Red Man Down(76)

‘Is it here somewhere – do you still have it?’

‘What, the shred of lettuce? It’s in the garbage,’ Greenberg said. His nose twitched. ‘I’m not going through that.’

‘OK. Has he got a bruise on the back of his head?’

‘Not on the back. On the right side here, all around this ear, above and below – he’s pretty tan, but do you see the discoloration here on his jaw? How’d you know to ask me that?’

‘Angela had one on the back.’

‘Ah, yes, the hanging victim that gave Cameron so much anxiety.’ He was already feeling competitive towards the new doctor, Sarah saw. ‘Yes, well, this is very similar, in a way, I suppose, but there’s no attempt to disguise it as strangulation. All he shows in the way of marks is this bruise, left by a fist or some other device, that held the bag tight till the victim stopped trying to breathe.’

‘You would think,’ Sarah said, ‘that he’d have put up a monumental struggle, wouldn’t you? And in that confined space in the front seat – why isn’t everything all torn up?’

‘Because of this,’ he said, and showed her the taser marks on the right shoulder. ‘He was immobilized.’

‘Just like Angela,’ Sarah told her team when they reviewed the autopsy on Monday. ‘I think we can forget all the conjecture about suicide in her case.’

‘So now we’re looking for the murderer that did them both?’ Delaney said. ‘I thought you were all looking to hang this one on Joey’s buddies in the bar.’

‘Well, we all liked that better in the beginning,’ Jason said. ‘Nice and clean, and it fits his character – he got some money, came back to Tucson and started partying in a favorite bar, bragging to his mates, “So long, you suckers with jobs, I’m off to Mazatlan to play in the sun.” And one or two of his buds decided to get some of that cash he kept flashing.’

‘I still like it,’ Delaney said. Then, looking at Sarah, he said, ‘But you don’t want to settle for that, huh?’

‘I’m bothered by the similarity to Angela. The taser marks and the suffocation – that’s not a typical crime in Tucson. We live in a city awash in guns, and most of the mopes just go ahead and use them when they want somebody gone.’

‘That’s right,’ Leo said. ‘And there’s something else she’s right about. It’s in the report – the tellers at that small branch bank in Mesa get to know their depositors, and they say Joey made all the deposits into that savings account, and all the withdrawals that came out of it. The last withdrawal he made cleared the account – that was on the morning he died.’

‘I read that report too,’ Delaney said. ‘So?’

‘We know he never held a steady job in all those years, so where did the money come from if not from Frank and the credit union   here?’

‘He’s got a record of small crimes he got caught at. We don’t know how much thievery he was able to do in between without getting caught.’ Delaney obviously wasn’t convinced.

‘That would be occasional money, though,’ Leo said. Working with the bank examiners had given him a clearer feel for this case than the rest of the team. ‘Joey’s deposits were systematic, between fifteen hundred and two thousand a month for about four years. He’d have to have fantastic luck to get a steady income like that from fencing electronic toys and jewelry.’

‘You make it all sound very logical,’ Delaney said, ‘but Joey is dead, the money has disappeared, and we don’t have anything that proves he ever had anything to do with Frank or the money Frank supposedly stole.’

‘Still,’ Leo said, ‘we can’t just walk away from a string of four violent crimes in one family and say we don’t have a clue.’

‘I’m not saying we should. I’m saying what are we going to do next? I want to hear,’ he looked at his detectives, ‘what’s left to do that we haven’t done?’

‘Well, we have the DNA sampling that was done on the car,’ Sarah said. ‘We won’t have the results for some time, but—’

‘And when we do it may all match Joey García,’ Delaney said. ‘Let’s not pin our hopes on that.’

‘I’d like to go up to Mesa and interview each of those bank tellers,’ Leo said. ‘It’s a small bank and they remember things.’

‘I agree,’ Delaney said. ‘Anybody else?’

‘That laptop we gave to Tracy,’ Ollie said. ‘Where is it now?’