Laura drove slowly, taking photos of the vehicles and the people she encountered.
At the top she drove up past the first parking lot level, then the second. The road to the top terrace was sealed off by yellow tape. A U.S. Forest Service truck and two Santa Cruz County SUVs were parked alongside the road leading up to the higher tier. A deputy with a clipboard stood in front of the crime scene tape.
The public restroom was just inside the entrance to the lot to the left of the parking spaces that faced the rocky, oak-covered hill. Two spaces away from the restroom was a newer model silver Mercedes. One look at the license plate told her it was a rental.
Laura pushed the tail of her lightweight jacket to the side so the deputy could see her shield. She introduced herself.
“We’re going to have to move the crime scene tape much farther out,” she told the deputy, whose nameplate read RICKEL. She motioned to the trailhead and the road leading into the picnic ground adjoining the parking lot. “There are so many ways the killer could have come in here—or left.”
“Sounds good. ” Rickel was a carrot-top with freckles.
Laura nodded to the trailhead. “Someone could have come down from there and surprised the victim. We're going to have to rope off the area and look at footprints.”
It would be an enormous undertaking. And she’d have to do it all herself until her partner arrived. The fewer people traipsing around a crime scene, the better.
Laura donned latex gloves. She used to keep her hands under her arms, a habit she developed to make sure she didn't touch anything, back before everyone had access to latex. But the advent of unlimited space on the new cameras allowed her to document everything, and so now she kept her hands free. Now she photographed everything.
The blacktop was recently resurfaced. There were some tire marks here and there from general use. The Mercedes was parked nose-in to a concrete curb.
Laura started way out from the Mercedes, looking down at the parking lot. It was clean, no debris, no trash. From there, she proceeded to the restroom and checked both of them out. Photographed the interiors, made a note that the trash would have to be emptied and gone through.
She eye-balled the flurry of footprints, most of them partials, covered up by other footprints, and photographed them. Photographed the weeds, grass, leaves, and bushes on the trail. Called out, “Has anyone been up this trail since you got here?”
The deputy yelled, “No!”
Laura was aware of the people down below, gathered beyond the tape.
Finally she zeroed in on the car and its occupant.
The man's head had snapped backward, and he'd slumped back so that his left shoulder was propped precariously against the seatback. His head had come to rest in an impossible position if he'd been alive, canted back by gravity, the column of the neck propping it up. The shoulder harness had kept him in that position and rigor had sealed the deal. The rest of his body had collapsed against the seat in an artless, sack-of-potatoes way.
The bullet came from a small caliber weapon—a .22. He'd been shot efficiently, in the triangle between the eyes and the bridge of the nose. One puncture from the gunshot and plenty of stippling—
Shot at close range. Maybe from a foot away, through the open window.
In your face.
“Whoever you are,” Laura said to the killer. “You knew what you were doing.”
All signs pointed to a hit. An execution. Efficient, economical, bloodless, no overt evidence, except for what ballistics would have to offer and possibly shoe prints if they could see them, and of course threads, hair, skin—whatever they could vacuum up.
She thought he might have been waiting for someone.
Either that, or he was foolish enough to buzz down his window and talk to a stranger who ended up killing him.
Time of death had yet to be established, but Laura thought he was probably killed some time in the night. Sunglasses on the dash. He hadn't been wearing them, which meant it was probably dark at the time he was shot. The bare legs poking out of his hiking shorts were darker than the rest of his body, shading down from flesh color above the knee to brick red and finally to deep purple at the ankles. Hypostasis. The heart stopped pumping, and blood sank down to the lowest point. Knees bent, right foot stretched a little closer to the accelerator.
A bee zoomed past. It was getting warm already. An insect bit her ankle.
Two other things soon became apparent: the victim still had his wallet, and if he'd had a cell phone, it was gone now.
2: The Victim
In the wallet was a DL and several credit cards. Also the receipt from the car, rented from Enterprise Rent-A-Car in Flagstaff two weeks ago.
Presumably, the renter was Sean Perrin, forty-five, blue and brown, five-foot-nine, no glasses.
This trued up with the man in the car.
Just then Anthony Lake showed up.
“So what's kicking?” Anthony asked, then answered for himself. “Not that guy.”
Cop humor.
He leaned over and peered in. “Efficient.” Straightened, rubbed his shiny bald head. Anthony was in his early forties, a string bean of a guy, tall and pale because he avoided the sun. “Let me guess, a .22?” he asked, cocking his head. “Perfect kill shot. His eyes are closed. Looks to me like a hit.”
Laura pointed out, “His eyes are just shut. Not squeezed shut.”
Anthony nodded to the wallet. “Where's he from?”
“Vegas.”
Anthony stepped back. “Nice wheels, for a rental.” He removed his sunglasses and polished them with a handkerchief he carried for that purpose. “I can see it—he's on the run, big trouble in Sin City, he lights out for the boonies, ditches his own car along the way. Scary stuff going on in Vegas. You remember that shootout by those pimps who were supposed to be rappers a while back? Big collision on the Strip and boom! That was one hell of an explosion. Maybe that's the kind of thing we have here. This guy thought he got away, but it always catches up with you.”
“Let's take a look at the rest of his receipts,” Laura said, trying not to smile. Anthony was a good cop, it was just that he saw every homicide through two lenses—what they could piece together to make a case, and how he could use it in one of the screenplays he liked to write in his spare time. Fortunately, the case always came first.
Very carefully, she teased out each receipt from the wallet with tweezers and photographed them one by one, including a receipt from Madera Canyon Cabins.
So Sean Perrin had stayed here in the canyon. He had not driven up here for just the day. That narrowed it down. Otherwise he could have come in from Tucson, or Nogales, or Green Valley, or some other place. That meant that he had interacted with someone here, if only the person who ran the credit card and gave him the key to his cabin.
He could have been planning to meet someone at the trailhead.
Anthony had sketched out a possible scenario, describing it like he was pitching a script.
He even framed the scene with his hands.
“Maybe the guy was parked here—waiting for someone? He fell asleep? And boom! Somebody just shot him point blank. What do you think?”