The Execution by Dick Wolf Read Free Book Online

a charming man—he was a politician, after all—but on top of being twenty years her senior, she had never felt any romantic impulse from him whatsoever. She realized, though, that tongues would wag. Dealing with that on the job would be the least of her problems.
    One of Herrera’s white-suited forensic techs was methodically photographing the bodies. A pair of PF officers stood at each end of the row of bodies, scanning the empty plaza. The other man near them was Garza’s second in command, a big tough man named Major Alonso MacClesh. MacClesh was a common name in Mexico, thanks to long-ago Scottish immigrants—though, with his dark hair, high cheekbones, and black eyes, MacClesh looked as if he came from 100 percent Indian stock.
    “Any witnesses?” she said. “Apart from the guy in the ambulance, I mean.”
    MacClesh shook his head. He was smoking a cigar, the smoke trailing away from him in the warm evening wind. Garza had not trusted MacClesh at first. He was a hard man to read. He had been slotted to command the elite unit until Garza had been promoted over his head. If she had been in his shoes, Garza would have been pissed, so she trod gently around the man. But if MacClesh resented her, he never showed it. In fact, he never showed much of anything. His reputation, like his performance file, was stainless. Garza trusted him implicitly. But this was Mexico, the home of corruption, and you never knew anything for sure.
    “Do we know who they are?” Garza said.
    MacClesh pointed to a heavily tattooed torso—the arms and legs of which had also been cut off. “Tats say he’s Sinaloa. Probably a high-level guy. A lieutenant from Monterrey went missing last week. Ten to one that’s him. Alfredo Luis Jimenez. They call him Cinnamon.” He pointed at another legless, armless, headless corpse. “Probably Ronaldo Gutierrez, Jimenez’s bodyguard. Based on the tats on the next guy, probably also in Jimenez’s set.” He pointed down to the end of the row. “Four or five guys down there have tats consistent with the federal prison in Michoacán.” Michoacán was on the west coast of Mexico, where the Sinaloa Cartel was strongest. Most Mexican prisoners went to prison near where they were arrested.
    “You’re saying these victims were probably from two separate snatches?”
    “At least.” MacClesh puffed on the cigar. “Some of them, though, I don’t think had anything to do with gangs. Probably just random people they killed to pump up the body count. When tomorrow’s news says, ‘Zetas kill twenty-two members of Sinaloa Cartel,’ it makes the Zetas look strong and the Sinaloas look weak. The Gulf Cartel’s falling apart right now, so you got a lot of low-level players making up their minds whether they want to jump toward Sinaloa or the Zetas. This is the Zetas saying, ‘You want to play in this part of the world, you better sign on with our team.’ ”
    MacClesh stubbed his cigar out on the sole of his boot, then slid it in his pocket. He didn’t want to drop his cigar butt on a crime scene. Garza liked that. Most Mexican cops—even in the elite PF units—had a contempt for physical evidence. And given how useless physical evidence generally was in the corrupt Mexican courts, she could hardly blame them. The PF went to a great deal of trouble to accumulate evidence . . . and it rarely proved the slightest value. Herrera and his men were trained by the Americans. They did their best. But it was mostly pissing in the wind.
    “You know what this means, right?” he said.
    Garza nodded, plucking her bottle of water from the loop on her belt and taking a swig. “The Sinaloas will retaliate soon.”
    For a moment their eyes met. They said nothing. But she couldn’t help thinking she knew what they shared—the feeling that they were in a hopeless battle, that as long as Americans kept buying black market drugs, this madness would not cease. And there was a corollary to that recognition—the