City of the Dead (Alex Delaware, #37)(59)

He cocked his head toward the other D’s. “Loot asked me to find the decedent’s phone carrier, still working on it.”

“Good to see you, Sean.”

“You, too, Doc.”

I continued up a narrow path that scythed through the grass. Not a planned access, a rut caused by years of surreptitious foot-traffic.

The hillside’s a combination of hard-to-access private property that forms the bottom borders of ambitious houses on stilts, along with intermittent patches of county easements that exist for no apparent reason.

Nice to see the grass back, along with clumps of pretty blue statice, other flowering succulents, and seedlings rebounding.

A couple of years ago fires had ravished California, and much of this land had been charred to the roots. Self-labeled experts predicted ten to twenty years before anything grew. As with everything, the issue had turned political and contentious, with blame leveled at climate change, government overreach, government underreach, the failure of greedy rich people to maintain their land, willful suppression of animal habitats.

The real reason turned out to be a cooking fire caused by intoxicated carelessness in a homeless encampment that had escaped everyone’s attention.

As far as I knew, the homeless had moved on, but I didn’t know much and I wondered how and why Tyler Hoffgarden had ended up here.

As I climbed, I scanned for shoe prints or drag marks, saw none. When I was a few feet from the three detectives, the slope eased into a flat background and activity clarified: a pop-up tent; coroner’s investigators and crime scene techs passing in and out; two uniformed officers running metal detectors over the brush; a hard-breathing Belgian Malinois leading a handler in hurried arcs.

In counterpoint to all that, two burly men stood to the right, motionless, taking in the view of the freeway. Crypt drivers waiting to transport yet another body bag to North Mission Road.

Alicia and Moe said, “Hey, Doc,” in unison.

Milo nodded and eyed the pop-up. “Feel free to look but my advice is don’t.”

I said, “Just for a sec,” and headed for the tent.

Why? A perverse fear of missing out? Plain old habitual compulsiveness?

In the spirit of being kind to myself, I decided on not wanting to miss a crucial detail.

But who knows?



* * *



—

The smell hit me first and endured well beyond the split-second image that filled my eyes and my head.

Something in clothing. The flesh that wasn’t garbed was a weird combination of dehydration in some places and slick, gelled putrescence in others.

I got out of there and returned to the detectives.

Milo said, “Learn anything?”

“To take your advice. Who found him?”

“A homeless couple, looking for a nice place to set up camp.”

Alicia said, “Hopefully not with Sterno.”

“Well taken, kid, but these two were good citizens. Ran down to Sunset and flagged a motorist who called it in, then stuck around.”

Alicia turned to me. “And got compensated by Loo’s generosity.”

I said, “Lunch money?”

She said, “More like lunch, dinner, brunch the next day.”

Milo said, “It’s all about working with the citizenry. Anyway, before I got here, patrol showed up, took down the basics, and taped it off. C.I.’s guessing three, four days, sent photos to Basia and she said that sounded right, pending her hands-on. As you saw, the body was left clothed. What you couldn’t tell was it was facedown with two bullet holes at the back of the skull and rope burns around both wrists and shins. So he was trussed, maybe even hog-tied. So far, no casings, a careful shooter or a revolver. I.D. was no mystery, Hoffgarden’s wallet was in his jean pocket. His face was pretty much eaten away by decomp and animals but the hair color’s right and there’s not a lot of people his size.”

I said, “Sean said he’s still looking for the phone server. Wallet on the scene but no phone?”

Reed said, “Nope, and no cash in the wallet.”

Alicia said, “Plus still no sighting of the Mini anywhere in the county.”

I said, “Robbery taken further?”

Reed said, “That’s how I saw it.” Alicia nodded.

Milo said, “Or someone wants us to think so.”

Both younger detectives flinched.

I said, “Didn’t see any drag marks. Did it happen here?”

“The blood says yes.”

“So Hoffgarden was marched uphill, bound, and shot? A man his size with mixed martial training?”

Milo said, “We’re thinking more than one offender.”

Alicia said, “The gangs have been doing team-things for home invasions and street heists. Three, four, five lowlifes swarm, point firearms, and overwhelm the victim. Sometimes they shoot in the air, sometimes they just shoot. Most of what we’ve seen has been southside or Venice but there was an ADW/attempted homicide in Beverly Hills last year and the idiots who pulled that one off got busted trying the same thing in La Canada.”

Reed said, “Mixed martial is fine but an army against you changes everything.”

Milo said, “Okay, onward. Moe, you’ve had contact with Hoffgarden’s landlady so you do the victim’s warrant and you and Alicia handle the toss. Sean will stay on the phone search and I’ll be here until I start to feel useless.”