"Q" is for Quarry by Sue Grafton

ended up stabbing her to death?”
    “That’d be my guess. You know they never did figure out who she was. Pitiful, you ask me. All these years, her mom and dad never knowed what happened to her. Prob’ly still think she’s comin’ home and there she was laid out with her throat cut ear to ear.”
    Stacey said, “Identifying the girl is part of what we hope to accomplish.”
    Dolan was already firing up his second cigarette. “We appreciate your time, Mr. Johanson. I’m sure you’re busy and we don’t want to keep you. Thanks for meeting us.”
    “Happy to oblige. You needn’t bother about me. I’ll just tag along ’til you’re done and lock the gate again.”
    “We won’t be long. We’ll be happy to lock the gate after us when we leave.”
    “I don’t mind the wait.”
    Stacey and Dolan exchanged a glance, but neither said another word as they trudged the remaining distance to the edge of the ravine.
    Johanson trailed along after us. “Wadn’t any gate here back then. I figure the feller must have cruised all up and down, looking for a place to dump her, and chosen this. He must not have knowed about the quarry. Lot of traffic on this road any time of day; fellers heading to the mine. Bad weather’s different. Operation closes down if things get too bad.”
    “I’m surprised she wasn’t found by one of the Grayson employees,” Stacey remarked.
    “Because she smelt?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Might’ve been for all I know. Lot of them boys are Mexican. Called ’em ‘wetbacks’ in those days. Made a point not to bring attention to theirself, especially where the law’s concerned. Probably thought it was a dog if they caught wind of her at all. I’m sure the last thing occurred to them was some young girl been kilt.”
    Dolan’s response was noncommittal, perhaps in hopes of squelching further conversation. Ignoring Johanson, he scrambled a few steps down the embankment. The ground seemed soft, though the surface was powdery with dust. He anchored himself with his right foot on the downside of the slope and stood with his hands in his jeans pockets studying the undergrowth. “She was right about here. A lot more brush in the area back then.”
    “We cut that back on account of the fire department,” Johanson said. “They come out usually twicet a year. Owner won’t clear brush without a threat. Too cheap.”
    “With the fire danger up here, you can’t ignore the brush,” Stacey said, ever so polite.
    “No, sir. That’s what I say. You’ll find a few more trees. Back when that girl was throwed down there, that ’un and this one wasn’t here. Both black acacias. Grow like weeds. I’d cut ’em down myself, but owner won’t hear of it. Now, oaks I don’t touch. Couldn’t pay me to fell one unless it’s eat out by rot.”
    Dolan and I were both ignoring the man. I watched Dolan as he scrambled back out of the ravine and stood scanning the portion of Highway 1 that was visible from where we stood. “My guess is he backed in and opened the trunk of the car. He probably used the painter’s tarp to drag the body the short distance from there to here. The tarp was heavily soiled on one side and you could see a path through the underbrush where it’d been flattened by the weight.”
    “Kids used to pull in here for petting parties,” Johanson said. “Monday mornings, ground’d be littered with rubbers, limp as snake skins. That’s why we put in the gate, to keep cars out.”
    I looked at Stacey. “Was she wrapped in the tarp?”
    “Partially. We believe he killed her somewhere else. There were blood stains in the grass, but nothing to suggest the volume you’d’ve seen if she bled out. He probably used the tarp to keep the stains off the interior of the trunk.”
    Dolan said, “If we’d had some of this new high-tech equipment back then, I bet we’d have found plenty. Hair, fiber, maybe even prints. Nothing neat about this killing. He just happened to get lucky. Nobody