Led Astray: A Crime Thriller

Part 1

On a Wednesday night, the third of the month, they discovered the body after a woman called in and said she'd found her dog chewing on a human hand.

The body had been retrieved at exactly 4:32 in the morning. The neighborhood was well-known to the officers-just two months prior, the Channel 5 news team had filmed them live as they broke into a house where an accused murderer had been hiding. As they dragged him out, forty-two years old, naked and cursing at them in a mixture of Spanish and English, one of the officers had snapped at the camera crew for getting too close-so close that he'd run headfirst into the news team's equipment as they wrestled the suspect into the squad car. The footage, complete with his own colorful language, had been replayed at least seven times the next day.

Detectives Martinez and van Daan surveyed the neighborhood, trying to see what hadn't already been seen. The neighborhood and countless others had been canvassed months before when the disappearance had been fresh and media hype over the missing girl had reached its dizzying frenzy. They had turned up next to nothing week after week, and eventually all the usual concerns-burglaries, armed robberies, the occasional violent suicide-had pressed in until they took precedence, and the weeks that stretched between the missing report and their last good lead had reached uncomfortable lengths.

Until now, now that she'd finally been unearthed.

There were at least two separate households on the block watching them, Detective Martinez noted. People were wary of cops in this part of town. "As well they should be," van Daan had said, leisurely buttoning his vest. "Pick any random person out of that part of town and they'll either be a bum, an addict, or a welfare case. Crime is practically in the water here."

Van Daan, having also spotted the figures lurking in windows, waved at them jauntily and stared until the windows had been covered again. For his part, Martinez ignored them. He was watching the people behind the yellow tape in their protective gear, taking pictures and notes with latex-gloved hands. He listened to their chatter, tried to hone in on phrases he anticipated, waited anxiously for anything surprising. The paramedics had gotten the signal to arrive on scene, which had been a waste of time: The victim had crossed the last threshold months ago.

The hand they'd recovered had been dug up by a white miniature chihuahua named Killer who had already ingested part of the index finger and snapped viciously at the team when he'd been handed off by the owner. "We'll have to get back the part the mutt ate," van Daan said, and a few others murmured disapproval. Martinez ignored that also. He wanted to see the body.

The girl had been buried in a shallow grave behind a dumpster in an area shaded by two gnarled, emaciated elm trees and littered with trash and debris. The ground, hardened by an early autumn frost, did not yield her easily. The clothes she'd died in had not been thrown away, but clung stubbornly to the flesh. She'd been wrapped in a bed sheet, originally baby blue with yellow-and-white stars. The blue of the fabric was bleached near-white, the stars splotched and distorted; the team hashed forensics, trying to gauge what they could from the stains. There were the thin tendrils of mottled brown hair hanging off the skull like limp seaweed; there were the patches of skin and unknown residue tattooed on the surface; her blank, washed-out blue eyes still witnessing a spectacle they could not fathom.

On the night she died, their victim had been wearing jeans and a pink blouse so sheer it was little more than a blushing veil. The scant sensuality of her black lace underwear was almost grotesque. She'd worn a pair of black stilettos, and a cross pendant huddled in the hollow of her throat on a chain of sterling silver. No purse or bag was recovered; the police assumed that her cellphone and wallet were disposed of and didn't expect to retrieve them.