The mountain grew relentlessly, 7,000 tons of garbage hauled up the switchbacks every day to be unloaded and crushed and pulverized. Matter dissolved into its atoms, urged along by science, and the mountain grew.
When she got to the top of the Olinda Landfill at Orange County's northern tip, Detective Julissa Trapp thought it was possible, just maybe possible, to do what she and her partner had come for: Find the bodies of four murdered women they believed were buried somewhere on the 565-acre site.
They gave the landfill engineers the dates:
Kianna Jackson, vanished Oct. 6, 2013.
Josephine Vargas, vanished Oct. 24, 2013.
Martha Anaya, vanished Nov. 12, 2013.
Jane Doe, vanished Feb. 14, 2014.
The landfill engineers performed careful calculations, and told police where they would need to look. The bodies were probably somewhere within a three-acre range in a northwest section, 18 to 25 feet deep.
With growing dismay, Trapp watched the choreographed dance of the big machines _ the unloading trucks, the shoveling dozers, the crushing tractors with steel-spiked wheels, all mobilized for war against inconceivable volumes of trash.
Trapp thought, "There's just no way." It was April 2014, and some of the bodies were already half a year down. Finding a single bone would be an extreme long shot.
The FBI said it had had no luck in similar efforts. It would cost at least $12 million _ about a tenth of the Anaheim Police Department's annual budget. And because nobody could be absolutely sure the women were here, they might have to search a second landfill 60 miles away. There would be no dig.
For Trapp, finding the women was about more than collecting evidence. She wanted to return them to their mothers. As she drove back down the mountain, she was already thinking about how she'd tell them.
