by Nancy Cupp
“We won’t have to worry about either of them taking off. It looks like they’ll be in the hospital long enough for us to make our case,” reported the deputy.
“Let’s get some sleep,” the captain said, slapping the deputy on the back. “Good work tonight, but you need to get up early to take Ms. Malone to the airport. We can work out the rest when the lab sends back our information.”
☙
The next morning Greg knocked softly on Margret’s door. He was dressed in civilian clothes and she hesitated to let him in until he spoke.
“It’s me—Greg. I’m off duty today.”
“Deputy Smith—I almost didn’t know you.”
“Please—call me Greg. We have a little extra time before we catch your flight. We can talk over breakfast.”
34
Going Home
Margret leaned back in her comfortable seat, waiting for the plane to take off. A book lay open in her lap as she stared out the window. With so much to think about, memories flew in and out of her thoughts like flies on a napping sunbather.
In a few days I’ll be back at work, and all this will be history. I won’t have to drag my junk around with me everywhere, and I can relax with a good book, she thought. Back to normal.
I’m going to miss Yosemite, I can’t believe I did all that walking. The Parks’ were so nice, lots of interesting stuff to talk about. Deputy Smith—Greg. She took a deep breath as she let her thoughts wander. I wonder if he’ll call me like he said—I guess he meant if he has more questions. She shivered as those thoughts surfaced.
Margret hardly noticed a middle aged woman take the seat beside her. Flight attendants demonstrated seat-belts and emergency procedures while passengers ignored them. When the plane started to taxi, the woman broke into Margret’s thoughts.
“This always makes me so nervous—do you mind if I talk until we get in the air?”
“Of course not, I’m Margret.” She extended her hand.
“Are you going on vacation?”
“No, actually I’m going home after my vacation in Yosemite.”
“Isn’t that where that woman was murdered? I heard it on the news.”
“Uh—yeah, there was something about that going on.” Greg told Margret not to talk about the case until after it was closed. He said she’d be a witness when it went to trial.
When the plane leveled off, Margret politely backed away from the small talk. She watched as rounded domes, rock cathedrals, and plunging waterfalls faded from view.
Margret drifted into a deep sleep with the drone of the plane’s engines. She woke when the attendant shook her, asking her to buckle her seat belt for landing. She watched familiar sites of home race by, her thoughts on getting back to her routine. She hoped Robin got the message to pick her up.
“Robin,” Margret called, waving, as her friend’s old Saturn slowly rolled past people stuffing piles of luggage into waiting cars. Robin parked the best she could on the crowded street, while Margret dragged her battered equipment to the waiting car.
“Maggie! I’m so happy you’re home,” said Robin. “So you really did it—you went to Yosemite.”
“I have so much to tell you,” squealed Margret.
“What—you fell in love with a rich writer, who wants you to proof-read the next Great American Novel?”
“Better than that!”
“I can’t imagine what would be better—for you.” Robin giggled, giving her friend a sideways look. “Maggie you look different—good, great even. Did you fall in love or something?”
“Kind of. Maybe I’m in love with Yosemite, with the outdoors—with adventure!”
“I can’t imagine. It must’ve been a good book.”
“It’s not a book. It’s—life! You’ll never believe what happened.” Margret started to tell bits and pieces of her adventures. “…a huge bear, just as I was pulling my pants up, so I ran…”
Robin crinkled her face up in a skeptical look. “Really?”
“Honest Robin! I have pictures—not of the bear of course. I was too busy running to get a picture of that. Just wait ’til we get home and I can show you my pictures. The waterfalls were so pretty. I climbed all the way to the top of this waterfall and got soaked…”
“What did you do with my friend Maggie?” Robin teased. They laughed and talked all the way home and late into the night.
35
The Investigation Continues
Deputy Smith was in the office long before sunrise. He was poring over reports from the forensics lab and comparing photos of the evidence.
The small triangle of denim fabric from Indian Canyon was a positive match for the hole in the victim’s pants. Bits of cloth recovered from bear scat were shown to have traces of blood.
The blood-type was a match for Patty. The fibers also had skin flakes, and DNA showed they didn’t match the victim. Her body was tested for other DNA, but none was found that could be analyzed.
Lab personnel pried apart the handle found in Patty’s hand. Inside, they found a crude map with a message scribbled on the back. The information gave directions that seemed to tell how to find something inside a cave. “A double stalactite with one side broken off. Stand under the broken side and sight across the stalagmites.” The map didn’t seem to correspond to anything familiar, at least not to Greg.
When Captain Sheffield came in he found the deputy deep in thought. “Morning Greg, did you figure out anything new?” He handed the deputy a cup of coffee.
“Thanks Captain.”
“George, please call me George.”
“Okay sir—uh, George. No, but I came up with a bunch of questions that we need to find answers to.”
“Like what?”
“Like who wrote this note, was it the same person that drew the map? The map’s writing looks different from the note.”
“What else?”
“Why would Patty be ‘smuggling’ this in her—or Paul’s brief case?”
“Maybe she didn’t know it was there.”
“Either way, what’s the map for? I don’t recognize anything mentioned here. Why would she get killed for it?”
“We went through Patty’s cabin after she was killed, but I think we need to go back and look for clues in light of this new information. We also need to go through Paul’s and Lance’s places when the search warrant comes through. If we can find a DNA sample we may be able to get a positive match. At least it would prove he had contact. ”
“I’d like to be part of the investigation Captain—George. I’ve had some training in forensics and I’d like to use it.”
“Absolutely! Why didn’t you say you could do more than take notes?”
“I’ve been trying to move up through the chain of command but I just keep hitting brick walls in the good ‘ole boy’s network.”
“I know where you’re coming from Greg, been there myself. If you can lighten up a little, and we get this thing solved, I’ll put in my recommendation for you.”
“Thank you sir.”
“Let’s get to work, I don’t want to have to let those two go when they get out of the hospital—I don’t think we’re going to get a confession out of either of them.”
At Patty’s cabin, they went through everything with a fine tooth comb. They looked through the usual bills and junk mail on her desk. George checked her shelves and books to see if there was any unusual trend in her reading, but only saw a wide variety of subject matter.
Greg turned on her computer and checked the history. “She searched for artifacts, E-bay, Native American and art for sale. Almost looks black market.”
“Was she involved with selling pieces?”
“Either that or she was trying to find some,” said Greg, shutting off the computer.
His eyes fell to the garbage can next to the desk. There were several pieces of stationary crumbled and discarded there. He took them out and smoothed the pages. All of them had only a few lines written on them.
Greg read them out loud, “Dear Curt, I’m sorry… this one says Curt, I don’t understand why money is more important than…and this one Honey, I wish you understood why I need to preserve…” the last one had been torn in half and Greg pieced it together, “Dear Curt, I love you…”
“Sounds like she was trying to make up, we already know there was a rift between them.”
“He’ll never get the chance to work it out with her now,” said Greg. “Can I leave these out on the desk? Let family decide what to do with them.”
“Sure. Curt and Sam Parks will be released as soon as we can pile up enough facts to implicate Lance. I hope we can find enough to back up Margret’s story,” said George. “Does Patty’s handwriting match any on the map we recovered?”
“I have a photocopy,” Greg pulled a folded page out of his pocket. He laid it on the desk next to the samples from the waste basket. “It looks like the writing on the back, but not here where it says, north.”
“So what does that mean? That she wrote the note and someone else made the map?”
“Or she made the map and note and somebody wrote, north, so they could orient the location? Either way, she was involved with this map,” said Greg, “I wish I knew where this place was so we could look around.”
Later that afternoon Captain Sheffield got the search warrants they were waiting for. First they went to Lance’s place.
They couldn’t find a hair brush with any hair on it, Lance had a crew cut, but they did pluck some hairs out of his pillow case. Greg found hiking boots in the closet and he made prints from them hoping to match them with prints found in Indian Canyon.
Captain Sheffield went through the garbage but didn’t find anything that seemed helpful. In the bathroom cabinet there was the usual Ibuprofen, toothpaste and shaving gear, but nothing incriminating. A search of the bedroom didn’t seem helpful either, until Greg looked under the bed.
There he found empty containers with steroid labels. “Are these steroids illegal enough to keep him in jail for a while?”
“No, since they’re empty. Nothing wrong with having garbage under your bed,” said George.
“If DNA matches, I think we have enough to place him in Indian Canyon. We know that’s the direction the body was carried from the fabric that matches the victim’s pants,” said Greg. “Does he have a computer?”
“I didn’t see one back here, I bet he uses the one in the office. It’s park property—I think we can get permission to search in there.”
Captain Sheffield used the land line in Lance’s kitchen to call park headquarters. “I got the okay, but we have to get a key unless we can find one in here.”
“Is that an answering machine?”
“Yeah, the park is pretty old-school.”
“Let’s check to see if there’s a message,” said Greg, looking over the machine to determine how it worked.
He played back the messages, and a scratchy recording squawked a woman’s voice. “Lance, call me. A bunch of us are getting together…” Greg hit the next button.
“Honey, this is Mom…”
“Even Lance has a mom I guess,” smiled Greg, pressing the button again.
“I got your stuff, come over and get it.”
The captain and Greg looked at each other. “Does that sound like Paul?”
“I don’t know him too well—but I think so.”
“A lab should be able to match a voice print. It may not convict him, but it could connect them.”
“Let’s see what we find at Paul’s. We can come back here after we pick up the key for the office. It’s on that side of the valley anyway.”
“If we can show Paul is supplying Lance with drugs, it may be enough to show he was controlling him,” said Greg.
“But that still doesn’t convict him in the murder. It only makes him a drug dealer.”
“What did Margret say she heard about a picture?”
“Something about selling it.”
“So we need to find something that connects him to selling stolen art. I wonder if that map leads to a stash of stolen goods.”
“It might, it would mean Patty was involved with stolen art. If we could figure out where to start, we could find out. We need an expert on caves in the area. Didn’t it say something about stalactites?”
“Yeah, a broken one, there could be a million of those around,” Greg said, with frustration as he turned into the parking lot.
At the apartment complex, they entered Paul’s unit. The place was still a shambles, reflecting the battle between Lance and Paul.
“Well, I understand why Paul shot Lance,” said Greg. “I wouldn’t want that guy mad at me either.”
“Yeah he’s strong enough to tear a guy up pretty bad,” said George, “or a girl.”
The men got busy sifting through things that were strewn around. Greg went straight to the computer and checked the history. He found quite a bit of recent activity and it took him a while to sort through it all.
The captain was rifling through papers that were all over the room. “Find anything?”
“Well, the guy is into Facebook, and he’s been looking up Native American History, antiquities, Thomas Moran…”
“Wait—Moran? That’s familiar. Isn’t that an artist?”
“Don’t know,” Greg punched some keys, “I’ll look it up—Yeah, 1800’s artist. Famous for early paintings of—National Parks!”
“I thought it sounded familiar. I worked on the museum case last year, I think a Moran sketch was stolen. They say it’s priceless.”
“There’s an E-bay account that’s frequently accessed, and Pay-Pal. Too bad we can’t hack into these accounts. I think he’s been selling stuff on-line,” said Greg.
“It sounds like our art thief. He and Patty were looking up similar things, like they were working together.”
“Yeah, with her note on the back of the map, I’d say she was working with them.”
“I need to dig into records of that investigation. I know nothing was ever recovered, but I don’t know if any finger-prints ever led anywhere—of course a park employee’s prints would be all over and ruled out,” said George, turning over each page that he picked up off the floor. “This is interesting.”
“What do you have?”
“This looks like the map with Patty’s handwriting. But there’s no writing on this one, except where it says north. It’s just the drawing.” He handed the page to Greg.
“So maybe he gave her the map and she made notes on it?”
“Or she wrote the notes, and he made a map from them. Either way, they both had something to do with it. They worked in the same office.”
“Are there files at the office?” Greg asked.
“We need to check that too. There’s a file cabinet in the back room. I assume it’s permit records and stuff,” said George. He picked up an empty file folder, and looked at the tab. “There’s handwriting on this, Caves with NA history, What would NA stand for?”
“North America?”
“Not available?”
“Or Native American,” suggested Greg.
“Anyway, the hand writing looks like Patty’s, and it has to do with caves,” said George.
“Did you find examples of Paul’s handwriting?”
George looked around, and pulled open one of the desk drawers that hadn’t been dumped into the pile in the room. “There’s a check book here, with a register. Do you still have that copy of the map?”
Greg pulled a well creased paper out of his shirt pocket. “Yup,” he said, unfolding it.
The two men studied the register and the map. “It looks like it matches the word, north.”
“I agree. So I think Paul made the map and Patty wrote the comments. Did you see the original before we sent it to the lab?” asked Greg.
“Yeah, the map looked like a photocopy, but the handwriting on the back was written in ink.”
“This map doesn’t look like a photocopy,” said
Greg picking up the map that the captain found. “So he could have made a copy of the map, and she wrote on it before putting it in the handle.”
“What else can we find in this mess?”
They continued their search, looking in every cabinet and opening every drawer.
“Bingo,” said George.
“What did you find?”
“Lance’s source,” the captain said, holding a cardboard box containing about thirty vials of anabolic steroids. “The labels are peeled off where the doctor’s name should be,” he said looking at each container, “except this one, Dr. Ted Crandal, from Merced.”
“Let’s look at that check register again,” said Greg. “Look at this, there are several deposits here of a thousand dollars. I doubt he was making that much as a ranger. These go back all the way to the beginning of the register, almost a year.”
“So he was selling something?”
“It could be. But I don’t see where he’s spending a lot, like if he was buying drugs.”
“He’d probably use cash for that, but there’s no large cash withdrawals either. Can we go visit this Dr. Crandal?”
“I think we should. First we need to check Lance’s office.”
The visit to Lance’s office didn’t give them much information. A check of the computer only showed a passion for computer games. War Craft and Blade Hunter were his favorite. A workout record, with asterisks marking days at regular intervals was on the desktop.
“These marked days could be when he took steroids,” suggested George.
“Yeah, look here where it shows how much he was lifting—jeez, that guy’s strong. The day after the asterisk shows a higher amount and then it tapers off until the next asterisk,” said Greg.
“It’d be interesting to learn about steroids. I assume they’re addictive, but do they affect aggression, and personality?”
“I’ll research it when we get back to the office. Are we done here?”
“Yeah, for now. I want to get those samples to the lab as soon as we can, if we match that hair with what Karen found we can hold him,” said George.