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“I’ve met Maria, remember?” Maria Martinez was a schoolteacher who aspired to be an administrator in the district where her kids went to school. “I don’t see her in this scenario. Don’t think she wants to uproot your kids.”
“She’s on board,” Martinez insisted as Settler threaded her way through the traffic, while keeping Davis’s car in sight. “You gotta admit that this weather, it’s better than what we got.”
“Today,” she said, eyeing the blue sky that stretched forever. A few clouds were visible, along with a jet trail, but the sun was shining, as opposed to the gray day they’d left in the Bay Area.
“All damned winter.”
“Okay, okay, but you’ve got a few years until retirement.”
“You hope,” he said. “Who else would partner up with you and always be saving your sorry ass?” As they turned a final corner onto Pinto Lane, she spotted Davis’s vehicle turning into a lot, sunlight reflecting off the windows of her car.
“A man can dream, can’t he?” he asked.
“No harm in that.” She eased into the large parking area, a wide stretch of asphalt surrounded by a landscape of rock, sand, and some well-placed desert-friendly plants, cacti and other succulents. Settler located a spot near Davis’s vehicle. The Las Vegas detective was already out of her car and lighting a cigarette.
“Ready to meet Didi?” Settler asked Martinez as she parked and pocketed the keys.
“Can’t wait.” He was already out of the car.
As they approached, Davis exhaled a long stream of smoke. “I’m down to two a day,” she said, as if she had to explain herself. She slipped her lighter into her jacket pocket and started walking them toward the long, low building that housed the Clark County Coroner’s Office. “My kids are all over me to stop completely, even want me to use the patch or e-cigs, because vaping is supposed to be so much healthier, you know, but when I’m working . . .”
“I hear ya.” Martinez nodded. “I quit fifteen years ago, when my wife was pregnant with the first one. She accused me of fouling the air for her and the babies, so eventually I quit.”
“And you still have the craving?” Davis sighed dispiritedly.
“It’s not so bad now,” he said.
Pausing near the entrance, she took a final drag on the filter-tip, then quashed the butt into the sand of an ashcan set not far from the main doors. “Let’s go.” She led them inside, where the air-conditioning had cooled things down.
Davis knew her way around. She found an officer who was working the case and guided them to an even colder room, where three toe-tagged bodies covered in tarps were stretched out on gurneys.
“Over here,” the officer said, and they entered a smaller examination room where a single stretcher was waiting. It, too, was covered by a plastic sheet.
“Let’s do this,” Davis said.
“Okay.” The officer pulled off the tarp of the single body lying face up.
Settler wasn’t squeamish, but she always braced herself.
“Jesus,” Martinez said and crossed himself, as he always did upon first viewing a dead person.
The body on the table was little more than a skeleton, bones hung with bits of leathery flesh, eye sockets dark holes, ribs covering a chest devoid of internal organs. A few tufts of hair were still attached to the skull, but for the most part, twenty years of being buried in the desert hadn’t preserved the body as much as Settler had hoped. It seemed completely decomposed.
“This is Didi Storm?” Settler asked.
“ID isn’t a hundred percent. There’s a chance someone else was dressed in her things, with her purse, in her car, but unlikely.” She met Settler’s gaze. “And the bullet hole, you see that?”
“Uh-uh.” Through an eye socket, past the empty brain cavity and hole in the back of the skull, the top of the gurney was visible.
“I think we’ve seen enough,” Settler said, “but I’ll need pictures of the body, the car, and all of her personal belongings, her purse and what was in it, and the baby carrier, although I’m not certain that Didi’s daughter will be satisfied with pictures. She may want to view the body herself, not that she could identify these bones, but I can’t say.”
“We’ve got Didi Storm’s dental records on file, ordered out when she went missing. We’ll check, but it’s a pretty done deal.”
Settler nodded.
“Let me show you what we have,” Davis suggested.
The other officer brought all of the personal items that were discovered with the corpse in the buried Cadillac. The items were bagged and tagged, but Dani viewed them through the plastic and was convinced that, yes, they’d found Didi Storm. The wig, dusty and dull, had been short and blond and was labeled with thick black ink that had faded but had been written in Didi’s distinctive hand.
