Red Man Down(6)

They had walked and talked their way back to the body, where everything had changed and was still changing for the man on the ground. Copper wire had no value for him now. He had been photographed many times, front and back, from every angle. His temperature had been taken and his eyes were closed. And he had found security at last – he had his very own toe tag now, with its own incident number, so there was no danger of his being mistaken for some other aspiring copper-wire dealer who might lie beside him on a shelf in the morgue.

His body bag was coming out of the transport van and he would lie inside it, growing colder and stiffer and then softening again while police detectives learned everything there was to know about him – except, perhaps, the answer to the question they had all begun to ask each other, looking around them at the multi-use buildings which, while not at the top of the heap commercially, were not entirely empty either – some had traffic coming and going, and every one had dozens of anonymous windows that blinked transparently down on his bagging-up.

So the whole crew of detectives had begun to ask each other, ‘What was he thinking?’

And before very long, from wondering that they went back and took another look at the dead man as if his face might hold the answer. And then another question began to circulate.

Ollie Greenaway asked Sarah, as soon as she walked up to him. ‘Doesn’t this guy look familiar?’

‘I kind of want to say he does,’ Sarah said. ‘But I’m not sure … number-five male, maybe forty, give or take? Thinner than average. And missing several teeth … maybe a tweaker, what do you think?’

‘Could be. Or a far gone alcoholic.’

‘Medium brown hair going gray, nondescript clothes. But he doesn’t look homeless, does he?’

‘Not quite dirty enough for that. Very shabby clothes, though.’

‘Looks like any guy down on his luck, and with a couple of bad habits.’

Cifuentes said, ‘Yeah, long-time unemployed is how I’d peg it. I know I’ve seen him, though. I just can’t say where.’ When the sergeant ended one of his many phone calls, Oscar repeated Ollie’s question to Delaney. ‘Doesn’t this guy look familiar?’

‘Kind of,’ Delaney said. ‘Probably got a local sheet.’ He turned to Spurlock. ‘You looked for ID?’

‘Yes. I couldn’t find any.’

‘He must have a driver’s license on him somewhere.’ A couple of them gloved up and searched the body. ‘Nothing, huh? How about the pickup? No? Did you look in his shoes?’

A stiff breeze had sprung up. Greenberg said he wanted to bag up his John Doe and get out of here before he turned stiff himself. For once Sarah agreed wholeheartedly with the doctor. She had her warm coat on and didn’t care about the cold, but she wanted to get Spurlock downtown. He had calmed down considerably during their walk but now Delaney’s rapid-fire, impatient questions were making him nervous all over again.

The crime-scene specialists were still going over the lot but the fingerprint lab tech was finished. The impound guys were working on the Dodge, getting it ready to tow. All the detectives had closed notebooks – there was nobody around to canvass – they were making phone calls, turning toward their cars. Then Jason Peete, who had been making an inventory of the items in the truck, came back, walked around the body one last time and said to Delaney, ‘Boss, I can’t remember his name but I think I know where I saw him last. Man, he’s really changed, though.’ His face crumpled into a huge grin and he crooned, ‘You are so going to hate this!’

Delaney, who did not appreciate Peete’s lapses into street behavior, said fiercely, ‘What?’

Suddenly serious, Jason said, ‘This man used to be a sergeant on the Tucson Police Force.’

‘What? Nah. Come on, Jason, that’s crazy.’

‘Can I help that? He musta been around for a while, too, because he was on the training crew for recruits when I went through the academy.’

‘Jason, now, that can’t be, I’m sure you’re wrong.’ Delaney hustled over to where Greenberg had just zipped up the body bag. A crime-scene specialist was standing ready to help him hoist the body onto the gurney, and as Delaney approached they squatted, Greenberg counted to three, and together they settled it onto the narrow cot. ‘Wait a minute,’ Delaney said, as they began to raise the securing straps, ‘I need to take another look.’

‘Oh, Sergeant, for God’s sake, what now?’ Greenberg yelled.

Delaney raised one hand in magisterial silence, bent, grasped the metal tab and pulled. When the bag opened enough to reveal the face, he motioned all his detectives over to stand beside him. ‘Once and for all now, anybody else think he looks familiar? Because I’ve been in this department a lot longer than you, Jason, and I certainly don’t remember this man around the academy.’