21st Birthday by Patterson, James (ebook reader screen .TXT) 📕

The CSI said, “I took a shot of the clothes.”

I peered at his image on his phone, saw a folded green striped dress, sandals, a brown shoulder bag. Not the clothes Tara was wearing on the video from Monday morning.

More confirmation.

The dead woman wasn’t Tara. Period.

Claire and several of her techs joined us graveside. She greeted those of us she knew and began shooting pictures of the deceased in situ, while Hallows’s team did the same.

I paced away from the body, looked at my watch every five minutes. Conklin and Alvarez were talking together under a tree. Brady stood with Clapper and Culver, and so forty-five minutes passed.

When the scene had been photographed from every angle, Claire and a tech carefully lifted the dead woman from her shallow grave and placed her onto a sheet.

I stooped next to Claire as she wrapped the body.

“Can you estimate time of death if I don’t hold you to it?”

“Swear it’s between you and me, Lindsay. Because I’m not ready to retire.”

“Promise,” I said.

“The young lady is out of rigor. I’d say she died twenty-four hours ago and you don’t need me to tell you cause or manner of death. Once I’ve got her on my table, I’ll do a preliminary workup.”

Brady joined us.

Claire said, “You’re gonna want a cheek swab from Burke. Maybe she scratched the bastard as he was killing her. Maybe he left trace behind. Or maybe he didn’t do it.”

Leaving Brady at the scene, I hitched a ride back to the Hall with Conklin and Alvarez. I slumped against the back seat, just thinking. Lucas Burke had been released more than twenty-four hours ago. He’d had time to kill her, barely. Maybe.

But had he done it?

And if so, why?

Had Franks witnessed something she wasn’t supposed to see?

CHAPTER 31

CINDY WAS AT HER DESK, laser-focused on her work, when a static storm crackled over her police scanner.

The signal faded, came back strong, and she could make out a few words. Piecing sentence fragments together, she gathered that a deceased female had turned up in McLaren Park. She listened, hoping for more information. A voice over the radio sputtered the name “Tara Burke.”

Cindy fell back in her chair.

She righted her chair, spun around to where the radio sat on the windowsill, and fiddled with the channel dial in search of clear signal but didn’t get it. She ran out to the newsroom, found Jonathan Samuels at his desk and told him what she’d heard. He opened a file drawer, grabbed his camera, and said, “All set.”

The two had picked up the portable scanner, left the Chronicle building, and gone directly to the underground parking garage across the street. By the time they were strapped in and heading toward the park, the name Tara Burke had been withdrawn.

“Correction … vic … unidentified.”

Cindy said, “That’s messed up. How’d they get that so wrong?”

“Overexcitement,” Samuels said, “and bias confirmation. Slow down, will you?”

Cindy eased up on the gas. Her urgency had cooled, but who, what, where, when, and why was still news. According to the scanner chatter, this was likely just another homicide who’d been buried in the greens and brambles of McLaren Park.

Traffic flowed and soon the car was closing in on the Burkes’ gabled house.

Samuels said, “Up ahead.”

She said, “Good catch,” and turned down the radio. Two blocks away, police vehicles were pulling away from the curb near the park, streaming toward them, then, passing them.

“There’s our story,” she said. “We just have to get it.”

Cindy parked the car on the street opposite three marked CSI vehicles, a K9 transport vehicle, and some cruisers.

Samuels hung his press pass on a cord around his neck, Cindy pinned hers to her jacket, and together they crossed the street toward the law-enforcement vehicles. Cindy picked out the youngest of the uniformed officers who was standing alone, thumbing his phone.

“Hi there,” she said. “I’m Cindy Thomas with the San Francisco Chronicle.”

He said, “How can I help you?”

“I’m covering this crime. What you can tell me about what happened here?”

“I’m not authorized to do that.”

“Okay, but, if I don’t know your name …?”

“Hah-hah. No. Sorry.”

“Okay then. Mind if we just take a walk in the park?”

“Not in the crime scene, uh, Cindy. Off-limits until CSU is done here.”

That’s when Cindy noticed a woman sitting on her porch across the street, watching all of it.

Cindy said, “Thanks anyway,” and she and Samuels crossed to the wood frame house with a small porch and front garden.

Calling up to the woman in the rocking chair, Cindy said, “Hi there. We’re from the Chronicle. May we talk with you for a minute?”

The woman answered, “Come on up. See the gate latch? There you go. I’m in no rush.”

Introductions were made. It seemed Ms. Melissa Goeden, retired social worker, knew of Cindy, read her column, and was, in fact, a fan.

“I’m the one who found her,” said Ms. Goeden. “Well, Sparky did.” She petted the head of her cocker spaniel lying at her feet. “That poor girl.”

Ms. Goeden used her finger to mimic a blade slashing across a neck.

Samuels said, “That’s awful. You didn’t by chance learn her name?”

“I was there when they found her driver’s license. She’s some-body Franks. Candy. No, no. Wendy. Wendy Franks. After that, it was ‘Thanks for being a good citizen, ma’am. Now get out of our crime scene.’”

Cindy said, “We’re familiar. But thank you from us. You helped us a lot and maybe we can help find Wendy’s killer.”

“You be careful, Cindy. Be very careful,” said Ms. Goeden.

CHAPTER 32

I WAS WORKING at a desk outside of Brady’s office.

We faced each other through his wall and he could still close his door for privacy. At the opposite end of the squad room, Alvarez sat at my desk and Conklin was at his. They were engaged in animated conversation.

Looking