Body Heat. Brenda Novak

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СКАЧАТЬ there was Craig Tenney, a local dentist. He’d seemed nice enough until Alice Greville had come into the station claiming he’d touched her breasts while he had her under nitrous oxide. His other clients had rallied behind him, and Alice had never been able to prove her claim, but Sophia had started going to a dentist in Douglas.

      And last but not least, Stuart Dunlap showed interest. On the surface he seemed like an ideal candidate. Other than a bar fight six years ago, he’d had no brushes with the law. Along with his brother, he stood to inherit the Dunlap ranch—something Sophia’s mother constantly pointed out. Anne had no qualms about marrying for money. When her first husband filed for bankruptcy, she’d acted decisively to protect her standard of living. But Stuart walked around Bordertown acting as if he owned the place. Sophia couldn’t stand his arrogance. She preferred his brother, but Patrick was already married.

      The highway blurred beneath her front tire as she gave the bike more gas. She thought of Detective Lindstrom heading home for an enjoyable supper with her DEA husband and wondered if she’d complained to the sheriff about being left out of the action this morning. Sophia should’ve contacted her when the call came in. She’d guessed immediately that their killer had struck again. But knowing that the detective had ties to Leonard and wouldn’t mind seeing her out of a job made Sophia leery. A few hours ago, Lindstrom had called to see if she’d gotten the shell casings off to the state crime lab. Sophia said she had, but she’d actually sent them to a private expert, one Lindstrom would have little chance of finding. She’d also kept the third shell casing, in case her package got lost. Maybe her caution was overkill, but she had no plans to live with regret.

      Because it was growing dark, and it was a weeknight, only a handful of cars were waiting to gain entrance into Mexico. But, as usual, there was a long line of traffic stacked up to get out. Peddlers toted piggy banks, wool blankets, tooled leather wallets and purses as they wandered among the cars, hawking their wares.

      Sophia watched various drivers and passengers roll down their windows to inspect these goods while inching forward. When it was her turn to speak with a border agent, she pulled under the overhang that announced Bienvenidos a Naco, Sonora, México and showed a uniformed Mexican man her passport, which was now necessary to cross the border, although at one time a driver’s license had been sufficient. She wasn’t carrying her badge. As far as the officials along the border or anywhere else were concerned, she wasn’t going into Mexico on police business, and she wasn’t armed.

      After a cursory glance at her passport, the man waved her through, and the engine thrummed between her legs as she guided her bike into Naco, Sonora. It was just on the other side of the border from its sister city but was ten times the size. With nearly eight thousand residents, it had housing, motels and grocery stores—and plenty of indigents who begged for money.

      It also had more than its fair share of coyotes.

      Sophia could see them lounging against buildings or loitering on street corners, talking with anyone who passed. Some stood off by themselves—smoking, eyeing the scene, searching for potential customers. For a moment, the babel of voices frightened her. She’d been to Naco before; she knew it well enough to feel as comfortable as one could in a foreign and rather dangerous place. But she didn’t speak much Spanish. She was relying on the fact that many of the people here knew English.

      A group of men clustered at the entrance to the ram-shackle motel Su Casa watched her “unass,” as Starkey would’ve described it. She wasn’t sure why she suddenly thought of her ex-boyfriend. Maybe because she sort of wished she’d brought him with her. He was no pillar of the community, but she did enough for Rafe that he treated her cordially, and he could hold his own in the worst of circumstances.

      Whistling and grinning as she removed her helmet, the men made their appreciation clear. They also spoke to one another in Spanish, using words like espléndido and atractiva. Despite numerous attempts, Sophia hadn’t been able to reach the person attached to the number she’d found in José’s sock, so she still didn’t have any identification. But, unlike the situation with the previous victims, she had pictures that showed an actual resemblance. She’d downloaded the photographs she’d taken at the scene and printed out several copies of the clearest ones before leaving the station.

      As she approached the group, most of whom were in their mid-twenties, she took a photo of each body from her back pocket. “Maybe you can help me.”

      Several were dressed in dirty “wifebeater” T-shirts and plain gray pants with thin-soled black canvas shoes. Others wore jeans and various kinds of shirts. They’d all been lounging against whatever was close by—the side of the building, a pillar, a foul-smelling trash can—but once she addressed them they straightened and stepped toward her.

      “Can you tell me who these people are?” she asked, holding the photos out for them to see.

      The closest one took the pictures and stared down at José and his wife. Then he handed them back. “No hablo Inglés.”

      “Nombre.” She pointed at the pictures again and gave them to someone else.

      “These people are dead.” The second man’s English was heavily accented but definitely understandable.

      “That’s the problem,” she told him. “I’m trying to figure out how they got that way.”

      “So…you’re a cop?” He laughed, making his skepticism obvious. “You don’t look like no cop.”

      She lifted her shoulders in a little shrug. “Right now I’m just a concerned citizen.”

      “A concerned citizen,” he repeated, and squinted as he studied the pictures a second time. “These two were killed crossing the border, eh? Like the others?”

      It was no surprise that he knew. The previous murders had been in the papers, and Naco was right on the border, only ten miles from where some of the shootings had occurred. “Yes.”

      “Who are you?”

      The insolence in his eyes unsettled her, but she steeled herself against it. She’d hung out with enough Hells Angels to know better than to reveal vulnerability. “A friend. At least to them.”

      He rubbed his fingers together in the classic sign that he wanted her to grease his palm. “How much you willing to pay?”

      In a town where men rushed to hold parking places or dashed into the street to wash car windshields, hoping for tips, she’d expected this and planned to use it to her advantage. “Fifty U.S.”

      “For…”

      “Información. On either one of them. Or anyone you feel might’ve had something to do with their deaths.”

      “You pay first?”

      She laughed as she shook her head. “Sorry, I’m not estúpida, eh? I’ll wait in the cantina across the street.”

      “What do you want to know?”

      “Where they came from, how and when they crossed the border, who they were with before they died, if anyone’s seen or heard anything strange or out of the ordinary lately that might be related to their murder.”

      “That’s a lot, no?”

      “You gotta start somewhere.”

      He thought for a moment. “Job like that could take СКАЧАТЬ