Horns of the Devil - Jeff Trask [02] by Marc Rainer Read Free Book Online Page A

their assigned seats. The trip back to DC was a repeat performance. No conversation, no radio. Complete silence. Trask nodded off again.
    First day of Little League. Not actually Little League. The minor league for Little League. The ones the small kids had to go through to make it to a real Little League team. “Anyone here a catcher?” No hands up. Just mine. If nobody else wants to do it, I’ll get to play. I’ll put on the “tools of ignorance.” Ignore the bat swinging in front of you. Just concentrate on the ball. Focus. Good. Eyes stay open. The bat’s just a distraction. Feel the ball hitting the mitt. What’s that pain? My knees? Another doctor. “Osgood-Schlatter disease, I’m afraid. Best thing to do is limit any sports activity…” “It doesn’t hurt that bad, Mom. Just a little.” The only lie I remember ever telling her. The pain’s just another distraction. Like the bat. Focus on the ball. Ignore the bat, ignore the pain. Concentrate.
    The car pulled back into the parking lot at the FBI field office.
    After they parked and returned to the squad room, Trask heard Carter speaking to Barry Doroz.
    “The Maryland guys think we have a gang war about to break out. Thirteen versus Eighteen. Both the dead kids were certainly MS-13, and the round they dug out of one body was a 7.62, but it wasn’t the usual cheap ammo. It looked like a higher-quality round to me, and it was marked up pretty good. I don’t think it was fired by an SKS.”
    “That could just mean that one of the gangbangers got his hands on a better rifle, couldn’t it, Dix?” Doroz had asked.
    “It could. I don’t think that’s what happened. I’d like you to have Frank Wilkes take a look at it.”
    Trask remembered Wilkes poring over the evidence in the Reid case. He was the best criminologist in DC, an expert in all things forensics, the Merlin of the local crime lab.
    “Sure,” Doroz said. “I’ll make the call.”
    He reached down for the phone, but it started ringing, and after Doroz answered it, they were off to another ME’s office, the medical examiner for the District of Columbia. Three more gangbangers blown away, this time on DC turf. Trask had a late hearing in the district court, so he drove himself in case the exams took longer than expected.
    He watched as Kathy Davis began the autopsy on one of the three newest victims. Doroz and Carter were looking under the sheets covering the other two. Wisniewski stood back, looking over Carter’s shoulder. Frank Wilkes had answered Doroz’ call and was standing at the head of the exam table with Commander Sivella. Wilkes was a thin, studious little man with graying hair and coal-black eyes that peered from behind a thick set of glasses.
    “They’re all MS-13,” Carter said. “Found lying on the back porch of a place in Northwest. Georgia Avenue just north of Columbia, about the 3100 block. The tat across this one’s back says Salvatrucha . It’s fresh. He probably got it within the last day or two. The other one has that Horns of the Devil sign on his right bicep. That one,” he pointed to the body on the examining table, “seems to have been a Latin scholar.”
    Trask looked at the right side of the dead man’s neck. The Roman numerals XIII stared back at him.
    “Here’s your cause of death for this guy.” Kathy’s raised forceps held a bullet extracted from the body on the table. “Looks like a 7.62. Right through the heart, back entry. A front rib stopped it, or it would have gone through him.”
    She handed the bullet to Wilkes, who held it up to the light as a narrow ribbon of blood trickled down the white plastic glove on his hand. He put the round under one of the lab’s microscopes.
    “SKS?” Carter asked.
    “No SKS fired this.”
    “How can you tell, Frank?” Sivella asked.
    “I’ll have to take it to the lab to be sure, put it into the computer, but the markings don’t look like SKS markings to me. Some newer Norincos will leave fairly