“What happened to him?”
“Walking through the alley, got stabbed from behind about ten times with a big knife, then ten more times in the front.”
“Overkill,” said Milo.
“I'll say.” Pierce's hands worked faster at his hem. “Can you imagine, unable to see it, just feeling it- this is some so-called alleged civilization we're allegedly living in.”
He directed the last words at me, staring, as he'd done off and on since being introduced. Was it my unshaven face or the fact that Milo had introduced me as a consultant?
Milo said, “Any estimates when it happened, Bob?”
“Sometime late in the afternoon. M.E. said the body was pretty fresh.”
“Who discovered him?”
“One of our patrol cars- how's that for something new? They were rolling up the alley, saw a leg sticking out from behind one of the dumpsters. At first they figured him for a crackhead who fell asleep and got out to roust him.”
“Late afternoon,” said Milo. “Working hours. Pretty risky.”
“Not if you're a no-brain sociopath. And he got away with it, didn't he?”
Pierce gave a sour look. “The thing is, even though it's working hours, this particular alley's been pretty quiet, lots of the buildings on Wall are vacant. And for the most part the people who work either on Main or Wall stay out of it because it used to be a crack market. The only citizens who do go in there are the janitors who take the garbage to the dumpsters.”
Milo peered down the alley. “The dumpsters give good cover.”
“You bet. One after the other, like rows of shacks. Reminds me of those little green houses in Monopoly.”
“So it's not a crack market anymore?”
“Not this week. Policy order from headquarters: Mayor says get a handle on quality-of-life offenses, let's make our downtown a real downtown so we can pretend we're living in a real city. HQ says knock the dope rate down pronto but without any additional personnel or patrol cars. Which is about as likely as O.J. feeling remorse. The way it plays out is we up patrol for one alley, the crackheads move to another. Like Parcheesi- bumping and moving, everyone goes in circles.”
“How often are the patrols?”
“A few times a day.” Pierce pulled out a pack of mints. “Obviously not at the right time for poor Mr. Myers. Helluva place for a blind guy to get lost in.”
“Lost?” said Milo.
“What else? Unless he was a crackhead himself, looking for something recreational, didn't know the action's three alleys over. But I'm choosing innocent til proven guilty unless I learn different. At this point, he got lost.”
“I thought blind guys had a good sense of direction,” said Milo. “And if he went to school around here, you'd think he'd know about the neighborhood, be extra careful.”
“What can I tell you?” said Pierce. Another glance back. “Well, there it goes.”
Coroner's attendants lifted a black body bag onto a gurney. As the wheels moved over the ravaged asphalt, the car rattled.
Milo said, “One second, Bob,” strode over, said something to the attendants, and waited as they unzipped the bag.
“So you're consulting,” Pierce said to me. “I've got a daughter at Cal State, wants to be a psychologist, maybe work with kids-”
Milo's voice made us both turn.
He'd walked past the coroner's station wagon, was standing near the east wall of the alley, half-concealed by a dumpster, the visible slice of his bulk whitened by a floodlight.
Pierce said, “What, now?” He and I went over.
The chalk outline of Melvin Myers's body had been drawn unevenly on the pitted tar. Right-angled. Folded. I could see where his foot had stuck out.
The oily rust of bloodstains all around.
A pothole in the center of the outline created a symbolic wound.
Milo pointed at the wall. His eyes were bright, cold, satisfied but enraged.
The red brick was blackened by decades of smog and grease and garbage distillate, a mad jumble of obscene graffiti.
I saw nothing but defacement. Same with Pierce. He said, “What?”
Milo walked to the wall, stooped, put his finger near something just inches from where the brick met the floor of the alley.
Behind the spot where Melvin Myers's head would have rested in death.
Pierce and I got closer. The garbage stench was overpowering.
Milo's fingertip pointed at four white letters, maybe half a handbreadth tall.
White chalk, just like the body outline, but fainter.
Block letters, printed neatly.
DVLL.
“That mean something?” said Pierce.
“It means I've complicated your life, Bob.”
Pierce put on his reading glasses and pushed his big jaw up to the letters.
“Not exactly permanent. Usually the idiots use spray paint.”
“It didn't need to be permanent,” I said. “The main thing was to deliver the message.”
37
Milo gave Pierce more details as we returned to Fourth Street.
“Different M.O.s, different divisions for each one,” said the Central detective. “Some piece of crap playing games?”
“That's what it looks like.”
“Who're the other Ds?”
“Hooks and McLaren in Southwest, Manny Alvarado in Newton, and we just picked one up that doesn't fit except for a DVLL link that's Hollywood's. D-I named Petra Connor, works with Stu Bishop.”
“Don't know her,” said Pierce. “One day Bishop's gonna be chief. Why isn't he in on it?”
“On vacation.”
“So what're we talking about, some coordinated effort?”
“Nothing to coordinate so far,” said Milo. “We've just been trading info and not much of it. Gorobich and Ramos did the whole crime-scene thing with the FBI and didn't get much either.”
Leaving out one particular detective.
Pierce clicked his upper teeth against his lowers. Perfect teeth. Dentures. “What do you want me to do, here?”
“Hey, Bob, far be it from me to tell you what to do.”
“Why not? My wife does. And her mother. And my daughters. And everyone else with a mouth… Okay, what I'm gonna do tonight is write this up as a 187 committed during a robbery. Then I'll try to see if Mr. Myers has a family. And a drug record. If there's a family, I make that call. If not, I visit the trade school tomorrow, see if he was a student, take it from there.”
Pierce smiled. “If I'm feeling really nasty, I call Bruce at midnight and tell him hey, guess what you'll probably still be working on when I'm fishing at Hayden Lake, trying to figure out which of my neighbors is an Aryan Nations nutcase and which one just hates people on general principle.”
“Would it traumatize you,” said Milo, “if I try to find out about Myers tonight? Run him through the files, maybe check out the school.”
“The school's closed.”
“Maybe they've got an off-hours number, someone who can confirm he was a student, tell us something about him.”
Pierce's eyes seemed to twinkle but the rest of his face expressed nothing. “Insomniac?”
“I've been living with this one for a while, Bob.”
“Yeah, go ahead, why not? You can call the family, too. And while you're at it, take my dog to the vet to get his anal glands squeezed.”
“Forget it. Don't mean to muscle in.”
“Hey, I'm kidding- go ahead, do what you want. I've got forty-eight days left before I trade smog for Nazis and no way am I gonna finish this one by then. Just keep me cued in from time to time, I need straight paper.”
He faced me. “This is police work in action. Enjoying the consulting, so far?”
Driving away, I said, “There's no way anyone else would have noticed those letters. A message but a private one.”
He twisted the wheel, drove to Sixth Street, hung a sharp left, and headed west, racing through the dark downtown streets. The only people visible were living out of shopping carts.