Tunnel Vision (8 page)

“Whatever works,” she said, smiling up at him.

Chapter Three

JUST AFTER LUNCH Tuesday, Brodie was

bravely pouring another cup of coffee when the telephone on Maggie’s vacant desk rang. After a few phone calls, Maggie had driven to the university to pick up blueprints of the Biology Building and the other nearby buildings. Taking a few steps across the room, Brodie grabbed the phone quickly and sat down.

“Lieutenant Brodie,” she said.

“Hey! Guess what we got?” Frank Cardona’s voice boomed over the handset.

“What?” she asked.

“The other three-fourths of the man from

Aquarius!”

Sitting up abruptly in her chair, she waved at Nicholls to pick up his phone.

“Where, Frank?” she asked, grabbing a pad.

“In a dumpster across town. You know where that new apartment complex is going up near Manchester?

Behind that,” Cardona said. “Found a little while ago by a troop of Boy Scouts out scavenging for aluminum cans. Can you believe that shit?”

“We’ll be there in a few minutes,” she said.

“No hurry. The body’s pretty mushy. Between that and about four hundred shitty diapers, the smell’s enough to gag a maggot, which are also plentiful. Bring Lysol, babe.”

Frank Cardona was nothing if not vividly

descriptive and suddenly the barbecue sandwich she had eaten for lunch was having second thoughts. She hung up the phone and grabbed her jacket from the back of her chair. Nicholls was already ahead of her.

“Let’s go, Maggie,” he called as he spotted their trainee entering the building with an armful of papers. “Looks like we’re finally gonna get a height and weight on the Headless Horseman.”

BRODIE STOPPED THEIR car near the flimsy

boundary created by yellow police tape strung around the parking lot. She was ahead of Nicholls and Weston as she flashed her badge to the officer manning the perimeter of the scene. It was easy to spot Cardona in his bright yellow coveralls. He was directing the men with him in removing the headless body through the opening on the side of the rusty dumpster. Everyone working at the scene wore a filtered mask to avoid the smell, except Frank. Brodie often thought he must have been born without olfactory nerves. Otherwise, no one could have stood the smells associated with his work. She was grateful for the slight breeze that seemed to be blowing the odor from the body and the dumpster away from them. Frank smiled when he saw her.

“Great afternoon, huh, Brodie?”

“Delightful, Frank. How’s it going?”

“He’s about ready to come out of hiding,” he said, looking behind her as he spoke. “Glad to see you brought the fox with you. Single?”

“I have no idea, but since she’s still alive and kickin’ I don’t think she’s your type.”

“Ah, yes. But hope springs eternal.”

“Maria would deep-fry your
cojones
for lunch if she knew you were even looking,” she said.

“Which reminds me. Farmed the kiddies out to grandmacita for a coupla days and Maria and I have made big plans that don’t involved a deep-fryer,”

Frank said with a wide smile.

“No plans until I get my report, Frank.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll give you a complete report on the Headless Horseman before the close of business today. You want me to send him over to Travis County?”

“Yeah. I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to get another John Doe from us.”

She looked around to see what had happened to Nicholls and Maggie. Nicholls was talking to a uniformed officer whom she assumed had been the first on the scene. Maggie was squatted down next to two boys who looked about twelve or thirteen years old. One of the boys was doing all the talking, using his hands like a hyperactive Italian. The second boy was sweating profusely and appeared to be on the verge of fainting. Maggie patted the boy’s shoulder and handed him a tissue from her jacket pocket.

“Hey! You! Shit for brains! I know the guy’s already dead, but try not to mutilate him any further,” she heard Frank yell. One man climbed out of the dumpster and was holding onto one end of a stretcher. He had to stand in an awkward position to raise the stretcher through the opening which was an inch or two narrower than the stretcher. Frank trotted over to help his men turn the stretcher just enough to get it out. The black body bag strapped to the stretcher glistened as sunlight struck its vinyl exterior. Nicholls and Maggie joined her as she watched the men work.

“Think it’s the rest of our victim?” Nicholls asked.

“I sure hope so, or we’ll be hunting for body parts again. What did you two find out?”

“The uniform didn’t know much. Checked the dumpster and lost his lunch,” he said.

“I’m sure those kids found that extremely

helpful,” she said.

“The kids appear to be okay,” Maggie said. “Their parents have been notified and I had a unit transport them to the hospital.”

“Were they hurt?”

“Not really. One of them may be suffering from shock, but he wasn’t the one who found the vic. The second boy was in the dumpster. When he found the body it startled him. Scratched his arm on the dumpster, so I thought someone should look at it. Might need a tetanus shot or something.”

Brodie looked at her and smiled. “Good thinking. We can get a statement from them tomorrow. Give them a chance to calm down a little.” Remembering a time they had discussed having one or two of their own, Brodie’s smile faded away as quickly as it had appeared.

“The Scoutmaster said they’ve been collecting aluminum cans for recycling and received a phone call this morning telling them to check out the dumpsters around here,” Maggie added, looking over her notes.

“Did he get the name of the caller?” Brodie asked.

“No.”

“Who the hell calls in a tip for aluminum cans?”

Nicholls asked.

“Maybe the perp figured we needed a little help locating the body,” Brodie said.

“Well, there’s no way in hell we’ll get any useable prints off that dumpster,” Nicholls observed.

“Probably right,” she agreed as Cardona reapproached them, pulling gloves from his hands.

“Okay, ladies and gent, scribble this down. The remains are the second installment of your find yesterday morning. No question in my mind. He’s a mess, but the cuts are as precise as the first. No blood around anywhere. Still a Hispanic male. I’d say about five eight and one ninety. Hadn’t missed too many tacos. Fully clothed in some kind of uniform, also sans blood. Must have been dissected and then redressed. No I.D. on the body or the clothes. It’s been warmer than usual the last few days and the heat can really build up in these metal dumpsters. From the degree of decomposition, I’d guess that the time of death was three to five days ago. The maggots are pretty advanced so they’ve been at it for a while. That’s about what you’ll be getting in my report, Brodie, but I’ll put it in writing and send it over.”

“Thanks, Frank. Go home and get lucky. Give my regards to Maria,” she said patting the man on the back.

“You, my friend, will be the last topic of conversation tonight,” he laughed and then jogged away and jumped into the forensics van.

“We’ll need to get some people into that

dumpster,” Nicholls sighed. “A wallet could have fallen out of the vic’s pocket.”

“We could always call Romero,” Brodie said with a chuckle.

Nicholls snorted loudly. “Hell, you couldn’t get Romero in there unless you promised him Weston was in there buck naked and willing.” Realizing what he had said, Nicholls shot a looked at Maggie. “Jesus, I’m so sorry, Maggie. I shouldn’t have said that,” he apologized.

“No need to apologize,” she said. “I have four brothers.”

Brodie turned and looked at Maggie as Nicholls walked away shaking his head. “There’s never been another female detective in Cedar Springs except me,”

she said. “They’re used to saying whatever they think, so if you have a problem with it you can report it to Captain Donaldson.”

“I know how cops talk. You don’t have to explain things to me, Lieutenant,” Maggie said as they began walking toward the car. “By the way, I may have an ID on our victim.”

Brodie stopped and looked sharply at her. “Were you planning to keep that
your
little secret?”

“No. I planned to tell you when I got back to the station, but we got the call to come here. The supervisor of janitorial services reported that one of his men hasn’t come to work for the last few days.”

She pulled her notebook from her jacket pocket and flipped a few pages before continuing. “The man’s name is Cruz Garcia. Very reliable worker. Never sick. He doesn’t have a telephone so the supervisor wasn’t able to check on him. I was going to run by the address he gave me, but we were interrupted.”

“What’s the address?” Brodie asked as they resumed walking.

“1229 Val Verde in Southeast Austin. It’s in the last area I worked on patrol. Not exactly the high rent district. Lots of gangs, lots of problems.”

“I’ll go with you after we drop Nicholls back at the station. He’s checking on another suspicious death from last Thursday night anyway.”

Brodie chose her Camaro over the department issued Crown Victoria and accelerated onto the highway ramp toward Austin, hoping the trip would go quickly. They drove along in silence for what seemed like an eternity, before Maggie broke the silence.

“Is this the same Camaro you were working on while you were in Austin?”

Brodie hesitated before answering. Why revisit old times? But it wasn’t going to be possible to work every day with Maggie and not speak to her. She supposed they had to talk about something and her car seemed like a harmless enough topic. “Yeah, finally finished it a couple of years ago. Didn’t have much else to do in my spare time.”

“It looks great.”

“Thanks.”

“Nicholls seems like a good detective. How long has he been your partner?”

“Three or four years. Since he finished his training.”

“Were you his training officer?”

“Yeah.”

“Sort of unusual for a TO to become the trainee’s partner, isn’t it?”

“You ask too many fuckin’ questions, Weston.”

“I’m a detective,” Maggie quipped. “It’s what I get paid to do.”

Brodie smiled slightly and then said, “Well, the truth is, Detective, Curtis Nicholls is a semi-racist, homophobic hot-dogger with a tendency to believe he’s God’s gift to women and the police department. I got stuck with him because no one else wanted to work with him.”

“Does he know you’re gay?”

Brodie glanced across the car at her. “Yes. But he doesn’t know you are and if you’re smart it will remain that way.”

BRODIE EXITED THE Interstate onto Cesar

Chavez Boulevard and turned into an older, rundown neighborhood within sight of the freeway. The majority of the houses were in need of paint, which gave them the overall appearance of weathered gray wood. Occasionally, someone had made an attempt to beautify their property, but the effort had obviously been hampered by a lack of money or a lack of interest. What once passed for grass was generally dying from a scarcity of water. Periodic green patches appeared to have been mowed but not edged, leaving long tendril of grass crawling across the cracked sidewalks. She followed Maggie’s directions through a series of turns that carried them deeper into economic depression. Brown faces stared at the Camaro as it moved slowly through the area, searching for a house number. It didn’t help that the many of the street signs were missing. The city had replaced them for years before finally giving up. Although she never caught them doing it, she suspected local gang kids or illegals removed them to confuse the authorities.

Eventually, she was forced to stop and ask directions from a juvenile who was walking lazily up the street. The kid looked about fourteen years old and was dressed in baggy tan work pants that fell across the tops of expensive looking tennis shoes in multiple folds virtually obscuring his feet. A white tshirt, and long-sleeved blue and black plaid shirt buttoned only at the neck completed his gang-banger attire. The boy’s hair was wavy and neatly trimmed, held in place by a hairnet which was pulled together in a small knot in the middle of his forehead. The beginnings of a skimpy moustache sprouted along his upper lip. He stared appreciatively at the car as it pulled to the curb next to him. Brodie rolled the window down and motioned for the boy to approach the car. He sauntered over to the car and rested his hands on the window frame.

“I’m lookin’ for Val Verde,” she said.

“What for?” the boy asked.

“Well, if I wanted you to know that, I’d have told you,” she said.

“You a cop, right?”

“And you’re an upstanding citizen who’s always happy to help out the police,” she answered with a grin.The boy chuckled and looked into the car at Maggie. Then he looked back at Brodie. “She a cop, too?”

“Yeah. So where’s the street,
jefe
?”

“I ain’t you fuckin’
jefe
,” the boy spat, backing away from the car, gesturing with his hands. Opening the door of the car, Brodie took a deep breath and stepped out, grabbing the kid by the shirt. She dragged him to the back of the Camaro as Maggie heard long strings of Spanish flying between Brodie and the boy, most of it recognizable in almost any language as profanity. Eventually, she heard laughter and watched the boy stroll away at the same speed he had been going when Brodie stopped him.

“What the hell was all that about?” she demanded as Brodie settled back behind the wheel. “This isn’t the kind of neighborhood where you can just grab one of the locals and hassle him. He could have twenty armed friends watching from the windows around here.”

“Relax. There wasn’t going to be any trouble. Just a lot of macho bullshit posturing. Now he looks good to his homeboys if they were watching because he stood up to the cops and walked away. Val Verde is a couple of streets over.”

Less than a minute later they parked in front of a house that looked better than most of the houses surrounding it. The grass was green and the small yard had been edged. Flower baskets hung from hangers along the porch. The stucco-covered building was partially newly painted. Tricycles and other children’s toys littered the yard. Brodie followed Maggie up the walkway to the front door. An old window unit hung from one of the front windows. Brodie knocked on the screen door and waited. She was about to knock again when the door opened. A man approximately her age peered at them through the screen. He was holding a crow bar in his right hand and appeared to be slightly out of breath. She smiled and asked, “Is this the home of Cruz Garcia?”