Vic seemed only mildly impressed. “Wow, the George Washington of Nazi fuckheads.” She fingered the dead man’s arm, where a pistol pointed out. “That means he’s a shooter?”
“Yeah. It’s odd that his tats end at his wrists and neck. This guy wears long-sleeved shirts, and you’d never see any of it.”
I was getting an education. “That’s not the norm?”
“No. They usually have stuff all over their hands, and sometimes on their faces.” He took a deep breath and touched Felix Polk for the first time, then looked up at Isaac. “May I?”
“By all means.” Isaac stepped forward and assisted him in turning the body.
The tattoos continued over both of the man’s shoulders and ended with a woman’s face. She was crying, and there were three teardrops. “Someone was waiting for him on the outside, and I’d say the drops are the number of kills.”
“Three?”
“Yeah, one for the stretch in Quentin and another in Huntsville.”
“The third?”
He shook his head. “Who knows? One where he didn’t get caught, maybe.”
Sancho and the Doc turned the corpse back over as I came around the other side to face Saizarbitoria. “This is the kind of guy who would kill someone if a multimillion-dollar weed operation went bad?”
The Basquo’s voice echoed off the stainless steel. “In a heartbeat, and I’m willing to bet that not only was Polk providing the knowledge for the venture, but he was also in charge of the buyers. Blood in, blood out. These guys are heavy into drug trafficking, extortion, and pressure rackets. I bet he was producing for the entire AB. Usually you have to do a hit just to get in and then members are actively expected to score for the others in custody.”
I sighed. “Isn’t he a little old for this stuff ?”
Santiago looked at him. “Not really. . . . ”
I stuffed my hands into the pockets of my coat. “I’ve only got one question then.”
The Basquo shrugged. “The partial thumbprint gave us nothing from the national records; Vic’s verbal request on a name search must’ve popped up in Travis County but nowhere else.”
“That wasn’t my question.” They were all looking at me as I continued to study one of the few portions of Felix Polk that held no information—his face. “How did Ozzie Dobbs meet somebody like this? And more importantly, how did he think he’d survive being in business with him?”
Nobody answered.
Especially not Polk.
The auxiliary baseboard heaters had kicked on in the jail to combat the extra-cold temperatures as Gina and I stood in the hallway.
She said she’d gone over and talked to Mrs. Dobbs. “You’ve been busy.”
She put the cigarette I’d forbidden her to smoke back in the pack and stuffed it into the pocket of the pink parka. “Yeah, well . . . I just wanted to get it off my chest.”
“All of a sudden?”
She shrugged. “Ozzie’s dead, and I’m scared.”
“Of what?”
Her brown eyes grew large in sarcasm. “Of being dead, too.”
“Why would anyone want to kill you?”
“Because I’m carrying Ozzie’s child?”
I sighed. “I don’t think there’s very much of a chance of anyone coming after you for that.”
“Why?”
“We’re pretty sure that the individual who killed Ozzie did it because he was involved with Duane’s marijuana operation.” The next part was only slightly misinformative. “And we’ve taken a man into custody.”
“Who is it?”
“Fellow by the name of Felix Polk. Ever heard of him?” The response was predictable. “No.”
“You never heard Duane or Ozzie mention that name?”
“No.”
“If I get you a picture of him, can you tell me if you’ve ever seen him?”
She sighed in exasperation, kind of like Cady did, but without quite the intelligence. “Why don’t you just introduce him to me?”
I paused, wondering if I really wanted to add to the death count in Gina’s head. “He’s indisposed.”
“What’s that mean, he’s in the bathroom?”
I figured the hell with it. “He’s dead.”
“Oh.”
From her response, he might as well have been in the bathroom. Other people’s deaths didn’t seem to make much of an impression on Gina.
I needed to talk to Duane, but so did she. The problem is, she wanted me to be a part of her conversation, and I wasn’t too keen on the idea. On the flip side, I wanted her to be a party to my conversation, and she didn’t seem interested in that. We were at an impasse, and the only answer was a very emotionally messy round robin.
“I am going to speak to Duane before you go in to talk to him.”
“Why do you get to go first?”
“Because what you’re going to say to him is going to be like an atomic bomb, and I’d just as soon get some answers before it goes off.”
She folded her arms. “You think it’s that big of a deal?”
I stared at her; I couldn’t help myself. “That you’re having another man’s baby? Yep, I think that’s going to put my questions on the back burner.”
She shrugged again; the shrug really was Gina’s art form.
“Duane, we know you had a partner in your little 4-H project and, since things have gotten more serious, I’m going to need you to tell me who that was.”
He glanced at his young wife seated on a folding chair to my right and then back to me. “I didn’t have a partner.”
I sighed. “Do you remember that talk we had about this conversation?”
“Huh?”
I nodded in an attempt to get him to remember. “The one about coming back here and having another conversation where you weren’t quite so guilty?” He was nodding along with me now. “That would be this conversation.”
He stopped nodding. “Oh.” He paused and looked at his wife again, and it was almost as if he had to try to remember. “Ozzie, Mr. Dobbs, had the money.”
I pushed my hat back and scratched my head. “I figured that one out, but I also need to know who had the know-how.”
“Ozzie did. He had these equipment books and all this other stuff that told you how to do it.”
“What kind of stuff ?”
“Notebooks.”
I rested my elbows on my knees and leaned in. “I don’t suppose you know where those notebooks are?”
“Nunh-uh.”
I threw a glance toward Gina; the response was predictable—she shrugged.
I clasped my hands together and tried not to think about Sancho’s remark that the two in front of me weren’t likely to be clever enough, collectively, to overturn cows. “Did Ozzie ever mention a guy named Felix Polk?”
“Nunh-uh.”
He really seemed pretty much incapable of lying. “So you’ve never heard that name before?”
“Nunh-uh.”
Unfortunately, I believed him.
I cleared my throat. “Duane, I think Gina has something she wants to tell you.”
15
“What do you mean it’s not the gun that killed him?”
“It’s not a match. I’m sending it off to DCI, but I did the prelims on the lead after McDermott dug it out of him and the markings are nowhere near the same as the one I tested—besides, Polk’s gun was a 9- millimeter and the one that killed Ozzie was a .32.”
I raised my hat and sat up, tossing the blanket that Ruby had used to cover me with a quick flip. My familiar and recurring headache blistered across my brain. “What’d you test it in?”
“A gallon of Jell-O and a box of sand.”
I sat up, slumped against my desk, and draped a hand down to pet Dog. “Aren’t we enterprising.”
“Hey, don’t be pissy with me for doing my job.”
I held my temples for a moment. “I thought it was DCI’s job.”
“I was bored. I don’t have a house and nobody bought me anything for Valentine’s Day.”