I’d’ve preferred to talk to Krochek before I interviewed Rebecca Weaver, but when I called his cell all I got was voice mail, and his secretary at Five States Engineering told me he was on a job site and incommunicado for the day. So I’d just have to wing it with Ms. Weaver—assuming she was home and willing to talk to me.
When I drove into Fox Canyon Circle, the three houses grouped around the cul-de-sac had an external look of desertion. No people, no cars, not even a sprinkler working in one of the front gardens. The whole area had a two-dimensional look under a high, fragmented overcast; the pale sun seemed caught in the gray-white like something in a web, its light silvery and shadowless. Despite a strong wind and the absence of humidity, it was the kind of day that makes me think of earthquakes. The sky had looked a lot like this when the Loma Prieta quake created several hundred square miles of havoc from Santa Cruz north to Sonoma County in ’89.
I parked between the Krochek house and the one belonging to Rebecca Weaver. The wind bent and swayed limbs in the trees along the canyon rim, and you could hear it thrumming in the telephone wires. It was like a hand on my back as I walked up the front walk to the Weaver house.
When I pressed the doorbell, a few chords of some vaguely familiar song echoed inside. Cute. Like the song snatches that the cell phone companies used in place of a good old-fashioned ring.
Two minutes, and the door stayed shut.
I let the bell play its tune again. Same result.
Well, hell.
There was a flagstone path that wound through the fronting cactus garden. I went along there onto the Krocheks’ property, following the route Rebecca Weaver had taken the day I’d met her. The front gate was closed but not locked. I went across the inner patio and pushed the bell there. Normal chimes, and as expected, no response.
It took me about fifteen seconds to decide to exercise a certain tacit right accorded me as Mitchell Krochek’s representative. The Krocheks’ spare key was still under the decorative urn at the front wall; I dug it out and used it on the door.
The coolness inside was faintly musty, the way houses get when they haven’t been aired out in a while. All the drapes were closed tight, making it too dim to find my way around without turning on some lights. The telephone and answering machine were in an arched alcove off the formal living room. The blinking light on the machine indicated that there were two messages. The first was from one of the friends Krochek had contacted about his wife, asking if everything was okay; the second was a familiar male voice saying curtly, “Carl Lassiter, Mrs. Krochek. Call me.” That one had come in at 2:45 yesterday afternoon, before my meeting with him.
I went into the kitchen. The dried blood smears were still there on the tile; Krochek had followed my advice on that score, at least. He hadn’t touched anything else in there, either; the dirty dishes still jammed the sink, giving off the sour odor of decay.
Nothing had changed in the rest of the house, as far as I could tell. The empty Scotch bottle and overflowing ashtray and strewn clothing still cluttered the spare bedroom. The bed in there was unmade, the sheet pulled loose at the bottom corners—testimony to a couple of long, sleepless nights for Krochek before he moved in with Deanne Goldman.
Back to the kitchen and into the laundry room. A quick look around there told me nothing. I turned the deadbolt on the outside door and stepped into the backyard.
The narrow half-moon gouge in the lawn caught my eye again. I got down on one knee to look at it this time. Half-inch or so deep, which meant that it had been made by something heavy; the grass that hadn’t been ground down into the dirt was brown and dead.
Wheelbarrow?
Could be. The width of the furrow was the right size for a barrow tire. And a wheelbarrow was a convenient way to move a body from one point to another. To a car, say, backed into the garage or up close to the garage door.
There was no sign of a wheelbarrow out here, but I thought I remembered seeing one among the other garden implements when I’d looked into the garage last time. I headed over that way. What stopped me before I’d taken a dozen steps was a smell carried on a gust of the cold wind. Rank, noxious—
Rotting meat.
The hair on my neck stood up like quills. When the wind gusted again, bringing me another whiff, I followed the odor to a fenced-in section between the garage and the gate that led out front. Another gate opened into a narrow enclosure where the garbage cans were kept. Garbage smell, that was all. Except that it was too strong here, too distinct.
I eased the lid up on one of the cans. The stench that poured out was bad enough to make me recoil, start me breathing through my mouth. The can was stuffed with paper-wrapped packages and freezer bags, all of them showing bloodstains. At first glance I thought: God Almighty, he killed her and cut her up. But when I took a closer look, swallowing bile, I saw that it wasn’t human remains the packages and bags contained, but steaks, chops, roasts, hamburger.