“We cut that back on account of the fire department,” Johanson said. “They come out usually twicet a year. Owner won’t clear brush without a threat. Too cheap.”
“With the fire danger up here, you can’t ignore the brush,” Stacey said, ever so polite.
“No, sir. That’s what I say. You’ll find a few more trees. Back when that girl was throwed down there, that ’un and this one wasn’t here. Both black acacias. Grow like weeds. I’d cut ’em down myself, but owner won’t hear of it. Now, oaks I don’t touch. Couldn’t pay me to fell one unless it’s eat out by rot.”
Dolan and I were both ignoring the man. I watched Dolan as he scrambled back out of the ravine and stood scanning the portion of Highway 1 that was visible from where we stood. “My guess is he backed in and opened the trunk of the car. He probably used the painter’s tarp to drag the body the short distance from there to here. The tarp was heavily soiled on one side and you could see a path through the underbrush where it’d been flattened by the weight.”
“Kids used to pull in here for petting parties,” Johanson said. “Monday mornings, ground’d be littered with rubbers, limp as snake skins. That’s why we put in the gate, to keep cars out.”
I looked at Stacey. “Was she wrapped in the tarp?”
“Partially. We believe he killed her somewhere else. There were blood stains in the grass, but nothing to suggest the volume you’d’ve seen if she bled out. He probably used the tarp to keep the stains off the interior of the trunk.”
Dolan said, “If we’d had some of this new high-tech equipment back then, I bet we’d have found plenty. Hair, fiber, maybe even prints. Nothing neat about this killing. He just happened to get lucky. Nobody saw the murder and nobody spotted him when he toppled her down the slope.”
Johanson perked up. “Neighbor down the road—this is C. K. Vogel—I don’t know if you remember this, but C. K. seen a light-colored VW van on the particular morning of July 28 up along that road over there. Painted all over with peace symbols and psychedelic hippie signs. Said it was still there eleven o’clock that night. Curtains on the winders. Dim light inside. It was gone the next morning, but he said it struck him as odd. I believe he phoned it in to the Sheriff’s Department after the girl was found.”
Dolan’s skepticism was unmistakable, though he tried to be civil—not an easy task for him. “Probably unrelated, but we’ll look into it.”
“Said he seen a convertible as well. Killer could’ve drove that. Red, as I recollect, with an out-of-state license plate. If I was you, I’d make sure to have a talk with him.”
I said, “Thanks for the information. I’ll make a note.”
Johanson looked at me with interest. Suddenly, he seemed to get it: I was a police secretary, accompanying the good detectives to spare them the tedium of all the clerical work.
The breeze shifted slightly, blowing Dolan’s smoke in my face. I moved upwind.
“Something I forgot to mention about Miracle,” Stacey said. “When we went back to the impound lot and searched Frankie’s car, we found soil samples in the floor mats that matched the soil from the embankment. Unfortunately, the experts said it was impossible to distinguish this sample from samples in other quarries throughout the state. West Coast has the most extensive marine deposits in the world.”
“I saw that report. Too bad,” I said. “What’d Frankie say when you questioned him?”
“He gave us some long garbled tale of where he’d been. Claimed he’d been hiking in the area, but it was nothing we could confirm.”
Dolan said, “He was higher than a kite the day they picked him up. Grass or coke. Arrest sheet doesn’t say. He’s a meth freak is what I heard.”
“Everyone under thirty was higher than a kite back then,” I said.
Mr. Johanson cleared his throat, having been excluded from the conversation too long to suit him. “Being’s as you’re here, you might want to see the rest of the property. This is the last ranch of its size. Won’t be long before they tear down the old house. Probably build subdivisions as far as the eye can see.”
My impulse was to decline, but Dolan seemed to spark to the idea. “I’m in no hurry. Fine with me,” he said. He gave Stacey a look. Stacey shrugged his assent and then checked for my response.
I said, “Sure. I don’t mind. Are we finished here?”
“For now. We can always come back.”