Free L a Requiem (1999) by Robert - Elvis Cole 08 Crais

longest time where the man pointed. He was just about to admit that he couldn't see a goddamned thing when he finally saw it: Three-quarters of a print, partially obscured by a runner's shoe print, and so shallow on the hard edge of the trail that it couldn't have been more than three grains of dust deep. It appeared to have been made by a casual dress shoe of some kind, like that worn by a cop, but maybe not.
    John said, "The shooter?"
    "It's pointing in the right direction. It's where the shooter had to be."
    John glanced back toward the shell casing. "So you figured an automatic? That's why you looked over there?" An automatic would eject to the right, and would toss a .22 casing about four feet. Then John thought of something and squinted at the man. "But what if the guy had used a revolver? A revolver wouldn't leave anything behind."
    "Then I wouldn't have found anything." The man cocked his head almost as if he was amused. "All the people around, and no one heard it. Can't silence a revolver, John."
    John felt a blush creeping up his face again. "I know that."
    The man moved along the trail, dropping into his push-up position every few feet before rising and moving on. John thought that now would be an ideal time to run for the two uniforms, but instead jammed a wire into the ground to mark the print, and followed the man to a stand of leafy scrub sumac at the edge of the little clearing just up the trail. The man circled the trees, first one way, then another, twice bending low to the ground.
    "He waited here until he saw her."
    John moved closer, careful to stay behind the man, and, sure enough, there were three perfect prints in the hard dirt that appeared to match the partial by the shell casing. As before, the prints were slight, and damn near invisible even after the man pointed them out, but John was getting better at this.
    By the time John had taken it all in, the man was moving again. John hurried to wire the site before hustling to catch up.
    They came to the chain-link fence that paralleled the road, and stopped at the gate. John guessed that the paved road would be as far as they could go, but the man stared across the road as if the slope on the other side was speaking to him. The radio car was to their left at the curve, but judging by the way the two cops were wrestling around in the back seat, they wouldn't notice an atom bomb going off behind them. Sluts.
    The man looked up at the ridge. Off to their left were houses; to their right, nothing. The man's gaze went to a little stand of jacaranda trees at the edge of the road to their right, and then he was crossing and John was following.
    John said, "You think he crossed there?"
    The man didn't answer. Okay. He wasn't talkative. John could live with that.
    The man searched the slope in front of the jacarandas and found something that made his mouth twitch.
    John said, "What? C'mon?"
    The man pointed to a small fan of loose dirt that had tumbled onto the shoulder of the road. "Hid behind the trees until people passed, then went through the gate."
    "Cool." John Chen was liking this. Big time.
    They climbed the slope, the shooter's prints now pronounced in the loose soil of the side hill. They worked their way to the ridgeline, then went over the top to a fire road. John hadn't even known that a fire road was up here.
    He said, "I'll be damned."
    The man followed the fire road about thirty yards before he stopped and stared at nothing again. John waited, biting the inside of his mouth rather than again asking what the man was looking at.
    But finally he couldn't stand it and said, "What, for chrissake?"
    "Car." The man pointed. "Parked here." Pointed again. "Coolant or oil drips here. Tire tread there."
    John was already marking the spots with wire.
    The man said, "Off-road tread. Long wheelbase."
    "Off-road? Like a Jeep?"
    "Like that."
    John wrote notes as fast as he could, thinking that he'd have to call his office for the things he'd need to take a tire