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I said, “Another link between Cordi and Caspian. Tough family lives.”
“Misery lusting for company? Nice insight but unless I’m missing something, she told me nothing I can use.”
He got a text. Read, cursed violently, shot to his feet.
Tight lips, hot eyes, white face.
“Mr. Hoffgarden has shown up.”
I said, “Great.”
“Not so great. Let’s take separate cars, don’t know how long I’ll be stuck there.”
—
The hills above the northbound lanes of the 405 freeway are generally an uncomplicated drive from the station. Sepulveda to Sunset, a quick right, a quick left.
Orange cones due to police activity had stopped the traffic at Sunset and it took me a while to edge close enough to an imperious trafficcop so I could flash my LAPD consultant’s badge. It’s long expired but I’ve never bothered renewing because most people have no interest in details.
Luckily, that applied to Mr. Traffic. Grudgingly, he moved a few cones and I cruised past murderous looks from less fortunate motorists.
The hills are softly rounded suggestions of altitude, sometimes green, now bearded with high dry grass that gave them a frosted look. I parked next to an LAFD ambulance occupied by two firefighters eating sandwiches, walked north to a border of billowing yellow tape, and got waved under by a uniform chewing gum at an aerobic level.
Milo stood fifty or so yards up, flanked by Reed and Alicia. Detective Sean Binchy was positioned away from them, closer to the tape. Tall, lanky, freckled, with spiky red hair, Sean wore his usual navy suit, expressive tie, and the Doc Marten boots that evoke a past life as a ska-punk bassist.
I saved Sean’s life a couple of years ago, spent a long time with him afterward, arranged for a master therapist named Larry Daschoff to help him with incipient PTSD. All that had changed our relationship and Sean tended to avoid contact with me. But he’d never stopped being friendly. Even the day after nearly falling from a twenty-plus-story building.
He stopped working his phone, flashed a country-boy smile. “Doc. Hey.”
We pumped hands.
“Nice tan, Sean.”
“Bible camp near Crater Lake, took the family, did the camping thing, some music, awesome.”
He cocked his head toward the other D’s. “Loot asked me to find the decedent’s phone carrier, still working on it.”
“Good to see you, Sean.”
“You, too, Doc.”
I continued up a narrow path that scythed through the grass. Not a planned access, a rut caused by years of surreptitious foot-traffic.
The hillside’s a combination of hard-to-access private property that forms the bottom borders of ambitious houses on stilts, along with intermittent patches of county easements that exist for no apparent reason.
Nice to see the grass back, along with clumps of pretty blue statice, other flowering succulents, and seedlings rebounding.
A couple of years ago fires had ravished California, and much of this land had been charred to the roots. Self-labeled experts predicted ten to twenty years before anything grew. As with everything, the issue had turned political and contentious, with blame leveled at climate change, government overreach, government underreach, the failure of greedy rich people to maintain their land, willful suppression of animal habitats.
The real reason turned out to be a cooking fire caused by intoxicated carelessness in a homeless encampment that had escaped everyone’s attention.
As far as I knew, the homeless had moved on, but I didn’t know much and I wondered how and why Tyler Hoffgarden had ended up here.
As I climbed, I scanned for shoe prints or drag marks, saw none. When I was a few feet from the three detectives, the slope eased into a flat background and activity clarified: a pop-up tent; coroner’s investigators and crime scene techs passing in and out; two uniformed officers running metal detectors over the brush; a hard-breathing Belgian Malinois leading a handler in hurried arcs.
In counterpoint to all that, two burly men stood to the right, motionless, taking in the view of the freeway. Crypt drivers waiting to transport yet another body bag to North Mission Road.
Alicia and Moe said, “Hey, Doc,” in unison.
