CONKLIN AND I stood with Charlie Clapper on the bricks behind the Ellsworth compound watching CSU pack up their gear. The garden was pocked with holes and heaped with mounds of dirt; it looked as if a hundred woodchucks on crack had run amok there.
Still, no additional heads or any other body parts had been found. There was no new evidence of any kind.
I was struck again by how twisted this case was, how unusual in every way.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, a homicide investigation revolves around a body and a scene where the crime actually took place.
You’ve got an assortment of material to work with: clothing, blood, fingerprints, hard evidence that can tell you who the victim was, what caused his death, and possibly when the victim died. You can even compare a photograph of the victim with the DMV’s database and most of the time can come up with a name.
Or you start with a missing-person report and you work the case from the other side. You start with dental records, maybe DNA, a list of friends, coworkers, phone numbers, the time the missing person was last seen.
All we had were holes, piles of dirt, unidentified remains, and a list of suspects that barely made the needle jump.
We couldn’t even say for sure that the seven victims had died from homicidal violence. Maybe they had all died of natural causes and their heads were brought to the site for burial.
All we knew for certain was that whoever buried those heads had access to the garden behind the Ellsworth compound over a period of perhaps ten years or more.
As we waited for the forensic anthropologist to complete her measurements and run the data through software that could put virtual features on bare skulls, we could do nothing but hope for a lucky break or — please, God — a confession.
Now Clapper unzipped his coveralls, stripped off his gloves, and sighed.
“We’ve sifted every square foot of this place. We’ve got everything there is to get. Those artifacts we pulled out of the graves were clean. No prints. No DNA. Just doodads.”
“If we identify the victims, the doodads may mean something to the families,” I said.
Clapper said, “Okay, then. I gotta get out of here. My wife is expecting me home for dinner, first time this week.”
I felt deflated and frustrated. I was about to suggest to Conklin that we go to the firing range and put a lot of holes in some paper targets when Brady’s phone reached out and connected with mine.
“Boxer, there’s been a shooting. Looks like another one of these freaking Revenge killings. That son of a bitch. Is Conklin with you? Good. You two go to Potrero Center. I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.”
Chapter 55
POTRERO CENTER WAS ON Sixteenth and Bryant, a modern strip mall of wall-to-wall retail stores: Office Depot, Safeway, Jamba Juice, and more. A stone wall with a metal rail on top enclosed the vast parking lot that was nearly always packed.
The sun was going down when we drove between the stone pillars on Sixteenth and identified ourselves to the uniformed cops at the entrance. I asked for the name of the first officer, then Conklin parked our car near the dozen or so squad cars right inside the gates.
We headed toward the yellow tape at the perimeter, and as we worked our way through the shifting crowd, I saw fear and anger on the faces of shoppers. Clearly, they’d been told that no one could leave the lot without giving a statement, and the handful of officers on the scene were just starting a process that could go long into the night.
The first officer was Mike Degano, a young guy who had been a block away when the call came over his radio. He wanted to help, had the look of a patrolman who aspired to work homicide.
Degano pointed to a late-model black Mercedes XL, said to us, “That’s probably the DB’s car. He had a Mercedes key ring in his hand when he went down. Car is registered to Raoul Fernandez. I ran his name. He has a record for assault and for possession with intent. Spent a couple of years at Folsom, released in 2010. Wait’ll you see this.”
Conklin and I walked with Degano to where the body of a heavily tattooed twenty-something man was splayed on the asphalt. His arms were flung out like wings, his legs were twisted. It looked to me as if he’d been walking toward the shopping center, had turned toward his killer, and had been blown off his feet by the four bullets he’d taken to his face.
It took a steady hand and an automatic gun to throw four shots in such a tight pattern. I’m a good shot, and I couldn’t have done it.
I took another look around the lot as lights came on. Shopping carts were adrift, like dinghies on a blacktop sea. Broken paper bags spilled groceries where they’d fallen. I saw surveillance cameras on light poles, but the shooting had taken place a good hundred yards from the closest camera.
“Were there any witnesses?” I asked Degano.
“Yes, ma’am, we have one sort of witness. Mr. Jonathan Nathan, over there. Old white dude. Red shirt. He heard the shots.”
Chapter 56
JONATHAN NATHAN WAS IN his seventies, stooped, glasses balanced on the lower slope of his nose, red-and-white aloha shirt under a windbreaker, khaki pants. Flip-flops. His eyes switched between us and the parking lot, as though anything could happen, as though he didn’t feel safe.
I said, “Can you tell us what you know?”