"Hey Mike…"
Tim Doyle's smiling face appeared by his door frame just as he hung up the phone. Holding a case file in one hand, the Vice Lieutenant confidently walked into his office and tapped his temple.
"I knew the old file cabinet upstairs still had it in it."
"A Vice guy remembering anything related to a nudist camp…come on now, I'd be amazed if you didn't remember…", Mike teased and turned around to face the mid-fifties detective in the light grey suit.
"Well, I'd hate to disappoint you two; I am sure you were already looking forward to checking this out. It's not a real nudist colony. At least not according to my contact. Consider it more or less a…a free spirit sort of camp. A bunch of young adults getting together, smoking copious amounts of dope, doing whatever their confused minds tell them to do. Some play music, some dance, some get naked and…ah…some get naked and make out."
"Damnit.", Mike cursed and ran a hand over his freshly shaven chin, "I guess Steve's winning that round."
Glancing past Doyle, he noticed his partner deeply engrossed in a phone conversation while taking notes. Hopefully that meant some more information trickling in from his end.
"Well, what'd you expect after meeting Luigi? Like I said, he doesn't have the mental capacity for murder."
"Somebody at that camp does."
At his words, Doyle nodded solemnly, then pointed his chin at the nearby map of San Francisco.
"I've got some directions in here for you. This isn't a very…structured kind of event and I don't have much background on how it was started or when it'll take place again, so be careful. I think they come together once or twice a month though. It's on the eastern end of Las Trampas, some abandoned campground. A few of the kids attending bring their parent's trailers and tents for everyone to overnight at. It's far enough away from civilization, so there's no complaints even if it gets wild and raunchy. They're smart enough to clean up well after themselves. Even when our contact went out there to look for…paraphernalia…he couldn't find any."
"Interesting…sounds like a weekend sleepover party gone wild …", Mike mused and scratched his head, "Have you got files on any of the attendees, Tim?"
"Nothing, Mike. It's kinda like a rock festival. There's so many of them, you can't tag them individually. I do have something though…and bear with me, 'cause this is going to sound weird as hell…"
"Remember Tim, you're up in Homicide. We specialize in weird…", Mike said smilingly and helped himself to another sip of coffee, before returning his attention to the chuckling detective, as he scanned through the file he brought.
"Oh yeah...here it goes…they ehm…they call that thing freedom festival, go figure. Attendance is garnered by spreading flyers on campuses nearby, mostly Berkeley and Oakland Arts College, go figure again.", licking his dry lips, Tim flipped the page, his trained eyes looking for a specific piece of information, "The one thing that might be interesting to you is a guy they call the…the apothecary."
"The Apothecary?", Mike mouthed, eyebrows raised, "Is it safe to say he's the one spreading the yellow poppies and Valerian around up there?"
"It's quite possible.", the other Lieutenant said with a nod, before glancing back up, "He's been of interest to us because he's described as a Caucasian male in his mid-fifties, long curly gray hair, kind of a mythical figure of sorts, mingling amongst all these scantily-clad college kids. That sort of information makes my Vice heart beat faster…"
"I bet it does. They're mostly going to be legal age, drugged up to their eyeballs…an easy target for any sexual predator."
Putting a hand in front of his mouth for a second, Mike hesitated, when two pieces of the puzzle suddenly came together.
"Bernie said that she had consensual intercourse a few days before she was murdered. Luigi swore he didn't touch her the last time they hung out together. Maybe she didn't have intercourse with him, but this…the apothecary…and maybe he didn't want to let the secret out."
