"Gross, Mom," he said, never taking his eyes off his video game, giving it far more concentration than he ever did his homework. As an added precaution, he absently raised his shoulder, using it to wipe his cheek clean.
Now, with the sun mercifully far behind planet Earth, I found myself heading east on the 91 Freeway. Me, and nearly all of southern California, too. I settled in for the long commute, tempted, as usual to pull over and take flight.
Instead, I sat back and turned up the radio and tried to remember what life was like before I became what I currently am.
But I couldn't. At least, not really, and that scared the hell out of me. My new reality dominated all aspects of my life, all thoughts and all actions, and as I followed a sea of red taillights and bad drivers, I realized my humanity was slipping further and further away.
I hate when that happens.
Chapter Four
The crime scene wasn't much of a crime scene. It also wasn't too hard to find. At least, not for me.
Using Sherbet's notes, I soon found an area of road that had recently seen a lot of activity. The dirt was grooved deeply with tires, and there was even some crime scene tape left behind in one of the sage brushes.
I parked my minivan off the side of the winding road and got out. Yes, there are actually winding roads in southern California. At least, up here in these mostly barren hills. Winter rain had given life to some of the dried-out seedlings that baked during the spring, summer and fall seasons, which, out here in the high desert, was really just one long-ass summer. The stiff grass gave the hill some color, even at night. At least, to my eyes.
I shut the door and beeped it locked. Why I beeped it locked, I didn't know. I was alone up here on the hillside, parked inside a turnout, hidden in shadows and what few bushes there were.
Which made it even more remarkable that the body had even been found in the first place.
According to Sherbet's notes, a city worker making his routine rounds had come upon the body. He might not have found it, either, if not for the turkey vultures and the foul smell.
Predictably, it hadn't been a pretty sight.
Like the others, this one was rolled up in a dirty sheet and tied off on both ends. The same type of sheet, every time. A sheet commonly sold at Wal-Mart, of all places. The vultures had gotten through the sheet, using their powerful beaks. Apparently, they had made a meal of the intestines, but that's as far as they got before the worker showed up.
I had seen a handful of corpses back in my days as a federal agent. But, mercifully, I had never seen a human body eaten by vultures. I was glad Sherbet spared me the photos.
Yes, even vampires get queasy.
The air was cool and crisp. I was wearing jeans and a light jacket, although I really didn't need a jacket. I wore it because I thought it looked cute. Really, when you're as cold on the inside as the weather is on the outside, jackets are a moot point.
Unless they're cute.
The air was heavy with sage and juniper and smelled so fresh that it was easy to forget that bustling Orange County was just forty-five minutes away.
I studied the crime scene. It was a mess. What few plants there were had been trampled. Footprints everywhere. Tire prints. And deeper gouges into the earth that I knew were from the Corona mobile command. A trailer they hauled out to process evidence, or as much as they could, right there on the spot. I even found two deep ruts in the road that I seriously suspected were from a helicopter's skids. It was a wonder the rotor downdraft hadn't erased all the other tracks.
I scanned the area, looking deeper into the darkness than I had any right to see, seeing things that I probably shouldn't. I'm talking about energy. Spirit energy. Even in the desert I sense and see energy. Small explosions of light that appear and disappear. These are faint. Mere whispers.
What I wasn't seeing was perhaps more telling. There was no lost spirit here. No lost human spirit.
Which told me something. It told me that I was either completely insane and lost my mind years ago and was currently babbling away at some mental hospital, or that the victim had been killed elsewhere.
I was hoping it was the latter. Although, trust me, there were times I actually hoped it was the former.
Anyway, what I didn't see is the bright, static energy that often makes up a human spirit. That is, one who has once lived and passed on. The newer the spirit, the sharper they come into focus. I've gotten used to seeing such spirits these days. I'm a regular Sylvia Browne, although you won't find me on Montel Williams. At least, not yet. Maybe if he asks nicely.
Then again, I had a tendency to not show up in photographs or video.
So much for my talk show circuit, I thought, as I circled the area where the body had been found. As I did so, the wind picked up, lifting my hair, flapping my jacket.
I tried to get a feel for the land, for what had been here. For who had been here, but these psychic gifts of mine were relatively new and I was only getting fleeting images. One of those fleeting images was that of the body still lying undisturbed on the ground, wrapped in the dirty sheet.
I went back to the spot where the body had been found and knelt to examine the ground. There was nothing left of the crime scene, of course. The investigators had been all over it.
Most telling, there hadn't been any blood. As I knelt in this spot with my eyes closed, feeling the wind, hearing the rustle of dried leaves, I heard something else.
A voice. No, a memory of a voice. A hauntingly familiar voice. Deep and rich. Telling someone to dump the body here. Good, good. Let's go.
And that's all the psychic hits I got.
No, not quite. Another memory came to me. Another image. A snapshot, really. I saw a bag. Lying deep in a deep ravine.
Except there were damn ravines everywhere. Hell, there were ravines within ravines. I only had to think about it for a second or two, before I started stripping out of my clothes.
Right there at the crime scene.
Chapter Five
There's nothing like being naked in the desert.
Seriously. With my clothing folded on the hood of my van, I stepped across the cool dirt, picked my way through a tangle of elderberry and carefully stepped around a patch of beavertail cactus. I moved past the general area where the body had been found and headed deeper into the empty hills.
The desert scents were heady and intoxicating. Sage and juniper and creosote. Pungent, sharp and whispery. The desert sand itself seemed to have a scent all its own, too. Something ancient that hinted at death, at life, of survival and of distant memories. This place, so close to civilization, yet so far removed, too, smelled as it had for eons, for millenniums. The sand, I knew, was sprinkled with the bones of the dead. Dead vermin, dead coyotes, dead anything and everything that ever ventured into these bleak hills.