11th hour

Chapter 54

Conklin and I stood with Charlie Clapper on the bricks behind the Ellsworth compound watching CSU pack up their gear. The garden was pocked with holes and heaped with mounds of dirt; it looked as if a hundred woodchucks on crack had run amok there.

Still, no additional heads or any other body parts had been found. There was no new evidence of any kind.

I was struck again by how twisted this case was, how unusual in every way.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, a homicide investigation revolves around a body and a scene where the crime actually took place.

You’ve got an assortment of material to work with: clothing, blood, fingerprints, hard evidence that can tell you who the victim was, what caused his death, and possibly when the victim died. You can even compare a photograph of the victim with the DMV’s database and most of the time can come up with a name.

Or you start with a missing-person report and you work the case from the other side. You start with dental records, maybe DNA, a list of friends, coworkers, phone numbers, the time the missing person was last seen.

All we had were holes, piles of dirt, unidentified remains, and a list of suspects that barely made the needle jump.

We couldn’t even say for sure that the seven victims had died from homicidal violence. Maybe they had all died of natural causes and their heads were brought to the site for burial.

All we knew for certain was that whoever buried those heads had access to the garden behind the Ellsworth compound over a period of perhaps ten years or more.

As we waited for the forensic anthropologist to complete her measurements and run the data through software that could put virtual features on bare skulls, we could do nothing but hope for a lucky break or — please, God — a confession.

Now Clapper unzipped his coveralls, stripped off his gloves, and sighed.

“We’ve sifted every square foot of this place. We’ve got everything there is to get. Those artifacts we pulled out of the graves were clean. No prints. No DNA. Just doodads.”

“If we identify the victims, the doodads may mean something to the families,” I said.

Clapper said, “Okay, then. I gotta get out of here. My wife is expecting me home for dinner, first time this week.”

I felt deflated and frustrated. I was about to suggest to Conklin that we go to the firing range and put a lot of holes in some paper targets when Brady’s phone reached out and connected with mine.

“Boxer, there’s been a shooting. Looks like another one of these freaking Revenge killings. That son of a bitch. Is Conklin with you? Good. You two go to Potrero Center. I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.”