Body Heat (23 page)

“You waiting for someone?” Sophia asked as soon as Lindstrom noticed them.

A scowl creased her forehead as she glanced from
Sophia to Rod and back again. “I'm having breakfast with a friend. What does that matter to the two of you?”

“It doesn't,” Rod said. “Unless that friend happens to be Stuart Dunlap.”

Her eyes narrowed. “That's none of your business.”

Sophia blinked innocently. “You don't want to tell us?”

“No.”

“Then you can continue to wait, and we'll leave you in peace.” With a shrug, she turned to Rod and they began to walk out. But Lindstrom seemed to catch on that it might be in her best interest to find out why they'd asked.

“What if I
am
meeting Stuart? What would you say then?” she called after them.

Sophia pivoted, returned to the table and lowered her voice so she wouldn't be making the shocking announcement to the whole restaurant. “I'd say that you might as well go ahead and eat without him. Stuart Dunlap is dead.”

K
evin, the older Simpson, had found Stuart. He was waiting for them when James drove her, Rod and Detective Lindstrom to the site via ATVs. Sophia rode behind James, Lindstrom behind Rod. Although Fitzer confirmed that Dr. Vonnegut had been called—and that he was fully recovered—he hadn't arrived. It was just the five of them. Bruce would've been there and probably Edna, too, except that Sophia had refused to tell them where their son had died or even who had discovered him. She couldn't risk having him get involved this early. She needed time to process the scene and gather any evidence she could. She'd told Bruce to go home and break the news to the rest of the family before they heard it from someone else and promised she'd be in touch as soon as she had some answers.

But, so far, she knew very little. According to what James had told her when she met him at the house, Kevin had gotten up early to drive the perimeter of the property and had come upon Stuart's truck in a washed-out gulley. One tire was flat, suggesting it'd been driven over quite a bit of rough terrain. The truck would've
had
to traverse a lot of rough terrain to get where it was. They weren't anywhere close to a road.

“This is exactly how you found him?” Lindstrom asked when Rod came to a stop and she was able to get off the ATV.

Sophia thought it was obvious that the body hadn't been disturbed but didn't say so. The last thing she needed was an argument with Lindstrom. She climbed off the all-terrain vehicle she'd been riding, and walked to within three feet of the cab door, which stood open.

Kevin spat on the ground before answering. “I opened the door, but that's it.”

Sophia's arms and legs felt rubbery as she caught her first glimpse of Stuart. James cursed; apparently, this was his first glimpse, too. And Rod stood close by but said nothing. He revealed no outward sign of distress, yet she could sense the negative emotions churning inside him.

Stuart sat slumped over the steering wheel. Blood ran down the door and brain matter speckled the window. Thanks to the recent heat wave, relentless even at night, his corpse was giving off a pungent odor that turned Sophia's weakened stomach. Blowflies crawled over the corpse, attracted to the moist areas of the eyes, mouth and nose, where they liked to lay their eggs. Sophia was afraid to look too closely for fear she'd already find maggots. According to what she'd learned about entomology, the eggs could hatch within hours, especially in warm conditions like this.

“So you didn't touch him, try to revive him?” Lindstrom was doing her best to appear unaffected and professional, but the strain in her voice was unmistakable.

“Hell, no,” Kevin said. “One look at him, and I knew he was dead.”

Sophia told herself it was fortunate that Kevin hadn't disturbed the body. They'd have a better chance of
reconstructing the crime, and any evidence the killer had left behind wouldn't be compromised. Sophia had heard Locard's Exchange Principle a million times. “Wherever he steps, whatever he touches, whatever he leaves, even unconsciously, will serve as a silent witness against him.” But that principle only seemed to apply on TV.

“Whoever did this took him by surprise,” Rod said.

“He didn't see it coming, didn't attempt to get out,” Sophia agreed. “But what brought him here in the first place? Why would anyone drive for several miles over rock, cactus, even a few broken bottles, to reach such a remote location? To do that kind of damage, he had to be driving fast.”

“Maybe he was meeting someone,” James said.

Lindstrom shook her head. “There're no other tracks.”

“It's hard to see tracks in this kind of soil.”

Sophia gestured to the plants around them. “There
is
smashed vegetation.”

“But, with the illegals constantly tramping through here, there's always smashed vegetation,” Kevin said. “That's part of my complaint against what's going on. It's ruining my property.”

“I think he was drunk and patrolling for illegal aliens to harass, and he ran afoul of a drug deal,” James said. “This feels almost like an execution.”

Or it could be the retaliation they'd all feared—the Mexicans striking back—but Sophia didn't say it.

Rod shoved his hands in his pockets. “He could've been participating in a drug deal.”

Sophia thought of Jamie Skotto, a white girl who was raped in Douglas. At first, Jamie had claimed the culprit was a Mexican national, which incited the whole area.
White men from all over Cochise County headed into the desert to avenge her attack on whatever UDAs they could find. When she admitted that she'd actually been beaten and raped by her own uncle, the vigilantes slunk back to their regular lives, but the rise in racism never really receded. Falling back on the recent murder of the rancher near Portal, some people still came out here to harass UDAs. Although they tried to put a patriotic slant on it—“Those sons of bitches have no right to come into our country!”—it often boiled down to basic cruelty. “As much as I don't want to believe this, he could even be the UDA killer. Until we know more, we can't rule out any possibility.”

“We can rule that out,” Lindstrom said.

Sophia eyed her thoughtfully. “Why were you meeting him this morning?”

“He called me last night around eleven,” she said. “Told me he had some information on the murders. If he was guilty, I doubt he'd do that.”

Why hadn't he called
her?
Sophia wondered. Because he was angry? Because he hadn't been able to find her? That would've been while she was looking out for Rod over at the safe house. But she'd had her phone with her. No call had come in…. “Did he give you any idea what he had?”

“No. None. He was acting a little paranoid. Said he didn't want to go into it over the phone.”

“And then he was killed.”

“From what I'm seeing.”

Kevin spat again, hitting the dirt not far from his boot. “He wasn't out here just for kicks. Tormenting UDAs isn't something he'd do alone, not unless he was seriously planning to hurt someone, which I highly doubt. And if he was
with friends, we would've heard from them by now. You don't see your buddy get shot and not say anything.”

“Was the car running when you found it?” Lindstrom asked.

Kevin's hand scraped over his beard growth. “No. And there was no other vehicle in the area.”

Rod stepped closer to the body. “How'd you spot him?”

“I caught a glimpse of red from the ridge up there—” he pointed to his left “—just as the sun was coming up. I used my binoculars, so I wouldn't walk into anything dangerous. Maybe this is my land, but I know not to interrupt the wrong people out here,” he explained. “And this is what I saw.” He took the walkie-talkie from his belt. “Since there are no cell phone towers out here, we use these around the ranch. First thing I did was notify my wife that we had a problem.”

A problem.
Sophia already had a problem. This made it worse. “I hope the Feds will come in on this one, too,” she muttered to Rod. To start with, they needed someone who knew more about blood spatter analysis than she did. A blood-spray expert would be able to determine the angle of fire and how far the gun had been from Stuart's head when it went off. It appeared that the shooter pulled the trigger from inside the truck, which meant they might be able to glean some of his DNA—if the Locard principle held true.

Edging closer, she peered into the cab. A piece of flesh hung from an exit wound above Stuart's left ear. Sophia didn't want to fixate on that morbid detail, didn't want to acknowledge that she was seeing someone she'd dated a few times in a state like this. And yet she couldn't tear her eyes away.

Suddenly, her vision dimmed. Afraid she might pass out, she closed her eyes and took some deep breaths, and when she opened them again, she tried to convince herself that none of this was real. It was merely a puzzle that needed to be solved, and
she
needed to do the solving. But in the past several weeks, she'd seen everything from skeletalized remains to this. It didn't matter. Death was something she could never get used to.

“Look at his eyes,” she said.

“What about them?” Rod leaned around her. “Are you talking about the bruising?”

“Yeah. You think he got in a fight before he came here?”

His face more masklike than ever, Rod shook his head. Sophia guessed he, too, was struggling to distance himself from the fact that he'd known this person. It had to be even harder for him. Stuart was—had been—his half brother. Maybe they'd never been close but in some ways the animosity between them only complicated matters. Now they'd never have the chance to put their differences aside. “Raccoon eyes are typical with a gunshot wound to the head,” he said. “I've seen it before.”

“What are you talking about?” Lindstrom tried to squeeze between them.

Careful not to touch the truck, Sophia stepped out of her way. She found it difficult enough to hold herself together without having to tolerate Lindstrom. “I didn't notice it on Benita Sanchez,” she murmured to Rod.

His gaze remained fixed on the bruising. “Doesn't happen every time. Depends on the damage. Besides, it wouldn't have shown up so clearly against darker skin.”

“So something's wrong with his eyes?” Lindstrom asked.

Rod also stepped back. “The bruising. It's normal for this type of death.”

He seemed to know a fair amount about murder. How many other cases had Rod worked? Sophia wondered. What had they been like? He'd become so distant this morning she could hardly believe he was the same man she'd slept with last night.

“What's your guess on time of death?” Sophia asked.

A muscle twitched in his cheek, the only outward sign—besides his general reticence—that this was difficult for him. “Without an M.E. here to get a body temp, it's hard to say. But…I'd guess maybe three hours.”

Lindstrom inserted herself into their conversation once again. “Why not longer?”

He gestured toward Stuart's corpse. “Rigor's just setting in.”

Sophia knew rigor mortis was caused by a chemical reaction involving the loss of adenosine triphosphate, which made the muscles contract and hold rigid. She also knew that it typically started with the small muscles in the face, neck and hands and that it set in about two hours after death. She'd read a lot of forensics books since the UDA murders had begun, hoping for insights. But she'd never actually seen rigor before. In her first murder case—the domestic dispute that had ended so badly—she'd been called to the scene immediately. And all the illegal immigrants who'd been killed since then had been discovered either before or after the thirty-six-hour period when rigor became a factor.

“Provided your estimate is accurate, he died around four.” Lindstrom stated the obvious.

Wondering where Vonnegut could be, Sophia turned to James. Maybe the M.E. felt no sense of urgency to respond
quickly to the deaths of illegal aliens, but now they were dealing with the murder of a prominent citizen. “Have you heard from Dr. Vonnegut?”

He checked his watch. “After Dad called Mom and I reported this, Officer Fitzer contacted us to say he'd notified you and Dr. Vonnegut. I guess he's been sick. A day he'd spend golfing in Tucson with some old college buddies.”

“I hope we caught him before he could leave,” Lindstrom cut in.

“I was told he was going to turn around,” James said. “He's on his way. I'm sure it won't take much longer. My mother will call me on the radio once he arrives, and I'll go back for him.”

“How will we get the body out?” Lindstrom asked.

“That won't be as hard as you might think,” Kevin told her. “We can hook a trailer to one of these ATVs. That's how we deliver food to the cattle.”

“Makes sense.” Sophia pulled her digital camera from the case hanging around her neck. Now that she'd had a few minutes to deal with the shock and the upset, she needed to get down to business. She had to photograph and take a video of the scene before she could touch it. And then she planned to search for any scrap of evidence. She wasn't going to miss a cigarette butt this time. She wasn't going to miss anything ever again. She didn't expect to find the murder weapon, but hoped she'd at least recover a shell casing.

And if that shell casing had the familiar bulge she'd seen in the casings from the Sanchez murders, this was the work of the same person.

If that bulge wasn't there… She didn't even want to think about that.

Sophia had just snapped her first picture when Rod spoke up. “What's that?”

“What's what?” She turned to face him.

He was standing behind her, keeping out of the way so she could do her job. He pointed. “That silver thing in the ashtray.”

How had he even seen that?

Careful not to brush against anything, she leaned in. “It's a memory stick.”

“Can you read the logo?”

“Looks like…Department 6.” Recognizing the significance of that, she gaped at him.

“With my computer broken in pieces on the floor, I didn't even think to check for it,” he said. “But why would he take something like that?”

“I don't know. Maybe because it was the only personal thing you brought with you.” Or it had been planted by the killer….

“What would he want with my work files?”

“I doubt it was the work files that interested him. It was the possibility of more personal stuff. Which goes to show you that he was as curious about you as he was frightened.”

 

That evening Rod sat in a booth at the Rockin' Rooster Drive-in. He had the bag of toiletries and clothing he'd just purchased on the seat beside him, and his Hummer was parked where he could see it through the window. But he didn't have a room yet. The Sundowner had been full, as he'd expected. Before Stuart's death, he'd hoped the news crews would leave soon, that they'd do a story on the UDA killings, maybe shoot some footage of the border fence with the patrol officers at work, then go on their way—at
least until a break in the case or some new development brought them back. It wasn't cheap to keep these people on location, and there had to be bigger news breaking someplace else. But that all changed when Stuart was killed. Now the whole town was buzzing like a hornet's nest, and the newspeople wouldn't leave. They'd stay for another day or two, make the most of the drama involved in other people's pain.