only would have smoked out here late at night, when no one could have seen him,” Kendra said.
“Interesting,” Metcalf said. “You would have known this if you had attended my scintillating presentation, but crime scene techs found six cigarette butts in the left pocket of the coveralls.”
Kendra nodded. “Of course. He wouldn’t have littered in his garden. So it was that night. He was waiting out here for a reason.”
“Maybe to meet someone,” Metcalf offered.
Kendra glanced around. “Kind of an out-of-the-way place. It seems more like a spot where he could look down to that area below without being seen.”
Griffin stood between the tall bushes and looked down toward the access road. “Yes, it does.”
Kendra turned and continued her scan of the area, but nothing else caught her attention. “Okay.” She braced herself. “Now I’d like to see where Elaine Wessler was found.”
Allison motioned toward the far side of the campus. “It was on the hillside, on the other side of the athletic building.”
“On the Slide?”
Allison wore a pained expression. “I strongly discourage that name.”
Kendra smiled. “Still?”
“Yes.”
Kendra turned toward Metcalf and Griffin. “For years, students have grabbed flattened boxes to slide down the hill over there.”
“Even the blind kids?” Metcalf said.
“Of course. Some of the best times I had here were over on the Slide.”
“Dodging any teacher who might try to stop you,” Allison said sarcastically. “And you and your friend Olivia always led the pack. Fun times. Until someone inevitably gets hurt. The area should have been cleared and leveled to take away the temptation.”
“But that would have broken our hearts.”
“Better your hearts than your heads. You students had enough problems to worry about.”
“But Elaine Wessler wasn’t sliding on boxes,” Griffin said grimly.
Allison shook her head. “No. This way. I’ll show you the best way to get there without hurtling into the ocean.”
They followed Allison past the main building and around the athletic complex and swimming pool. A paved stairway took them down a long slope that appeared to end at the ocean. Kendra knew, however, that it was merely an illusion, since a fence and service road separated the base of the hill from the water. The school did have a private beach on the coast, but it was closer to the cliffs.
There were no lights on that part of campus, but the moon cast a blue glow over the hillside. Several boulders jutted from the earth, appearing smaller than how Kendra remembered them.
Allison walked toward the largest boulder. “Elaine was found here less than twenty-four hours after Ronald Kim’s body was discovered.”
“Who found her?”
Metcalf shrugged. “San Diego’s News Copter 7, believe it or not.”
“A news helicopter?”
Allison extinguished her electronic cigarette and placed it into her pocket. “Yes. They were covering the morning rush hour and happened to see Elaine’s body here. They notified the police and we found out from them.”
“She was stabbed twice,” Griffin said. “Once in the chest, once in the throat. Time of death probably before midnight.”
“Did she have a reason to be here on campus at that time of night?” Kendra asked.
“None,” Allison said. “She should have left about four the previous afternoon.”
“But she didn’t,” Metcalf said. “At least not according to the entrance and exit camera feeds. It looks like she arrived for work that morning, but never left.”
Kendra was gazing at the much-trampled area ahead that they were approaching. So many memories…Big Rock, the huge flat boulder where she and other generations of children sat, ate lunch, and listened to stories and waves crashing in the distance. They had all considered this place peculiarly their own. There were now hundreds of carvings on the rock, some etched there in the decades before her time, many in the years since. She remembered constantly tracing an odd design with her finger that only later, after she’d gained her sight, had she realized was a four-leaf clover. She recalled a star, a heart, and a pyramid with wavy lines…There were even hundreds of students’ initials carved through the decades on the underside of the rim of the rock. Kendra knew exactly the place where she and Olivia had carved their own initials to join them. They had crept out early one morning, and she could remember the excitement, the sound of the sea, and the scent of the earth as they’d knelt down there beside the rock. Sounds…scents…tastes…friends.
“This is where Olivia and I first met.” Kendra cleared her throat and then turned toward Allison. “We’re still best friends. She has her own condo on