useless and fucking impotent. Pedro had stopped struggling, and Zorno wasn’t moving. Their blood mingled on the floor.
Maggie looked at Pedro’s body trying to figure out who it was. “Oh god. Is that Pedro?”
“Yeah.”
“How did he know about Pedro?”
I checked them both for a pulse-dead and dead. Then I searched Zorno’s pockets, pulling his bar bill out of his back pocket. There was a handwritten note on the backside.
PEDRO VARGAS
BUILDING 11, UNIT 7
BAINE’S CANALSIDE DRIVE
KOBA
MALE
AGE 15
SAW YOUR HANDIWORK!
Maggie paled. “Oh my god, Juno. It’s my fault. I filled out the witness report. I knew where Pedro lived.”
“It’s not your fault, Maggie. Zorno did this.”
“But I should have known! I knew his address. I should have known that was where Zorno was leading us. I could have stopped it.”
“You were tired. You didn’t sleep last night.”
“I don’t believe this. I fell asleep and let him die. He was counting on us…”
“Zorno did this, Maggie. You can’t blame yourself. Zorno and the fucking barkeep that passed him this note. I was the one that pushed you into following him. If we had arrested him right away, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Maggie didn’t look convinced.
She found a dry spot and sank down to the floor, the lase-pistol still in her hand. I studied her shock-seized face, unable to help…another example of how fucking useless I was. Somebody is going to pay for this.
Some punk kid poked his head in the door.
“Get out!” I scared him so bad that he smacked into the door frame as he bolted away. I looked out and saw there was a whole crowd out there. Just like the flies and lizards, people were attracted to dead bodies. I closed the door and sealed us off from the scavengers.
I called down to HQ-told them to send out a body wagon and to get some cops here quick for crowd control. I went through the apartment and found Pedro’s mother in the bedroom, lying on the bed with an opium-glazed look on her face, ashtray on the pillow. She’d been here the whole time, too hopped to notice her son being murdered in the room next door.
I dried the cup with a moldy towel, dropped in a bag of green tea that I found in the cupboard, and poured boiling water. I left the tea bag sunk in the water and brought it to Maggie. It looked like some of the color had returned to her face, but I wasn’t sure.
I took a seat. Abdul worked from a kneeling position, plastic bags meticulously rubber banded over his clothes. His fingers spread Pedro’s throat wound open. “He did this one the same way-from behind pull right, push left, pull right. The incision isn’t as deep this time. He used a smaller knife, but the cutting motion is the same. It’s not as exact as fingerprints, but it looks like Pedro Vargas and Dmitri Vlotsky were killed by the same man.”
Greased by Pedro and Zorno’s combined blood, he slid more than crawled over to Zorno’s body, which lay facedown. “There’s your killshot,” he said, pointing to the charred region on the top of Zorno’s head. “Help me turn him over, Juno.”
I got down low, careful to stay out of the blood, and tried using my legs to help power him over. I pulled hard on one of his bulky arms as Abdul turned the torso. I almost fell when the body slid on the slick floor-damn, he was heavy. When we finally succeeded in getting him over, Abdul surveyed the corpse like it was a fine meal. “Ah, we have a stomach wound. I can see it now. The first shot burned into his stomach; he doubled over, and the second shot bored into the top of his head. How am I doing, Juno?”
“You’ve got it.”
Abdul took his eyes off Zorno’s body to look at Maggie sitting silently on the sofa. “That was nice shooting, Maggie.”
She met his eyes after a pause, reluctant to speak. “Only two hits; I fired three times.”
“Two out of three is excellent. I know thirty-year veterans that can’t match that ratio.” He smirked in my direction.
Two white coats entered. “You have somebody for us?”
About time! “Yeah, she’s in the bedroom, right down the hall.”
“Is she injured?”
“No, just drugged out of her mind. She missed the whole thing.”
They headed into the bedroom and came out a few minutes later with Pedro’s mother on a stretcher. They had mercifully pulled a sheet over her head, so she wouldn’t have to see her dead son. As soon as they left, in came Paul with that asshole Karl Gilkyson.
Gilkyson looked ill the instant he laid eyes on the gory scene.
Paul noticed his queasy stance. “Why don’t you wait outside? We’ll come right out.”
Gilkyson gave Paul a thankful nod and stepped out.
Paul told Maggie to take a break. She was deeply offended; after all, she’d just killed a man, working this case. She’d earned the right to be in the inner circle.
Paul said, “I’m sorry, Maggie, but I need to talk to Juno and Abdul privately.”
She left in a rush. Are those tears in her eyes?
The three of us were alone with the two bodies. Paul took charge like always. “We won’t be able to talk for long. Gilkyson will be back in here as soon as he gets his stomach back. I need to know what happened.”
I said, “The kid’s name is Pedro Vargas. He was a witness to the Vlotsky killing-saw the whole thing go down. He picked Ali Zorno out of the mugs last night.”
“Zorno? I thought you were looking at the military guy-Kapasi. I’ve been busting my hump trying to get you in to see him.”
“Keep on it. He and Zorno were cellmates at the Zoo. I still want to talk to him. Zorno got arrested by Brenda Redfoot when he broke into an apartment in her building. She had him pegged as a serial killer but couldn’t sell it to the judge, so he got sent up for burglary. He just got released from the Zoo a few weeks ago. Get this: Brenda put together a list of missing persons that she thought Zorno could have taken, and Kapasi’s missing sister is on the list.
“At this point, Maggie was thinking Zorno was a serial killer and Lieutenant Vlotsky was just a random victim. But when we busted into Zorno’s place this morning, we found a pile of cash in his mattress along with Vlotsky’s lips. We’re talking a big pile of cash with Vlotsky’s picture and address. That locks it, Paul. Vlotsky was a hired hit. Maggie wanted to arrest Zorno right away, but I wasn’t sure we’d be able to get him to squeal, so I talked her out of it. I thought we should follow him to see who he contacted. We wound up following him here. By the time I realized this was the kid’s place, it was too late.”
“How did he find out about the kid?”
“I had Maggie fill out a witness report.”
“A cop tipped him off? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Yeah, unless it was Gilkyson. Is that guy glued to you or what?”
Paul looked ready to explode-must be what I looked like most of the time. “No. Gilkyson’s too busy crawling up my ass to read witness reports. It has to be one of ours. Odds are it’s the same asshole that ratted the frame job I tried to put on the mayor last month.”
Abdul stopped working the stomach wound to talk to Paul. “Why’d you put Juno on a homicide? You could have gotten him killed.”
That made me angry. “Since when do you talk about me like I’m not here?”
Abdul raised his spectacle-magnified eyebrows at me. “Since you don’t know how to take care of yourself.”
