Blood Flag: A Paul Madriani Novel (12 page)

FIFTEEN

H
ow did you know Sofia didn’t come by?” I’m talking to Emma’s neighbor, still sprawled in the lawn chair in the yard.

“Because the dog was still here.”

“So you weren’t watching for her?” I ask.

“I wasn’t here.”

“What?”

“I wasn’t home. I had an appointment. I told her on the phone, the girl from your office, that I wouldn’t be here. Otherwise I would have given her a hand with Dingus.”

“Why didn’t you tell that to the police?” says Harry.

“They didn’t ask me. I came home, I guess it was about ten o’clock. The dog was barking. I came over and picked him up. What was I supposed to think? Sure didn’t seem like she had been here—the dog still being home and all . . .”

She has a point. It’s hard to blame her. She made the same mistake we did, the two detectives, Harry, Herman, and I when we all came out earlier in the day. We assumed that if we found the dog here it was conclusive evidence of the fact that Sofia never made it to Emma’s house. When we discovered that the dog was with the neighbor, that was the assumption we made. And we were wrong. The discovery of Sofia’s cell phone trinket, the miniature chrome Eiffel Tower, proves it. She was here. So why didn’t she take the dog and leave?

Harry, Herman, and I start looking, searching the house for anything else that might give us a clue. Herman is going through the bedrooms. Harry is checking the kitchen, back in the study, checking the desk.

I’m still in the yard with the neighbor, who wants to help. I start to think, If the trinket was on the ground, the iPhone may not be far away. That’s when I notice the trash can against the house near the back door. I walk over, lift the top, and look inside. It’s empty.

“They picked up the garbage this morning,” the neighbor says. “I always take it out and bring it back in when Emma’s not here.”

“Any chance you might have looked inside?”

“No. Why would I do that?”

“No reason,” I tell her. “Just wondering.” If Sofia’s phone was tossed in the trash it is long gone now. There are applications built into devices for locating lost or stolen cell phones or tablets. I am wondering whether Sofia might have activated this feature on her phone. My guess is that she did, for the reason that she prized it so. The question then is how to use this feature to find it. The cops would know. They would go either to the carrier or the manufacturer. I make a mental note. The two detectives may already be working on this. I am hoping. But if the phone is in a landfill, or worse, at the bottom of the ocean, we can forget it. If, on the other hand, the killer took it, we can only pray that he did and if he’s not too adept with cutting-edge electronics, we can punch a button, check the map, and find Sofia’s phone, and we will have found the bastard who killed her.

Harry wanders out through the back door. He’s got something in his hand.

“What have you got?”

“I was wondering,” he says, “about the dog. What he was doing down in the cellar?” Harry looks down at his shoe. “Remember?”

I nod.

“So I went back down. Took a look around to see if there was some other way he could have gotten down there.”

“Did you find one?”

“No,” says Harry.

“Is the dog a climber?” I ask the neighbor.

“What?”

“Doofus,” says Harry.

“You mean Dingus?”

“Yeah.”

“Not that I know of.”

“Then I suppose he wouldn’t be able to climb down a ladder into the cellar under the house.” I look at her.

“I didn’t know there was a cellar. But I doubt it. Do you want me to get him and try?”

“No, not now,” I tell her.

“So if that’s the case,” says Harry, “what was he doing down there and how did he get there?”

I shake my head. I don’t have a clue.

“How do you know he was there?” she asks.

“That’s a story for another time,” says Harry. “I wonder maybe if you should go back, check on the dog. We’re gonna lock up and leave in just a couple of minutes.”

“You’re right. It’s getting late.” She picks up her flashlight. We thank her for her help and she heads toward the gate at the side of the house.

“Can you get out that way?” I ask.

“I left it unlocked when I came in,” she says. “Good night.”

“Good night.”

Harry waits until she’s gone and he hears the gate latch shut. “I was thinking what if Sofia came by and the dog was in the cellar?”

“Why would he be there?” I ask.

“Suppose someone was in the house and the dog was making too much noise. So whoever was there put him down in the cellar to try to keep him quiet.”

“Go on,” I tell him.

“Sofia comes in, looks for the dog, can’t find him, but then she hears him barking . . .”

“So she looks,” I say, “finds the trapdoor, opens it, sees the dog down below. She goes down to get him.”

Harry’s nodding, his hands behind his back. “And she runs into the killer in the dark.” He brings his hands from around. He is holding the torn V-belt, from down in the cellar.

“I know. I saw it. But it’s too wide.” The outer band on the belt is at least three-quarters of an inch in width.

“Yes, but if you flip it over . . .” says Harry. He turns the belt toward the inside where the wedge-shaped V takes it down to no more than a quarter of an inch. Here solid hard fiber was designed to grip down deep in the pulley on an air compressor, while the half-horse electric motor turned the belt and provided the power. It was these forces that ultimately tore the backing and the snapped belt. But twisted in the grip of a pair of human hands and looped around a pretty throat, the fiber belt had more than enough strength left in it for that.

As I enter the kitchen at our house Joselyn is standing at the island in the center, chopping onions on the wooden board. There is a salad already on the table and stir-fry steaming on the stove. She looks up at me. Tears from the onions are already in her eyes—this is the moment.

“Where have you been?”

“Busy,” I tell her.

“So I gathered. I’ve been trying to reach you all afternoon. Your phone is turned off.”

“I know.”

“You send me a text message, tell me that dinner with Sofia is off, that you’re out of the office. I call there, I get the answering service, who tells me they don’t know where you are. I call Sofia, there’s no answer. I have no idea when you’re going to be home . . .”

“Honey . . .”

“What?”

“We need to talk.”

“What is it?” She lays the knife on the board next to the chopped onions and wipes her eyes with the bottom corner of her apron. Then she looks me straight in the eyes, weighs my somber expression, and says: “Don’t tell me it’s another woman. I don’t want to hear it. Don’t you dare . . .”

“It
is
another woman, but it’s not what you think.”

“It never is,” she says. Joselyn starts to take off her apron, probably getting ready to throw it at me.

“Come here,” I tell her. I open my arms. “Please. There’s some terrible news I have to tell you.”

The anger dissipates, replaced by a look of puzzlement around the eyes.

“Sofia is dead.”

She stands there for a moment, frozen in place behind the granite island, her soft features framed by the cauldron of steam hissing from the stir-fry on the stove. “What? What do you mean?”

I move around the island, take her by the arm, and turn off the burner.

Her eyes are following me.

“Let’s go sit down.”

She looks dazed, as if I just sucker-punched her.

“Come on.” I guide her by one arm and grab the box of Kleenex from the countertop as we pass by. Through the dining room I ease her into the living area and we settle on the couch.

As I turn my head to look, she’s still staring at me, waiting for an answer.

“Two detectives came to my office this morning. They told me that her body was found by two joggers early this morning, off a road out near El Cajon.”

“Was she hit by a car?”

I shake my head. “She was killed.”

“You mean murdered?”

The word I can’t bring myself to say.

A look of agony suffuses her eyes as she reads the answer from my face. “No—no.” She shakes her head, looks at me again as if perhaps I’ll give her a different one if she waits long enough. When it doesn’t happen she collapses against me, her sharp fingernails digging into the back of my shirt as I feel the warmth of her tears flood my neck. She sobs. “How? Who did it?”

“They don’t know.”

She continues to cry.

I try to hand her a Kleenex. She shakes it away, buries her head in the open collar of my shirt, sobs some more, and then says, “When did it happen?”

“Best they can figure, Friday night.”

She is silent for a moment, anguish giving way to calculation. “But we just saw her at the office . . .”

“Yes, earlier in the evening, just before she left.”

She eases her hold on me, retracts the claws, sucks up some tears, and finally takes the Kleenex from my hand. “They must have some idea who did it? What did they tell you?”

“I’m not sure you want to know the details.”

“Tell me!”

“They believe she was strangled. It’s not clear exactly what time. But the marks on her throat would indicate—”

“Did you see her?”

I nod.

“Was she raped?”

“I don’t think so. They won’t know all the details until the coroner finishes his examination. But I don’t think that was the motive,” I tell her. “Of course, I may be wrong.”

“What do the police think?”

“It’s not entirely clear. Harry and I suspect they may be headed in the wrong direction.”

“What do you mean?”

I tell her about Sofia’s missing shoes, the theory voiced by the medical examiner that the case may be tied to a series of murders where the victim’s shoes disappeared.

“Maybe they know something you don’t,” says Joselyn. “You know as well as I do that the police hold back details. Maybe there’s something else that links them besides just the missing shoes.”

“It’s possible, but . . .”

“What?”

“Remember Sofia’s iPhone?”

“Yes.”

“Remember the little metal charm, the Eiffel Tower that was attached to it?”

“It’s called a dust plug,” says Joselyn. “She bought it online.”

I open my hand.

She looks down. “Where did you get that?”

“In the backyard of Emma Brauer’s house. Remember the woman I told you about, the one charged with the mercy killing?”

She nods.

“That’s where Sofia was going when she left the office Friday night . . . to pick up Brauer’s dog because Brauer had been arrested earlier that day. She was in jail.”

“Who else was at the house?”

“No one, as far as we know. According to Brauer, she lives alone.”

“Then you have to tell the police what you found.”

“I intend to first thing in the morning.” I have been trying to reach Noland and Owen ever since finding the trinket in the yard. They are off duty and their phones roll over to voicemail. I left a message. Harry and I debated whether we should take the tiny Eiffel Tower from the site where it lay and decided it was wise to do so. Otherwise the neighbor or a gardener might come along, sweep the yard, and throw it in the trash. I had Herman take several pictures of it on the cement where Harry found it. We placed a quarter next to it for scale and then I picked it up and put it in my pocket. If we have to, we can all sign an affidavit as to where we found it.

“Let me see it,” she says.

I hand it to her. She looks at it.

“That’s hers, I’m sure.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, because Sofia and I talked about it. And I saw it on her phone.”

“Do you know where she bought it, what site?”

“No. She didn’t say. But who else could it belong to?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then tell the police to look at Sofia’s phone. If the dust plug is missing, it’s hers.”

“I asked them about her phone. They were a little cagey,” I tell her.

“What do you mean?”

“They didn’t want to say anything. I’m wondering if they have it. I’ll find out tomorrow.”

“Who else would have it?”

“Whoever killed her might have taken it,” I tell her.

“So you think Sofia was killed at this woman’s house?”

“If the charm is hers, then we know she got to the house. We also know that she didn’t take the dog, because it was found barking in the house later that night by a neighbor.”

“So she was killed before she could get the dog,” says Joselyn.

“That would be my guess.”

“And her body dumped where the joggers found it.”

“Yes. You know, I think maybe we should grab a bite and call it a night. Talking about this is not good for either one of us. We’re tired and hungry.”

“I’m not hungry. I’ve lost my appetite. I want to understand what happened,” says Joselyn. “If someone killed Sofia I want to know why.”

“So do I.”

“Why would he move her body?” she says. “Unless it was somebody who lived there.”

“No. No one lived there but Emma. We checked with the neighbors and they confirmed it. Emma’s in her sixties. She doesn’t have a boyfriend. From everything we’ve seen, what we know, she’s very quiet.”

“So we cross that off,” she says. “OK, let’s assume it was a burglar and he panicked. Sofia walks in on him and he kills her. Why would he take the time or the risks involved in moving her body? That’s not protocol, is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you’re the defense lawyer,” she says. “Help me out here.” She brushes the last tear from her cheek. She might cry later tonight, but for the moment the best painkillers are answers.

“All right. He wouldn’t move the body. Not if he was just a burglar. A burglar with a dead body would run. If he had a brain he might slow down long enough to make sure he wasn’t leaving a name tag behind.”

“All right, so we can cross that off,” she says. “What’s left?”

“Well, we have to assume he moved the body for a reason.”

“Obviously,” she says. “I know that. The problem is we don’t know what the reason was.”

“Perhaps we have a guess,” I tell her.