The ruins were now directly off to their left. A pelican was perched on a former wall of the structure; a photographer with a long lens was creeping up, a step at a time, attempting to capture the shot that would add polish to his portfolio.
The wind was appreciably firmer down at the ocean’s edge, and Vail wrapped her arms across her chest.
“What’ve you got for us?” Burden asked the officer, who stood at the mouth of a fairly regular opening in the cliffside, roughened edges encircling its periphery.
“Body’s in there,” the cop said. “Got a call from a tourist. Kind of hard to figure out what he said-dispatch said he was from Denmark, I think-but he was pretty upset. Something about a body that wasn’t moving.”
“Is he still around?” Friedberg asked.
“We got here, no one knew anything about him. And he’s not answering his cell.”
“Okay,” Burden said. “Where’s our victim?”
“Inside, all the way down.”
“Down where?” Vail asked, squinting into the darkness.
“It’s a tunnel. He’s at the end. Any of you have a flashlight?”
Vail fished a small LED keychain light from a pocket.
“That’s useless in there. Take mine. Be careful, the terrain’s a little rough.”
The upper three quarters of the rock facing surrounding the tunnel’s mouth was a creamy, rose-colored tint; the bottom portion was gray and appeared to have layers etched in its surface, like the rings of a tree. A few feet beyond the opening, the walls were black.
Vail suffered from claustrophobia, but it was inconsistent: sometimes she had little difficulty with enclosed places, while on other occasions merely getting in an elevator would fill her with consuming anxiety. She had developed the condition after a recent case that left her in the custody of a killer who traumatized her in a confined space.
Vail took the flashlight and switched it on. The roughened walls and ceiling of the tunnel, which appeared to be about eight feet high, stared back at them. I can do this. “Shall we?”
Vail led the way, her shoes crunching on the course, compacted sand. The ground seemed to slope away from her, undulating into the distance as far as the light carried. So far, so good. Approximately seventy-five feet away, a semicircle of light blasted through the opening from the tunnel’s opposing end. An object appeared to be silhouetted against the glare.
“Is that-” She swung back over her shoulder. “Hey! Officer. Is that our guy down at the end?”
The man bent over and peered in. “That’s him,” he said, his voice reverberating off the walls. “He’s tied up against something.”
“That would fit,” Burden said.
Vail moved further in. A few steps later, smashing ocean waves echoed somewhere off to their left. The hand-smoothed sheen of a metal railing caught her light beam. They stopped and listened: a sliver of light followed the water into the cave, a tributary that ran below them and perpendicular to the tunnel’s main trunk. Vail crouched and looked into the crevasse.
With her flashlight, she followed the water to an area just below them. “High tide, I’m sure the ocean floods this tunnel. We’d better get to that body. CSI on the way?”
“He was dispatched same time we were called,” Friedberg said. “Should be here soon.”
They walked toward the open end, where, against the gray light of the sky, a shape that resembled the body of a man stared back at them. As they approached, Vail shined the beam on something to the right of the corpse. The reflective coating on a brown Caution sign, similar to the one they had seen earlier on the trail, lit up brightly: End of Trail.
As if the cable, the abrupt end of the tunnel, and huge boulders ahead weren’t clues enough.
Friedberg rested his hands on both knees to examine the left portion of the body. “Can I get some light?”
Vail complied, illuminating the area.
“Fishing line again. Vic’s fastened to the cables that are holding up the sign. But…” Friedberg craned his neck and peeked behind the man. “He’s strapped to a two-by-four.” He stepped back and gestured with a hand. “Take a look. It runs vertically, from head to toe. It’s secured to the two cables that run horizontally across the cave opening.”
Burden surveyed the setup. “He needed that two-by-four to keep the body upright.”
“And that board isn’t from around here,” Vail said. “That much is obvious. Meaning our UNSUB planned this. I mean, we knew that already-but this is pretty definitive. It supports what I said back at your station. Organization, planning. He brought the tools he needed with him. And apparently no one saw him.”
Behind the body, the terrain changed markedly. Over time, pounding waves had done a job on the rock face, chopping it into pieces of varying sizes. Boulders, large and small, rose and fell in height, leading into the ocean a few dozen feet in the distance.
Vail said, “I can’t see how the offender would get in here on this end. He had to have come in where we did. Without anyone seeing him.”
Burden gave a quick look, then turned to study the opposite end of the cave. “Coming from the road, it’s a long haul. And the terrain’s rough. Hard to carry a body. Even using a wheelbarrow, or something like that cart he used back at the Palace of Fine Arts, not as easy to do here.”
“Remember,” Vail said. “Easiest thing for the offender to do is bring the vic here alive, then kill him in the tunnel.” Vail removed a pen from her pocket and handed the flashlight to Friedberg as she separated the ends of the man’s Members Only windbreaker. “Wanna hear my theory?”
“That’s what we brought you out here for,” Burden said.
“This kind of disposal site tells me that this offender has some prior knowledge of what he’s getting himself into here. The challenge of the terrain. But he still uses it-which would suggest it holds some kind of symbolism for him. It’s more than just being ‘in your face.’ He wants law enforcement to get the symbolism. And if I’m right, this kind of offender’s gonna be the type to monitor the investigation. He’ll pay attention to what the media says, so he can find out what we’re thinking about his disposal sites.”
“Maybe we can use that.”
Vail nodded. “The statements we make about these sites are very important. We may even use misinformation. We could totally misinterpret what he’d intended, to get him to contact us-kind of like, ‘No, stupid, you got it all wrong. This is why I’m doing it this way!’”
“I think we can arrange that,” Burden said. “A reporter I know, we can use him. He’ll do it.”
“Meantime,” Friedberg said, “if we can find out who this vic is, we may find another body.”
Burden nodded. “His wife.”
“Yeah,” Vail said, her mind shifting to an image of Maureen Anderson’s tortured body. “His wife.” Off to the side, amongst the uneven boulders, two parallel rusted metal strips poking up and between the rock caught her eye. “Is that railroad track? Kind of in the middle of nowhere.”