It was my turn to roll my eyes. “They are helping us, Candice. They planted the imagery in my dream last night, and put me right where I needed to be to find the next clue.”
“Which is?”
“Well,” I said, adjusting the sketch in my hands so she could see it better. “That’s what we have to figure out.”
Candice sighed and let her arms fall to her sides. “Okay, so what does this sketch mean?”
“What do you mean, what does it mean?” I said, thinking it was obvious. “It means that I needed to be on the lookout for the Clawsons. They’ve got to have something to do with all this.”
Candice pursed her lips and pointed to where the severed section of the vine was dripping blood. She said, “That’s the part that I find really unnerving.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “For me too.”
“What if the vine is Ivy?” Candice said.
“Of course it’s Ivy,” I said. “That’s what got me to really pay attention when Mrs. Clawson said her daughter’s name, then dropped the nail polish and it splashed into my footbath.”
Candice expelled a small sigh. “Yeah, but what if it’s more than that, Abby? What if the vine bleeding into the water is about the nail polish and it also represents Ivy’s murder?”
I gasped. “Holy shit, you’re right! I didn’t even make that connection.”
Candice looked like she was surprised I’d agreed with her. “So you think that could actually be true? You think she could be one of the girls that gets murdered in the future?”
I thought back to the girl I’d seen at the salon and in the parking lot of the grocery store. She’d looked very typical for a teenager—bored with the conversations of the adults around her and very into texting with her friends. She’d been disconnected from the world around her, and I suddenly saw how easy a target she’d make. Even a year and a half from now, she’d probably be no less withdrawn from the world around her. It made me very afraid for her, and the shudder that crept along my shoulder blades seemed to confirm that she could be one of the girls targeted by the killer who would someday bury her near the excavation site. “Yes,” I said to Candice. “Yes, I think she’s destined to be one of the victims.”
Candice pointed to my sketch again. “So maybe your dream wasn’t about the robberies at all. Maybe it’s about the future murders.”
I shook my head. “No,” I said, tapping the leaves on the vine. “It’s about both. They’re connected in some way. They have someone or something in common.”
“Okay . . . ,” Candice said, her brow furrowed in thought. “What could link Ivy’s murder to the robberies other than maybe the killer?”
I thought about the warm water of the bathtub in my dream again, and wondered if I’d actually been right about the first metaphor I’d come up with for it. “Mrs. Clawson,” I said with a snap of my fingers. “Ivy’s mother. She was talking to Mrs. Edwards and they seem to be friends, and we’re pretty convinced that Will Edwards is connected to the robberies in some way.”
“Are you sure he’s not the killer?” Candice asked. “I mean, he did slash our tire. At the very least the guy is armed with a knife.”
I reflected on that for a minute before I shook my head. “I just can’t see that big, sluggish man with a preference for an even bigger woman suddenly developing a liking for murdering young girls. And the knife is probably just what you said about it yesterday, that he uses it for protection because Flower works in one of the seediest neighborhoods we’ve ever been to. Which is saying something, since we both grew up near Detroit.”
Candice nodded. “True that,” she said. “So, Mrs. Clawson and Will Edwards are connected to the bank robberies?”
I nodded, then shook my head, then nodded again. “Yes? Maybe? I don’t know. Maybe we should review the video again and see if there’s any footage of her at the bank. I mean, it’s possible she could’ve been there at the time, posing as a customer, and helping out with the lookout, right?”
“There was no female customer in the bank at the time,” she said. “Just a guy in what looked like construction attire, and another gentleman who was maybe in his late sixties or early seventies.”
I vaguely remembered seeing both those men on the footage. And then I had another thought. “Candice,” I said. “Was there any footage of the robbers from outside the bank?” I wondered if perhaps someone like Mrs. Clawson wasn’t standing guard outside to warn the others should the cops roll up, and also possibly to drive the getaway car.
“Yes,” she said. “But it only shows the entrance and sides of the building. You see the four guys entering and leaving, but where they go after filing straight out isn’t available. At least, not in any of the video links I’ve seen posted.” She paused a moment to tap her lip and added, “Maybe we should call Kelsey and see if she has access to that. Maybe there’s an angle that shows the parking lot of the bank that the Feds have managed to keep under wraps, away from the public.”
“I’ll send her a text,” I vowed. “Did you get anything more on Edwards?”
“Maybe,” she said. “I’m not sure yet.”
“What’s that mean?”
“About six years ago he began working for a company that produced video surveillance systems. The company was bought out by a larger conglomerate two years ago and he left shortly after the merger, probably because he didn’t like the new management. I haven’t been able to determine if the camera system sold to the bank came from either the original company or from the larger conglomerate, but there might be a lead there if it did—and if Edwards knew about, or had a hand in creating, the system.”
“If he did, that’d be a big connection, right?”
Candice smiled. “It would, but it’s difficult to tell if he worked on the camera system or not, and what role he had in creating it. I’ll have to tread carefully when I dig for information, because companies that deal in security of any kind tend to be pretty tight-lipped about who worked on what and when. The fact that the camera system itself was hacked into won’t make anyone any more forthcoming either.”
My radar pinged and I just felt that looking further into Will Edwards’s connection to the origin of the camera system was going to be worthwhile, no matter what the hurdles. “Keep digging,” I told Candice. “There’s something there.”
Candice rubbed her eyes and yawned. “I’m on it,” she said before trying to stifle yet another yawn. I realized suddenly how tired she looked. I also knew that, like me, she’d gotten only a few hours’ sleep, but unlike me, she’d been staring at a computer screen for a couple of hours while I bounced around town tailing a mother and daughter. My energy was driven by adrenaline. Hers was driven by sheer willpower.
“Why don’t you take a nap?” I told her. “You look beat.”
She offered me a slanted smile. “I’m fine.”
I waved my hand in front of her. “Your aura says otherwise. You need a nap, Huckleberry.”
Candice’s lids drooped and she made an attempt to widen them and shrug off her fatigue. I cocked a skeptical eyebrow and that made her smile again. “Okay,” she relented. “Maybe just a quick one.”
We went back up to the room and while Candice lay down, I sent Kelsey a text and asked her to call me, then went back down to the lobby in search of a snack and to hopefully await her call.
My phone rang just as I was polishing off a banana. (I know, you’re reeling in shock right now that I didn’t go for the Snickers, right? It was a shock to me too.) “Hi, Kelsey,” I said when I picked up the line. “Thanks for calling me.”
“What’s going on?” she asked. “You have some info to pass on?”
“Maybe,” I said. “First, I need to ask if you guys have looked for any surveillance footage from other businesses in the area of the robbers leaving the bank.”
There was a pause, then, “We have, but
so far we haven’t managed to recover anything useable. We did find footage of the robbers both coming and going from two of the robberies, from a surveillance camera located outside of a liquor store and another at a gas station, but the footage is grainy and it appears that all four robbers came on foot from different locations and also left headed in different directions. So far there’s no evidence of a getaway car or if they met up at a later location.”
“Wow, really?” I said. “You’d think that there’d be some kind of useable footage somewhere.”
“If there is, we haven’t found it,” Kelsey said. “I think the robbers planned which branches to hit very carefully. All five branches are well away from other businesses that could’ve recorded the thieves. It’s really been a frustrating investigation for Perez and Robinson.”
“Poor boys,” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm.
Kelsey laughed. “Okay, so what’s this information you have to share with me?”
“Well,” I said, thinking about how to best phrase my request. “Candice is pretty exhausted right now, so I need someone to look into the background of a woman named Cindy Clawson who lives at the following address—”
“Whoa,” Kelsey interrupted. “Abby, I can’t just go digging into somebody’s background without probable cause. What evidence do you have to suspect this woman?”
I blinked. I had nothing but my gut and the dream from the night before. “I don’t. But trust me, she’s involved. Can’t you just sort of do a little snooping without crossing any lines?”
She laughed softly. “It’s not that simple. I’d need to get Rivera to sign off on an administrative subpoena to look into any of her digital records, and there’s no way he’s going to grant me that without knowing why I’m looking into her background. The second I tell him it’s for the robbery cases, he’ll have me in his office for a dressing-down like you wouldn’t believe.”
“So don’t tell him it’s for the robbery cases,” I said, crossing my fingers.
“It’d have to be attached to something, Abby,” she said. “Something that was assigned to me.”
The way she emphasized that last word let me know she was trying to point me in the right direction. Lucky her, I’m not that slow on the uptake. “Oh, wait, Kelsey! My bad. You thought I was talking about the robbery cases? No way! I switched subjects and didn’t tell you. My bad. I need you to look into Cindy Clawson for the Grecco case. I think she may have purchased some wine from him . . . or some artwork . . . or something. You feel me?”
“I do,” she said right away. “And since you’re a trusted source on that case, I feel compelled to follow up on your hunch. Okay, I’ll get the sign-off from Rivera, but you should know that this could come back to bite me in the ass if it goes south, so we’ll both tread carefully here with Mrs. Clawson, okay?”
“Deal,” I said, happy as a clam that I’d successfully enlisted her help. To be sure I was covering all the bases, I added, “And you might want to look into her husband, Mr. Clawson, too, just to make sure she didn’t try to hide anything under his name.”
“Is that another hunch?” she asked.
“For sure,” I said, even though it wasn’t quite true.
After hanging up with Kelsey, I moseyed on over to the hotel pool and got a good dose of vitamin D. It was a little chilly out, but the sun was shining and I was in good spirits. Leaning back in the lounge chair, I closed my eyes and sighed happily.
The next thing I knew, someone had me by the shoulder and was gently shaking me awake. “Who? What? Where?” I exclaimed, sitting bolt upright with hands ready to karate chop anything threatening.
“Whoa, Sundance,” Candice said, stepping out of harm’s way. “Better put those away before you poke an eye out.”
I holstered the karate hands and shook my head a little to get the sleepiness out. “What’s going on?”
Candice held up my phone. “I came looking for you and saw you out here. Your phone was ringing when I walked up, so I checked the display and answered it. Kelsey called. She needs to see us. Right away.”
I shook my head again, trying to catch up to everything Candice had just said. “Why?” I finally managed.
“They found something mixed in with the ancient remains you helped dig up. It’s putting a whole new spin on things.”
I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Did she say what it was?”
“No. She wouldn’t tell me over the phone, and that can only mean that it’s something bad.”
“Shit,” I said. “I was afraid of that.”
Chapter Thirteen
• • •
We met Kelsey at a Starbucks midway between our hotel and the bureau offices. She was already there when we arrived, and the look on her face was . . . tense.
“What’s happened?” I asked when we sat down, not even wasting time on the hellos.
“Perez and Robinson got a call an hour and a half ago,” she began. “The archaeologist, Dr. Acuna, who was hired by the Tongva tribe to inspect and catalog the ancient remains discovered a few extra pieces.”
“Extra pieces?” Candice repeated.
“Yes. Extra bones. A femur, a piece of the spine, the left half of the pelvis, and a jawbone. The teeth on the jawbone appear to have had some dental work.”
“I didn’t know the ancestors of the Tongva tribe had a dental plan,” Candice said.
“They definitely didn’t,” Kelsey confirmed. “Anyway, given the fact that there were fillings in the teeth on the jawbone, Dr. Acuna called in one of our county’s medical examiners, Dr. Catalpa, whom I know personally, as he’s helped out with a few of our cases in the past. He’s who we call when decomp is so bad that all we have left is a skeleton.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “The additional bones were from someone who died recently.”
“Yes. Dr. Catalpa says they’ve been in the ground no more than a year. Two at the most.”
“Whoa,” I said, my mind racing to try to figure out how this new twist could figure into the cases we were working on.
Before I could draw any conclusions or hypotheses, Candice said, “How’d they get buried so deep? And, for that matter, how did someone know where to dig to put them next to a set of ancient remains when no living person could’ve known those remains were down there in the first place?”
“They didn’t,” Kelsey said. “Dr. Catalpa and Dr. Acuna examined photos of the remains taken immediately after the bulldozer dug them up. The extra pieces weren’t there.”
“So how’d they get mixed in with the tribesman’s remains?” Candice asked.
“The tribesman’s bones took a few days to be dug up, and each day they were photographed to make sure the process was well documented. The photos on the third day of the dig show the extra bones scattered among the skeleton of the tribesman. No one noticed until the photos were carefully screened by Dr. Catalpa and Dr. Acuna.”
I felt a chill go through me and the memory of the Edwards kid walking away from the dig site went through my mind. But that had been the night immediately after my discovery of the tribesman. The bones hadn’t appeared for two more days. We’d seen for ourselves that the young teen liked to sneak out of his house and patrol the neighborhood in the middle of the night. It could’ve been purely innocent. The kid could’ve merely been curious what all the fuss was about at the edge of his hood and wanted to see the dig site up close.
And yet, it was another one of those coincidences that bothered me, especially as it looped back to the Edwardses.
“What do they know about the victim?” Candice asked next. “I mean, I know it’s only a leg bone and some extra parts, but is there anything that can point you guys to identifying who it was?”
Kelsey nodded. “The victim was young. The growth plates hadn’t completely sealed on the leg bone. Dr. Catalpa is estimating that the vi
ctim was between twelve and fourteen. Maybe a little older or younger depending on the individual development. He also believes the victim was a male.”
“Male?” Candice and I both said together. “You sure?” I asked.
“I’m not,” Kelsey said. “But Dr. Catalpa said that the pelvis is more consistent with a prepubescent male rather than a female. The leg bone is also a bit heavier than most female adolescent leg bones, and the jawbone is also slightly heavier than most young females’. He says he’s eighty percent certain they belong to an adolescent male. He’ll need more time for analysis to determine race and solidify gender, and we can get a DNA sample from some tissue left on the pelvis, but it’s highly unlikely this kid would be in the system, so the DNA would have to be strictly for profiling. We could also use it to identify the victim, if the dental records aren’t available for some reason, for comparison to his parents’ DNA, assuming we can offer up a possible name for the victim.”
“I’m betting there’re lots of missing young men his age in the area, though, right?” I said. The runaways alone would likely number in the dozens, if not hundreds.
“Well over six thousand young males between twelve and sixteen have gone missing from L.A. County in the last year alone,” Kelsey said. “That’s for a population of about ten million.”
My jaw dropped. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” I had no idea the number was so high.
Kelsey shook her head sadly. “No, not kidding. The vast majority of those cases, however, are either kids who’ve run away from home or who’ve been kidnapped by an alienated parent, who then either takes them across the border or to another state under an assumed name.”
My heart hurt for all the parents who never got to know what became of their children.
“Still,” Kelsey continued, “we estimate that at least five percent of those missing have met some sort of violent end.”
The table fell silent as Candice and I absorbed that.
“Sweet Jesus,” Candice finally said. “That’s three hundred kids! A year!”