Blood Line by Rex Burns Read Free Book Online Page B

Gargan.”
    “Wait a minute—what about this: What about you being the relative of a shooting victim? The Lucero kid, Julio Lucero. He’s a member of your family, right? Cousin, right?”
    “What do you want to know that for, Gargan?”
    “My editor thinks it’s a human interest story. Put a face on crime, that kind of thing. He is your cousin, right?”
    If Wager didn’t tell him, the reporter would be pestering Aunt Louisa until he verified what Golding had leaked. “Yeah. He’s my cousin. Was my cousin.”
    “So you got a personal stake in this one? Putting in overtime on it, that kind of thing?”
    “I’m not on the case.”
    “Oh, yeah? That department policy? Officers don’t investigate crimes involving their own relatives?”
    “No. I don’t know what the department policy is on that. I just wasn’t on duty when he was shot. But I am on other cases such as Hocks. Good-bye, Gargan.”
    “Wait a minute, wait a minute! OK, so you’re not on the case. Anyway, how do you feel about it?”
    “What?”
    “A homicide cop’s personal reaction to murder in his own family. In his own words.” He added, “And I’d like to send a photographer over for a couple pictures of you. Don’t worry, he’ll make you look as good as he can.”
    “This homicide cop’s personal reaction, Gargan, is you’re a goddamned fool if you can’t guess how anybody would feel about it. Those are his own words and here’s one more: good-bye.” The receiver was still squawking when he dropped it like something filthy.
    And now, in addition to a couple of homicides, he had one more thing to distract him from the vital and pressing business of answering a four-page questionnaire labeled “Participating Officers’ Assessments of Interdepartmental Structural Relationships,” as well as filling out a form estimating in six categories the amount of copy paper used per month—an original and three copies to be submitted.
    To hell with it! Wager grabbed his radio pack and slapped his name across the location board from Office to On Duty. He might have used a little excessive force: The civilian clerk jumped at the clatter as she watched him stride out the door, shoulders stiff with his anger and the embarrassment of not being able to hide it.
    The Denver International Airport, the largest public works project in the state in fifty years, was the site of the equally new Denver Police District Five. The police district was established and operating; the airport was supposed to be operating too, but people were taking bets on when—or, for lower odds, if—it would ever open. It wasn’t the construction—that was on schedule and only a couple months from completion; it was the fancy automated baggage-handling facility that wasn’t facilitating. That, and the fact that the highly paid designers of the newest and largest airport hadn’t put in any backup system for transferring luggage if the newest and largest airport’s baggage-handling machine broke down. But then, technically, the machine hadn’t broken down; it just couldn’t get started. So now it looked like Denver, in a few months, would have a brand-new empty airport and billions of dollars in junk bonds. It was a sore issue in Elizabeth’s reelection campaign; as the increasing cost of the project was passed on in taxes, there would be plenty of blame for all city officials despite the fact that the mayor and his cabinet had been the ones to make the deals, sign the contracts, and establish the parameters without bothering to inform council of all his actions.
    The adjective often applied to the project was “controversial.” The controversy was located on the prairie northeast of downtown, connected to the city by a thin neck of gerrymandered land whose population, coerced by various promises and threats, had voted to join the city and county of Denver. From the freshly laid Peña Boulevard, Wager could see the roof of sharp canvas peaks over the main terminal.