“He looks real casual, doesn’t he?” said Nathan Grady. “Like he just laid down in the street to take a nap. I like the way he’s got his hand in his pocket, too, don’t you? Except for his face, you wouldn’t even know he was dead.”
Strange and Quinn were inside the yellow crime tape, standing beside Grady. Kids and adults from the neighborhood were behind the tape, some talking to uniformed officers, some laughing, some just staring at something that would give them bad dreams later that night. The photographers and forensics team were still working over the body and had not yet covered Mario up.
“Why is he like that?” said Quinn.
“My guess is the bullet severed his cerebral cortex,” said Grady. “When that happens it freezes the victim at the moment of death. I’ve seen it before. Mario was probably standing on the corner, his hand in his pocket, when he took the bullet. He died instantly, I’d say.”
“Standing on the corner doing what?” said Strange.
“Well, one of the locals said they saw little Mario there earlier in the evening, looked like he was selling something, or trying to. When we get into his pockets we’ll find out.”
“He got killed over drugs?”
“Could be. Looks like an amateur killing. A pro wouldn’t put a forty-five to a man’s head. I mean, a twenty-two would have been sufficient, right? One thing’s for sure: He didn’t get killed for his sneakers. You see ’em?” Grady laughed. “My man here is sportin’ a pair of ‘ordans.’ Or maybe I’m missing something and that’s the rage these days.”
Strange and Quinn did not comment.
“Anyway, he’s dead. Justice in Drama City, right? Thought you guys would want to see him. For closure and all that.”
“You call his kin?” said Strange.
“His brother, the drug dealer. He’s coming down in a while to ID the body. I’m gonna let him tell their mother.”
“Thanks for calling us,” said Strange.
“Yeah, sure. Take care.”
Grady motioned to the photographer, indicating that he should take another picture of the corpse. Strange guessed that the photograph of a bloody Mario Durham, “sleeping” in the street with his hand slipped into his pocket, would soon be hanging on Grady’s wall.
Strange and Quinn ducked the crime tape and walked to their cars.
“Get in for a minute, Terry,” said Strange, nodding at his Caprice. “I want to talk to you before we go home.”
DEWAYNE Durham looked out the back window at the alley and the house on Yuma. The house was all lit up inside, and McKinley was standing in the kitchen with a man, big like him but muscular, not fat.
“Foreman,” said Durham. He raised his voice. “Bernard, better get in here.”
Soon Durham felt Walker behind him, looking over his shoulder.
“That’s Foreman, right?”
“Yeah.”
“What the fuck’s goin’ on?”
“I don’t know. But they’re leavin’ the house.”
“Maybe they’re just goin’ to their car.”
“You see either one of their cars out in that alley?”
Durham heard Walker pull back the receiver of his Glock and ease a round into the chamber of the gun.
“They’re comin’ over here,” said Walker.
Durham watched them cross the alley. His fingers grazed the grip of his gun. “He ain’t hidin’ nothin’, either.”
“I can smoke ’em both, they get close enough.”
“Before you do that,” said Durham, “let’s see what they got on their minds.”
Chapter 34
THE overheads of cruisers flashed the crime scene and threw colored light upon the faces of Strange and Quinn. A meat wagon had arrived for Mario Durham, and its driver was leaning against the van, smoking a cigarette. The neighborhood crowd had begun to break up and many were walking the sidewalks back to their homes. Some kids had set up a board-and-cinder-block ramp in the street and they were taking turns jumping it with their bikes.
“Same old circus,” said Strange, looking through the windshield from behind the wheel of the Caprice. He was holding his cell phone, flipping its cover open and closed.
“You feel robbed?”
“A little. In my heart I know I shouldn’t, but there it is.”
“I do,” said Quinn. “Everything we did today, all the running around and all the sweat, and I feel like we didn’t accomplish jack shit. Like we were one step behind everyone else.”
“Well, we’re not the law. They do have a little bit of an advantage on us. Anyway, we got the girl and her kid to a safe place. That was something.”
“Not enough for me. I’d feel a whole lot better if I’d accomplished something.”
“There’s always tomorrow.”
“I was thinkin’ you’d come with me over to Naylor before we head back to Northwest. Talk to those boys about Linda Welles.”
“Tonight?”
“Damn right.”
“Nah, man, my day is done. I’m gonna go home and have a late dinner with Janine, see my stepson, make sure Devra and the boy got settled in all right. Pet my dog. You need to go home, too.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Look at me, Terry. Promise me that’s what you’re gonna do.”
“I’m going home,” said Quinn.
“Good man,” said Strange.
Quinn listened to the click of the cover, then looked at the cell in Strange’s hand. “You gonna use that or just wear out the parts?”
“I been debating on making a call.”
“To who?”
“Dewayne Durham. I got his number from Donut, remember?”
“And what would you tell him?”
“It would be an anonymous call. I’d tip him that his brother got done by Horace McKinley or one of his people. I was thinkin’, a call like that, it might speed along McKinley’s demise.”
“Why would you do that?”
“McKinley threatened me, Terry. Threatened my family. Talked about me losing my license, my business, everything.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time you been threatened. You said it earlier, you let yourself get disrespected like that every day.”