Empty Promises

twelve hours. He was fully clothed and his wallet was in his pocket with his military ID and two one-dollar bills. Balmer and Cellucci stared at the body, perplexed. It was the first time in their experience that a killer had bothered to bandage the ears of his victim, and Hargis’s head was swathed in gauze, tissue paper and bright yellow vinyl tape.
    Joe Cellucci crouched down to look at the dead man. He lay on one side, his face twisted toward the sky. The detective couldn’t begin to count the numerous crushing blows on Hargis’s skull, or the bruises on his neck, shoulder, lower back and hip. His wrists had been bound with shoe laces that were threaded through his belt loops.
    Hargis had lain in plain sight of the road. If anyone had happened to pause and look down into the dry creek, they would have seen him. Balmer and Cellucci had no idea of the movitation of the killer or killers; it was possible that it was a robbery and that the robber had left behind the two single bills and taken away a much larger amount.
    The San Diego detectives climbed up to the road and studied the shoulder there. There was a partial tread mark from a tire and they photographed that, along with a shoe print a bit closer to the drop-off. The print indicated that the shoe had a waffle design on its sole. There were dried bloodstains on the bridge and they found a piece of the yellow vinyl tape that was identical to the “bandage” on the victim’s head.
    A quarter mile down the road, Fred Balmer located a bloodied sheet and a brown corduroy jacket. But the investigators found no appreciable bloodstains in the sandy soil or on the concrete bridge and its supports. David Hargis had clearly not been killed here; he had only been thrown away here.
    After they had gathered what physical evidence they could find into neatly labeled plastic bags, Cellucci and Balmer faced a dreaded task. They had to inform the widow. Waiting at the sheriff’s substation in Ramona, Carol Hargis had managed to control her emotions and was no longer sobbing. She was stoic as they informed her that her husband was dead—murdered.
    She said she had expected that. Her dear friend—Teri Depew—was afraid that someone might have beaten and robbed David.
    “Why?” Balmer asked. “What was he doing out here in the middle of the night?”
    “He was hunting for snakes,” Carole said, adding that she hadn’t thought a thing about it when David decided to take advantage of the cool of night to hunt rattlesnakes. A lot of his friends did that, too, collecting the rattles and the skins. Skeletal snake heads, their fangs exposed, were in demand to hang from rearview mirrors. “The snakes hide under rocks in the daytime when it’s so hot,” Carole explained. “Teri wanted to go along with him last night, and that was fine with me. I stayed home with my little boys.”
    But Carole said Teri was very upset when she came home. “They were up at Black Canyon Road and they ran into a bunch of guys that were partying,” Carole said. “Teri said David joined in while she went out to buy more beer—but when she got back he and the strangers were gone.”
    Carole had called the sheriff and then talked to another marine who lived in her neighborhood into taking her up to the campgrounds to look for David. “But I didn’t find him,” she said softly, “so I went back to your substation in Ramona.”
    Traditionally, the first place any good detective looks for a killer is among those near and dear to the deceased. They begin with the spouse and the family, and move on to the victim’s circle of friends and co-workers. The San Diego detectives started their questioning with Carole. There was something “hinky” about this widow. Her affect was all wrong—too flat and empty of emotion—and she fumbled with her story. She contradicted herself and her eyes darted around nervously.
    Next, Cellucci and Balmer obtained a search warrant for the Hargis residence. After the rest of the Laurel Street house yielded no clues, they concentrated on the bedroom. Catching a whiff of fresh paint, they stared at the walls and touched them—only to find the paint was still tacky. They knelt to run a fine, sharp tool along a crack in the baseboard, and along with balls of paint, they saw dark red. Women who thought tarantula venom sacs were deadly had no idea what secrets even small amounts of blood could reveal. David’s blood had soaked into the wall and the baseboard,