I showed her the photo on my phone of the tagging on the refrigerator car. “Have you seen this tag before?”
She took the phone, spread her thumb and forefinger to enlarge it. “It’s the tag for a punk band. Kill the Normies.”
“Sounds ominous.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “It’s a band, not a threat.”
“They play in Denver?”
“They’re on tour. They play at Leopard’s Den tomorrow night. Is that the secret information you were looking for?”
“You know who made this tag?”
The wariness snapped back into place like a visor. “I look like a rat to you?”
“The people I’m looking for aren’t in trouble, Purple. I just want to talk to them.”
“That’s what cops always say.” She handed the phone back to me. “They’re vandals.”
“I don’t care about that. But whoever did the tagging might have seen something.”
Purple sucked in her lower lip and narrowed her eyes, like she was doing some heavy thinking. Then she puffed out a breath. “Something like murder, you mean?”
“What would make you say that?”
She looked at Clyde. “Is he really a hero dog?”
“He’s saved people’s lives. A lot of lives.”
She watched Clyde a moment longer. Then she stared out at a train on the far side of the tracks. Finally, she turned back to me.
“Okay,” she said. “I might have heard some talk.”
Twenty minutes later, Clyde and I were back in the car, and I was on the phone with Bandoni.
“The girl heard other punks talking about two men hitching a ride on a freight who claim they saw someone get killed,” I told him. “She didn’t have names, and she wouldn’t look at mug shots. But she—”
“You could have brought her in on a panhandling charge. Gotten her to look at photos.”
I put the phone on speaker and started to back out of the parking space. I heard the shatter of breaking glass and stopped. Crap. I turned off the engine.
“If I’d brought the girl in,” I said, opening the door, “she would have lied, then bolted as soon as we cut her loose. She’s not a big fan of police, and she doesn’t want to be a rat.” I walked around to the rear of the Tahoe. Shards of brown glass glittered on the asphalt. Someone had placed a beer bottle behind my tire.
“Shit,” I said.
“Shit what?”
“Nothing.” I went back to the cab for work gloves. “Anyway, she said the witnesses are likely the taggers, and they’re in Denver to see a band. Group’s playing tomorrow night at Leopard’s Den.”
“You get descriptions?”
“The main tagger is a guy who calls himself Damn Fox. He has crosses and Bible verses tattooed on his arms. Travels with a five-foot-two punk with a green rooster tail who goes by the name Street Cred. I asked another group of punks about them, but the kids scattered soon as I mentioned Damn Fox. His reputation precedes him, apparently.”
“You know these kids. You think a guy in peach chiffon would be part of that scene?”
“No.” I found gloves and pulled a paper bag from my satchel. “But our victim could have hopped on board the train for the same reason college kids do it. They don’t want the life, they just want a thrill.”
“Would him muscling in on that scene get him killed?”
“These kids are fiercely protective of their territory. And with that dress . . .”
“Hate crime.”
“Most of those kids are just lost souls from broken homes. But some of them are really messed up.” I crouched next to the rear tire and reached for the glass. At least the tire looked okay.
“Murderously messed up?”
“It happens.”
A grunt. Then Bandoni said, “Not too shabby, Parnell.”
I hated how good his praise felt. “Thanks.”
“Even a blind squirrel can find a nut. Where are you now? The PM starts in half an hour.”
Postmortem. “I’m in LoDo. I’ll see you in thirty.”
I disconnected and kept picking up glass, pissed that someone had decided to share their black mood by adding to mine. I reached out an arm for the last bit of glass, and my fingers knocked against something. I peered under the Tahoe.
A naked, blond Barbie doll hung from the chassis. I pulled her free and turned her in my hands. Her breasts had been painted red, and she had a ribbon around her neck that looked disconcertingly like a hangman’s noose.
I stared into the vacant, plastic eyes for a moment and tried not to think about how adding this bit of weirdness to my day made me feel. I stuffed the doll into the bag with the glass, unsure what it meant, and got to my feet.
All around, the garage was filled with echoing sounds. Tires screeching on the turns. Car doors slamming. Voices. A blue cargo van came around the corner, heading toward the exit, tailgated by a man in a cherry-red Porsche.
As near as I could tell, no one lurked in the shadows to watch the results of their handiwork.
I rolled closed the top of the bag. Just my luck to be the random target of some pissed-off freak. I returned to the cab, tossed the bag behind my seat, then looked at my partner as I got in.
“A weirdo born every minute, right?”
Clyde shook himself. His tags jingled.
I backed up again and headed for the exit. As we pulled into the sunshine, I forced aside thoughts of the glass and the doll and turned my mind to more important matters. Like the PM.
A vision of our John Doe’s faceless corpse rose in front of me.
My fellow Mortuary Affairs Marines and I had worked hard to compartmentalize the carnage we saw. We learned to mentally separate the ruin in front of us from the person he or she had been before the bomb or the bullets. Most of us got pretty good at it, and those who didn’t were allowed to transfer out. No harm, no foul.
But even with rigid discipline, there were some things that managed to break through the walls we built.
My gut told me
