We reached the small group of other law enforcement and first responder units and conferred with the leaders. Mata volunteered to drive me up to the summit, so one of the others tossed him the keys and pointed to a red Jeep Wrangler.
When we reached the summit near the Hollywood sign, I exited and looked around. What I saw seemed surreal. One side of the mountain, the Hollywood sign side, looked green and brown. The backside was blackened ash and skeletal trees pointing ebony, devil-like fingers toward the sky. Here and there small tendrils of pale smoke drifted skyward. Several firefighting groups moved on the slopes, targeting those areas and extinguishing the heat sources.
Two men and a woman walked from the radio tower area to join us, introducing themselves as the forensics team, with the woman as the chief Medical Examiner, Anna Hawkins.
Hawkins pointed at the fire-devastated side and said, “Recognize the place?”
“Not from here. I need to retrace my route.”
“We’ll go with you.” I nodded and we started down.
It was all I could do to keep from whimpering with each step. My legs and back felt like the muscles were impregnated with shards of glass, and each movement made them yell at me to stop moving.
Hawkins said, “You’re moving well, considering your efforts yesterday. I thought you might be stiff and sore.”
“It would have killed a lesser man.”
She laughed, as did the others, “I don’t think you’re far wrong on that, Mr. Baca.”
The further we descended, the more my muscles warmed and became less painful. After ten minutes, I almost felt normal. Almost.
Hawkins said, “We’ve gone up and down twice before, so I’m hoping you can locate the area. Our legs are weakening at a rapid clip.”
I surveyed the slope and saw familiar boulders fifty yards downslope and to our right, but further to our right than I remembered. “Over there.” I said. We crossed at an angle and reached them without trouble. The boulders seemed larger up close. “They were on the other side, that’s where I last saw them.”
We worked our way to the far side, being careful because of the steep slope and a good bit of loose talus. A small cave-like opening showed at the base of two boulders. The burned remains of a medium sized oak lay across the opening. One of the men used his phone to shine a light underneath the tree and said, “Bodies.”
I stood to the side as they went about with their work. Hawkins had a good team. When they removed the tree, the man said, “Looks like they crawled in here to escape the fire.”
I asked, “How bad are they?”
“Like a burned match head.”
Hawkins said, “The tree on top of them. Oak burns hot and long.”
They worked carefully to remove the first body. Then one of the men said, “Uh-oh.”
Hawkins said, “What?”
“Appears to be a bullet hole in the back of this one’s skull.”
“Photograph it,” Hawkins said. They removed the corpse and placed it in a body bag, then returned to the cave.
“The second one’s deeper in here. It’ll take us a minute.” They worked and moved in the cram
ped space, but eventually got the second body out of the hole. The man said, “This one’s shot like the first one, back of the head.”
Everyone worked hard and sweated a lot, exposed to the sun like we this, and the men in the hole panted from the heat. Hawkins said, “Did you find the third body?”
He said, “There’s only two.”
I felt my scalp prickle, “Can I look in there?”
“I’m telling you, there’s not a third body.”
“I understand, but can I look?”
He sighed, and exited the hole. I said, “Can I borrow your phone? For the light?”