I readily promised. “Actually, if I’m staying here to watch what goes on- do you think I could ask for help from someone who might be able to learn more about the property’s past? Someone who won’t try to take the story from me?”
He laughed. “Sure. Have anyone in mind?”
“Lydia Ames.”
“She’s in features.”
“Trust me. We did a story in our college paper about the university annexing some property-Lydia did all the county record work.” I gave him the details I had on Griffin Baer, which weren’t many. “The car looks as if it’s from the 1950s, but maybe it wasn’t new when it was buried. Lydia can find out how long Baer owned the property, and talk to the heirs to learn who lived out here if he didn’t.”
“If features can spare her from her work there, okay. If not, I’ll find someone else and make him keep his mitts off your story.”
I reassured him that I had a roll of dimes and that I’d call back if I needed any other help, then hurried back out to the pit that held the car.
Most of the outside of the car was so dirty, you couldn’t see much inside. I doubted that absolutely clean car windows would have helped much, because the front windshield had collapsed, and most of the passenger area of the car was filled with dirt, too. The grill was smashed in, making it look as if the car had been in an accident, but maybe that happened during the burial process. There were no license plates on the car.
The police arrived, ending my snooping. Uniformed officers, and not much later, two guys in suits. One of the suits was a broad-shouldered, gray-haired man I guessed to be in his fifties, with a pleasant, easygoing manner. He introduced himself as Detective Matt Arden. He ignored my presence almost immediately and focused his attention on Brian and the workmen.
His partner was tall and slender and far more reserved. He was younger than Arden, probably about forty. No one would have called him handsome. His features were harsh, but he had big, beautiful, intense brown eyes. He looked over the group of us who stood near the car, taking note of everything and everyone. Eventually he was looking at me. I could almost hear him singing to himself, “One of these things is not like the others…”
“Irene Kelly,” I said, holding out a hand. “Las Piernas News Express.”
His face kept its oh-so-serious expression, but he shook my hand-nice, firm handshake. “Philip Lefebvre, Las Piernas Police Department.”
I heard the mimicry of the form of my introduction and smiled. Taking care with the pronunciation of his last name, I said, “Detective Lefebvre, you can’t do much for the folks in the trunk of the car, but you can save a life today.”
“Yours?” he said, and smiled. He had a chipped front tooth. For some reason, I found it endearing.
“Oh yes. I was sent out here to cover the groundbreaking of a shopping center. I don’t suppose I need to tell you how much this changes things.”
“These victims are giving you a career opportunity, then?”
I don’t think I flinched-outwardly, anyway. “Don’t pretend they might not do the same for you.”
He gave a Gallic shrug. “We don’t even know if this is a homicide yet.”
“I suppose they could have crawled into the trunk of a car, closed it, and even completed their murder-suicide pact inside the trunk, but I don’t know how they got the gun out of the car, or buried the car while they were in it, for that matter. Especially not in their evening clothes. Hell, I don’t even know how they got their arms back down at their sides after they shot themselves.”
“How could you know they were shot?” he asked, then noticed the camera in my hand. “Have you been taking photographs of the car and its contents?”
“Yes. And I don’t know for certain about the shooting, or even if that was the cause of death, but they do have wounds on their heads that look like bullet entry and exit wounds.”
He sighed. “Are we bargaining here, Ms. Kelly?”
“Irene. And let’s not make it any more sordid than it already is-Phil.”
That won a laugh from him. I saw Matt Arden look over at us in surprise.
“Look,” I said. “I’ll make double prints and give you a copy if you promise not to pass them around to other members of the media. But please don’t make me stand a thousand miles away from whatever is said and done here.”
“All right,” he said, “but you won’t be in the middle of things, either. You don’t try to eavesdrop when I talk to my partner, and you don’t touch anything-have you been touching the car?”
“No. The only ones who have touched it are a few of the guys on the crew, and most of them were wearing work gloves. I can point out the ones who did make contact with the car, if you’d like.”
“Thanks.”
He spent time talking to the people I indicated, leaving me to watch- with a uniformed officer at my side-from nearby, but not close enough to overhear his questions or the crew’s answers.
A crime lab technician arrived, and a few minutes later, the coroner’s wagon pulled up. The police had some photos of their own taken. I began to wonder if mine would be of any value to Lefebvre after all.
After the technician was finished with his initial work on the trunk, there was the tricky job of removing the bodies. I heard Lefebvre speak sharply to one of the coroner’s assistants. I caught one word of what he said: “Three.”
Three bodies? I was fairly sure I had only seen two, but I hadn’t really been able to study the contents of the trunk in the way the police investigators did.
The assistant brought out a small body bag. A child’s bones?
Other media started arriving just as the car itself was placed on a flatbed tow truck. Eventually, a lieutenant from the Las Piernas Police Department arrived, and after conferring with Arden and Lefebvre, made a brief statement to the press-remains thought to be human had been found, an investigation into the matter was now under way, but no further comments would be made until the coroner’s office had been given a chance to study the remains. Lots of questions were shouted at him, but he didn’t answer any of them.
I glanced at my watch. I had a deadline to make and lots of questions to ask, too, but now that the lieutenant was on the scene, Lefebvre might not be able to answer any of them. I wondered if any ID had been found on the bodies. If not, I wanted to get back to the morgue at the newspaper-where articles and photographs and past issues of the paper were kept on file-to see if I could find out who disappeared during the years when that Buick was new.
I found myself thinking about O’Connor. Every year, he wrote about missing persons. He had been writing these stories since 1956. A Jane Doe had been found beneath the Las Piernas fishing pier the year before-and never identified. Someone had nicknamed that woman “Hannah.” O’Connor covered the story of the discovery of her body in 1955, then on the anniversary of the day they found her, wrote the first of his “Who is Hannah?” articles. They were some of the most powerful stories I had ever read.
They weren’t just about her, but about all the John and Jane Does-and about the other side of the equation, missing persons cases. Now, more than twenty years later, Hannah’s case was still unsolved, but O’Connor had helped police to close a number of other cases through that column. If anyone in Las Piernas knew who was still missing, it was O’Connor.
Wrigley would probably give this story to him.
I told myself it could go to worse hands than O’Connor’s. If he got it instead of Wildman or Pierce, at least it would be given the care it deserved.
I still didn’t like the idea of losing it to anyone, though.