Then She Vanished

Four

Natalie Strait’s BMW X5 was discovered at 3:15 that afternoon at about the time I was leaving Lark. Four days had passed since her disappearance.

Dust choked and somehow forlorn, it sat not far from the Tourmaline Resort Casino on the Pala Reservation, behind a cluster of small, now derelict homes set off the road behind a windbreak of towering eucalyptus trees. The surrounding meadow looked to have once been a commercial nursery but was now grazed to the nub by a heard of plump Herefords. The workers’ former homes stood naked of doors or window glass, some of them even without roofs, some of them only foundations.

A flotilla of San Diego sheriff vans, SUVs, and prowl cars was parked on one side of a yellow crime tape, and a Union-Tribune police reporter I recognized was quarantined on the other. The afternoon sun was high behind them, girders of sunlight through the empty window frames of the houses.

Sheriff Lieutenant Lew Hazzard of the Special Enforcement Detail led me through the dead little enclave to where Natalie’s car had been found. He was tight within his uniform, ham faced and blue eyed. He had been a sergeant during my SDSD days, a brusque cop’s cop who liked bodybuilding and flying model airplanes.

We walked past empty beer bottles and soft-drink containers, a fire ring, a plywood lean-to probably made by kids. Hazzard said that a ranch hand had seen the SUV parked here on Tuesday afternoon, and it was still here today, Friday, so he’d finally called it in. Which made Hazzard wonder what some people were thinking, if anything. He nodded toward a young man sitting on a eucalyptus stump. Nearby stood a small bay mare tied to a rusted transmission half buried in the ground.

Natalie’s X5 was last year’s model, a striking cobalt blue, now dust covered. Brawny tires and complex wheels. All four doors were swung open, and the lift gate, too. A tan leather interior trimmed in shiny dark wood.

A team of blue-gloved crime scene investigators moved patiently within and without: a videographer, a photographer, a sketch artist, two techs lifting latent prints with clear tape, another combing through the driver’s floor mat, wearing a hiker’s headlight on her head and magnifiers over her eyeglasses. I noted no blood or damage or other signs of mischief, and that the driver’s seat was much farther back than five-foot-four Natalie would need. An automatic exit convenience?

“Was it locked?” I asked.

“Un,” said the lieutenant.

“How much gas was left in it?”

Hazzard looked at me as if even this was highly sensitive information. “Half.”

“I appreciate this favor,” I said.

“Not yours to appreciate,” said Hazzard. “Dalton Strait’s.”

And walked away.

I loitered. Watched the tow truck rumble toward us on a dirt road. Soft, dry soil, I saw, poor for traction and retaining tire prints. I asked the hair-and-fiber collector if they’d checked the navigation unit for recent addresses.

She looked up and shook her head. “Talk to the lieutenant.”

“He’s mad at me.”

“Is crime scene contamination your job title?”

A young fingerprint tech looked at her. “Susan, he’s just doing his job.”

“So am I.”

I waited for Susan to thaw but she didn’t look up again so I wandered to the other side of the vehicle. A member decal for the Vista Valley Country Club was stuck low on the windshield. A small wooden cross on a string of leather dangled from the rearview mirror. The mirror, I noted, was tilted up for a driver much taller than five feet four, in keeping with the backed-up driver’s seat.

Through the open rear door I could see the handicap parking plaque lying on the back seat. And an LA Times, wrapped in its traditional orange plastic bag, and a Union-Tribune in its blue plastic bag. I recognized Tuesday’s front-page picture on the U-T.

And saw the word HELP written in crude red lipstick letters on the rear of the front seat, above the map pouch.