"Sure hope not, ma'am," said Milo. "Tell you what, I'll come by and pick up that DVD right now."
"Um, okay, I think we have some in stock-if you're moving this fast, it sure doesn't sound good. Those poor parents. Mrs. Mendoza volunteered for every bake sale and Cinco de Mayo celebration and Mr. Mendoza didn't mind serving food to hundreds of people. I should call them."
"Not a good time, ma'am. They're sequestered."
"Oh."
"Anything else you can tell me about Martin?"
"Hmm," she said. "Terrific kid, that's all."
We were just out the door when the phone rang.
Sierra Madre PD: Sal Fidella's Corvette had been found early this morning, abandoned and partially burned in a ravine along the northern edge of that pretty city.
Milo checked a map. "Ten miles north of El Monte. Forget Texas, the kid's sticking close to home."
The high school was on the way, so we stopped there first. Clean and well maintained, but your basic institutional architecture and no evidence of a golf course. Jane Virgilio wasn't in but her assistant handed us the disc.
Another check of the Thomas Guide: The Mendoza residence was five blocks away and we headed there. I thought of Martin getting up early for the commute to Brentwood, rewarded for the trek with frustration.
Emilio and Anna Mendoza's residence was small, white, nondescript. Drapes blocked every spotless window. No answer to Milo's ring.
A vest-pocket backyard shaded by an umbrella-like agonis tree was overstuffed with bromeliads, ferns, palms, coleus. A bulk-rate sack of plant food was propped against a trellis wall and the grass had been watered to emerald. A knock on the rear door evoked the same silence.
Milo put his ear to the panel. "Can't hear anything but they could be holed up."
He phoned the house, got no answer.
I said, "Maybe they've all packed up to Texas."
"After the car was dumped? Family that flees together? Yeah, why not?"
That theory was shattered when a call to Mountain Crest Country Club revealed that Emilio Mendoza was on shift.
"May I speak with him please?"
"I'll see." Moments later: "Sorry, he's tied up."
Click.
A quick ride through Pasadena took us into the northeast corner of Sierra Madre. Houses were long gone and brown hills rolled lazily.
No police presence announced itself in advance of the dump spot. We drove right to the rim of a shallow depression, far short of being a ravine. A female uniform stood next to a black-and-white, talking on a cell phone. Forty, dark hair drawn into a ponytail, smile on her face as she chatted.
She waved languidly.
No tape cordon, no evidence markers, nothing to say this was a crime scene. Nothing to guard, the Corvette was gone.
The site was a forty-foot beige soup bowl, sides eroded and bearded by serpentine roots and the stumps of long-dead trees. At the bottom, nothing but flat dry space. Scorch marks scarred the first few feet of drop along the southern wall. The Corvette hadn't rolled to the bottom.
A large clump of petrified root boll beneath the burned area seemed a likely culprit. White flecks said someone had tried to cast prints.
The cop pocketed her phone. Two stripes on her sleeve. E. Pappas. "L.A.? All yours, I was just on my way out."
Milo handed her a card. "No debate on my place or yours?"
"My chief isn't much for jurisdictional quibbles, Lieutenant. Car got towed to your auto lab."
"Good riddance, huh?"
"You bet," she said, without a trace of regret. "We're a force of twenty-one people, I'm the only corporal, and in six years I can remember exactly one homicide and that was an open-shut domestic. Arson's another story, we get the usual pyros during dry season, our FD has its hands full. Thank God this one didn't spread. It won't even appear on our stats."
"Did you see the initial scene?"
"First to arrive."
"Who called it in?"
"Elementary school chaperone-a parent with some little kids on a field trip. I'm no arson detective but it looked like an amateur job. Gasoline got poured on the passenger seat but the windows were left closed so the fire got starved out quickly. Your offender wasn't any wizard at hiding evidence, either. Tried to roll the darn thing down to the bottom but it got caught on that chunk of root. Even if it had made it to the bottom, it still would've been in plain view. You want to conceal something, I'll show you gullies ten minutes from here so overgrown you could hide stuff forever."
"Anything on the casts?"
"Nope, sorry. After the car had been moved we saw what looked like shoe prints, but they turned out to be twig marks. Maybe you'll pull up some latents from the vehicle. Only thing left behind was a hat and I made sure it got bagged and tagged for you."
"Thanks. What kind of hat?"
"It was partially burned but I'd say a baseball-type. The little color left was blue."
"Where was it left?"
"We found it on the passenger seat, where the accelerant was squirted. That tells you how dinky the fire was, couldn't even finish off a cloth cap."
"This spot isn't particularly hard to get to," said Milo. "People come here a lot?"
"Would you?" said Pappas. "We've got gorgeous areas all over the place, my opinion, this is one of the uglier ones. Only reason that field trip was here was the teacher wanted to scare the kiddies about erosion."
As Corporal Pappas drove off, we inspected the scene, achieved no insights. A call to the auto lab supervisor verified the arrival of the Corvette.
The trunk and glove compartment had been emptied but the VIN number traced to a vehicle registered to Salvatore Fidella. Moderate fire damage to the interior left plenty of vinyl and metal to process for prints, fluids, and fibers. Same for the remnants of a partially burned blue cap already processed and found devoid of prints or DNA. A handful of scorched fibers with metallic content suggested brass or gold thread, maybe an insignia.
Milo reached Detective I Sean Binchy at the station, directed Binchy to run an image search on south el monte baseball team.
"When do you need it, Loot?"
"Now."
"Sure… here we go, they're called the Eagles… here's a group picture, game they won from Temple City, they're all smiling."
"What color are their caps, Sean?"
"Navy blue."
"Any insignia?"
"Looks like a snake-no, it's an S, probably for 'South.'"
"Gold?"
"Right on, Loot. Anything else you need?"
"Pray for world peace, Sean."
"I already do that every morning, sir."
We drove back to L.A., stopping at a place on Colorado for take-out coffee that we drank while in motion. Just west was Pasadena and that got me thinking. But I didn't have enough for sparkling conversation.
Milo said, "The kid pays girls to buy ice so he can ice Freeman in a dramatic way, then mops up Fidella for good measure, only question is why. With Elise's proclivities and Fidella being a lowlife, maybe sex and education got jumbled up together in a particularly nasty way."
I said, "Martin was careful enough to set Elise's murder up with surgical precision and to wipe Fidella's house clean amid a horrendous scene but left his hat in the car-and the car out in the open?"
"Teenagers, Alex. You're the one always saying they're unpredictable. Or maybe he's reached that point: big drop in adrenaline, tired of running, and ready to get caught. We can discuss this till forever but right now he's a good lead. The car gives up the same prints as Fidella's garage, I'm going public."
I said, "Prep school makes noble attempt at diversity but best intentions fail, the manor-born sail into their dream schools, Martin Mendoza ends up in jail. The chief-and Darwin-will be pleased."
"Yeah, it stinks, but that doesn't make it untrue." He finished his coffee, chewed on a cold cigar, drove faster. A few freeway exits later, he said, "Life ain't a surprise party. We both know that."