Body Heat by Brenda Novak Read Free Book Online Page A

where the coyotes are? I don’t know very many people who are trying to sneak across the border into Mexico.”
    Lindstrom leaped out of her chair. “But you’re not supposed to leave the country!”
    â€œWe have to take a few risks if we want to figure out who killed these people.”
    â€œYou think it was a coyote?”
    â€œNot necessarily.” Sophia thought it was Leonard shooting these Mexicans, that he was completely cracking up. Considering the timing and the fact that all the killings fell within her jurisdiction, she didn’t feel it could be anyone else. He was her only enemy, and he had a verygood reason to hate UDAs. But logic suggested these murders could also be perpetrated by a renegade border patrol agent who’d grown a little too sick of his job. If that was the case, the UDAs who tried to cross but were caught, and people who worked in the smuggling industry, might be able to tell her more than anyone on the American side. Maybe they’d encountered an agent who was acting peculiar or who was particularly aggressive.
    It was a long shot but, at the moment, long shots were all she had. “In any case, a new perspective can change everything.”
    â€œYou won’t have any perspective if you get yourself killed. My husband works for the DEA, Chief St. Claire. Trust me. It’s dangerous down there these days. He tells me that all the time. You don’t want to go to Mexico.”
    Was Lindstrom really concerned for her safety? Or was she afraid Sophia would solve the case and salvage her job? “Like I said, we have to talk to people on both sides. I need to figure out exactly where our victims came from and how they crossed, meet the people they met while there’s still a chance they’ll be remembered.”
    â€œYou could get some, if not all, of that information from the person who has that number.”
    â€œMaybe, maybe not. At this point, I don’t even know if I’ll be able to reach him.” She picked up the phone. “Hang on.” She tried the number; again, there was no answer. But this time she left a message. Then she accessed a reverse directory via her computer to see if she could come up with a name.
    â€œIt goes to a prepaid cellular phone,” she said. Which told her nothing. It wasn’t even anything she could trace.
    â€œMaybe he’ll call back.”
    â€œMaybe he will. But I’m not going to sit around and wait.”
    â€œYou can’t go into Mexico,” Lindstrom insisted. “What about the other victims? Surely there’s more work to be done there.”
    The other victims didn’t offer the same opportunity. By the time they’d been found, their bodies were severely decomposed, too decomposed for a photograph to help with identification or anything else. Documents recovered from the bodies had identified some, relatives who’d contacted a foreign ministry field office in Mexico had identified others, but she still didn’t have information on three of them. And time was running out. Mayor Schilling had said so just this morning. He’d hinted that he was under a lot of pressure, that he didn’t know how long he could keep the city council and Bordertown’s most powerful citizens behind her. But he’d been hoping to replace her with someone “proven” from the beginning, even before they were dealing with a serial killer. To him, she’d always been a stopgap because of her age and now he was convincing others.
    He didn’t spell out exactly how much time she had left, but she knew it wasn’t much. Soon she’d be fired. And then it wouldn’t matter that she’d ousted an officer who was as bad as the criminals he went after and had become the youngest chief of police in the state. She’d be publicly shamed and out of a job, single-handedly setting back the cause of women in police work here, in southern Arizona, by a