CHAPTER FOUR
1880 Words
CHAPTER FOUR
Alexa watched as the forensics team carefully scraped the soil away with all the care of an archaeological excavation. They had already stripped off six inches of soil to partially uncover a dozen bodies. They lay in an orderly row, all men, mostly young and mostly Hispanic.
Alexa and Stuart had watched this meticulous, grisly process for the past couple of hours, phoning in regularly to Rebstock to keep him updated. He hadn’t been out yet. He was on the scene of another murder, a sixty-year-old man who had stabbed his wife of thirty years to death with a pair of scissors. The evil of the world did not rest just because they had uncovered a major tragedy.
The CSI team brushed away dirt from the faces and worked around the edges of their bodies to reveal more of their appearance. The corpses looked like ghosts materializing out of the earth.
The team’s head, Annette Guevara, was everywhere, checking, making notes, giving instructions. A genius at her work, she could tease out clues from even the subtlest crime scene.
With something like this, she could discover volumes.
At the moment she crouched over the head of one of the bodies in the middle of the row, staring at it. Her long brown hair was tied up in a bun, and her pretty features were set in concentration. She looked younger than her age, almost like a teenager, although no teenagers Alex had ever met could concentrate this hard on anything.
At last she stood, wiped the dirt off her knees in an absentminded gesture, and walked over to them. Without preamble or even a hello, she started talking.
“We’re dealing with a left-handed male who is fairly strong but not overly so, and with great physical reflexes. His preferred weapon is a 9mm automatic, but he killed several of the victims with blunt force trauma. In every case, he shot them in the back of the head execution style, often a couple of hours after they were dead.”
“That’s odd,” Stuart said, handing his girlfriend a double espresso he had bought at the last gas station they’d passed. Alexa stifled a smile. He was like her puppy dog, if puppy dogs could buy espressos at gas stations.
“Thanks, baby,” Annette said. “It was done in what looks like a ritual fashion. For the ones who were already dead, and therefore a bit more cooperative, he would stand in the exact same position. About five or six feet behind and a little to the right.”
She took a sip of her coffee and went on. “Time of death ranges from eight to ten days to two days. In each case he remembered where he buried the previous victim and dug a grave right next to him. He made an orderly row with the first victim on one end and his final victim on the other.”
Alexa considered this. It would have been a difficult thing to do in the dark.
“Any sign that he got injured in any of these fights?” Alexa asked.
“Nope. None of the knuckles show any scraping or bruising from throwing a punch. I’ll have to check the knees when I undress them, but I doubt I’ll find anything. There aren’t many defensive wounds and any of those are glancing. That’s one of the ways I know he was quick.”
“What do you mean by glancing defensive wounds?” Alexa asked. Sometimes you had to bring Annette down to earth.
“Meaning that when the victim brought up his arm to stop some blunt force trauma, the bruise or break wasn’t directly on the arm. It was on the edge of the arm because they didn’t get the arm up quick enough. In at least one case, the guy lying three bodies away from us, tried to block his face, but the weapon barely hit the forearm before continuing on to break the right cheekbone. I’ll probably find more examples once I get them cleaned up.”
“So what was this blunt weapon?” Stuart asked.
“Different in each case. One looks like the wooden handle of a tool. Another was probably a wrench—the victim had grease stains on his clothes and under his nails, so he probably worked in a garage or body shop—and a couple with what looks like a tire iron. Most victims had only bullet wounds, although I might find more evidence of blunt force trauma when I undress them.”
Alexa had the odd thought that because Annette would be so busy tonight with the case, she would be spending time with n***d corpses instead of a n***d Stuart.
Ugh, why did I even think of that? This job is getting to me.
“Thanks, Annette, keep us posted,” Alexa said, trying to keep her voice level.
“I always do.”
The CSI team leader reached out and brushed Stuart’s chest with her fingertips as she turned and walked back to the mass grave.
“Looks like Cortez told the truth in a bigger way than we ever imagined,” Stuart said, watching her go.
Alexa nodded.
Yes, the g**g leader had been right.
Cortez was right about something else too. They did have him on surveillance, and he hadn’t been out of Phoenix in two weeks. It would have been impossible for him to commit the bulk of the murders.
He could have ordered them, though.
Alexa had some tough questions for him at their meeting this afternoon.
* * *
Once again, they sat in the interrogation room with Jeronimo Cortez and his attorney. Homicide Detective Rebstock came with a folder tucked under his arm. The deal with the D.A.?
She and Stuart flanked the detective like before. For a moment, both sides stared at each other in silence.
“So?” Cortez asked at last.
“Twelve bodies,” Rebstock said. “All shot in the back of the head, execution style. Some had other wounds, a few fatal, but your man finished them off with a shot to the back of the head, even if they had already been dead a couple of hours.”
Cortez nodded. “That’s his way.”
“Five were in your g**g. A couple more we’re not sure about. A few others had records. d**g dealing. Armed robbery. But at least three seem to be civilians. That includes the two most recent ones.”
“He’s going after my people, but if he can’t find one in time, he takes somebody else out. Now that you busted twenty of my guys and sent a few more to the hospital and the morgue, he’s going to have slim pickings. He’ll be going after civilians even more now.”
“What do you mean, ‘in time?’” Alexa asked.
Cortez made a face. “He likes to kill. I mean, when you do what we do, killing is something that happens. Not that I’ve ever had to pull the trigger.” Rebstock snorted. “But he actually likes it. He was one cold guy. Then about a month ago he changed. I don’t know why. He just started capping people for no reason. Usually guys from other gangs, so we didn’t complain too much, but it caused problems. We don’t start beefs. It’s bad for business. He got the whole city going crazy.”
Alexa remembered there had been an uptick in g**g shootings in and around Phoenix, as well as a few known g**g members going missing. This killer was responsible for all that?
“We need a name,” Rebstock said.
Cortez looked at the folder the homicide detective had placed on the table in front of him.
“I need a deal.”
Rebstock slid it over to the lawyer, who opened and read it. Cortez leaned in and read it too.
Alexa and Stuart traded glances. Assuming Cortez hadn’t made the hits himself, trying to weasel his way out of them in a very unusual fashion, this was big. Really big.
And if Cortez didn’t take the deal, a lot more people would die before they tracked the killer down.
Plus, there was no way to threaten Cortez. They had nothing to hold over him. He was already facing life in prison and a very good chance of execution. This was his one lifeline. If he tossed that aside, they had no power over him.
The lawyer frowned.
He gave Rebstock a sharp glance and said, “I need some time alone with my client.”
Rebstock lifted his heavy frame out of the chair and motioned for Alexa and Stuart to come with him. Out in the hall, he said,
“He’s probably going to hold out for more concessions. The D.A. gave me a fair amount of room to maneuver. I’ll keep the pressure up, though. I know Jero. I busted him years ago when he was just a low-level runner and I was a street cop. He cares about his people. Los Diablos Auténticos is like a family to him. While he wants to protect himself, he wants to protect them too. If this ex-member is really on a rampage like he appears to be, Jero will c***k before long.”
Alexa noticed Rebstock used the familiar short form of Cortez’s first name. This was something she had seen in many cops who had been around for a while. They got to know certain criminals so well they were almost like troublesome friends. She’d even known cops who visited the guys they busted in prison. The cons felt the same for some officers.
She even knew of a case where a cop was the victim of a nonfatal shooting and a guy the officer had arrested for stealing cars snitched on the shooter, at great risk to himself.
Cops and criminals were enemies, no doubt about it, but their lives grew so intertwined that with some of them, a level of mutual respect and camaraderie was bound to develop.
They walked down the hall to the main office, heading for the coffee machine. It had been a long day already and it would continue to be so. The office buzzed with activity. Cops and detectives took calls or interviewed witnesses or busied themselves on their computers filling out the endless paperwork that every officer of the law got burdened with on a daily basis.
As they came to the coffee machine, the scanner nearby crackled to life.
“Report of bodies found at 702 Finch Lane. I need a unit to respond.”
“Unit 32 here. We’re a couple of blocks away. We’ll take it.”
“Aw, hell,” Rebstock said. “That’s a d**g house. The narcotics division has been gathering evidence on them.”
“A d**g house?” Stuart said. “This could be our man. Cortez said he’s been killing people from other gangs.”
“Let’s go,” Alexa said.
They hurried out of the building. The coffee would have to wait, even though a long day had just gotten a whole lot longer.
- Writer
