“I’ve been trying to get through to Detective Lorenz,” he says, “but he’s not returning my calls.”
As much as I sympathize after this morning’s fruitless errand, there’s a tribal imperative to observe. Crime-scene technicians can’t expect to have homicide detectives at their beck and call. The food chain runs in the reverse direction.
“He’s got his hands full at the moment,” I say.
He brandishes a shiny-covered report. “So can I leave this with you, then?”
“You wanna tell me what it is?”
So he starts explaining, turning the pages as he goes. “It’s actually pretty interesting. The victim in the hallway, the one sticking halfway out the bathroom? Hector Diaz -?”
“Little Hector,” I say, remembering what the girl across the street had called him.
“Originally, we thought he must have been leaning through the door pretty far, because he was hit three times in the side. Right here.” He uses his fingertips to indicate holes above his left kidney and between the ribs. “But I had a hard time making sense of that. I mean, if somebody’s taking a shot at you, and you’re returning fire, do you turn your flank toward them like that? For a right-hander like him, that’s not the best use of cover.”
I wonder if Castro’s ever been in a firefight, or for that matter any kind of fight. Making best use of cover, that’s a lesson they don’t teach on the streets.
“So I went back to the scene,” he says, “and took a harder look. The bathroom window is busted open – that’s on the original report – but it looks like it happened a while back. No loose glass on the floor or anything like that. So nobody paid much mind. But when I went outside and started looking through the shrubs, I recovered a 9mm shell casing.”
“Just the one?”
“Maybe the shooter collected the rest of his brass.”
“So you’re saying Little Hector was shot from outside?”
He nods. “What must have happened is, he was holding them off from the bathroom door, so they sent someone outside to… you know, flank his position.” He makes a gun out of his fingers and jams it through an imaginary window. “That would make sense of the angles. He was crouched in the doorway, firing down the hall, when suddenly he starts taking fire from the window.”
The report includes a three-dimensional computer rendering of the action, one stick figure outside the window with red lines streaming out of his stick pistol, intersecting the torso of another stick figure in the wire-frame doorway.
“That’s a pretty sophisticated move, don’t you think? For gang-bangers? The guy with the shotgun must have kept Diaz engaged while they sent the other one outside. That’s fire and maneuver, isn’t it? Basic tactics.”
The cynic in me wants to squash Castro’s enthusiasm, but the kid has a point. In a standoff like this, I’d expect the players to empty their clips and get out of there. Under fire, tunnel vision kicks in. Most people don’t think much beyond the immediate threat. So if this crew managed to improvise on the go, I’m impressed.
Then again, they might have left a driver on the street, and maybe he noticed flashes in the bathroom window and went up to investigate, pumping a couple of rounds through the conveniently busted glass.
“I’ll look this over,” I tell him, tucking the report under my arm. “Good work, Castro.”
He grins ear to ear, making me wonder how long ago his braces came off.
I catch up to Lorenz in Bascombe’s office, and all at once I realize I’ve been outplayed. The two of them sit listening to a third man, hardly acknowledging my arrival. Ginger-haired, with deeply furrowed cheeks and a handlebar mustache, I’m betting this is the elusive Mitch Geiger. His voice trails off when he notices me. Bascombe snaps his head my way, hawkishly predatory.
“Just sit down and listen.” He points with a talon-like finger.
I sink into a chair in the corner.
“Should I recap?” Geiger asks in a scratchy rumble of a voice.
After a nod from Bascombe, the narcotics sergeant repeats what I already know from the folder Lorenz passed along yesterday. There are rumors on the street about an independent crew hitting stash houses, disrupting the flow of product. Some of the gangs are using the hits as an excuse for drive-bys – not that they’ve ever needed one.
“But it’s not about one gang putting pressure on another,” Geiger says. “I’ve been mapping it all out, trying to connect the various dots. This crew is no respecter of persons. They’re hitting everybody in Southwest, and not just the low-hanging fruit, either.”
Lorenz leans forward, looking very serious. “Is there some kind of modus operandi with these guys? Something their jobs have in common?”
“Well…” Geiger draws the word out, glancing at Bascombe.
“Without examining the scenes,” Bascombe says, “that’s probably tough to determine. One question we need to ask, though, is whether they’ve killed anybody before now.”
“From what I’m hearing out there, I’d have to say no. These sound like clean operations to me. In and out, just like that. Of course, assuming the same guys hit your scene, they might have run into unexpected trouble.”
If Bascombe wants me to sit down and shut up, that’s probably what I should do. But I just can’t help jumping in. “There’s a problem with what I’m hearing. Morales wasn’t sitting on a stash. As far as I know, Morales handled the money, not the product.”
“So maybe there was a brick of cash,” Lorenz says.
“In that case, we should be hearing about it on the street.” I look to Geiger. “Is that the story you’re picking up out there?”
He glances sideways, gives me half a shrug. “Right now, we’re not hearing much of anything.” The words come reluctantly, like he’s been warned in advance not to interact with me too much. The question is, was it Lorenz who gave the instructions or Bascombe? And did the orders include not returning my calls? Because this is feeling a lot like a setup.
“This isn’t about a drug stash,” I say, “and it’s not about money. The girl on that bed, she’s what it’s about. She’s why they were there.”
“March,” Bascombe snaps. “You wanna shut up a second?”
“Somebody has to say it.”
“Well, you lost your chance. This was your job to do, but you didn’t. So now I’m having to do it myself. Why don’t you just sit there looking clueless. It’s what you do best.”
I should let it go, but I don’t. “Either we can sit here trying to make a square peg fit a round hole, or we can start looking for a match to our female victim’s blood sample. That’s the lead we should be following.”
Lorenz glares at me, bloated with contempt, while Geiger takes a sudden interest in the carpet. Bascombe, though, he’s smiling, an unspoken thank-you on his face. He turns to the other two.
“Will you gentlemen excuse us a moment?”
They don’t have to be asked twice. Once they’re gone, Bascombe hops off the desk and pushes the door shut.
“You can’t help shooting your mouth off.”
“Hedges put me on the case,” I say. “I’m going to work it. The politics mean nothing to me. I don’t care if Lorenz likes me, or even if you do. There’s a lead to follow and I’m going to follow it, no matter what you drop on my lap. You have to respect that.”
“Respect?” he says, circling around the desk, slipping into his chair. “Oh, I do respect it, March. Now, I happen to know that after we talked yesterday, you went straight to Missing Persons, ignoring everything I said. I had to ask myself, Why would he do something like that? And all I could come up with was this: He really must believe in that connection. Crazy as it sounds, you’re convinced the woman in that house is the girl from tv. You’re so sure, you don’t need any instructions from me, isn’t that right?”
I shrug, not sure where he’s going with this.
“So I give the whole situation some thought. And you know what I see? There’s an opportunity here for a win-win.”