The Juan Doe Murders: A Smokey Brandon Thriller (6 page)

When I pulled up to the square structure that housed the shooting range, I was still annoyed that Ray stood me up, but I had to smile at the thought of his last words to me on the phone. Ray with a stripper. Just like him. A stripper. Bless his little ol’ heart.

Because, once upon a time, I myself had been a dancer on a low-rent stage—in Vegas, home to the bummed out, broke out, beered up, or bratty. Maybe I qualified as that last. I was a dancer, exotic, as they say. Get right down to it, a stripper, true and blue. Ray knows about the history, has the decency to refer to it only once in awhile and then only when we are alone. I was seventeen when I started. It was me. It wasn’t me.

Today it seems simply not important. Murder is. Justice is. Serving and protecting, like Ray Vega and thousands of others do every day, is. If Ray-my-virile-buddy-Vega wants to date a stripper, well, we’ll just let him.

I shot the Glock first and did pretty well on a target of a man in black silhouette, giving him a belt line and a happy-face, then took out my new “spurless” revolver with the hammer shrouded in the frame so it can’t snag on clothes when used for a pocket gun. It was a long, hard trigger pull. When the gun finally fired, the muzzle-lift was so fierce the cylinder-release tore skin off my thumb-knuckle. I’d be shooting out street lamps before I’d knock over a bad guy. A young guy behind the counter in the check-in
room was watching me through the glass. He put on a set of ears and came through the double doors into the gallery. “What you got there?” he shouted.

“S-and-W. It’s cute, but I can’t shoot for shit with it,” I said, and offered the gun to him.

He aimed one-handed and fired five dead-center in the ten. “You’re not used to the size,” he yelled. “It’s got a hell of a long trigger pull.” Then he emptied the cylinder while holding the weapon
upside down
and pulling the trigger with his pinkie. The tight circle he cut was at the edge of the bullseye, three-o’clock, but a hell of a hole. He gave the gun back and said, “Anytime,” then went down the row to see who else needed help or humbling.

Annoyed at myself, I clipped on a clean target, switched to the Glock, ran a new target out to fifteen yards, and cookie-cut the center so the backstop shone through like a camera lens.

From there I drove to sheriff’s headquarters, just a couple of blocks from the lab, and sat through a class on audiology, otherwise known as forensic audiology, in a conference room cold as the morgue. I heard about waveform analysis and replication of acoustic events and waited for it to be over so I could warm up. Trudy Kunitz, another lab tech, sat beside me. She did a lot of police sketches of suspects for public release.

When the class finally broke we talked a while out in the sun. Trudy had confided in me two weeks ago that she had tested positive for HIV. She was the sort to buy into the think-it-away school. I couldn’t let her off without asking if she had the second test, intended to serve as a check.

She rubbed her arms for warmth, the sleeves of a heavy black sweater traveling up and down. Her glasses winged out thickly at the sides to correct for severe astigmatism. She said, “In my whole life I’ve had seven dates. Seven,” she said, holding up fingers. “I’m thirty-four. Seven dates, two…events…and I get this.” She shook her head. “I was a virgin till I was thirty, Smokey. No
justice, not in this world. And it wasn’t Katchaturian, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I thought you liked him there for a while,” I said.

“I had two lunch dates with him. He stiffed me for both. ‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me’, right? Shame on me. Shame on me,” she said, and turned to walk back.

I said, “I hear he’s working for some magazine, writing articles on guns. I didn’t even think he could spell.”

She said, “Maybe you only need to spell ‘Bang!’ ”

“You want to do lunch?” I asked.

“Can’t make it,” she said, her silver-daisy earrings swinging. “I have a post-post. A drive-by, courtesy of the Sixth Street gang. Then I have to take another blood test. Do you know how mortifying it is to even go in? These fascist women, sitting there talking to you like you’re a little kid. The one who told me? She was younger than me! Heartless little Nazi. Tells me while she’s shuffling papers. I had to ask her to repeat it, couldn’t believe what she was saying, like she was saying go pick up a prescription or something. I didn’t even like the sex. One time. That’s all it takes. Shit. Let’s go.”

I walked over to Civic Center Square, on my way to a hotdog wagon. Office people, lawyers, clerks, and clients, were emptying from the buildings for lunch. I bought a chili dog and a lemonade and sat on a cold bench with a pigeon perched on the other end.

He hopped down and waddled away but was back soon, with a mate. She was a beauty: black spots on soft white. Rock doves, they’re called. They stood in front of me and sort of purred. Sucker that I am, I plucked bread and tossed it. In a flash, more birds landed. I licked the chili off one end of the bun and tossed more bits to them. Mistake. Half a dozen sailed in this time, dodging between people to head my way.

When I got back to the lab, I completed log sheets, made sure my lifts and print cards were in order, and was about to go to
the computer when Stu came by. “You need to go out to Turtle Rock,” he said. “We’ve got a dead male Hispanic. Timmins is tied up, King’s at a doctor’s appointment, and Kunitz I can’t get hold of.”

“Another one? Is it a Doe?”

“If it’s a Doe, you phone me. I don’t know if it’s a serial or what, but I am not a happy camper here. I want thoroughness here, right?” I was about to come up with an appropriate answer when he asked, “Where were you this morning?”

“Audiology seminar, headquarters.”

He frowned, recalling, then said, “You know where that’s at, Turtle Rock?”

“No problem, Stu.”

“You could see if Sanders is free to go along.”

I nodded, not sure if Stu didn’t trust me for the job alone or what, but not wanting to give it much thought, either.

Joe was on the phone when I came by. When he got off I said, “I’m on my way out to a case,” I said. “Stu says you’d be good company.”

“Where’s it at?”

“Turtle Rock.”

“That’s near David’s school,” he said, straightening his desk to leave. “We talked this morning. He said one of his roommates has been ripping software programs off the internet. Trademarked programs. That makes it illegal. I told him to give the jerk an ultimatum: Knock it off or move out.”

I was pleased David confided in his dad. Joe’s forehead was still pinched. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Why are you frowning then?”

“I’m not frowning. It’s how you look when you get my age. You’ll learn.”

“If that’s a bid for pity, it’s wasted.”

He got up and removed his jacket from the back of the chair. “I could have told him to report his roommate to campus police. I should have. I’m slipping. But you get to thinking, we got cases like this,” he said, nodding to the phone, “and cases like your Does, and who gives a shit about some software programs?”

“Life in the big city,” I said, rising.

“Eight million ways to die,” he said. “Who said that, anyway?”

“The eight million? Mystery writer,” I answered.

“Eight million. We’ve got what?”

“Two-and-a-half.”

“Two-and-a-half million ways to die in this county. Most of them are not going to be by someone else’s hand, and by someone we’re supposed to trust, like this Dana Point asshole.” He tapped a file on his desk. “Who’d you say wrote that, the eight million?”

I dug for my sunglasses. “Lawrence Block. He’s got this guy named Scudder, a reformed drunk walks around New York doing favors for friends.”

“Good writer?”

“I like him.”

“How much you think a guy like him makes a year?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“I should quit,” Joe said, “write books.”

“Mysteries?”

“Nah. I don’t much like fiction.”

“What, then?”

“Beats me.”

“That could be a problem.”

He pulled out the middle drawer of his desk. “Who’s on this from Homicide, you know?”

“Will Bright.”

“That girl’s case…” he said, and struggled for the name.

“Nita Estevez,” I said.

“That’s the one.” He stared at me the moments it took him to remember that night I spent complaining in his arms about how I couldn’t get anywhere on that case, and how Will Bright wasn’t giving it any more time until new leads turned up.

“Little Crane,” I muttered as we headed out the door.

“Beg pardon?” Joe asked.

“Nevermind.”

SIX

“I
f that’s a turtle, I’m a pterodactyl,” Joe said. He held our two evidence kits in each hand, raised his elbows and cried, “Squawk!”

I snapped his picture.

We were at the corner of Rockview and Rocky Knoll, looking at the massive stone named for a turtle. It sat on a hill in a tailored community called Turtle Rock, which sat on a hill itself five miles in circumference. Surrounding it were farmers’ fields and the expansive college campus of the University of Irvine, where Joe’s son David was a sophomore. Bright flowers, vivid grasses, and yellow scene tape reading POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS and
POLIZIA NO CRUZAR
gave the whole lump the look of a decorated cake.

The victim lay in shadow under the neck of the rock, on his side, eyes partly open. Blood had coursed across the nose and under the eye nearest the ground. A red kerchief spanned his forehead, blackened in the center from a round between the eyes. He had on a black jacket, a gray T-shirt with a design of a cannabis plant in the center, jeans with pale wear-marks at the knees, and white socks showing above black sneakers.

Linda Givens, a coroner’s investigator, glanced up from her notes and said, “Hi, guys.” In her forties, she was rumored to be an information hoarder, a non-team player.

Beyond her, on a curving path through the tended lawns of condos, a cop stood talking to a couple, the woman gesturing broadly as all three faced our way.

Joe sat on his heels near the body.

“Over there,” Linda said, nodding toward some cards on a flat paper sack. The reporting officer had laid out the ID found on the body, she said. I said I wished people would leave the scene the way they find it. “Yeah, well,” she said, shrugging. Investigator Bright had been there and left, she said, court date.

We stood before a small white sign stuck in the ground a few yards from the rock that said not to walk on the rocks because they were sacred to Indians. I asked Linda if she’d seen any spent shell casings, but got no answer. Maybe she didn’t hear me. She folded her notebook and walked around to the accessible part of the rock and started up it, defying the Indian admonition. No more from Linda.

I gloved up, then moved to the collection of ID cards. Held just right, the first few cards showed friction ridges, but they could be the officer’s fingerprints if he had been careless.

“Problem?” Joe said, coming toward me. Light see-sawed across his tie-clip shaped like a revolver.

“Look at this,” I said. “A stack of ID’s. Different names on the driver’s license, Alien card, and a Sam’s Club.” The photos showed a man with high cheekbones, flared nostrils, and meaty chin: the victim beneath the rock, but which of the names was his? “Doe Three,” I said, “until we know better.” Pointing to the signature at the bottom of a card, I said, “Hector Estancio Rivera Rios. My Nellie Gail victim was Hector Rios. The victim Sunday, off Alton, he was a Hector too. Hector Gonzales, Hector Flores.”

“Hannibal Hector?” Joe said.

I gave him a look. “Fun-nee,” I said. “This one, the driver’s license: the name’s Alfonso G. Abrigal. It could pass in a dark bar with a blind bartender maybe, but the glue even shows through the lamination. Stu’s gonna shit a brick.”

“That’s scary to contemplate,” Joe said.

“He’s probably got some high-priced profiler on the payroll already.” I slipped the ID cards in the paper sack and marked it.

Joe said, “Stu’s an old hand. He’s not going to jump to conclusions at this point.”

“Right. But Stu’s afraid of the sheriff, who’s afraid of the public. I just hate to catch flak when I don’t deserve it.”

“The public doesn’t give a damn about dead illegals,” Joe said. “It’s the live ones they worry about, stealing those sought-after dishwashing and gardening jobs right from under our noses.”

I said, “I read in the paper that by the year 2010 there will be forty million people of Hispanic origin in the United States.”

“Less three,” Joe said, then went to scout for evidence in the grass while I snapped off near shots of the victim. I did a close-up of a tattoo on the back of the victim’s wrist: a spider with a red hourglass on the abdomen.

When Joe came back, he brought Linda with him and said, “Let’s turn him.” They tipped the victim face-forward so his own stiffened weight formed a sort of bent triangle braced on the ground. The rear pocket showed a diagonal outline, short-pencil size—syringe size.

“Careful,” I said.

Joe glanced at me, held my gaze, and said quietly, “I know.”