“Yep.”
We sat in silence for a moment, then Hunter said, “Not much sleep tonight, huh?”
**
It was ten o’clock the next morning before we heard something, and it wasn’t Mickey. Sergeant Vick Best called and I answered.
Best said, “Ronny, we found one of your business cards this morning.”
A sinking feeling settled in my stomach. Hondo and Hunter watched me. I said, “Where?”
“You know somebody named Mickey Haile?”
I closed my eyes and nodded. Hondo whispered, “Oh, man.”
I said, “Yeah, where is she?”
“She? It’s a man, Ronny, wearing a woman’s clothes.”
I said, “Where is Mickey?”
After a second Vick said, “It’s a body. A bicyclist found it this morning. We’re on Mulholland Highway, a mile west of where it intersects with Old Topanga Canyon Road.”
“We’re headed that way.”
“Ronny, it’s not pretty. If you’d rather talk-”
“We’re on our way.” I hung up as Hondo pulled the keys from his pocket.
**
There were a dozen law enforcement vehicles parked along the shoulder of the road and twenty yards from the pavement, we saw the yellow crime scene tape outlining a draw that angled up into the mountains.
Vick saw us coming and lifted up the tape. He said, “They’ve finished gathering forensics and we’ll be taking the body in a few minutes.”
He led us into the draw and I saw Mickey. She was wearing her pink and green biking clothes and was lying on her stomach on the talus in the bottom. Her face was toward us and was almost unrecognizable. Someone had beaten her until all the bones were broken. I walked to the body and knelt down. The fingers on her right hand had been broken and there were a dozen holes the size of grapes over the backs of her legs. The holes weren’t round, but oval, like someone inserted a slim blade and moved it around the way you use a stick to stir paint. She’d been alive when they finished. Dried blood left tracks like red roads from each wound along her legs, indicating she had moved, or been moved, while she bled.
Hondo squatted beside me and looked for several seconds. He pointed at the holes in her legs. “These are at nerve clusters. Pain would have been the kind to pop your skull off.”
I said, “They aren’t bullet holes.”
“Nope.”
We looked at Mickey for several more minutes, then climbed out to join Vick. He called over the primary Investigator and had him stand with us and ask his questions. We answered them and when we mentioned the phone message from last night, Vick looked at the ground and shook his head.
“Haile shouldn’t have tried to do it alone.”
“I know.”
Hondo said, “Crime Scene people come up with anything?”
“Doesn’t look like it. We couldn’t even find any tracks down to the body.”
Hunter stepped closer and pointed at the ground beside us, “Looks like a couple people here went straight to the edge and came back. You can see where they walked over their own tracks.” I looked where she was pointing and couldn’t see anything. There was little soil, only the faintest dusting over the gravel and exposed rock. I lifted my foot and looked where it had been and couldn’t see that I’d ever stood there.
Vick said, “Border Patrol, a tracker, right?”
Hunter nodded. “You want me to take a look?”