The Juan Doe Murders: A Smokey Brandon Thriller by Noreen Ayres Read Free Book Online Page B

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.”
    Bad things come in pockets. Those who cared to speculate on how Oakland Police Officer William John Brandon encountered the bug that canceled his life guessed it was a prick from a creep’s pocketed needle.
    My Bill, at twenty-eight. I am older this minute by seven years than he ever got to be. We had only six months together as husband and wife. The virus had only just been labeled, a form of raging hepatitis that took him away in