“And he was a racist,” Dora said.

Tadeo shrugged. “Not the first I’ve met, undoubtedly not the last.”

“Your family has been in this country longer than his! Your cousin fought in Vietnam. Your dad fought in World War II. He sees brown skin and right away he assumes you were born in Mexico.”

“Nothing wrong with being born in Mexico, Dora…”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“And as for his attitude-I don’t know. You ask me, that wasn’t what bothered him most that night. It was his pride, after what happened.” He turned to me. “I knew we had press there. He showed up at the scene because of that. What I didn’t know at the time-there was a reporter with a parabolic microphone pointed at us. So my theory about the crime got reported in the paper.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “You turned out to be right.”

“Well, yeah. But by the time anyone figured that out, I was already in trouble. I had embarrassed him, so he had me written up for being insubordinate, and eventually he managed to get me reassigned and demoted.”

“Tadeo is not a politician,” Dora said. “That lieutenant, he was more politician than anything.”

“The union helped me out,” Tadeo said. “But I was miserable for quite a few weeks before it all got straightened out.”

“And it was during that miserable time that you were on patrol in the mountains?”

“Yes.” He paused. “It was the most exciting thing that happened the whole time I worked up there. But…that’s not why I remember it so clearly. I remember it because it has been eating at me for five years.”

“Why?” I asked softly.

He looked over to his wife. “Because I should have spoken up and I didn’t.”

“You’re speaking up now,” she said.

“About what?” I asked.

He took a big breath, as if he were about to dive into deep, cold water. “I think someone staged that scene.”

CHAPTER 33

Monday, May 1

11:15 A.M.

REDLANDS

THERE were all kinds of things at that scene that just didn’t make sense, and yet no one from Las Piernas seemed to notice them.”

“Give me some examples,” I said.

“First of all, the place he was found-makes no sense. He doesn’t have a cabin up there-I checked that out. He’s supposed to be smart enough to carry out a double homicide in broad daylight and manage to dump his sister’s body in some woods somewhere without anyone seeing him, but then he decides to drink and pop pills and get naked in the mountains? You know what the roads are like up there?”

“Curving, with cliffs and steep embankments.”

“Right. He’s supposed to be blasted-nearly died of the booze and barbiturates alone, but he doesn’t drive off a cliff. He doesn’t scrape a guardrail. He doesn’t even hit a tree. He makes it into a shallow little drainage ditch off a driveway. Hardly any damage, either-doesn’t even knock out a headlight. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he carefully backed into that ditch.”

“Backed into it?”

“The headlights were shining up into the trees, pointed away from neighboring cabins. I looked around-the shape of the ditch, the way the road and trees were lined up along there-the only way I could see the car ending up at that angle was if it had been backed in.”

He hunted up a piece of paper and drew a little diagram.

“This isn’t exact, just something to give you a rough idea. Okay. He supposedly drives into that ditch, and the sound isn’t loud enough to wake the neighbors-I woke them, shouting the little girl’s name.”

“Jenny.”

“Yes. But that’s not all that’s off about this scene. He isn’t bruised or cut-not even a scratch. Although he had two victims to kill, neither of them harmed him in any way. Okay, maybe he held them at gunpoint or knifepoint-but no. No weapons other than that metal sculpture. Some kind of award. Not many people get held up at award-point.”

“There was more than one room at the studio, though,” I said, thinking about this. “He could have killed his stepfather with the trophy and then attacked his sister by strangling her…but…yes, I see. If he killed her at the studio, then why not leave her body there?”

“Lots of stuff about this doesn’t make sense.”

“On that we agree. Tell me more about what you noticed that night, the things that bothered you.”

“Okay-no keys.”

“What?” Ethan said.

“No car keys. Not in the ignition, not anywhere on the ground that I could see them.”

“Wasn’t he supposed to have put stuff in the trunk? Maybe he dropped them when he was doing that.”

“Yeah, when did that happen? After he hit the ditch? So he wrecks a car on a cold, damp night, he gets out and strips everything off but his socks and underwear, then passes out in the front seat. Does that make sense, even for a drunk? Oh, and there’s a laundry miracle while we’re at it-the bottoms of his socks stayed clean, even when he walked around in the mud, leaving shoe prints. And the shoe prints he leaves don’t look like the bottoms of his shoes, which are in the trunk.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You could see the bottoms of his socks while he was passed out in the driver’s seat?”

“Yes.”

“Without moving him?”

“Yes,” he said, frowning.

“But then the seat must have been back too far.”

“What do you mean?” Ethan said.

“When you drive,” I said, “you drive with the seat close enough to reach the brake and accelerator, and to reach the clutch if it’s not an automatic. If his seat is so far back that the bottoms of his socks can be seen, how did he operate that vehicle?”

“If you ask me, he never did,” Tadeo said. “Not that day, anyway.”

“But if someone had to move his unresisting but heavy form behind the steering wheel…”

“Yes, it would have made it easier if the seat was back as far as it can go.”

“You said you didn’t see any scratches or bruises on him. What about blood? I mean, spatter or smears from his victims?”

“Nothing. Not on his hands, not on his arms, nothing in his hair.”

“Maybe he cleaned up,” Ethan said. “Took a shower or something.”

“There was a shower in the studio,” I said slowly, “but why would he shower and then put bloody clothes on? Unless you believe he drove in his boxers and put clean socks on later…”

Tadeo smiled. “That’s the funny part, isn’t it? A guy’s clothing is spattered, but he’s clean. He doesn’t have any other clothing with him.”

“And he’s supposedly driving around the mountains on a cold night wearing not much more than his birthday suit.”

“Right.”

“How long was the car in the ditch?” Ethan asked.

“The last person to drive down that private road before him got home at about ten-thirty. That guy would have noticed the car if it had been there then, because as he came down the main road he would have seen its headlights shining up at an angle through the trees. I found Mason Fletcher at a little after one in the morning.”

“Richard Fletcher was last seen alive-by anyone other than his daughter and his killer, anyway-at about six-thirty in the morning on May ninth,” I said. “And you found Mason almost eighteen hours later?”

“Yes.”

“So to believe he’s guilty, you must believe he had Jenny alive with him in his car while he drove around for almost eighteen hours, and that the whole time he was either wearing bloodstained clothes or drove around all but naked with her in the car.”

“Or that he had killed her already,” Ethan said.

“Why not leave her at the studio, then? He’s already left one body there.”

“That’s it,” Tadeo said. “And if he’s kept her alive so that he can kill her less than twenty-four hours later, you are hinting that he was up to worse things, that he’s really one very sick individual.”

“The prosecution didn’t suggest that he molested her.”

“They made him a child killer,” Ethan said. “He’s lucky to still be alive in prison.”