the kitchen. They would have been remiss if they had not assumed the
worst, that an armed intruder had forced his way into the house to
commit burglary or to harm whoever resided legally within.
Drawing their revolvers, they entered cautiously.
Shards of broken glass crunched underfoot.
As they moved from room to room, they turned on lights and saw enough to
justify intrusion. The bloody palmprint etched into the arm of the
white sofa in the family room. The destruction in the master bedroom.
And in the garage… Emestina Herhandez’s powderblue Ford.
Inspecting the car, Reese found bloodstains on the back seat and floor
mats. “Some of it’s still a little sticky,” he told Julio.
Julio tried the trunk of the car and found it unlocked.
Inside, there was more blood, a pair of broken eyeglasses-and one blue
shoe.
The shoe was Emestina’s, and the sight of it caused Julio’s chest to
tighten.
As far as Julio knew, the Hernandez girl had not worn glasses. In
photographs he had seen at the Hernandez home, however, Becky Klienstad,
friend and fellow waitress, had worn a pair like these.
Evidently, both women had been killd and stuffed into the Ford’s trunk.
Later, Emestina’s corpse had been heaved into the dumpster.
But what happened to the other body?
“Call the locals,” Julio said. “It’s time for protocol.”
1,52 A.M. When Reese Hagerstrom returned from the sedan, he paused to
put up the electric garage doors to air out the smell of blood that had
risen from the open trunk of the Ford and reached into every corner of
the long room. As the doors rolled up, he spotted a discarded set of
hospital whites and a pair of anti static shoes in one corner.
“Julio?
Come here and look at this.”
Julio had been staring intently into the bloody trunk of the car, unable
to touch anything lest he ruin precious evidence, but hoping to spot
some small clue by sheer dint of intense study. He joined Reese at the
discarded clothes.
Reese said, “What the hell is going on?”
Julio did not reply.
Reese said, “The evening started out with one missing corpse. Now two
are missing-Leben and the Klienstad girl. And we’ve found a third we
wish we hadn’t. If someone’s collecting dead bodies, why wouldn’t they
keep Emestina Hernandez, too?”
Puzzling over these bizarre discoveries and the baffling link between
the snatching of Leben’s corpse and the murder of Ernestina, Julio
unconsciously straightened his necktie, tugged on his shirt sleeves, and
adjusted his cuff links. Even in summer heat, he would not forsake a
tie and long-sleeve shirt, the way some detectives did. Like a priest,
a detective held a sacred office, labored in the service of the gods of
Justice and Law, and to dress any less formally would have seemed, to
him, as disrespectful as a priest celebrating the Mass in jeans and a
T-shirt.
“Are the locals coming?” he asked Reese.
“Yes. And as soon as we’ve had a chance to explain the situation to
them, we’ve got to go up to Placentia.”
Julio blinked. “Placentia? Why?”
“I checked messages when I got to the car. HQ had an important one for
us. The Placentia police have found Becky Klienstad.”
“Where? Alive?”
“Dead. In Rachael Leben’s house.”
Astonished, Julio repeated the question that Reese had asked only a few
minutes ago, “What the hell is going on?”
1,58 AM.
To get to Placentia, they drove from Villa Park through part of Orange,
across a portion of Anaheim, over the Tustin Avenue bridge of the Santa
Ana River, which was only a river of dust during this dry season. They
passed oil wells where the big pumps, like enormous praying mantises,
worked up and down, a shade lighter than the night around them,
identifiable and yet somehow mysterious shapes that added one more
ominous note to the darkness.
Placentia was usually one of the quietest communities in the county,
neither rich nor poor, just comfortable and content, with no terrible
drawbacks, with no great advantages over other nearby towns except,
perhaps, for the enormous and beautiful date palms which lined some of
its streets. Palms of remarkable lushness and stature lined the street