“Kit?” Brandon asked.
“A nonstandard tissue-collection kit,” Ralph said. “They’ll FedEx it to whoever’s obtaining the sample for us.”
“I suppose that’s better than shipping a coffin across the country,” Brandon returned.
“They want the sample collection to be done by an official agency, preferably a medical examiner’s office. How’s your track record with your local ME?”
“It wasn’t bad years ago,” Brandon said, “but times have changed. I’ve been out of the game for a while. My showing up at the morgue with a thirty-two-year-old corpse in the back of my car is likely to go over like a pregnant pole-vaulter.”
Ralph chuckled. “See what happens,” he said. “If you can’t find anyone willing to do the job, let me know.”
“Sure thing,” Brandon said. “I’d best get started.”
Larry Stryker’s back hurt. He’d done a lot of unaccustomed physical labor over the weekend. He was getting too old to wrestle mattresses around by himself, but he’d managed. He’d done it. The basement room was ready again-ready and waiting.
Disappointed that Gayle had slipped away without staying the night, he dragged his aching body out of bed and staggered into the bathroom to get ready for work. He kept a radio there so he could listen to news while he showered and dressed. Today the lead story was about the murder of an unidentified female homicide victim whose body had been found near Vail on Saturday morning. An unnamed suspect had been arrested in connection with the case. The victim, estimated to be in her mid- to late teens, was thought to be Hispanic in origin.
Standing in front of the mirror, razor in hand, Larry smiled at his steamy reflection and experienced that incredible rush that always flooded through him at times like these. His most recent girl was dead, and Erik LaGrange was in jail, but for Larry nothing at all had changed. Except for one thing: Once news of Erik LaGrange’s identity leaked to the press, Medicos for Mexico would be overrun with reporters. Bearing that in mind, Larry chose that day’s clothing with care. If his photo was going to be in the papers or on television, he wanted to look his best.
During the hour-long drive into town, a few shadows of doubt crept into his thoughts. Always before, through years of disposing of bodies, Gayle had done so in ways that had never led back to Gayle or Larry or Medicos for Mexico. This was different. Was it possible that fury over Erik’s betrayal had carried Gayle a step too far? Was she losing her touch? Still, despite his misgivings, Larry knew from what Gayle had said the night before that maintaining a united front was essential. And since Larry’s name topped the Medicos for Mexico organization chart, he would have to be there to answer questions about their jailed employee.
That was Larry’s part of the job. His reward for hanging tough would come at the end of the week, when Graciella Duarte sent him the next occupant for the room downstairs. In the meantime, he’d have to remember to buy another mattress for the cot and a few more plastic tarps.
Kath was gone by the time Brian woke up, which wasn’t a good sign. She usually kissed him good-bye when she left for an early shift. When he went into the kitchen and found she hadn’t made coffee, either, he knew he was in trouble. They generally managed only one day off together each week. Kath didn’t take kindly to being cheated out of it-even if the reason was work-related. Especially if it was work-related.
At least we’ll be together at the funeral this afternoon and the feast tonight, Brian told himself. Maybe that’ll get me out of the doghouse.
Haunted by his mother’s scattershot approach to love and marriage, Brian had entered into his union with Kath determined to make it work. It was a challenge to combine law enforcement careers with two different agencies in the same household. As for having kids? That was too complicated even to consider.
He showered and dressed. An hour later, he was sitting in his cubicle poring over faxes of information from the other similar cases he had located on Sunday. For several of them, he had only cursory reports, but the details were surprisingly familiar. The bodies, so far all unidentified, had been strewn in the desert-just the way this Saturday’s victim had been. In two others-one near Sierra Blanca, Texas, and one near El Centro, California-the dismembered remains had been stuffed into Rubbermaid trash containers. He was reading through one from Yuma County-the one where AFIS had picked up that single fingerprint-when a clerk dropped off Roseanne Orozco’s dusty paper file. Her case, dredged out of the archives, seemed eerily similar to the others.
The Papago Tribal Police, as they were then called, had been the primary investigative agency. Having played a secondary role, Pima County didn’t have extensive involvement. The Orozco file was painfully thin, but the facts were clear. Roseanne’s dismembered body had been found by highway workers collecting trash along Highway 86 west of Sells. The body had been hacked to pieces and stuffed into a Coleman cooler. An autopsy had revealed that the fifteen-year-old homicide victim had been pregnant at the time of her death. For some reason, Henry Orozco, the girl’s father, was initially considered to be a prime suspect both in terms of Roseanne’s death and as the father of her unborn child. When a blood test excluded him as the baby’s father, he was dropped as an official suspect in the murder investigation as well. Within weeks of Roseanne’s death, new entries in the file ceased completely as the investigation was left to go dormant.
Even so, Brian thought, Brandon remembered her the moment I brought it up. Why? There was no mention of Brandon Walker’s name in the file. His signature didn’t appear on any of the reports. Still, it was a case that stuck with him decades later.
Brian reached for his phone and dialed the Walker place in Gates Pass. Lani answered. “Hi, Brian,” she said. “You missed a great dinner last night.”
“I know,” he said. “Had to work. Sorry. Is your dad around?”
“No. He left a little while ago. Do you have his cell-phone number?”
“I do,” Brian said. “Thanks.” But before he had a chance to dial, PeeWee arrived and settled at his own desk. “What are you up to?” he asked.
Wanting his conversation with Brandon Walker to be private, Brian put down the phone. He had been sorting the faxed case files into two separate stacks: scattered remains versus contained remains. He added Roseanne Orozco’s file to the second stack and passed the piles along to Detective Segura. “Anyone for a serial killer?” he asked.
While PeeWee scanned the material, Brian walked down the hall. Returning minutes later with coffee, he found PeeWee engrossed in the files.
“You may be right about these being related,” PeeWee said, tapping the stack of faxes that dealt with containerized remains. “These may be connected, too, but this one?” He tapped the Orozco file, which he had pushed to one side. “LaGrange is too young for this one, but I’ll check his credit card transactions to see if we can put him in the vicinity for any of the others.”
PeeWee took a thoughtful sip of his coffee. “You picked all this stuff off the computer in a matter of hours. How come you’re the first investigator to make the connection?”
“Because I’m smarter than the average bear?” Brian asked with a laugh. “No, it’s the same old thing. Nobody else found it because nobody else was looking. I’m guessing these are all throwaway kids. They went missing and nobody even bothered to file a missing persons report.”
“And without some relative keeping the heat on…” PeeWee added.
They both knew why active cases went cold. Time passed and nothing happened. With no grieving relatives maintaining pressure, the respective investigative agencies finally stopped looking.
“Somebody’s applying pressure now,” Brian said. “You and me. So let’s get cracking. I’ll call Yuma and talk to the detectives over there. The Vail autopsy is scheduled for ten. Who’s going to do that?”
“I’ll flip you for it,” PeeWee said, tossing a coin in the air. “Heads you go. Tails I do.”
The coin came up heads. “Too bad, buddy.” PeeWee grinned. “This is one damned autopsy I’m happy to miss.”
Brandon drove to the back side of Kino Community Hospital and pulled up in front of the Pima County medical examiner’s office. He had come here often enough in the distant past, back when what he still considered the “new” hospital first opened. It had been years now since he’d had any official business with the ME’s office. He wondered what kind of reception he should expect when he showed up with a nonroutine corpse and a nonroutine request for
