Blood Ties

 

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This book is for Thia, who knows all the reasons why.

 

1

The rain had stopped just before dawn, but up on the coast highway the air was still laden with heavy mist, enough to dissolve the flashers on the police cruisers into pulses of smeary red light. A couple of uniformed officers Ellen didn't recognize were already putting up yellow tape to keep onlookers at a distance. The morning traffic was light, but word got around, even on a weekend. In twenty minutes they would have their hands full.

The site was a lookout point with space for about ten cars. She saw three black-and-whites and a dented powder-blue Chevy, which presumably belonged to the man who had phoned in the report, which meant that Ellen's partner Sam hadn't yet made it up from Daly City.

Even before she had put her Toyota into park, a cop was leaning over the door.

“You'll have to move on, Miss. This is a police inquiry.”

Without so much as glancing at him, she opened the door and, as she stepped outside, took out her badge case and lapped it over the breast pocket of her worn tweed jacket. Standing there, she was almost as tall as he was.

“I'm Ridley,” she answered.

The dispatchers did this to her every time, as if the gag would never wear thin. They would radio the scene,
Inspector Ridley will be there in twenty minutes,
and never use her first name.

Two years ago, during her early days on the homicide squad, she would have made an issue of it. She would have looked the man straight in the face, daring him to smile or say a word, daring him to look beyond the badge to the slender woman with short reddish-brown hair who appeared perfectly ready to break both his knees. But somewhere along the line she had made her peace with what the other women detectives referred to as the Nancy Drew syndrome. You can't reform the world.

So she directed her attention to a group of four men drinking coffee out of Styrofoam cups. All of them were cops except one, who looked ancient and was wearing a green Army coat he had probably owned since Korea.

“Is that the guy who found her?”

“Yeah.”

“Anybody question him yet?”

“No. We were waiting for you.”

Ellen nodded, as if acknowledging a neutral fact, but she was pleased. During her three years in uniform she had had it drilled into her that the officers who got there first were supposed to protect the crime scene, identify and detain any witnesses, and keep their mouths shut, but not everyone followed procedure.

As she approached, the three uniforms faded back and left her alone with the man in the Army coat, who smiled at her until he saw the badge. He had a weathered face, and the fingernails of the hand that held the coffee cup were discolored by decades of cigarette smoke.

“You went fishing this morning?” she asked.

He nodded. “Down just before sunrise. That's the best time.”

His eyes glittered with excitement, but that was natural enough. Half an hour ago he had found a dead body, so the adrenaline was still rushing. He had had time to stop being scared and now he was just enjoying himself.

But he had been scared enough then. His khaki trousers were covered with fresh mud, as if he had scrambled back up that bluff on his hands and knees.

Ellen looked over to where the land seemed to end abruptly in a few tufts of dry grass. It was a good sixty feet to the beach and almost a straight drop. She would not have liked climbing around there in the dark.

“You know, you're not supposed to do that.” She tried to keep it from sounding like a threat. “The tide can come in here pretty fast. Every couple of years it catches somebody before they can get back on the trail, and the body washes up in Half Moon Bay.”

“Don't worry about me,” he said, happy to show off a little. “I've lived in the Bay Area for forty years. I know this coast, every inch of it.”

“So when was the last time you fished this stretch?”

“Two weekends ago. Yeah—last Sunday I was a couple of miles further south.”

“And you went down this morning in the dark? When did you find the body?”

“Right away. I had my flashlight with me, and she was hard to miss.”

He laughed nervously, making it sound like the punch line of a dirty joke, like whoever was lying down there dead was somehow the guilty one. Ellen decided she didn't like the fisherman very much. She would leave him to Sam, who would manage to convey the impression that the police regarded him as a leading suspect. That would ruin his day.

“Thank you,” she said, glancing away. “Someone will be along shortly to take your full statement.”

“Will I have to go downtown?”

Ellen smiled at him, perhaps a trifle maliciously. “Oh yes. You'll get to know us all real well.”

And now it was time to pay her respects.

Sam said you got used to it, but she was beginning to wonder. Death still had not lost its power to humble her. Even if the corpse was a drug mule, shot in a dispute with management and left in some alley off Mission Street, she could never quite overcome the feeling that she was intruding on a private tragedy, that she was out of place. That it was none of her business.

“You're not being rude,” Sam had told her once, when she was a fresh transfer from Juvenile Division and he had only just stopped expecting her to sick up. “They're dead. They won't mind. Stop worrying about their modesty. If it makes you feel better, just remember that you're the last person who's ever going to do them a favor. You're going to catch whoever killed them.”

The grass at the edge of the bluff waved forlornly in the ocean breeze. The path down to the beach was just wide enough for one person and the night's rain had churned the gravelly ground into mud.

The victim was about fifteen feet from the top, head down, snagged on the bushes so that her left arm fell across the path as if she were trying to arrest her fall. Except for her bikini-style red panties and a pair of red satin heels, she was naked. Her face was turned away and her short, dishwater blond hair was matted and dirty, almost as if she were wearing a cap. There were no obvious wounds, but she was lying facedown so there wouldn't be.

Ellen, standing on the edge, forced herself not to look away. It was the terrible helplessness of the dead that got to her. This woman, whoever she was, could not so much as put up a hand to ward off the disrespectful attention of strangers. She had been stripped not only of her life but of her dignity as a human being and had not even the power to protest. Somehow that fact made what was happening to her now almost as bad as death itself. It was as if they had all become accomplices in a murder of her soul.

“I think the shoes add a nice touch, don't you? I always like a villain with a sense of humor.”

She hadn't noticed Sam coming up behind her. He took off his hat to push back a tangle of steel gray hair. The hat was canvas, putty colored and brand-new, the only thing he was wearing that didn't look as if it had come out of the Goodwill bag, and he put it back on his head with appropriate delicacy. Sam, who had a reputation for being the best homicide detective in the state, had been on Homicide for fourteen years and Ellen's partner since she had come on the squad.

“He's teasing us,” Ellen said, with just the faintest trace of resentment. “He wanted her found quickly, and he wanted us to know it. He didn't just throw her out of the trunk of his car.”

“If he had, those bushes wouldn't have held her. The crabs would be having her for breakfast. I think he carried her down there.”

“Probably. And the rain last night took care of any fiber evidence.”

“He's a clever bastard.” Sam lit a cigarette, an unfiltered Camel, and took a drag so deep he gave the impression he had been holding his breath.

“What do you make of the panties?” she asked. “Why did he leave them on?”

“Good question. But I don't suppose we'll find out until we can ask him.” He took the cigarette out of his mouth and frowned slightly, as if faced with an unpleasant choice. “You want to go down there and do the honors?”

“Aren't you coming?”

He shook his head and smiled. “She's all yours, Ellie. I can wait until she's on the table. Have you had a word with whoever found her?”

“Only just. I left him for you.”

This made Sam laugh. “I'll see if I can't smarten up his attitude a little,” he said.

The path to the beach was treacherous. She had to watch her feet every step or the rain-slick, sandy earth would slip away under her shoes and take her with it. Ellen could see why someone going down here in the dark might make it almost to the body before noticing it.

And that, apparently, was what had happened to their fisherman, because his flashlight, coated with mud, was lying not five feet from where the dead woman's hand reached out onto the path. His big surf-casting rod was hung up in some bushes nearby. He must have had himself quite a shock.

“Steady, girl,” she told herself, just under her breath, so that no one except she could hear. “Stay below zero.”

She had learned she had to distance herself from the normal human responses. Disgust, anger and pity just got in the way. She was there to observe. That was it. And it was the only part of her job she really hated. But it was what she owed to the dead.

There were beads of rainwater all over the woman's skin. It was obvious there was no evidence here beyond the body itself, but Ellen still was careful not to disturb the scene. Holding on to some bushes, she went off the path to get lower down to have a peek at the face.

Nobody's looks were improved by a night out in the rain, especially if they were dead to begin with, and Ellen had the impression this lady might have been someone who cared about appearances. There were still traces of makeup on her face, and from the way it was holding up it didn't seem to be the kind you picked up at Kmart. There was a thin gold chain around her neck that looked like it might be worth something.