Land of Careful Shadows by Suzanne Chazin Page A

Greco tore off a piece of the red licorice between his teeth and adjusted his black glasses. They were too big for his face and gave his eyes a perpetually startled expression.
    â€œCause of death is a skull fracture,” said Greco. “Manner, undetermined. Estimated time of death was four to six weeks ago. So she died in late February or early March. Any earlier, and Gupta says she would’ve just been fish food.”
    â€œNo water in the lungs,” Vega noted. “So whoever tied her down didn’t do it to drown her. She was already dead.”
    â€œI ran a check on those ropes this morning,” said Greco. “They had a green tracer line running through them. I thought that might make them easy to pin down. But it turns out everybody carries that rope, including Rowland’s Ace Hardware downtown. All the landscapers use it.”
    â€œYeah, but Rowland’s has like nineteen different kinds of rope with any number of different-colored tracers running through them,” said Vega.
    â€œYou shop there?”
    â€œNah. I just remember all the ropes from when I was a kid. Bobby Rowland and I used to hang out in the store a lot. We were friends. His dad was our landlord.” Vega thumbed the report some more. “Dr. Gupta has no idea how her skull got cracked?”
    â€œShe says it could have been the result of an assault with a weapon like a baseball bat. There were fractures to her ribs consistent with an assault. But she says the cracked skull also could have been the result of falling backward against a hard surface.”
    â€œLike being thrown off Bud Point?”
    â€œI asked. Gupta said she’d have sustained more broken bones and compression injuries. And don’t tell me about your little swan dive at seventeen, Vega. You were the luckiest bastard in the world.”
    â€œThen how does Gupta explain the rib fractures, if not from assault?”
    â€œShe said it also could have been bad CPR.”
    â€œBad CPR?” Vega made a face. “That’s like killing someone by taking their pulse.”
    â€œGupta says she’s seen similar rib fractures in people who have heart attacks and get CPR from someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing.”
    â€œWelcome to the future of managed health care,” said Vega. Greco gave a throaty chuckle. It sounded like a car backfiring. Vega took a sip of coffee. Next time he’d bring his own. Anglos didn’t have a clue how to make coffee. “Did Gupta manage to lift any fingerprints?”
    â€œThe tissue was too damaged from being in the water so long,” said Greco. “But the lab did manage to match her DNA to a bloodstain on the shoulder bag so we can be pretty confident the bag was hers and she’s probably the face in the photograph. The lab also lifted a fingerprint from that letter. I ran it through the database. No matches. Whoever wrote that letter has no police or immigration record.”
    â€œAnything come up on the Dora sneaker?”
    â€œThe model was manufactured within the last five years. Sold in Target and Walmart. No DNA or prints. No way to tie it to a particular child.”
    Vega had already combed the missing persons databases. Nothing matched. Even the pawn registry came up cold for that crucifix. He could see how a woman could end up unreported. But a little girl? How does someone not miss a child?
    But he knew the answer to that already. With his own eyes, he had seen how a child could become forever lost. Desiree was two. She never saw three. He would always blame himself no matter what the official report said.
    â€œWhat gets me,” said Vega, “is the media. Not one newspaper or television station has picked up on the flyers we sent. I figured, with a child involved—”
    â€œâ€”Technically, we don’t know for a fact that the child is involved,” Greco reminded him.
    â€œHer mother’s dead. Little kids