Grave Secrets

Though this stretch of hillside was largely grass and scrub, the grade was steep, the ground rocky. I placed my feet sideways, kept my weight low, and grasped vegetation as best I could. I didn’t want to turn an ankle or stumble into a downhill slide.

Twigs snapped in my hands. Rocks broke free and skipped down the slope with sharp, cracking sounds. Birds screamed overhead, angry at the intrusion.

Adrenaline poured through my body from wherever it waited between crises. It may not be her, I told myself.

With each step the sweet, fetid stench grew stronger.

Fifteen feet down, the ground leveled off before taking one final downward plunge.

A crank call, I thought, stepping onto the small plateau. De la Alda’s disappearance was reported in the press.

Mario Colom was passing a metal detector back and forth across the ground. Juan-Carlos Xicay was photographing something at Hernández’s feet. As at the Paraíso, both technicians wore coveralls and caps.

Galiano and I crossed to Hernández.

The body lay in a rainwater ditch at the juncture of the slope and plateau. It was covered by mud and leaves, and lay atop torn black plastic. Though skeletonized, remnants of muscle and ligament held the bones together.

One look and I caught my breath.

Arm bones protruded like dry sticks from the sleeves of a pale blue blouse. Leg bones emerged from a rotting black skirt, disappeared into mud-stained socks and shoes.

Damn! Damn! Damn!

“The skull’s farther up the gully.” A sheen covered Hernández’s forehead. His face was flushed, his shirt molded to his chest like the toga on a Roman sculpture.

I squatted. Flies buzzed upward, their bodies glistening green in the sunlight. Small round holes perforated the leathery tissue. Delicate grooves scored the bones. One hand was missing.

“Decapitated?” Hernández asked.

“Animals,” I said.

“What sort of animals?”

“Small scavengers. Maybe raccoons.”

Galiano squatted beside me. Undeterred by the smell of rotting flesh, he pulled a pen from his pocket and disentangled a chain from the neck vertebrae. Sunlight glinted off a silver cross as he raised the pen to eye level.

Returning the necklace, Galiano stood and scanned the scene.

“Probably won’t find much here.” His jaw muscles flexed.

“Not after ten months of ground time,” Hernández agreed.

“Sweep the whole area. Hit it with everything.”

“Right.”

“What about neighbors?”

“We’re going door to door, but I doubt we’ll get much. The dump probably took place at night.”

He pointed to an old man standing outside the tape at the top of the hill.

“Gramps lives one block over. Says he remembers a car prowling around back here last summer. Noticed because this is a dead end street and there’s usually not much traffic. Says the driver returned two or three times, always at night, always alone. The old guy figured it might be a pervert looking for a place to jack off, so he kept his distance.”

“Does he sound reliable?”

Hernández shrugged. “Probably a weenie whacker himself. Why else would he think that? Anyway, he remembers the car was old. Maybe a Toyota or Honda. He’s not sure. Took this in from his front porch, so he didn’t really get a good look, didn’t get a plate.”

“Find any personal effects?”

Hernández shook his head. “It’s just like the kid in the septic tank. Clothing on the vic, but nothing else. The perp probably offloaded the body from the road, so he might have heaved something into the barranca. Xicay and Colom are going down when we finish here.”

Galiano’s eyes probed the small crowd on the bank above.

“Nothing, and I mean nothing to the media until I talk to the family.”

He turned to me.

“What do you want to do here?”

What I didn’t want to do was repeat my blunder at the Paraíso.

“I’m going to need a body bag and several hours.”

“Take your time.”

“But not too much,” I said, self-recrimination sharpening my words.

“Take as long as you need.”

I sensed from his tone that Díaz wouldn’t be bothering me this time.

Taking surgical gloves from my pack, I walked to the end of the plateau, dropped to hands and knees, and began crawling the length of the ditch, sifting leaves and dirt through my fingers. As at the Paraíso, Xicay trailed me with his Nikon.

The skull lay six feet from the neck of the corpse, nudged or tugged by scavengers until they’d lost interest. Beside the skull, a mass of hair. Two feet beyond the hair, scattered phalanges led to a concentration of hand bones.

When Xicay had taken pictures and I’d recorded exact locations, I returned the displaced parts to the main body site, finished my survey of the ditch, and walked the plateau in a grid pattern. Then I walked it again, my second grid perpendicular to the first.

Nothing.

Returning to the skeleton, I dug out a flashlight and ran the beam over it. Hernández was right. After ten months, I doubted I’d find trace evidence, but hoped the plastic might have provided some protection until torn by animals.

I spotted zip.