“That and basically Gorobich and Ramos agreed with him. It didn't look like anything the kid had brought on herself. More like some twisted fuck watched her and snatched her and dispatched her and cleaned up afterward. Like you said, playing. Big fucking game. God, I hate when it's a kid.”
He got up and paced, opened the fridge, looked inside, closed it, peered out the kitchen window.
“Have you met the parents yet?” I said.
“I put a call in today, waiting for an appointment.”
“Three months with no progress,” I said. “The grief may have turned completely to rage. It may be even more difficult to approach them.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I'll tackle that later. Meanwhile, trees don't have feelings, so how about taking a look at the scene?”
4
It was less than a half-hour drive, a right turn off Sunset, past the Brentwood intersection with Pacific Palisades. No signs. Sometimes people who love nature don't think other people should disrupt it.
A suburban street lined with middle-sized ranch homes led to a brush-shaded single-lane road that kept narrowing. A school bus would be scraped by branches.
The gate was steel painted ballpark-mustard yellow, latched but not locked. The first sign, orange city-issue, specified visiting hours. Opening time was an hour away. I got out, released the latch, returned to the unmarked, and we drove through more foliage-banked asphalt. We pressed on, rolling on dirty hardpack, now, as the brush turned to pines, cedar, cypress, sycamore. Trees planted so close together they formed deep green walls, nearly black, just the faintest delineation of branch and leaf. Anyone or anything could hide back there.
The road ended in a spoon-shaped clearing. Faded white lines marked off a dozen parking spots and Milo slid into one. Behind the lot was a ten-foot strip of dry, clipped grass upon which sat three rickety picnic tables, a U-drive mower, and several fastened lawn bags, stuffed, shiny-black.