As I drove blindly through the cloud of dust, I thought about Fish saying, “I think I know where we might find Sandra Brody,” a vague but intriguing statement that was a mile short of a confession.
So far, all that connected Fish to Sandra Brody was that she fit the pattern of young women Fish had been convicted of killing. She had dark hair, was attending college, and she had vanished at three in the afternoon without a trace.
A friend of Sandra’s had taken a cell phone picture of her an hour before she disappeared. Sandy had been crossing the campus on her way to her volunteer job at the Raphael House, a shelter for homeless people. Her jeans looked new, her shirt was powder blue, she was carrying a brown saddle-leather backpack, and she was wearing loafers. Her long, dark hair was shining. To me, she looked like an angel.
Sandra Brody never arrived at her destination.
Jacobi and I had interviewed Sandra’s friends, her boyfriend, an
d her devastated parents. We had seen videos and photographs of Sandy from the time she was born to the time she was last known to walk the earth.
That cell phone picture had been flashed over the Web and was posted on her Facebook page.
HAVE YOU SEEN SANDY?
The reward for information increased from ten thousand dollars to ten times that amount as money flowed in from friends Sandra hadn’t known she had. Three years after she disappeared, her page was still up. People still wrote on her wall. Her parents hadn’t given up hope that the phone would ring and Sandy would be on the other end of the line.
If Randolph Fish helped us to find Sandra’s body, at the very least, her family would know what had happened to her. I prayed that we were on the road to solving the mystery.
We traveled up Highway 99 north to I-580 west and from there to Redwood Regional Park. I’d been there before and knew it to be 1,829 acres of sequoia, evergreens, chaparral, and grasslands just outside the dense urban areas of Oakland and the East Bay. Wildlife abounded, and that was one of the elements that made this wilderness a good dumping ground.
If coyotes had found a dead body, they would have carried it away, along with any evidence that might lead to Sandra’s killer.
That’s what I was thinking when suddenly the caravan veered onto the verge. Parker nosed his car onto the weedy edge of the road and after avoiding the motorcycles spinning their wheels in loose stone, I came to a stop.
The transport van doors opened and a guard jumped down. He helped his prisoner to the ground and the second guard joined them. He unlocked Randy Fish’s leg irons as the driver and another armed guard dismounted from the front of the vehicle. The cadaver dogs put their noses to the ground and their handler got a good grip on their leads.
Despite the reason we had all driven to this spot, I noticed that it was a beautiful day. The new leaves were a fresh green. The sun was blazing in a clear blue sky, and the air was a mild, pine-scented sixty-two degrees.
Randolph Fish hadn’t stepped on natural earth in more than three years. He took in a deep breath, closed his eyes, and tipped his face up to the sun.
Parker advanced on him and said, “Okay, Mr. Fish. Let’s get to work.”
Chapter 67
I HEARD THE psycho killer say to the head of the FBI’s San Francisco field office, “I’d like to have my hands free.”
“I don’t think so,” Ron Parker said. He took a panoramic look around the steep, heavily wooded terrain.
Fish said, “I know you think I’m going to run, but really, I want to read. My paperback is in the van. It’s a great story and I’m dying to find out what happens.”
“Tell you what: when you get back to your cell, I’ll be sure to get that book to you. That’s if you show us where you buried Sandra Brody.”
We were caravanning again, this time on foot. I stayed behind Fish, my hand on my gun. I could imagine that freak in the orange jumpsuit breaking free, zigzagging through the scrub, and bullets missing him, flying into the trees. It wasn’t so hard to believe that Fish might want to get shot out here rather than wait twenty years for his walk to the death chamber.
But if Fish was anticipating “suicide by cop,” you couldn’t tell from watching him. He chatted with Ron Parker, told Ron that he was a happy person. That he had been a happy baby, and hardly ever experienced doubt or frustration.
Parker asked, “So what made you kill those girls? What made you cut off their fingers? I really want to know.”
“If I told you, you’d judge me.”
“Try me,” said Parker.
“I might be willing to tell Lindsay.”
“No. You won’t,” said Parker. “She’s not that interested in your twisted facsimile of a mind.”
“See? I knew you’d judge me,” Fish said brightly.