“She was a bitty thing. Skinny. And I got the sense she was short.”
“You saw more than her face, then?”
“I guess I must’ve. I noticed that flashlight. It was a doozy.”
“What do you mean?”
“It looked like my big tactical light. Long and heavy.”
I flashed to the lump on Heinrich’s skull. “Did you see the other lights again?”
“Maybe. Off in the distance. But maybe they were just ghost lights. Will-o’-the-wisps.” He flushed, then shrugged apologetically. “Easy to get superstitious on midnight runs.”
“Tell me what the woman looked like. Her face.”
He finished his coffee and pushed away the cup. His gaze went toward the ceiling as he thought back. “She was Mexican. Or whatever they call themselves these days. Hispanic.”
“It depends on where they’re from.”
“What?”
“What they call themselves depends on where they’re from. Anyway, what makes you say she was from south of the border?”
“Black hair. Brown skin.” He shrugged. “You know.”
“Young or old?”
He laughed, gave a soft shake of his head. “These days, anyone who doesn’t have to tweeze their nose hairs looks twelve to me.”
“A teenager maybe?”
He considered. “Older than that. But not by a lot. Early twenties. A little younger than you, would be my guess.”
“What about clothes? Did you see what she was wearing?”
He shook his head. “Too dark.”
“Anything else? Take your time, Deke. Close your eyes, see if you can pull up her image.”
We were in dangerous waters. I didn’t want to steer Deke into creating false details merely because of the normal human desire to please the interviewer.
But I needed information.
Deke did as I asked, tilting his chair back so it rested on two legs and closing his eyes. After a moment he let the chair fall forward, opened his eyes, and rested his palms on the table. “That’s as much as I got, Sydney. Sorry.”
“No, this is all great, Deke. Thanks.”
“Yep.” His phone buzzed, and he glanced at it. “Looks like they’re ready for me to haul that train on down the road.”
We both stood. Clyde woke, lifted his head. Across the room, Bandoni appeared in the doorway.
I said, “When you get back to Denver, Deke, why don’t you plan on coming down to the station? I’ll get in a sketch artist, see if we can give this woman a face.”
“Sure.” He nodded. “I’ll be back in Denver late this afternoon.”
“I’ll arrange something for this evening and give you a call with the time.”
We shook hands. Deke gave Bandoni a nod as the two men passed each other.
Bandoni gripped a chair across from me and gave it a shake as if to confirm it would hold his weight. When he lowered his bulk into the seat, Clyde moved out from underneath the table and sat next to my chair.
Bandoni looked amused. “Dog doesn’t much like me, does he?”
“He’s a good judge of character.”
Bandoni put his cop’s eyes on me, and for a moment I saw myself as he must. Young. Ignorant. Foolish. And female. My fears no doubt aligned with his—that I’d fail spectacularly and bring us both down.
I said, “Are you done with the scene?”
“Just about. I’ve asked the ME to delay before moving the body. I want to make sure we get all possible microscopic evidence. Too easy to lose shit during transport.” Bandoni jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction Deke had gone. “That the engineer?”
I gave Bandoni a rundown of my conversation with Deke.
“Good idea to have him meet with a sketch artist,” he said. A rare dollop of praise. “Our victim’s a white male. Midtwenties to midthirties. Dead four or five hours. Gay, tranny, something, based on that dress he’s wearing. I’m thinking we’re looking at a hate crime.”
Something shifted inside me. Small, but also seismic. Man’s murderous ways toward man. “What about the fact that his face was obliterated? Does that also go to your hate-crime theory?”
Bandoni worked something out from beneath a fingernail. “Don’t read too much into that. A blow to the head is always ugly. It destroys flesh and breaks bones. But it doesn’t mean the murder was personal. Could be our killer is a stone-cold psychopath.”
With appreciation for how forthcoming Bandoni was being, I picked up my pen. “Cause of death?”
“Don’t quote me, but the blow to the head’s at the top of my list. Won’t know for sure until after the autopsy.”
“Identification?”
“Total John Doe. No wallet, so no driver’s license. No passport, no dog tags. If we’re lucky, his fingerprints will be in the system.”
“Be nice if the department had a mobile print identifier. We’d already know.”
“Be nice if we had a lot of things.” Bandoni grunted. “Whole budget has gone to hell with the shit that’s happened.”
The sexual-harassment scandals, he meant. A society that didn’t trust its police force didn’t award the department with money and grants.
I waited for Bandoni to continue, but he stared past me with eyes gone bleary with age and overwork. He looked like he took the department’s troubles personally. And maybe he did. He’d been with the Denver PD for over thirty years, working his way up from patrol through the motorcycle squad, then riding high on a stunning series of successes, including identifying the Capitol Hill Killer and running down a psychopath who’d spent five years robbing liquor stores and kneecapping the owners. Cohen had shown me a picture of Bandoni in his prime—a startlingly handsome man in a black trench coat and good suit, his tousled hair falling over a high forehead. With his intense blue eyes, square jaw, and cleft chin, he was just what a 1950s casting director would have demanded for his lead.
But somewhere in the stretch of highway between fifty and sixty, he’d hit some speed bumps—cases that dragged out, a dispute with his lieutenant. Then, hard after that, came potholes and a broken axle or two. A divorce, a headliner case that went wrong. Too many days looking evil in the eye and too many nights alone with the bottle.
Too many nights fighting himself.
He was still a
