Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [777]
He stepped over the busted barbed-wire fence and noticed a No Trespassing sign still attached, now mud splattered and barely hanging on. That summed it up pretty good. These two guys had no respect for authority, no respect for private property, no respect for anybody but themselves.
“We’re getting what we can,” Ben yelled to him as Pakula stepped from one mud pile to another, making his way to the car. “Then we’ll haul it in and comb the inside.” Ben tapped out a cigarette, and when one of the techs scowled at him, he headed back the way Pakula had just come.
Pakula recognized the tall, skinny kid, Wes Howard, and mumbled a hello. He didn’t envy these two, crawling around in the mud, trying to do their grid of the scene with latex gloves on and plastic bags in hand. He stayed back about twenty feet, trying to get a sense of what those two assholes went through during their scenic crash in the country. What did they do next? How did they happen to stumble onto the cabin Andrew had rented?
“Air bag deploy?” he asked.
“Nope and thank goodness,” Wes said. “Sometimes they make a mess of the evidence.”
“Yeah, but sometimes you end up getting some blood or snot for DNA.”
“No blood or snot but plenty of vomit in the back seat.”
“Really? Isn’t that interesting. Anything else?” Pakula asked.
“We’ll dust the interior for prints after we haul it in. Footprints around the car are pretty much washed away. Although I think I have a partial on the inside back doorstep.”
“Nothing got left behind in the car?” Pakula came close enough to glance inside. It was looking more and more like the assholes didn’t get away with any money.
“Couple of pairs of bloody coveralls, one kerchief. No weapon. We’ll do a good vacuum job back at the ranch. I did find this in the mud.” Wes held up a plastic bag with what looked like a piece of jewelry, some kind of pendant or locket. “It’s not tarnished, so I don’t think it was here before the car crash. Just dirty. And I don’t know too many farmers who’d be wearing something this fancy while plowing the field. Has an engraving on the back.” He took a closer look then handed it to Pakula. “TLC and JMK. Mean anything to you?”
“Probably not tender-loving-care, huh? Mind if I hang on to this for a couple days?”
“No problem. You might check with Darcy. I think I remember her saying she found a broken necklace on one of the victims.”
“Remember which one?”
“No, sorry.”
“Where did you say you found this?”
“Along the side of the car, down in the mud. Kind of deep in the mud, actually. I might not have found it except that I was scraping for a soil sample. If it was dropped accidentally, it was also stepped on hard enough to press it into the dirt.”
“You think they might have buried it so it wouldn’t be found on them?”
“Who knows. I guess it’s possible.”
“So we have this and a partial shoe print on the back doorway.” Pakula stared at the car as if seeing it for the first time. Something didn’t add up. The Saturn’s hood was smashed in, the front bumper hanging off. There were scrapes where the barbed wire had tried to hold it back. The radiator was probably busted. No windshield cracks, so no heads were busted. But there was something wrong with this picture.
“Is this exactly the way the car was when you guys got out here?”
“Yup. They probably jumped out and ran. Didn’t even take time to close the doors.”
That was it, Pakula thought. That was what didn’t fit.
“Why are there three doors left open?” he asked. “And you said the partial footprint was where?”
Wes met Pakula’s eyes, and he could see the kid was already thinking the same thing.
“Back doorstep,” he said.
“Can you tell if it was stepping back into the car as if someone was getting something?”
Without hesitation Wes said, “No, it was definitely on its way out of the car.”
CHAPTER 45
11:33 a.m.
“We’re headed in the wrong direction.” Melanie said. She had spent most of her life within a hundred-mile