleared.
“Why is her purse in the trunk?” Frank asked. “That’s a weird place to put a purse, isn’t it?”
“Not really,” Savannah said. “When a female has her purse with her but doesn’t want to carry it or leave it in the interior of the car where it might be seen and snatched, she throws it into the trunk.”
Savannah looked around her at the thick woods, the dense brush, the hiking trails stretching into the foothills behind them. And she shuddered to think of all the bad things that might be out there, the dangers that could beset a young woman like Daisy.
The rattlesnakes sunning themselves on the paths were bad enough.
But it was the two-legged snakes Savannah worried about most.
“I think she parked here, locked her purse in the trunk, and took a hike,” she told them.
Dirk and Frank said nothing, but the looks on their faces showed that they, too, were contemplating what might have happened on that hypothetical hike that might have prevented Daisy O’Neil from returning home for nearly forty-eight hours.
Again, Dirk flipped open his phone and punched in numbers. “Coulter here,” he said. “Yeah, I’m at the vehicle. Send me a K9 tracker. Get Don Thornton if you can. And tell him to haul ass.”
He hung up. “We have to find this kid,” he said, his eyes filled with deep concern, even sorrow. “It’s already too late.”
“Don’t say that,” Savannah said. Maggie filled her mind, clutched at her heart. “Damn it, Dirk, do not say that!”
Dirk shook his head and closed his eyes for a moment. He swayed on his feet, exhausted. When he opened them, he gave Savannah a long, loving, understanding look filled with defeat. “Come on, Van,” he said softly, “Like it’s gonna make any difference what I do or don’t say.” He reached over and put his hand on her forearm.
She shoved it away. “It makes a difference,” she said. “You watch your mouth. She’s still alive out there. I can feel her. She’s waiting for us.”
Waiting like Maggie was waiting.
Savannah shook her head. But the thought remained.
She turned away from them and headed for the gate at the end of the road.
“Savannah,” Dirk called as he came after her. “Savannah, where are you going?”
“I’m going to start looking for her.” She swung one leg over the gate. A piece of rusted metal caught and ripped her linen slacks and scratched her thigh, but she didn’t notice. “I’m not going to stand around here waiting. I’m going to—”
“Honey, stop!”
Strong arms wrapped around her waist and pulled her off the gate.
A moment later, her face was pressed against Dirk’s warm, hard chest, and he was holding her so tightly that she was pinned against him, unable to move.
Sagging into him, she breathed in the comforting, familiar smell of him—leather, his Old Spice deodorant, and now ...the recent addition of cinnamon to replace the old tobacco smell.
He reached up and stroked her hair. “You can’t go out there and just start running around those hills looking for her, babe,” he said. “Wait for the K9. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll organize a search party.”
Savannah fought back tears. “It’s just... you know . . . she’s a kid. Kids are different. They’re...hard.”
He squeezed her a little tighter. “Oh, I know. Kids are the hardest.” He reached down, put his hand under her chin, and forced her to look up at him. “This is a new case, Van. It’s not her.”
She looked into his eyes and borrowed a little of the strength she needed. She bit her lip and nodded.
“Let’s take this one minute at a time,” he said, “Okay?”
She reached inside and, as Granny Reid called it, gathered up her strength. “Okay. One minute at a time.”
Chapter 7
The CSI tech arrived before the K9 unit, but Dirk wouldn’t let her begin dusting for prints. “Sorry, Michelle,” he told her, “but I don’t want anybody walking around the vehicle until the dog’s tried to find a scent.”
“No problem,” the petite blonde replied. “It’s time for my morning coffee break anyway. Come get me when you need me.”
She returned to the white van with its county logo and the coroner’s seal on the side, where she sat and sipped coffee from an enormous Styrofoam cup.
Savannah stood behind the Honda talking on her cell phone, the contents of the SCHS gym bag in her hand. “Yes, Pam,” she was saying to Daisy’s mother. “The vehicle looks fine. No signs of an accident or anything unusual. Her purse was locked in the trunk, so there’s no reason to worry about robbery or anything bad like that.”
Just rabid coyotes, rattlesnakes, and sexual predators on wilderness trails, she thought. Okay, rabid rattlesnakes and coyotes aren’t much of a problem. Stop it, Savannah. You’re supposed to be logical and comforting here.
Pam didn’t sound all that comforted. “But what could have happened to her! She’s been gone so long now! Even if she parked there and took a hike, she would have come back long before now unless something horrible—”
“Not necessarily something horrible. It could be something just...well...a little bad or not too bad at all. We
may very well find her out there somewhere with a turned ankle, in need of a lift out. Something a lot less awful than all the stuff you’re imagining.”
Or that I’m imagining.
“But she would have been out there at night, two nights, in the dark.”
“Yes, but the weather’s been very mild. She’s a big girl, who, judging from the books in her room, knows a lot about nature. Even if she can’t walk out, she could still probably take care of herself. Please try hard not to worry yourself sick.”
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