BODY SCISSORS
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James
Torbett, the department's only black detective, was transferred
to Homicide three years earlier after Joey Velez died.
But where Joey had been volatile and streetwise, the center
of any drinking party, with a jovial smile and a boisterous
laugh, Torbett was a sober, restrained, churchgoing husband
and father in his early forties, the muscles of his face
perpetually clenched in an attempt, I guessed, to balance
opposing forces from within and without. Torbett had to
be about fifty times better than any cracker to get where
he got, the Jackie Robinson of the Austin Police Department.
He was humorless, efficient and quietly furious. And he
was clean, cleaner than anybody, cleaner than me. But
he wasn't stupid. He knew the department used him where
they needed him. Any other black victim or their family
would get the cop on call. But Virginia Key was famous,
Miles said. I'd never heard of her, most white people
hadn't. But the black community in Austin loved her, or
maybe hated her. Either way they'd be watching. Key got
Torbett.
Inside,
a dozen EMTs had trampled the house, obscuring 90 percent
of any trace evidence on the scene with their own microbes:
hair follicles and earwax and a thousand footprints. The
destruction of evidence was supported by the overkill
of five patrols. Dial 911 and you get ignored or you get
an army. Outside, in the melee, I scoped the yard, circled
the house and found the back door had been jimmied, though
an intruder could have punched through the glass or slipped
the lock with a table knife more easily. The crowbar lay
among the shrubs. I had a patrol bag it. By the time the
crowd cleared and I got back inside, two EMTs had moved
Mrs. Key into the kitchen and were talking to her, her
sobs still echoing through the house, breaking down now
like the cries of a child, weak helpless tones. Torbett
had assigned two of the patrols (Officer Laurel and Officer
Hardy) to check outside for footprints. He had the other
three (Officers Moe, Larry and Shemp) get statements from
the neighbors.
I
felt around the living room floor and discovered a bullet
casing only one, that someone had kicked under the sofa.
I showed it to Torbett and pocketed it for Ballistics.
Ron
Wachowski, chief crime-scene technician from the Department
of Public Safety and an avowed ex-liberal ("After
what I've seen"), had weaved in and out of the frenzy
until the wounded boy and dead girl were slid onto the
stretchers and carted off in two different directions.
He moved with agility for a man of sixty-five or so years,
gray hair flopping over his eyes like an aged Huck Finn.
He pulled Torbett and me away from the kitchen. "Wanna
bring over some cadets?" he twanged. "I got
a few inches of carpet nobody's stepped on yet."
"Anything?"
Torbett asked.
"He
came in the back way. How much he traveled around the
house is a mystery, thanks to the Union army treading
through. You can ask Mrs. Key if anything's missing. When
they got in and shut the door he walked there, by the
sofa." He pointed to a spot facing the front door
from about eight feet in. "Mrs. Key was here, a few
steps in from the door. The boy and girl had walked in
ahead of Mom and were here and here." He pointed
to two bloody splotches on the carpet by a marble coffee
table. "He fired one round. The bullet went through
the boy and hit the girl in the skull and stayed. The
girl dropped where she stood, right in front of her mother.
Look at this."
The
carpet was matted with blood and footprints so it was
hard to mark anyone detail from the rest. Ron pointed
out one original splotch of blood, not a smear or a footprint,
but blood spilled on that spot. And the blood had spilled
on top of a shoe, leaving an outline and a bit of tread:
one left sneaker.
"Figure
the boy struggled, and got shot in the process, bleeding
on the shooter's foot. The boy fell to the side and cracked
his head on the coffee table. The shooter bailed out the
front door, the quickest way." Amid all the bloody
footprints were only one set of sneaker prints. "I'll
take a print but I say those are Converse All Stars, size
7. Short strides. Little guy, or a woman, maybe five-six
tops, 120 pounds."
Mrs.
Key's sobs wafted in from the kitchen.
Torbett
asked, "Anything else?"
"I've
got some fingerprints. You'll have to check them against
the patrols and EMTs and the family. Don't count on anything.
And this." He held up a clear glass vial with what
looked like a combination of bodily fluids in it. "He
spit in the kitchen sink. If that was him."
It
seemed like an unlikely spin, that a killer would leave
his fluids behind in such a short visit. But we'd caught
a rapist once, easier than that. After the act, he stopped
in the bathroom to take a leak, lifted the toilet seat,
left his fingerprint on the underside. His thoughts were
elsewhere.
"You
can type him from mucus?" I asked.
"You
can if there's blood in it." I looked closer.
Ron
said, "The Southwest never gets a deep enough freeze
to kill germs that would die in colder climates. We're
a perfect petri dish for developing epidemics." He
pointed out a drop of red in the yellowed phlegm. "Austin,
Texas, meet tuberculosis."
We
considered the potential of an infectious killer on the
loose.
"On
the plus side," Wachowski added, "it's only
been an hour.
How far could he have gone?"
11:45
P.M.—Koenig Lane
It
was Mo's idea. Anything that crazy would have to be, Rainbow
John thought, as he steered his Lincoln east on Koenig
toward the quiet edge of town.
Normally,
he didn't do his own driving, but he needed a lack of
witnesses. By Mo's thinking, that would make John the
only witness. It would also make, as Mo would say, "the
continuation of John's stint on the planet a question
for debate, rather than a foregone conclusion. "
But John had no choice in the matter.
Of
all Mo's distributors, John seemed to be the one he called
whenever he had something crappy he needed done. This
time Mo got the idea to take the two craziest junkies
they knew, a wiry speed freak named Vic and a strung-out
heroin addict named Gaz, a limey with bad teeth, and hold
them hours after they started craving, till they groaned
with pain: chills, aching bones, nausea, like two kids
with a bad case of the flu, side by side on a velvet sofa.
Then put them in a room together in John's house, thanks
a lot. Whoever comes out first gets a fix. The other walks
away empty handed. Mo and Rainbow John watched through
holes they'd drilled in the door. All odds on Vic, the
speed freak.
The two junkies sized each other up a moment and Gaz shot
for the door. Vic was on top of him, wrapped him in a
half nelson and slammed him to the floor. Mo laughed gleefully.
Gaz rolled backwards on top of Vic, lifted himself up
a few inches and slammed his hip down into Vic's groin.
He rolled off but Vic held onto Gaz's arm and got up with
him, slamming them both against a wall. Vic got his hands
around Gaz's throat. Gaz kicked him in the gonads, then
leaned forward and bit Vic's hand. Vic pulled it away
and lost a bit of flesh. Mo howled. As Vic recoiled, Gaz
knocked him down, then kicked him and kept on kicking
him until Vic coughed blood and Mo got bored, and Rainbow
John finally opened the door and dragged Gaz out.
Mo's
professional distribution was mostly heroin now but he
kept cocaine and a few other treats in his private stock,
for himself and a few select friends. He jacked Gaz up
on cocaine, highlighting the Brit's natural violence with
a shot in the arm that transformed him, from sluggish
to desperate to flying, a psychopathic offshoot of Mo
himself. Since Gaz was Rainbow John's junkie, it was John's
job to drop him off near the bitch's house, circle the
block, wait, then pick him up. John's job to dispense
with him. And if he didn't, Mo would hold John personally
responsible, a proposition with several possible conclusions,
all of them painful.
John
heard the gunshot from where his Lincoln idled at the
corner, saw Gaz run out the front door against orders.
He pulled up close enough that Gaz dove in the back window;
then the Lincoln rolled away, headlights dark, toward
the bus station. There Rainbow John gave Gaz his own pants
and shoes, oversized by twice, to replace Gaz's bloody
ones, along with a bail of cash—fifty fifties—and
a packet of Lance, meth laced with strychnine to give
it a litte edge. But John had laced it with more than
a little strychnine. The tiny white packet had enough
for two fat lines, John thought, as he drove in his overcoat,
socks and boxers. If Gaz snorted one, he'd be dead, heart-attack
style. Like any junkie, the minute Gaz started coming
down from the coke they'd shot into him, he would snort
the whole bundle.
He'd better.
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