12th of Never

Chapter 66

I DROVE FOR two hours, some of that time wishing my eyes had windshield wipers. I pulled myself together about the time I saw the guard towers and the razor wire of the Atwater penitentiary. I parked in the law enforcement lot, combed my hair, and put on lipstick so that I looked like I had some game.

I showed my badge thirty times before being shown to Warden Haight’s corner office overlooking the yard. FBI big cheese Ron Parker joined us, and we talked about the psycho we were taking for a day trip and how dangerous he was.

The warden took a call, then said that Fish was ready for transport to his “playground.” All I had to do was say hello to Fish so he knew that I was on board.

Parker and I walked through the loud, labyrinthine prison corridors out to the lot inside the north gate. The transport vehicle was a black armored van with a steel grille between the front seat and the rear cargo area, where Pretty Boy Fish was flanked by armed guards and shackled to an iron loop in the floor.

Fish smiled when he saw me. It was a great smile, seemingly genuine. The killer was a charmer. With a different mind-set, he could have been a talk show host or a real estate broker dealing in upmarket homes.

“It’s a wonderful day for a treasure hunt,” said Randolph Fish. “I think I know where we might find Sandra Brody.”

We pulled out of the prison yard caravan-style. A pair of motorcycle cops took the lead, then came Fish’s transport van. More cops on bikes followed, then the red van with the hounds. Parker’s government-issue SUV was next, and I brought up the rear in my geriatric blue Explorer.

As I drove blindly through the cloud of dust, I thought about Fish saying, “I think I know where we might find Sandra Brody,” a vague but intriguing statement that was a mile short of a confession.

So far, all that connected Fish to Sandra Brody was that she fit the pattern of young women Fish had been convicted of killing. She had dark hair, was attending college, and she had vanished at three in the afternoon without a trace.

A friend of Sandra’s had taken a cell phone picture of her an hour before she disappeared. Sandy had been crossing the campus on her way to her volunteer job at the Raphael House, a shelter for homeless people. Her jeans looked new, her shirt was powder blue, she was carrying a brown saddle-leather backpack, and she was wearing loafers. Her long, dark hair was shining. To me, she looked like an angel.

Sandra Brody never arrived at her destination.

Jacobi and I had interviewed Sandra’s friends, her boyfriend, and her devastated parents. We had seen videos and photographs of Sandy from the time she was born to the time she was last known to walk the earth.

That cell phone picture had been flashed over the Web and was posted on her Facebook page.

HAVE YOU SEEN SANDY?

The reward for information increased from ten thousand dollars to ten times that amount as money flowed in from friends Sandra hadn’t known she had. Three years after she disappeared, her page was still up. People still wrote on her wall. Her parents hadn’t given up hope that the phone would ring and Sandy would be on the other end of the line.

If Randolph Fish helped us to find Sandra’s body, at the very least, her family would know what had happened to her. I prayed that we were on the road to solving the mystery.

We traveled up Highway 99 north to I-580 west and from there to Redwood Regional Park. I’d been there before and knew it to be 1,829 acres of sequoia, evergreens, chaparral, and grasslands just outside the dense urban areas of Oakland and the East Bay. Wildlife abounded, and that was one of the elements that made this wilderness a good dumping ground.

If coyotes had found a dead body, they would have carried it away, along with any evidence that might lead to Sandra’s killer.

That’s what I was thinking when suddenly the caravan veered onto the verge. Parker nosed his car onto the weedy edge of the road and after avoiding the motorcycles spinning their wheels in loose stone, I came to a stop.

The transport van doors opened and a guard jumped down. He helped his prisoner to the ground and the second guard joined them. He unlocked Randy Fish’s leg irons as the driver and another armed guard dismounted from the front of the vehicle. The cadaver dogs put their noses to the ground and their handler got a good grip on their leads.

Despite the reason we had all driven to this spot, I noticed that it was a beautiful day. The new leaves were a fresh green. The sun was blazing in a clear blue sky, and the air was a mild, pine-scented sixty-two degrees.

Randolph Fish hadn’t stepped on natural earth in more than three years. He took in a deep breath, closed his eyes, and tipped his face up to the sun.

Parker advanced on him and said, “Okay, Mr. Fish. Let’s get to work.”