“Was that the case with Delilah Occum?” Decker asked.
“I don’t remember the details of her disappearance. How old was she?”
“Nineteen.”
“Yeah, she looks it. I definitely would have carded her and given her driver’s license a good once-over. So I must’ve remembered her from the flyers. What happened to her?”
“She had a fight with her boyfriend at a party and walked out. That was the last anyone saw of her.”
“Typical,” Diaz said. “I see it here all the time at the bar. The guy gets drunk and the girl gets disgusted and stomps out. I tell the guy: ‘Don’t let her walk alone. It’s dark outside. It’s late.’ The guys are almost always tossed themselves.”
“Do you like what you do, Mr. Diaz?” McAdams said.
“Yeah, actually I do. Rich kids give good tips and you meet some interesting people. Like you. Never would’ve taken you for a cop.”
“What does he look like?” Decker pointed to McAdams.
“A grad student. A rich grad student. The coat is the giveaway. We get our fair share of rich people. This is an acceptable bar, and the kids bring in their parents to show them off to me. I make a point of being nice. Not just for the big tips, but I’ve dropped hints about wanting to open my own place in a bigger city.”
“New York?” McAdams said.
“New York or Boston. In the meantime, I’m still here. Maybe one day.” He looked at Decker. “Anything else?”
“Yes, actually.” Decker showed him the photo of Erin Young—the cashier who went missing between Yvette and Pettigrew—and laid it on the table.
“That’s Erin. She worked here for a year. I was stunned when I saw her flyers.”
“Erin worked with you here at the College Grill?” Decker asked.
“Not as a bartender, as a waitress.”
“We were told she worked as a cashier for a local convenience mart.”
“After she left here, yeah.”
“Why did she leave her job?” Decker asked. “Surely it paid better than working as a cashier for Circle M.”
“I don’t like to speak ill of the dead—if she’s even dead. Anyway, she was caught with her hands in the till. I noticed that the register wasn’t matching the receipts, and I pressed her on it. Eventually she fessed up. She begged me not to report her. She had fallen on hard times and jobs were scarce. I told her I wouldn’t say anything, but she had to leave. When she got a job as a cashier, I debated telling the owner of the Circle M, but then she disappeared and I thought . . . what was the point?”
Decker was annoyed. “I’ve read her files. You never contacted the police after she went missing.”
“What for? She hadn’t worked here for a while. I’m sure she knew dozens of people who didn’t contact the police.”
“Yes, but those people didn’t catch her stealing. You did. What if she was stealing from her current boss and he wasn’t as nice about it as you were.”
“Meaning?”
“She’s missing, isn’t she?”
“You think Derek Kinny had something to do with it?” He made a face. “He might have fired her, but c’mon. He’s been around here for years. Does Erin have something to do with Bogat?”
“Everything is still being investigated.”
“Well, then maybe you want to talk to Derek Kinny.”
“Crossed my mind, Diaz,” Decker said. “Take a look at this guy.” Out came a photo of Lawrence Pettigrew.
“Him, I remember,” Diaz said. “The cross-dresser. Really bright guy. He was underage. I never served him anything stronger than espresso coffee. We talked politics all the time.” He looked at Decker. “I didn’t know he disappeared. Never saw any flyers.”
“He dropped out of college and moved to Manhattan,” McAdams said. “One day, he came up to visit the colleges and that was the last anyone has ever seen of him.”
“Wow, that’s freaky! When was this?”
“Five years ago. Before Erin Young disappeared,” Decker said. “Tell me about him.”
“I told you. Bright, crazy gay guy. Real flamboyant.”
“But smart,” Rina added.
“Real smart and a good tipper. Lots of gay people are big tippers. The order of generosity is gay men, straight men, lesbians, and straight women. Especially straight women who get pissed with friends.” He cocked his head in the direction of the three young women at the end of the bar who were in the process of trying to exit with dignity. The two of the less-drunk girls were supporting the third. Diaz said, “Good night, ladies.”
They grunted something in return. Diaz scurried to the end of the bar and picked up seventy-five dollars in cash. “To prove my point, their total bill was seventy-two, forty. I get two dollars and sixty cents for serving them for the last three hours.”
Rina took Decker’s wallet from her purse and pulled out a fifty. She laid it on the bar top. “Keep the change.”
Diaz said, “You don’t even know what your bill is.”
“I know it’s a lot less than fifty dollars,” Rina said. “Not all women are misers. And we’re not all spendthrifts, either. Like guys, we run the gamut.”
Decker said, “Notice how she proves a point by taking my money out of my wallet.”
“Excuse me, it’s our money.”
Decker laughed. “Of course, dear. I was just joking.”
“The way I figure, half of it is morally mine as your wife, and the other half is actually mine since we were married in California, which has community property. So two halves make a whole. That means that in reality our money is all mine.”
Decker scrunched up his face. “But I could say the same thing.”
“But you didn’t and I did. First come, first serve.” She pushed the money at Diaz. “Enjoy.”
“You snookered me,” Decker said to Rina.
“That’s what you get for marrying a math major.”
Chapter 18
Driving home, Decker said, “I’ll drop you off at home. I’m going back to the station house.”
“Why?” Rina said. “What’s up?”
“I’m thinking about Erin Young. I’ve been assuming she had nothing to do with the others since she wasn’t a college student. But maybe she’s connected.”
“You think she’s buried at Bogat Trail?” McAdams said.
“I don’t know, but even if we don’t find her body, I think she may be involved. She worked in a place where college students hang. Maybe our killer noticed her. I need to reread her files.”
“Can I make a copy for myself?” McAdams said.
“Why?”
“I can review her file when I get back to school; that way you can concentrate on the bodies we do have.”
“No, no. It’s one thing to take them to my house. It’s another to take them out of Greenbury. What if they’re stolen?”
“Unlikely, but I do have a safe in my apartment.”
Decker relented. “Call up Kevin and see if he can pull them out of the cage. See how many boxes there are.”
McAdams took out the phone. “Sure.”
Rina said, “It’s out of the way to take me home. Besides, I can make copies while you two read.” She smiled. “As a matter of fact, I can read through them myself and let you know what I think.”
Decker shrugged. “Okay.”
Rina was shocked. “Okay?”
“Sure. This isn’t LAPD. I could use the help.”
McAdams hung up. “Kevin’s not at the station house right now. He said he’d be glad to come back and pull them from the cage in a half hour after he’s finished watching Roman Gladiator. It’s smack in the middle of the fight scene between Flavius and the lion.”
“No spoilers, please,” Rina said. “I’m streaming the show.”
“I couldn’t spoil it because I don’t know how it turns out. I have no idea where I am in the series.”
“Where are you at?”
“Nero has just caught Flavius and is d
emanding the return of Octavia Portia, but Flavius has a plan for escape.”
“You’re at least three episodes behind.”
“So I guess if Flavius is fighting in the lion’s den, he doesn’t escape.”
“You’ll have to watch it and find out,” Rina said. “I would have never guessed you as a Roman Gladiator fan.”
“I got hooked on it last year at school.”
“Tell this guy how good it is,” Rina said. “He still won’t watch it with me.”
“I just don’t want to come in the middle of a series,” Decker said. “With real bodies piling up, I don’t have a lot of time to watch a stupid TV show.”
“It’s not stupid.” Rina crossed her arms. “Well, it is sort of stupid, but it’s very addictive. Maybe you could use something to take your mind off reality for an hour.”
“Thank you for your concern, but that’s why I tinker with my car. At least when I change the oil, I feel I’ve done something.”
“Besides get the garage floor dirty?”
“That’s what garage floors are for. They aren’t supposed to be white and shiny. They’re supposed to look like someone has done something besides passively watch a bunch of overpaid actors with coiffed hair pretend to be Roman warriors.”
“Well, aren’t you just above the fray!”
“You know what? Maybe I should drop you off at home.”
“Fine. Suit yourself.”
The car went silent.
McAdams said, “Are you guys really in a fight?” When neither Decker nor Rina answered, he said, “I mean, seriously? Over a TV show?”
He was met with more silence.
“Peter, you just passed the station house. Let’s get the boxes and start copying the files. There’s no sense wasting time taking Rina home when we can use her help. Turn the car around and let’s go back to plan A, all right?”
Wordlessly, Decker made a U-turn and headed for the station house parking lot.
Shaking his head, McAdams said, “It’s a sad state of affairs when I have to be the adult around here.”
As Rina worked at the copy machine, Decker took the warm duplicate pages from the tray and began to scour through Erin Young’s file. McAdams was updating the list of intersecting people he had originally taken from the files of Pettigrew, Yvette Jones, and Delilah Occum. They worked in a precise but cold harmony, attentive to the job and civil to one another.
Decker’s cell rang. Sheila Nome introduced herself as the medical examiner who performed the autopsies on the bones of Yvette Jones and Delilah Occum. She said, “There is only so much you can do once the soft tissue is gone.”
“Anything will be helpful.”
“That’s the problem. I can’t tell you anything. With Pettigrew, there was a big dent in his skull. With the girls, unfortunately, there isn’t anything definitive. If these were bones from two hundred years ago on a family burial plot, you’d assume natural death. But given the context, we know something went very wrong. There’s nothing in the bones to suggest that the victims died from gunshot or blunt force trauma. And there were no cut marks in the bone—either in green bone perimortem or white bone postmortem. Now they could have been stabbed in the neck or the leg—caught the carotid or femoral artery and bled out—but there weren’t any cut marks in any of the bones I examined.”
“What about the hyoid?” Decker asked.
“They were broken in all three bodies. The girls could have died from strangulation. So could have Pettigrew. But you have to remember that it’s a thin bone and there were other broken bones in the body—fingers, toes, the orbits, and the septum. It could be regular erosion of the bone or maybe the body was dragged. We don’t know because the eyes have disintegrated. It also could have been suffocation. Or poison. We can test the bones and the hair for arsenic and heavy metals. But if it was an OD, it’s unlikely that we’ll find traces in hair or bones. I’d like to tell you more. I’m sure you’d like to have more. What can we do?”
“It’s fine. Thanks for the information. When can you deliver the report?”
“You can either pick up a copy at my office or I can mail it to you with the photographs tomorrow, which will take God only knows how long. I can also e-mail you the text now and send you the photographs in snail mail.”
“The photos don’t reproduce.”
“Not well, no.”
“Then I’ll pick up the report tomorrow, but if you could e-mail me the text tonight, that would be helpful.”
“Are you working on the cases now?”
“I am.”
“On Sunday?”
“Crime doesn’t take the weekend off.”
“Dedicated or bored?”
“Truthfully? Maybe a bit of both.”
Decker hung up the phone and went back to his reading.
Erin Young had been working for the Circle M twenty-four-hour market, and the night she disappeared was completely unremarkable. It was a warm spring evening bordering on hot and humid. The change of shift was eleven-thirty at night. She had left the market wearing jeans, a white wifebeater tank top, and sandals—appropriate dress considering the AC in the mart was malfunctioning. There was no indication that she was going anywhere other than home—an apartment she shared with a friend.
Since then no one had heard boo from her.
Decker sorted through her photographs. They presented a living, breathing human being: round face, short blond hair, small freckled nose, and blue eyes. She might have been described as pixieish had she been a little younger and less tired-looking. There were blue and black shadows under her eyes—the mark of hard living. He leaned back and let out a sigh. “We’re going about this half-assed.”
McAdams looked up from the desktop, a highlighter in his hand. Rina stopped photocopying. She said, “What do you suggest?”
“We start from the very beginning. I want to interview each victim’s immediate circle and then start moving outward. In each case, since family wasn’t around when they disappeared, I want to talk to those who were closest to them in school—friends, boyfriends, roommates, classmates, and teachers.”
“You said you thought that all three cases were related because all three were in the same burial site,” McAdams said. “Did you change your mind about that?”
“No.”
“So why would you want to interview roommates and boyfriends of Yvette Jones, for instance, when they weren’t even in town when Delilah Occum went missing?”
“Because I want to know each victim individually.”
“I understand your need to be thorough, but why don’t we interview the people on the list first and then go back and interview everyone else?”
“Depending on how many people Radar can spare, we can do it simultaneously,” Decker answered. “I’ll start with Yvette Jones because she’s the oldest case. I’ll also do Erin Young because she’s an outlier. You’re starting school soon. Once you leave, I’ll put Kevin on Lawrence Pettigrew and Ben on Delilah Occum.”
“I can probably come down weekends and help you out.”
“Only if it’s convenient.”
“I’ve been thinking about Erin Young,” Rina said. “Is it possible that she was the lucky one who made it out alive?”
Decker said, “Tell me why you think she’s still alive?”
“I’m just thinking that if Erin was attacked—she was walking home late at night—what if she managed to escape and decided to disappear rather than go to the police? From what Diaz said, she was a thief. Could be she was hesitant about contacting them. Plus, she didn’t seem to have anything tying her to the community.”
“Her mother still lives here,” Decker said.
“Yes, and that brings us to another point. If Erin is still alive, maybe she has been in contact with her mother.”
“The other bodies aren’t going anywhere.” Decker shrugged. “I’ll set something up with Erin’s mother for tomorrow.”
McAdams said, “I’ll come with yo
u.”
“That’ll work.” Decker looked at Rina. “So you think she’s tied in with Bogat?”
“Just a gut feeling I have.”
“For what it’s worth, I agree with your gut.”
“It’s worth a lot. Thank you for not dismissing me out of hand.”
“I wouldn’t do that, no matter how mad I was.”
“Are you mad?”
“No, I’m not. Are you mad?”
“No.”
McAdams said, “So you two are okay?”
“Of course, we’re okay.” Rina was offended. “We’re not children. We’re not even college students who can’t handle microaggressions without falling apart.”
Decker laughed. “Even so, I’m sorry if I was microaggressive-ish. I want you to feel safe in your environment.”
“Duly noted.”
“You know, I really work hard not to make a mess on the garage floor.”
“I know. But you are gone a lot. So when you have some free time, it wouldn’t hurt for you to watch a half hour of TV with me before you go off on your own thing.”
“We watch TV together all the time. Just going through Midsomer Murders is going to take another decade.”
“Sometimes I’d like to watch something other than sports or a cop show.”
“I thought you liked cop shows.”
“I do like cop shows. And I like sports. But I also like Roman Gladiator and you should watch it with me because I don’t ask much of you.”
“Duly noted.” Decker managed a brief smile. “Sorry.”
“Sorry, too.”
“Aw, you’re all made up,” McAdams said. “How sweet!”
“You know, McAdams,” Decker said, “I can turn my aggression toward you on a moment’s notice, and believe me, there will be nothing at all micro about it.”
Chapter 19
The bungalow was on a rutted lane surrounded by woods. With shorter days and cooler nights, the forest was on the cusp of fall, the leaves turning gold, crimson, plum, and russet. The drivable pathway ended about a hundred yards from the house. There was a twenty-year-old black Ford pickup off to the side and Decker parked next to it. He and McAdams got out and walked the remaining distance to the small, one-story structure that, up close, was more boards nailed to a frame than actual house. The steps to the front door were pockmarked and the windows were panes of soot. At eight in the morning, it was chilly and dank and a thoroughly gloomy place—like an evil cottage in a Grimm’s fairy tale.
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