Blindman’s Bluff

TWELVE

AS THE DAYLIGHT drew to a close, the sun’s rays lengthened and turned the ranchland into a sheet of polished copper. Even peering through shades, Decker had to squint. Men were digging up parched ground, gingerly relocating mounds of pebbled soil. After the first inch, Marge explained, the earth gave way easily, and everyone suspected that there was something down below. She and Oliver had been sifting through the piles of dirt, making sure that nothing significant went unnoticed.

So far, the yield was confined to beer bottle caps, soda cans, food wrappers, and cigarette butts.

“They’ve been collected for evidence,” Marge said. “Should we need to, we can have the cigarettes sent for DNA testing to give us an idea about who’s been out here.”

Oliver added, “We found the butts below the dirt, so they didn’t ride the wind to the spot. Someone dug this hole for a purpose.”

“It stinks,” Marge said. “Mostly from horseshit.”

Decker agreed, although the smell was a tad nostalgic, reminding him of his days as a single man owning a ranch. He wouldn’t want to go back, but the recollection was sweet. His nostrils also picked up skunk spray. He looked upward and saw a fleet of crows overhead. They cawed noisily, bothered by the posse below invading their wide-open space. There were also several raptors circling overhead, the up-tilt of their wings suggesting that they were carrion feeders as opposed to hawks that ate fresh kill.

Crows ate carrion as well.

Made him wonder. What did they know that he didn’t?

The sun had dipped below the hills, crowning them in fiery gold. Dusk was starting to cover the remnants of natural illumination. Marge had set up a half-dozen spots powered by beefed-up truck engines. She’d need them soon, as daylight was becoming a fond memory.

With nothing better to do than to watch the buzzards, Decker decided to be useful. He slipped on a pair of latex gloves, crouched down, and began winnowing through a dirt pile. Though he needed to focus, his mind began to wander as the monotony of the task set in.

It was Sabbath and he should have been home with Rina, enjoying good food and laughter and company over a bottle of wine. He should have been home with Hannah who was only a year away from college. There was so little time left with her, because his experience dictated that once kids left, they came back different. The love was still there, but the relationship changed irrevocably.

They were young adults merging into the fast lane of life.

Cindy had been financially independent for years, and since she married she was less in Decker’s consciousness. She was Koby’s responsibility, not his. Decker supposed he’d feel the same way once his other children settled down.

His older stepson, Sammy, was on his way. A sophomore in medical school, he was engaged to one of his classmates, a lovely young girl named Rachel whom he met by happenstance at a busy restaurant. Jacob, the younger stepson, was a neuroscience major at Johns Hopkins with an eye toward graduate school. He was still with his girlfriend, Ilana, the two of them dating steadily for the last two years.

Hannah Rose was the last stop before his barreling locomotive of child rearing came to an abrupt halt. His and Rina’s only biological child together, Hannah and her march to maturity not only represented that inevitable milestone of empty nesting, but signified the years of their cemented marriage. While he looked forward to calling his time his own, he knew he’d miss her terribly and he’d fret every time he got that nuanced phone call that told him that all wasn’t perfect in her life.

Just as the stars began to flicker overhead, Wynona Pratt and her band of searchers came in from the field. She spied Decker and brought him up to date, handing him a map of the areas recently combed.

“We’re going to reconvene tomorrow at nine to go over the last sector. I’ll do the entrances and the exits to the property at that time.” Wynona kicked the ground softly. “If you’re okay with it, I thought I might stick around to see what’s going on.”

“Grab a set of gloves and help us sieve through the dirt.”

As the night darkened, Marge turned on the spots, casting hot white light on the dig. The crew worked steadily for the next hour. As the hole grew deeper, it gave off a hint of odor.

The crows had turned in for the night, but the buzzards still circled.

The stink, faint at first, grew steadily stronger until everyone could easily discern it as the smell of rot. A garbage dump? In areas this rural, the local trash wasn’t picked up on a once-a-week schedule.

Another twenty minutes of digging passed until someone held up his shovel and announced that he had hit something hard. As a flurry of people gathered around the spot, another digger proclaimed he had come upon something as well. From that point on, the work was more carefully crafted, going from shovels to trowels in order not to disturb or mangle what lay beneath the ground. The physical positions had shifted from backbreaking spading to knee-straining squatting as the group systematically began to remove dirt.

The sky had become studded with twinkling lights. Crickets chirped, frogs croaked, and a distant owl hooted. Gnarled trees became frozen inky specters.

And still vultures flew overhead, bathing in the artificial lights.

Another hour passed before the ground started yielding its booty. Decker could make out several elongated skulls, large arcing ribs, and multiple femurs.

A reliquary of bones.

From the looks of it, it appeared that they had exhumed a horse grave.

The animals had been in the ground long enough for most of the flesh to deteriorate, although not completely. Decker could discern some musculature, hair, fur, and a couple of melting hooves. Still, the stink was disproportionately strong given the amount of remaining soft tissue. And the stench grew stronger as they began to uncover more material.

Decker allowed them to keep going until the smell became downright toxic. He ordered everyone to stop, step back, and take a few breaths of fresh air. He called over his detectives. “Obviously, we hit a horse grave. It’s not unusual to bury a dead animal out here when you have so much land, but something’s off. There’s too much stink for the amount of remaining flesh. Any ideas?”

Oliver said, “It’s more than one horse.”

“About three horses, looking at all the bones,” Wynona added.

“That’s weird,” Oliver said. “Burying three horses at the same time. What’d they do? Put a couple in cold storage until they had enough to fill the hole?”

“You know what’s really weird?” Marge said. “If you bury a dead horse-just dump it in the ground-when you dig it up, it should look like a skeleton of a horse that you dumped. It should be in roughly the same position as when it was buried. But all these bones are strewn willy-nilly.”

Decker said, “What if the horse skeletons were disturbed by human interference, specifically by somebody wanting to bury something underneath the equine bones?”

Marge said, “Like the bodies of our missing guards?”

Decker said, “Suppose one of the murderers knew about the grave because he saw it originally being dug. What better place to dump the bodies of the missing guards?”

Oliver said, “Certainly smells like recent death down there.”

Decker said, “Let’s get everybody gloved up and wearing face masks. Who has a camera?”

“I do,” Marge said.

“Me, too,” Wynona added.

“Good. Before we remove any horse bones, I want photographs of before and after. Then we’ll start removing biological material, bone by bone. Each time we remove something, take a picture. If the smell gets worse, and I fear it will, we’ll have to stop and call the M.E.’s office. At that point, we’ll turn this over to professional exhumers.”

“WHOEVER PUT HIM in the ground did you a favor.” The field coroner was named Lance Yakamoto.

In his thirties, he was around five feet nine inches, 140 pounds, with a long face and tawny-colored eyes that sloped upward. He was in his blue scrubs and a black jacket, the yellow lettering in back stating that he was from the Coroner’s Office. “If the body would have been dumped in the open, the decomposition would have been a lot quicker. With all the carrion-eating birds, we wouldn’t have much to work with.”

Decker said, “When I find and arrest the culprit, I’ll be sure to give my thanks for dumping him in the ground.”

Yakamoto said, “I’m just saying fact.”

“I know,” Decker answered. “Anything you want to tell me?”

“No rigor, some lividity, lots of insect activity. Once we get the body up, we’ll put the bugs in bags and hand them over to the entomologist. He can probably give you a better fix on how long it’s been in there. From what I saw, my guess is that he’s been there for a couple of days. That would square with your murders, right?”

“Right.” Decker looked at the brightly illuminated pit. The county had sent a quartet of techs in HAZMAT suits. They were at the bottom of the hole, figuring out the best way to slide the corpse into a body bag. Since it had been rotting for a few days, skin had begun to slough off. There was some residual bloat from the internal gasses, but most of that had settled down. Still, with careful handling, the detectives were able to make out the distinct features even though much of the face was black, distorted, and bug eaten. Both Marge and Oliver thought he might have resembled the pictures they had of Denny Orlando.

“Are we sure there’s only one body down there?” Decker asked Yakamoto.

“No, we’re not sure,” the assistant M.E. responded. “Not yet.”

Oliver said, “Smells ripe enough for two bodies.”

Decker said, “If Rondo Martin’s down there, my lead is shot.” He told the three detectives about his meeting with Brett Harriman, trying to remember the story as well as he could without notes.

Oliver asked, “You believe this guy? I mean it’s hard enough getting something substantial from eyewitnesses, Loo.”

“Just because he’s blind and couldn’t see them doesn’t mean he didn’t hear the conversation correctly,” Decker said. “That’s what he’s trained to do. To use his ears, Scott. Anyway, how would he know that Rondo Martin is involved?”

“He’s a missing guard,” Marge pointed out. “His name might have been in the papers.”

Wynona said, “How does he read the papers if he’s blind?”

“He has a voice-activated computer that tells him the news,” Decker told her. “I’ll concede that maybe he read or heard about Rondo Martin. But Joe Pine? Whom he kept referring to as José

Pinon. How’d he pull that rabbit out of a hat?”

Oliver had no answer. Marge said, “Have you checked him out?”

“He came in this afternoon after the courts had closed. I’ll start calling people on Monday.”

“Do you even know if he’s really blind?” Oliver asked.

Decker grinned. “Are you asking me if I threw something at him to see if he would duck? No, Scott, I did not do that.”

“So I repeat. How do you know he’s really blind? You know how many crazies Wanda Bontemps has fielded on the tip lines, especially now that Grant Kaffey has offered a twenty-thousand-dollar reward?”

“That’s all?” Decker said.

“Looks like Guy wasn’t the only cheapskate.”

Decker said, “Harriman may be loony, but right now I’m taking him at his word. Willy Brubeck is looking into Rondo Martin with his sources in Ponceville. Joe Pine was on Brubeck’s guard list to check out, but so far he’s a no-show. Drew Messing is working on locating him. Enough about Martin. What’s happening inside the house?”

“Lots of evidence to process,” Marge said.

“Fingerprints?”

“A lot of smears, but CSI lifted a few that might be helpful,” Oliver said. “We still have to comb the auxiliary buildings. It’s going to take a while.”

Marge said, “Can we go back to Brett Harriman for a moment? He didn’t give you any name for el patrón?”

“Nope,” Decker said. “One of the men just said that he was worse than Martin-who was a very bad man.”

Shouts from inside the hole announced that the corpse was fully contained in the body bag. The trick now was how to hoist out the bag. The pit was around four-plus feet in depth. It was possible to scale in and out of the cavity by foot, but it was much harder to surface while holding a corpse.

Decker squatted at the edge of the hole. From this vantage point, the stench was considerably stronger. “If the three of you can get the bag above your heads, our people here can grab the bag and place it on the gurney.”

The HAZMAT crew considered the suggestion and deemed it possible. It took some careful maneuvering but when they finally managed to do it, the gang above was ready. Six men snatched the edges of body bag and put it on the gurney. Yakamoto unzipped the sack. “What do you think?”

Marge stared at the discolored and disfigured face. Worms were crawling in and out of the apertures of his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Some of the flesh had fallen off; some of it had been eaten. “It’s hard to say for sure, but with a little imagination it could be Denny Orlando.” She looked over at Oliver.

“I think it’s Orlando, but maybe it’s because I’m fixated on him.”

“We’ve got DNA now.” Yakamoto zipped him back up. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

THE SUN HAD crested over the horizon just as the last bits of all the biological material were removed from the grave. One body was disinterred. Rondo Martin was still missing. It was 5:26 in the morning. If Decker left within the hour, he could make it home in time to eat breakfast, shower, dress, and go to shul. He’d probably be the first one there.

Or he could go home and collapse.

Though his body screamed exhaustion, there are some days where spiritual nourishment takes precedent over sleep. Today just felt like that kind of a day.

“We’re done,” Marge finally told him. “I’m gone.”

“If you’re gone, I’m gone,” Oliver told her. “We came together, remember?”

“I’m not leaving without you, Scotty.”

“Wanna grab some breakfast? I have nothing in my refrigerator. I’m thinking IHOP. I’m in the mood for pancakes and cholesterol.”

“That’ll work.” Marge turned to Wynona. “You want to meet us?”

“Might as well chow down and coffee up. I have to be back here at nine.”

Decker waved them all good-bye. It took him another twenty minutes to finish up with his paperwork. By 6:15, he was in his car and alone with his thoughts. He started the ignition and as the car warmed up, he checked his messages on his cell.

There were three.

The first was from Rina at 7:02. She was just about to light candles and wanted to wish him a good Shabbos. She loved him and hoped to see him soon. Her voice immediately put a smile on his face.

The second call was at 8:26 last night.

“Hi, Lieutenant Decker, it’s Brett Harriman. I don’t know why I didn’t mention this before…maybe I was too overwhelmed with everything to remember correctly. Anyway, I of course couldn’t see the men talking beside me, but I did ask a woman next to me to describe them as discreetly as possible.

She kept asking me why and I didn’t want to tell her. I felt a little foolish, so I told her to forget about it. So she may have seen them and could give you a description.

“The problem is I don’t know her name, but I recognized her voice from the voir dire and I know she was impaneled on one of my cases.

“I don’t know if you can get the list of jurors from that case, but it’s worth a try. I’m sure she’ll remember me because we didn’t have a typical conversation. We can talk more about this if you want. Give me a call. Bye.”

Decker saved the call in the archives. Harriman was sounding a little like an attention seeker, feeding him information bit by bit. Or maybe he was after the reward. Before Decker returned the phone call, he’d check out Harriman’s credentials to ensure the man didn’t have a truth problem.

The last call came in at 10:38 last night.

“It’s Brett Harriman again. The woman that I told you about. I just remember that in the voir dire, she told the judge that she was married to a police lieutenant. Maybe she was trying to get out of jury duty, but they still impaneled her. I don’t think she mentioned LAPD, it could have been some other city, but how many wives of police lieutenants could there be who served on a jury panel in the last week? Could be you even know her. That’s it. Bye.”

The line disconnected.

Time passed in very slow increments.

Did she see them?

Did they see her?

It took a long time for Decker to throw the gear in drive and when he did, he noticed his hands were shaking.