'We're trying to find out who he is, so we can let his family know, if he has any.'
'He's dead.' Crazy Marge said it flatly, as if it was an acknowledged fact.
'That's right,' Sam said. 'He is. Does he look at all familiar to you?'
'I know him.'
'Who is he?' Greg asked.
She tapped the picture with a long nail. Fake, Greg was sure, with a glittering rhinestone stuck on near the tip. 'That's Crackers,' she said.
'Crackers?'
She lowered her voice almost to a whisper, dropping the stage act for the moment. 'My real name is Lurlene,' she said. 'But if you asked anybody around here about Lurlene, they wouldn't know who you meant. Most of us old-timers, nobody here knows us by our given names. I'm called Crazy Marge because… well, you figure it out. He went by Crackers because that's what he was always eating, always had a box of crackers, or else he was scrounging money to get crackers. Sometimes I didn't know how he survived on nothing but crackers, but maybe when I wasn't looking, he ate a salad or two.'
'So he's Crackers.'
'That's right,' she said, slipping right back into character. 'Always had him a cracker in his hand and one in his mouth. Surprised there ain't no cracker crumbs in his beard in that picture.'
'When was the last time you saw Crackers?' Greg asked.
She tapped her chin with that same studded fingernail. 'Maybe four, five days ago. He kinda kept to hisself. Some people said Crackers really was crazy, but you know, I don't judge people that way. Crazy is as crazy does, right?'
'Did he have any close friends here?' Sam asked.
'Like I said, kept to hisself. Some folks, you can't relate to 'em the way you do to others. He's like that. That's why people thought he was crazy, you know? You couldn't really reach him. He was always in his own head. And I tell you what, there was some scary shit in that head. For a while, my place was close to his, and I heard some screams, when he was sleepin'? Like to curdle my blood. Made me worry about him, wonder what he had been through. Or was goin' through in his own mind.'
'Well, can you show us where he lived most recently?' Sam asked her. 'Maybe one of his more immediate neighbors can help us.'
'You can try,' she said. 'They all just know him as Crackers, I'm pretty sure, but you give it a shot.' She beckoned them to follow. 'Come on, you. I gots stuff to do, don't have all day to be directin' y'all around.'
Greg felt like part of a floor show as he and Sam followed Crazy Marge, who sashayed through the tent city, waving to some, winking to others, offering a word or two to just about everybody they passed, and usually getting a friendly greeting in return. In her company, he and Sam were more readily accepted by those they encountered.
After about ten minutes, she stopped outside a ragged olive-drab pup tent. It looked like military surplus, maybe from the First World War. There were tears in it, some stitched up, some covered in duct tape, a few just open and catching the breeze. 'This is it,' she said. 'This is Crackers's house.'
'You said he's an old-timer,' Sam said.
'That's right, like me. Maybe not quite as long. Six, seven years, though, easy. Could be more, I guess. It ain't like I marked it down on a calendar. You know how it is. Some people move in, others move out. Sometimes you don't really notice who's come and gone until it's been a while.'
Greg squatted down and pulled aside the tent flap.
Crackers was not one of the tent city's better housekeepers, which did not come as a shock considering how he had looked when he died.
The other thing that didn't come as a shock was that the tent was littered with paper scraps, most apparently written on again and again and again. The ones in his pockets had been just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
'I'm going to have to get my kit,' Greg said. 'And process this place. It looks like I'll be at it awhile.'
'I'll have a uniform come over and keep an eye on things,' Sam said. 'I was hoping this would be easier.'
Anyway, he would need to save his breath for the task ahead – from the whiff he'd gotten when he stuck his head through the flap, he was sure he would be holding his breath a lot while he worked this scene. The reek clinging to the John Doe's body had nothing over the smell he'd left behind in his tent. Processing the tent would require him to breathe that air for a long time, a task he looked forward to without enthusiasm.
And once Greg got all of those paper scraps collected, the people in the QD lab would have enough work to keep them busy for years.
9
'Nick?'
Mandy stood in the doorway to the office Nick shared with Greg, her head cocked to one side, dark hair hanging across one eye. She had a clipboard in one hand. Nick had been writing down some aspects of his report on Domingo's house and vehicle while they were fresh in his mind, but he put down the pen. 'What's up, Mandy?'
'I got a hit,' she said, shaking back the stray hairs. 'On those impressions you collected from Robert Domingo's Escalade.'
'Good,' Nick said, glad something was coming easily for a change. His shift had long since ended, but there he was. Mandy, too. Time could mean everything when it came to catching a murderer, and he knew Catherine and Greg were on a case that involved a missing woman. Both were high-priority and meant that shift times were a flexible concept. 'Who do they belong to?'
Mandy consulted her clipboard. 'A woman named Karina Ochoa. She's nineteen.'
'A young woman was in the nightclub with Domingo, according to Brass. She left with him. If it's the same woman, then she had a fake ID.'
'She wouldn't be the first. But I don't know anything about that. I do know she's Grey Rock Paiute, and I have an address here, along with her driver's license photo.'
'Let's see.'
She brought the clipboard to the desk and handed it over. Nick studied the picture closely. He had seen the video Brass brought back from Fracas, but the quality wasn't great, and the woman had long, straight black hair partially obscuring her face. On the video, she could have been almost anybody. The young woman in the photo Mandy showed him might have been the same one. But this was a driver's license picture, straight on, her hair off her face, with an impatient half smile. He couldn't be sure.
'This is great, Mandy. Thanks.'
'I live to serve.'
'Yeah, right. Could you do me a favor? Get this and the video Brass got at Fracas compared with facial- recognition software, see if we can confirm that they're the same person.'
'Sure. I don't think anybody's busy today. That's a joke.'
'I got it.'
'I figured. Seriously, I'll take care of it.'
'You rock.'
'I do, don't I?' Mandy laughed and walked away, leaving the driver's license enlargement with Nick. He called Brass and described what he had.
'If FR gives us anything more concrete, I'll let you know.'
'Sounds good,' Brass said. 'I think we should head up there.'
'The reservation?'
'I'll call someone on the tribal police, have him meet us. We don't have jurisdiction there.'
'That's right, sovereign nation.'
