Q Is for Quarry

Stacey asked.
    I said, "I thought it was interesting her pants were homemade. If you add that to the issue of poor dental hygiene, it sounds like low income."
    Stacey said, "Not necessarily. If her mom made her the clothes, it'd suggest a certain level of caring and concern."
    "Well, yeah. There is that. Those flowered pants were distinct. Dark blue daisies with a red dot on a white background. Someone might remember the fabric."
    Dolan said, "I'd like to go back and look at that statement the minimart clerk made about the hippie girl who came in. What's the woman's name, Roxanne Faught? We ought to track her down again and see if she has anything to add."
    Stacey said, "I talked to her twice, but you're welcome to try. Is that store still open?"
    "As far as I know. It was closed for a while, so it might have changed hands. You want me to take a drive up there?" Dolan asked.
    "Let me do that. I can go this afternoon," I said.
    "Good. Meanwhile, what else? What about sizes?"
    We spent several minutes working through those details. This time Dolan flipped back through the pages, looking for the list of clothing booked into property. "Here we go. Shoe size-7lh. Panty size-medium. Bra size was 38A."
    I said, "That means she's got a fairly large torso, but a small cup size. Barrel-chested. Girls like that tend to look top-heavy, even if they're thin."
    Dolan turned a page. "Says here her ears were pierced. 'Through the left earlobe is a gold-colored wire of a "horseshoe" configuration. Through the right earlobe a gold-colored wire with a bent clip in its lower end.' People might remember that, too."
    Stacey added that to the list and then said, "Is that it?"
    I raised my hand. "She wore nail polish. Silver."
    "Got it. Anything else?"
    "Not that I remember."
    Dolan got to his feet. "In that case, if you'll excuse me. I gotta have me a smoke."
    At lunchtime, I volunteered to make a trip to the nearest market and pick up the makings for sandwiches, but they'd apparently gotten wind of my peanut-butter-and-pickle fetish and voted to go out for Chinese. We took Con's car and made the crosstown trip to the Great Wall, with its pagoda facade and a gilded statue of the Buddha sitting over the front door. In the parking lot, I waited while Stacey and Con tucked their guns in the trunk of Con's car. The three of us went in.
    The interior walls were painted the requisite Chinese red with red Naugahyde banquettes and round white paper lanterns strung like moons around the perimeter. Stacey didn't have much appetite, but Con seemed more than willing to make up for it. I was starving as usual. We ordered pot stickers and spring rolls, which we dunked in that pale Chinese mustard that cleans out your sinuses. We moved on to Moo Shu Pork, Kung Pao Chicken, and Beef with Orange Peel along with a dome of white rice. Con and I drank beer. Stacey had iced tea.
    While we ate, the guys speculated about the killer, a matter in which I deferred to them: I have no formal training in homicide investigation, though I've encountered a few bodies in the course of my career. Given the nature of the murder, they theorized that the perpetrator was most likely male, in part because women tend to be repelled by close-contact blood-and-gore killings. In addition, the multiple stab wounds suggested a brutality more commonly associated with men.
    "Hey, these days, women can be brutes," Con said.
    "Yeah, but I can't see a woman hefting that body into the car trunk and hauling it out again. A hundred twenty-five pounds is a lot of dead weight."
    "As it were," Dolan said. "You think this was planned?"
    "If it was, you'd think he'd've worked out a plan for disposing of the body. This guy was in a hurry, at least enough of one that he didn't stop to dig a grave." He was making notes on a napkin and the pen made occasional rips in the paper while the ink tended to spread.
    Con opened his packet of chopsticks and pried the two wooden sections apart, rubbing one on the other to smooth away any tiny wooden hairs. He doused both his chicken and his beef with enough soy sauce to form a shallow brown lake in which his rice grains swam like minnows. "I'm surprised he didn't pick a dump site more remote."
    "That stretch of road looks isolated if you don't know any better. No houses in sight. He probably didn't have a clue about the quarry traffic running up and back."
    "I'm with you on that. Forensics says the wire he used to bind her wrists was torn off something else so