Free Kiss of Death by P.D. Martin Page A

still being out at eight on a Sunday morning, but there’s no legal requirement to wait twenty-four hours or any other specified time in California. Saporo classified Sherry’s disappearance as Missing/Lost rather than as a runaway, parental abduction, stranger abduction or disaster victim. While it’s possible she was abducted by a stranger, there was no evidence to suggest that. According to the form, Sherry Taylor was last seen by her parents leaving the house at nine last night. She was wearing tight Guess jeans with an eveningwear-style, short-sleeved top—black with lots of beading—and a leather jacket. The clothing doesn’t help us much, given Sherry was found naked, although it does tell us she wasn’t dressed for a Goth nightclub…at least not when she left her parents’ house. So she either changed after she left, or Todd lied.
    The next section of the form relates to any companions the missing person was with, but in the case of Sherry she left the house alone and we don’t know who she may have seen after that—except for Todd. Information covering Sherry’s car has been completed in the next spot, including the fact that her Toyota Celica hasn’t been found. I give Sloan a call to confirm.
    â€œSloan, it’s Anderson. Don’t suppose Sherry’s car was at our crime scene?”
    â€œNo. It doesn’t look like she drove herself to Temescal Gateway Park. Unless someone else drove the car away.”
    â€œAnd her cell phone wasn’t found?”
    â€œNo,” Sloan confirms. “According to the parents, they were ringing her cell every ten minutes or so, from about seven this morning. It was going straight to voice mail.”
    â€œDoes it have a GPS unit?”
    â€œNo.” She pauses. “I do have some news.”
    â€œUh-huh.”
    â€œOur footprint experts have finished on-scene and identified three different sets of footprints that could be part of a circle around the body. Two are only partials, but one is more complete.”
    â€œGo on.”
    â€œThey’ll run them against shoe databases, but we’ve got a women’s size eight and what looks like a men’s eleven and a men’s eleven or twelve.”
    â€œIt’s a start.” Although the shoe sizes are all very common. Hopefully something more specific will come from the imprints themselves.
    â€œProblem is these prints were found amongst a lot of others. Given how much that clearing was used, any defense attorney’s going to smash them in court.”
    I grimace. If Sloan’s repeating the forensic expert’s words “could be part of a circle,” she’s right—that’s not good enough for court. “Okay, thanks.”
    I hang up and move back to the form and the details of the complainant—in this case Mr. and Mrs. Taylor—and then on to the more detailed information about Sherry. Again, nothing particularly stands out. The last two sections are for forensics data, but they’re blank, as you’d expect when the report had just been logged. Soon enough they would have added credit card checks and phone records and then, if suitably concerned that foul play wasa factor, they would have assigned a computer technician to start the laborious process of looking for clues on Sherry’s laptop. But for a twenty-year-old, that may have been weeks away.
    Next in the file Sloan pulled together for Rosen and the Bureau is all the information on the trespass charge and the preliminary information they dug up on Anton Ward, once they made the link between the two trespassers, After Dark and Ward. The file contains a printout of Ward’s driver’s license, as well as an article LA Weekly did on him and After Dark a few months back. It’s a feature article with a large photo of Ward and on the other side of the page is the After Dark logo. It’s a pentagram enclosed in a circle with the