Jonathan Kellerman - Breakdown

“What defines solid grounds?”

“A moldering corpse would work nicely, but ‘obvious evidence of wrongdoing’ is the operative criterion. Like I needed John to tell me that. I got too caught up, amigo. Too bad we didn’t spot Enid growing cannabis that night.”

“You could hire a bird to drop seeds.”

“Crows R Us, there you go. So how’d Zelda become a detective?”

“Lou Sherman detected for her. He was trying to figure out if her story about her mother was real or not.”

“Who told you this?”

“Earl Cohen.”

“Him? He’s still alive?”

“A medical miracle.”

“Why’d you go to him?”

“He was around back in the day.” I gave him Cohen’s description of the DePauws. What the old man had heard about Zina.

“Coupla would-be actresses,” he said. “On top of all the other family crap, sisterly competition.”

“Neither of them made it but Zina failed a little less obviously.”

“So Enid got back at her by stealing her boyfriend. That’s pretty primal.”

“Cohen called it spiteful, I like your description better.”

“Getting the boyfriend and snagging her inheritance, too, if we’re right about the shutoff clause. Sexy crazy, huh?”

“In those days, mental illness would’ve been an easy trigger. And that crack Cohen’s buddies made was telling: She was seen as easy prey. Add booze to the mix, and taking everything from her, including her baby, would be easy. Sherman also told Cohen that Zelda’s adoptive situation hadn’t been ideal.”

“Coup de grâce by Sister Enid,” he said. “Stripping Zina down to nothing. Zina hangs on, doing what it takes to get by, then one day, poof. But you know what John’s gonna tell me: A woman with that level of problems, there are all kinds of ways she could end up missing.”

“Sure,” I said. “But her daughter was most likely murdered. Along with—”

“Three innocents, I know. John was impressed by that. The blood potential. Assured me if it ever got to court, he had first dibs on prosecuting because a trial like that could be a career builder.”

“But he’s not holding his breath.”

“Way he put it was ‘My wife bugged me to take her to Maui, we’re leaving in two days and I’m not trading in my tickets.’ ”

Clear evidence of wrongdoing.

Rescue fantasies clogged my head.

I could call White Glove Cleaning, buy myself a tag-along with the cute girls.

I could find out when the gardeners arrived on St. Denis and wangle my way in with them.

Or just take the simple route: hitching myself over a wall and engaging in some freelance exploration.

All of which would screw up the case if I found anything incriminating. Officially, I was a private citizen, but even a bottom-feeder defense attorney would have no trouble convincing a judge I was an agent of the police.

Expired name tag notwithstanding.

Enid DePauw and J. Yarmuth Loach had the money to hire an ace.

Banish all thoughts.

That got me thinking about the prime suspects. Even with two of them doing the dirty work, a seventy-year-old woman and sixty-seven-year-old boy-toy transporting bodies and burying them seemed unlikely.

If Alicia and Imelda had fallen prey, they’d likely been driven somewhere and dumped in a remote location where burial wasn’t necessary.

The desert.

Had Enid’s story about Palm Springs been a nasty private joke?

If so, no sense pursuing it. East of the city stretched hundreds of miles of sand and sun-cracked gullies, an alternative universe where raptors, canids, and fire ants had evolved fierce and focused, striving to survive.

Flesh would be devoured greedily, bones picked clean in days and scattered.

When thinking about that proved too depressing, I returned to a more hopeful scenario: Why not somewhere on Enid’s estate? No need to dig deep because it was private property, protected by the lack of clear evidence of wrongdoing.

I recalled the layout. Hedged and terraced formal gardens backed by forest-like growth at the back. Zelda had been found in the manicured section, no attempt to conceal.

You can do what you want with them.

If two other bodies were concealed anywhere on the property, it would have to be at the back.

Same problem: serious tote for a pair of senior citizens, even a duo who could’ve stepped out of a cruise-ship ad.

I supposed a wheelbarrow would help. But the interment itself would entail strenuous effort.

I got on Google Earth.

Wouldn’t you know.

Learn something new every day.

The wonders of technology.

In seconds I had full-color, one-year-old, 3-D satellite photos of the property at a variety of angles, the forest-like area at the rear of the property revealed in high definition.

Old-growth pines, sequoias, cedars, and cypresses rendered in... forest green. A central passage began several feet in, passing between stout trunks. Narrower lateral cuts provided additional access. Behind all that was a high stone wall, easily ten feet, with an offset wooden door to the right. From the ground, what appeared to be the estate’s rear border.

An aerial view said it wasn’t.

Behind the wall was a beige rectangle of bare earth, around half the width of the property, flanked by columnar Canary Island pines. Backing that was a second wall, even higher, with no outlet.

Planted in front of the pines were clumps of shrubbery, some flowering. Unlike the manicured garden, these plantings had been left rough and natural.

I zoomed in, scanned, printed several times before drawing back and examining the overall layout.

The soil of the forest was dark and rich-looking, that of the pocket garden, pale and dry and littered with leaves and pine needles. But just off center, in line with the door, the ground was clear. A well-trod entrance.

At the end of the clear area, two oblong depressions in the ground.

I printed some more, saved and filed, looked up an email address and sent a message.

Dr. Elizabeth Wilkinson, assistant professor of (forensic) anthropology at the med school where I held a faculty position, answered immediately.

In addition to her academic qualifications, Liz had served a coroner’s fellowship at the crypt, still consulted to LAPD, and was the girlfriend of Detective Moses Reed.

Hi, Alex. I’m in San Francisco at a conference. Yes, theoretically even a covered grave could be visible as a slight darkening of the soil. But it’s hard to differentiate from natural irregularities such as disruption caused by scavenging animals, or another perfectly innocent excavation. The time of day when the photo was taken would matter, as well. Early-morning sunlight is the least distorting because the angle is oblique.

Thanks for the quick reply, Liz. Would there be any way to find out, short of actually being there and digging?

Are we talking a recent burial?

Three or so weeks. Probably shallow.

Both work in your favor. Shallow for obvious reasons and recent because decomp would still be active, raising the surface temperature sufficiently for an aerial infrared camera to pick up. If you needed to go deeper, you could use ground penetrating radar and/or dogs.

How would I arrange infrared photography?

Are you talking about financing it yourself?

Yes.

It’s pretty pricey. I’d go helicopter, not plane because helicopters are good at slow speeds. A jet-powered copter could run you a thousand dollars an hour. Smaller ones would probably cost in the hundreds but they’re pretty cramped and have limited weight ceilings. So this isn’t official business?

It could turn out to be.

I see. Well, just to let you know, LAPD has crackerjack helicopter pilots and many are adept with IR. Last year someone reported a mass grave out in Chatsworth and the department did an IR flyover. It was a grave, all right, but for horses. Nothing ominous, just an owner who couldn’t bear to send her older animals to be processed so she and her sons shot them and buried them. They’d been doing it for years.