The Body
8:38 AM - Saturday, November 1, 2014
US Park Police San Francisco Field Office, The Presidio
It was dreary out, especially for a Saturday. That meant it would be quiet - not as many hikers or walkers or kite surfers or surfers of any variety.
Paco Mayfield had just kissed his partner, Imogen, goodbye at her studio in Sausalito. She was looking forward to a day with her pottery wheel, and he was looking forward to a quiet day of catching up on a few projects, some paperwork, supply orders, maybe even a crossword puzzle.
Starting on the Golden Gate into the city, he turned his intermittent wipers on, the fog being particularly heavy post-rain. Just when he thought that cycling across the bridge would be miserable, a pair of what could only be elite-level cyclists as only Marin country could produce raced along the western pathway of the bridge, oblivious to the elements.
Yes, it would be quiet, and that might be nice for a change.
The whole office was quiet. He’d wait until 10 and do a patrol down to the bridge pavilion, Fort Point and Crissy Field. He made a pot of coffee — it was his favorite thing to make a whole pot of fresh coffee for himself and enjoy it, looking out the window to see what kind of day it would be. To feel the spirit of the day.
A member of the Yokut tribe of the Tule River Reservation, Paco had moved north from the San Joaquin when he started college at Cal. Since then he’d been immersed in the Chumash and Ohlone ways, not that they were much different from his own, except for being more maritime. He liked how the Chumash lived by nature’s time, not man’s time. Paying attention to the seasons and the changes, nature sending us helpers and giving us lessons on life. Today it was definitely fall. Chilly and overcast, a bit misty. The winter was approaching. But, Paco knew that later in the week it could be balmy and warm once again as it can always be in California. Today could just be a false flag of the season. One day of change and then nature pulls back again. Or not. You just had to sit with your coffee, observe the day and see what it gave you.
The office phone rang.
This was odd - the only people who rang the office phone were members of the public who might see some thing awry in the park. Usually it was just a coyote sighting, but that was happening more and more lately. Paco moved to the phone.
“Park Police, Officer Mayfield speaking.”
“Hello this is San Francisco emergency dispatch, can you please reconfirm your name?” The voice was quick and urgent. Emergency dispatch?
“Yes, this is United States Park Police Officer William Paco Mayfield speaking, how can I assist?”
“Thank you officer Mayfield, we have received an emergency call about a sighting of blood at a location in the park - the caller said it was at El Polin Spring? Is this a location you are familiar with?” The spring? The dispatcher said “El Polin” as “AL PAUL-en” instead of “el PO-lan” as it was meant to be pronounced. It sounded foreign, even to him.
“Yes, I am, it’s about five minutes or less from our office here. What is the nature of this blood?”
“The caller simply reported that there is a red flow in the spring water?” The dispatch sounded confused, she had probably never heard of El Polin Spring let alone seen it. “They said the water was red and it looked like blood.” A wave of ice went down Paco’s spine. Blood in the spring. “They aren’t sure if it could be a dead animal or what, but they sounded scared.”
“Yes…Yes, that doesn’t sound good.” Paco knew he was scrambling for words. He didn’t know what to say or think. “Okay, I’ll check it out. And can I get your contact information in case I need to call back?”
“Just phone 911 and provide your name, it will get to me.” The dispatcher hung up abruptly.
That was that. It wasn’t too strange for an emergency to get re-routed to them from the city dispatch. If an emergency happened in the park, people were far more likely to simply call 911 than look up the Park Police number. In fact, most people probably didn’t know it was an entirely different jurisdiction. The Presidio was part of the National Park system and therefore Federal land. The Park Police had jurisdiction, but because they were surrounded by a major city on two sides (and by an ocean and a bay on the other two), it was logical that someone would alert the city first. But now it had landed in the lap of the Park Police where it belonged. Still, blood in the spring had all kinds of bad feeling around it and Paco knew somehow that this Saturday was no longer going to be quiet.
It was a winding path to get to the Spring and Paco didn’t want to attract attention getting there.
“Would be quicker as the crow flies.” He said quietly getting into the Park Police SUV. It was true. Crossing park lands and buildings directly would have taken him 2 minutes, but the easiest parking was at the north end of the spring by the MacArthur Avenue apartments. This meant he had to swing north from the office at Fort Winfield Scott, loop around to the east on Lincoln Boulevard, pass the Main Post, and then loop back south onto MacArthur. It was a grim row of box-like mid-century apartments painted gray, but all of them were full, renting and re-renting quickly whenever one was vacant. People loved living so close to forests, lawns, beaches, and any kind of open space - especially in a busy city. All of the apartments and houses in the Presidio had once been military barracks or officers’ housing, but since the base had shut down and the land had become a park, all of the housing had become an essential source of revenue.
He parked at the dead end circle of MacArthur avenue and looked south up the hill toward Presidio Heights. The fog was obscuring the cypress and eucalyptus trees toward the top of the park, but he knew the big fancy houses were right behind them. It was another 100 yards or so to the spring which sat in the small valley at the bottom of the hill. Paco went to the left on the looping trail that circled the spring head. The lower stream was flowing after yesterday’s rain and he studied the stream where it was flowing over the cobblestones into the lower part of the Tennessee Valley Watershed. The spring was the natural water resource for the whole watershed which continued all the way down to the marshland at Crissy Field before meeting the brackish water of the San Francisco Bay. Paco knelt and looked closely at the stream - it looked pinkish. He started to take photos on his phone.
Continuing up the gentle slope on his left, the east side, he eventually came to the clearing in the central thicket. It was here that bird-watchers gathered throughout the year to see colorful migratory birds, and nature classes for kids would meet. There were logs carved into benches and even a small take-one-leave-one library hutch had been added. The center of the spring was here, under a low hanging bay tree, encircled by a cobblestone wall that had the look of an old-fashioned well. The actual origin of the spring was on the west side of the trail, but when the El Polin site had been renovated a few years back, this circular stone wall was added to control some of the water. The spring water and rain runoff from the hills flowed here to this central point before rolling down into the marshland.
Paco took a deep breath as he approached the well. He looked down and saw that the shallow spring water was indeed a deeper shade of pink here. But where was it coming from? Instead of going back out to the trail, he followed the path of the water along its cobblestone culvert through the thicket up the slope of the hill. He made it to the top part of the trail loop again, but the water was completely clear here. He looked around, realizing there was no one else here. Who made the phone call? More alarmingly, other than the low babble of the spring water, it was silent. There was no birdsong to be heard at all.
He turned to the right to proceed north again on the west side of the trail loop - the main source of the spring was just ahead, hidden off the trail.
On this side, the flowing water didn’t have a cobblestone culvert, but flowed under a wooden boardwalk that had been added to the trail to let the water flow undisturbed, while still letting visitors enjoy the spring trail.
Paco saw the water flow and here it was a deeper, richer shade of pink. This must be where the blood was coming from, not the south end. The dry, late autumn overgrowth was obscuring most of the spring head, which had been dammed up with a short brick wall to increase the water pull. Paco pulled some of the blackberry vine to the side and lost his breath. There, hanging over the edge of the spring dam’s brick wall was the hand and forearm of a human body, and it looked like a young woman’s.
His first instinct was to call someone but his phone had no service - this valley was little but with deep hills; where the spring sat at the bottom of the hill was always spotty. He took pictures instead, not touching anything.
Again, Paco noticed how quiet everything was around the spring. No birds, no breeze. Just the occasional drip of the condensed mist and rain onto the ground. He knew it would only be a matter of time before vultures found the scent and started descending. Not to mention the Saturday morning hikers and walkers. He needed help. But first, he needed to shut down the trail. He had grabbed a roll of caution tape at the office just in case and pulled it out of his vest pocket. Running to the south end of the loop, he criss-crossed the caution tape across the trail path where the uphill slope met the El Polin trail loop. He ran to the stairway past the north end of the loop and criss-crossed the tape there too, blocking the end of the stairway, and then did the same at the main trail head near where he had parked his SUV.
This wouldn’t be enough. All of the trails around the spring would be ways in or ways out for whomever had put that body there. They all could hold evidence. The whole area, if not the whole park needed to be closed, certainly all of the trails on the south end of the park between Presidio Boulevard to the east and Arguello Boulevard to the west, and all along the Presidio Wall on the south side. Paco knew all of these access points would be breached by visitors even if signs were up asking them to stay away — there needed to be officers there to prevent anyone from getting in.
Back at the SUV, he reached for the radio thinking that he could maybe reach Baker - the other officer that was working today. He should be in the office by now.
“Baker - Baker, this is Mayfield. Do you copy?” It wasn’t unusual to use the radio, but the team preferred cell phones whenever they could used them. These days the radio was just a backup.
“Baker - Baker, this is Mayfield. Do you copy?”
“Mayfield, this is Baker. I copy.”
“Baker - what’s your 20?”
“Mayfield - I’m at the office. What’s happening, over?”
“I need you at the El Polin Spring trailhead at the end of MacArthur Avenue immediately. I can’t leave my location. Over?”
“10-4. Be there in 5 minutes.”
Good. He’d get Baker to get calling the full team and get them in immediately. He couldn’t send a text with details. He just needed them all here, but it wouldn’t be enough. Besides, he’d never had to deal with a dead body before. He had to call someone else.