30. A Spring in His Step and a Song in His Heart

Ishook off the conversation and centered myself. Closing my eyes, buffeted by the wind, I lowered my guard and thought about the man's death. Immediately, I felt emotions coming at me from Hernández and Osso. "Could you guys move farther away? I don't need to know someone got into a fight with their significant other this morning."

"Don't look at me," Osso grumbled.

"It wasn't a fight. Just a misunderstanding about who said they'd stop at the market yesterday. We're out of coffee," Hernández explained.

Thankfully, their voices and emotions were quieting as they moved farther away. I tried again. No. This wasn't the place. "A man shoved his elderly mother over right here. He wanted to inherit the family fortune, but—based on the clothing—it was probably a hundred years ago."

I walked along the edge. The murder had taken place last night. I should feel something. Since I didn't, I kept walking. When I reached the tree line, I almost turned back, but I felt a pull ahead. Yes. This felt like the one who'd killed the teacher at the country club.

When I passed a large pine tree, the buzz became painful. I slipped off my glove and touched a finger to the bark.

He checks his thick gold watch again. The stupid old man is late. He looks up at the big house and steps out of the moonlight, leaning against a pine tree. The family never used to have cameras pointed in this direction. Hopefully, that's still true. He pulls down the brim of his ball cap and tugs up the collar of his jacket.

That's all he needs. He'll never hear the end of it if he gets caught trespassing. He checks his watch again, anticipation building. Is it fear? No. It's excitement.

The nosey old man had no right questioning us or going to the headmaster. A nice fat donation to the building fund, a gardener is fired, and suspicions fade away. That one wasn't on me, anyway. It wasn't my idea to kill the stupid cat.

He takes out a cigarette and lights it, feeling like a tough guy in an old movie. His fingers are trembling. He takes a long drag and then coughs horribly, feeling stupid and belligerent with it. He drops the cigarette in the pine needles and crushes it under his shoe.

"Hello?"

Finally. He sees the old man looking around, so he turns on the flashlight on his phone.

The old guy moves forward. "I almost turned around," he says. "I don't understand. Why are you contacting me now? I tried to help you years ago and you got me fired."

"That wasn't me. You were right about him. I didn't want to do that stuff. He made me."

"Okay," Garza says, moving closer. "But why all this mystery?" He gestures to the dark, empty estate. "You're a man now. Do what you want. You were done with school bullies years ago."

"I wanted to apologize for how we treated you." The excitement is growing as he grips the wooden handle tighter.

Garza looks around, brow furrowed. "Yes, but if you want to apologize, you go to the person. I had to pay to get into this community, so I could drive here, and then wander around this fancy place. If cops show up, guess who's getting arrested? This isn't how you apologize." He says it as though he's speaking to someone who's missed quite a few life lessons along the way.

"Don't worry," the killer says. "This won't take long."

Garza checks his watch. "I need to go. My wife is waiting for me."

"Here?" He can't keep the panic from his voice.

Garza squints into the dark, trying to read the young man's expression. "No. At home."

"Oh," he sighs. "That's good then."

The shovel comes up so quickly out of the dark, Garza barely registers a glint of metal before it bashes in the side of his head. He drops like a stone and the young man giggles.

Almost done. He takes out his phone, snaps a pic, and texts it away. Another one checked off the list. His father always complains that he never finishes what he starts. He almost wishes he could show his dad the list they started seven years ago. He's finished quite a few things.

He throws the shovel into the brush and then tries to lift Garza. He can't do it. He grabs the old man's wrists and tries to drag him, but it's harder than he anticipates. He should have made the old man walk closer to the edge before he hit him. Now what is he supposed to do?

His phone pings with a new text. He looks. It's a screenshot of the old man's name with a line through it. A zing of pride races through him.

Looking around, he tries to figure out how to move the trim man who couldn't be taller than 5'6". Embarrassed, he's glad he's alone right now. He'd be mocked for this for years. The shovel! He picks up the shovel and sides it under the gardener's butt. He grabs one arm and the shovel handle, slowly dragging Garza over pine needles, roots, and branches to the edge of the cliff.

The young man is sweaty and wheezing, but he did it. Rolling the body to the drop-off, he pulls out his phone, opening the camera function. With his foot on the gardener, he gives it a quick shove and then snaps a few more pictures as the body falls and splashes into the water.

Done, he strolls back through the estate, a new spring in his step, swiping through images, looking for the best to send. Once he has, he gets in his car and drives home. Maybe he'll treat himself to an ice cream. He finished what he'd started, after all.

Blinking, I found Osso and Hernández hovering. "What?"

"You what," Osso grumbled. "What did you see?"

I explained as I made my way through the trees to the cliff. Pointing at the discarded shovel, I said, "There's your murder weapon. He wasn't wearing gloves, so his prints should be all over it."

Osso took a glove out of his pocket and used it to pick up the shovel.

"I'm kinda torn right now," I said.

The detectives looked at me.

"I was going to ask you to take me to Mr. Garza's body so I could read him. He knows something about these two. The thing is, that's his blood, hair, maybe some scalp right there. I don't want to touch that, but if I do, it'll save us a trip to the asshole coroner's place."

"And she would be there," Hernández said. "This is a normal working day for her."

Great. Sighing, I took off my glove again and—as I didn't want my fingerprints on a murder weapon—touched the back of my hand to a bloody clump of hair, thinking about how he knew the killer.

He's younger. Wearing a long-sleeve olive green shirt and matching pants. A patch on the pocket reads Garza. He's in a forested area, sawing through a tree branch that cracked in last night's storm. The students aren't allowed in the grove on their own, but still. Can't have a heavy branch fall on a kid chasing a soccer ball.

He pauses to answer a text from the headmaster and hears whispering. He turns his head, trying to determine where the sound is coming from.

He follows the whispers and giggles through the trees, hoping he's not going to find students having sex. He hates that.

When he finds two teenagers not touching each other, he breathes a sigh of relief. He's about to bark at them about getting back up to the school when he hears a weak, pitiful mewing sound.

He circles around behind them, a sick feeling in his stomach. The boys haven't noticed him. They're too engrossed in what they're doing.

"What—" It's all he can get out. The tall one's hand moves so fast, Garza almost misses it. Something shiny and bloodstained just went in his pocket. The stick he'd been using to hold the wounded cat in place drops to the ground.

The other boy, shorter, looks scared. "We found him like this. We were going to bring him up to the school."

The tall one nods. "We heard him crying and came to help. We were trying to decide the best way to pick him up so we didn't injure him further."

"Get back to the school," Garza orders.

The short one doesn't need to be told twice. He takes off running. The tall one looks down his nose at the groundskeeper. "You shouldn't talk to us that way. We came to help. Our actions are laudable and you should remember your place." With that, he turns and walks back through the forest, leaving Garza with a tortured cat.

The image goes dark and then…

Garza is walking down the school hall. He's uncomfortable in here, much prefers to stay out on the grounds, but he's been thinking about the shorter one, the scared one. He hasn't been able to sleep, thinking about the two of them, what he's sure they did. He spoke to the headmaster, but that was a waste of time. The headmaster assured him that they were good young men from fine families and he was positive Garza had misinterpreted the situation.

He"d even gone to the dean, but he kept asking Garza if he'd actually seen the students hurting the cat. He hadn't, so the dean said he'd make a note of it in his files and dismissed him.

His wife told him to let it go. He'd done what he could. It was up to the school now. He knows she's right, but the shorter one looked scared and he needs to check on him, maybe help him get away from the other one. His own son had fallen in with the wrong group of boys when he was in school. Garza knew how hard it could be to break away from so-called friends at that age. Maybe the scared one just needed some help, an adult to blame that allowed him to save face.

He knows when the shorter one has PE, has seen him out on the field, and so is waiting outside the boys' changing room for him. When the student emerges and sees Garza, he quickly looks around. Garza waves him over and the boy goes reluctantly.

"Are you okay?" Garza asks.

He shrugs, still seeming to look for the dean.

"Listen," Garza continues. "You're a decent kid, right? You didn't want to hurt that animal, did you?"

"We told you. We found him like that." He looks over his shoulder. "Maybe a mountain lion attacked him." He shrugs again. "I don't know. We were just trying to help."

"I saw what the other one had in his hand. I saw the knife. Do you need help? The headmaster can keep you safe. I can talk to him for y—"

"No!" he whisper-shouts, looking over his shoulder again. "I told you, you're wrong." He turns back to Garza, his expression cold. "Unless you'd like me to tell the headmaster how you make me uncomfortable, always trying to talk to me and touch me, I suggest you leave me the fuck alone," he hisses.

Garza recoils. "I'm only trying to help."

"That was your first mistake." The one-minute chime is heard over the loudspeaker and the student jogs to his next class.

When the image dims again, I think of his death.

He knows his wife will be annoyed with him, but when the young man contacted him, he couldn't say no. He should have. He sees that now, but he keeps thinking about the fear on the kid's face when he'd caught them with the cat. The kid told him to park on the road, so he does. Why they couldn't meet at a coffee shop is beyond him. The big house is dark and the grounds deserted. He's got no reason to be on this property. If this is some stupid prank, he might be calling his very angry wife to bail him out tonight.

He sees a flare of light at the tree line, so he goes in that direction.

The same scene plays out, but this time I have a better look at the killer as an adult. It's dark and Garza's eyesight isn't as good as it used to be, but still. The killer was right. Garza doesn't see the shovel until it hits him.

What the young man doesn't realize is that the hit didn't kill him. Garza comes to, groggy and sore, as the killer rolls him to the edge. He sees a series of flashes and then is kicked over the edge, freefalling into the ocean and rocks below…

"What the hell was that?"

I opened my eyes at the bear's snarl as I dangled over the cliff, hanging from the arm around my waist. At the same time that I processed what a strange predicament I was in, a huge wave hit the cliff, a good thirty to forty feet higher than normal.

I waved at the water. "Thanks, Dad! I'm okay!"

Osso moved away from the edge and put me down. Hernández had a hand on her chest, her eyes wide.

"What?" I asked

"You walked right to the edge and stepped off. I don't know how Arthur got there in time to catch you." Hernández was shaking her head. "We thought you were out of the trance. I'd just asked you what you'd seen and you walked straight over the cliff."

"It was like watching Wile E. Coyote," Osso said. "I thought you were fine, just wanting to look where Garza would have gone over, but there was no hesitation." He rubbed his hands over his face. "You gave me a damned heart attack."

"Sorry about that," I said. "Garza didn't die when the shovel hit. He was waking up as the killer rolled him to the edge. He felt the kick over. The poor man was terrified as he dropped. And his last thoughts were of his wife and kids."

Hernández took my arm. "Can you move farther away from the edge, please." She blew out a breath. "I think I aged twenty years in that moment. If my hair turns gray, it's on you."

"I really am sorry. I don't usually move around like that."

They both looked like they might be sick.

"What do you say we head back? I'll buy you both dinner on the way home. Wait. No." I checked my phone. "I'm supposed to be meeting Declan for dinner. I'll bake you guys a thank-you-for-saving-me-and-I'm-sorry-for-scaring-you surprise."

"With honey," Osso said as he pulled another glove from his pocket and picked up the shovel again before heading back toward the car.