21st Birthday by Patterson, James (mystery books to read txt) 📗

Tara put her bag down on the asphalt, strapped the baby into a rear-facing car seat, then returned to the house and came out again carrying a diaper bag and an overnight case, which she put in the trunk.

Tara got into the driver’s seat. I could see her checking on the baby, then carefully backing out and making a reverse K-turn on Dublin Street. She headed downhill in the opposite direction her husband had taken.

As with Lucas, the camera angle was all wrong for seeing faces, but her actions and body language were clear.

She was not distressed or in a panic. And the carry-on showed Tara Burke had planned to be gone for some period of time.

Maybe not forever, but surely overnight.

CHAPTER 29

CONKLIN SHOUTED DOWN to us from the top of the stairs.

“I need you to see something!”

I followed Brady up the staircase and found Conklin at the closet across from the bathroom. It was filled with linens and cleaning supplies. Conklin pointed to a crumpled-up blanket on the closet floor. It was crib-sized, pink, and patterned with bunnies.

Conklin said, “That blanket must have been there since Tara and Lorrie left the house on Monday. I want to see inside of it.”

Culver took a few shots of the blanket and then Rich carefully unfolded it with his gloved hands. A little pile of feces was in the center of the folds, like the fortune inside the cookie.

Kathleen Wyatt had told me that Tara and Lorrie had been abused, that Lorrie was sometimes locked in the closet for crying. The soiled blanket was suspicious — but by itself proved nothing.

“She could have taken it out of the baby’s crib and thrown it into the closet,” I said, but I made note of it in my book.

This dollhouse of a home had no basement, no attic, the eaves were enclosed with sheetrock. So, after checking out the upstairs rooms and finding no bodies or signs of any, we cops left the house to CSU, stood near our cars, and brainstormed, theorized, hypothesized.

Where had Tara gone? Had she left Burke? How had she gotten separated from Lorrie? Had she and Lucas been in touch since Monday morning?

That was an interesting thought but took me nowhere.

The trees in the park were alive with the light rustling of leaves and the sweet sounds of birdsong. It was the kind of day that made you think that nothing bad could ever happen here.

And then Brady’s phone buzzed.

He answered, “What’s up?”

His face went rigid. He said, “I got it. I got it. Wait, let me get the coordinates again.” He slapped his shirt pocket, got back into the car, opened the console, and was reaching for the glove box when I handed him a pen and my notepad. Brady scribbled and said, “Thanks. See you later.”

He clicked off and went into deep thought.

I said, “Brady? What happened?”

“That was Teller.”

“Teller?”

“A CSI. A body was found on the eastern side of the park. Female.”

“Is it Tara?”

“Don’t know. Lady walking her dog found a girl’s body in a shallow grave. Throat cut. I’ve called for backup.”

What the hell was this?

Had Burke killed Tara and buried her in the park? And now that bastard was loose? My mind was ranging, trying to take in this new information and make sense of it.

I needed to see the victim.

I stuck with Brady as we all followed Hallows along a trail into the lush greensward. We’d walked for no more than five or six minutes when we reached a half dozen CSIs who’d roped off the area around the body.

My heart was pounding, but Brady was a brick. He had a quiet word with the CSIs that boiled down to “We’ll take it from here.”

I edged close enough to the deceased to see that she was partially covered with soil and leaves. But she was exposed enough that I could see that she was naked. Her throat had been cut on an angle and her breasts had been sliced, in no discernable pattern. From where I was standing, only her profile was visible.

I stared up as a news chopper hovered overhead. Then Clapper drove up in his car, lights flashing.

Ready or not, this gruesome murder was about to go public.

CHAPTER 30

CLAPPER LOOKED OVER the partially exposed and mutilated body and made a general announcement.

“Listen up, everyone. You know the rules. Play dumb. Do not speak to the media or anyone else. I’ll make an announcement after the vic has been identified and next of kin notified.”

I decided to get out ahead of the ID I knew was coming. I said, “I can notify her mother. I know her.”

This would be a horrible job. Kathleen would go insane, but I thought it better for me to deliver the news than a stranger. Just then, a CSI appeared at Clapper’s elbow saying, “Sir, we found something.”

“Go ahead. What is it?”

“A pile of women’s clothes. All folded neatly. I looked in the handbag. Here’s her license.”

Clapper took the license by the edges from the CSI’s gloved hand. As he looked at it, a muscle twitched in his cheek.

“This license belongs to a Wendy Franks,” said Clapper. “She resembles Tara Burke. But, her nose. The width of her forehead …” Clapper stooped down and held the driver’s license, containing the requisite California state seals and holographs, near the dead woman’s face.

“Unless her prints say otherwise, the victim is Wendy Franks.”

Things went a little crazy about then, everyone talking at once, firing off opinions, comparing the DMV photo to the victim’s face. I looked at the license in Clapper’s hand and said, “Wendy Franks had brown eyes and was five nine. From her description, Tara Burke has blue eyes. She’s five six.”

Alvarez said, “So, is Franks’s death a mistaken-identity situation?