W is for Wasted (Kinsey Millhone 23)

“Why don’t you shut your trap and let me do this my way?”

Felix and I exchanged a look and he shrugged.

She managed to hunch her way through the opening at an agonizing pace, but Felix and I knew better than to offer further tips. On the other side of the fence, she struggled to her feet and brushed herself off, dislodging dirt and twigs. Felix left me to hold up the flap of fencing while he slipped through after her.

The two began descending the hill, half slipping along the softened ground. A few yards farther on they disappeared into the tangle of saplings, fallen trees, and weeds. For a moment I could follow the rustle and thump. Pearl huffed and grunted briefly, and from that point on, sound was muffled and uninformative. She’d told me Terrence’s backpack was stashed in a tree and his book collection was stored in a waterproof box. How would she manage to carry both? The rest of his belongings were apparently stuffed in waterproof canvas bags, which I pictured her dragging up the hill. Surely, she and Felix would have to make more than one trip. Her claim that the job would take no more than ten minutes was patently absurd. Why is it that other people’s plans so often seem ill thought out while our own make so much sense?

I checked my watch. Not even a minute had passed though it felt like ten. The on-ramp where we’d seen the nearest panhandler was between the lanes of north- and southbound traffic, a ten-minute walk if he decided to leave his post and return to the camp. From my vantage point, I could see intermittent stretches of Cabana and a section of the parking lot across from the Caliente Café. I watched a car pull in and park. A woman got out with a jogging stroller and strapped her baby in the seat. At that distance, she was scarcely half an inch tall, an elf in my eyes.

I stayed close to the fence, clinging like a prisoner hoping to be liberated. I peered into the growth of trees down the hill from me but saw nothing. Traffic sounds didn’t penetrate the quiet. Above and behind me, the zoo property acted as a buffer, muting the low rumble of the Pacific Ocean on the far side of it. The slope in front of me dropped at an angle through the brush, extending maybe an eighth of a mile before it leveled out. The ground then rose up again to meet the railroad tracks, which were shielded from view by dense shrubs and a line of trees.

Without conscious intent, I tried to calculate the odds of the nearest bum returning prematurely. To me, the chances seemed iffy. I had to assume that on prior occasions, the Boggarts had seen Terrence with Dandy, Pearl, and Felix, sprawled on the grass, trading smokes or passing around a common jug of wine. The homeless seemed to be subdivided into smaller populations, not necessarily friendly toward one another, but not hostile either. Under ordinary circumstances, the Boggarts probably wouldn’t have stolen another fellow’s cart, but death had upset the balance in the social order and they’d used this to their advantage. Why, then, wouldn’t it occur to them that Terrence’s pals might try to recoup the loss?

As though in reply, I caught a punctuation mark of red in the parking lot below, a semicolon of cap and flannel shirt that appeared and disappeared so quickly that I blinked. Had I imagined it? I didn’t think so. Tentatively, I called out, “Hey, Pearl?”

The vegetation was so dense that the word was rendered flat, pasted against the thicket like a printed flyer announcing my alarm. As nearly as I could tell, the sound didn’t carry even one foot. I had no idea what the distance was between the point where I’d spotted the bum and the location of the camp, but what difference did it make? Felix and Pearl hadn’t been gone long enough to accomplish their aims, which meant he’d be walking in on them before long.

How could I stand at the fence and do nothing? An ambush was imminent and Felix and Pearl probably hadn’t had the good sense to designate one of them as a lookout. I would have preferred being more certain of what I’d seen. If I was wrong, I could help tote stuff up the hill. If I was right, at least they’d have some warning. I dropped to the ground and turned over on my back, holding up the treacherous flap of chain-link fence with one hand while I dug my heels into the dirt and used the leverage to hunch my way under.

Once on the other side, I scrambled to my feet and took off down the hill, the stern tug of gravity slowing my pace. The soil conditions created the sensation of running across a mattress, but I labored on, struggling for balance. I reached the thicket and raised my arms above my head. The undergrowth was dense and I thought I’d be wading into the brush for some distance. Ten steps more and I broke into the clearing, nearly falling over in my surprise. The first thing I spotted was an aluminum-framed backpack, propped against a tree with Terrence’s name neatly lettered on the canvas. Beside it was what looked like a seaman’s soft-sided duffel stuffed to the top.