Body Heat. Brenda Novak

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      “That’s highly unlikely.”

      “It’s possible.”

      She wasn’t optimistic about his theory. Except for the fact that the couple had been killed execution style, the murders didn’t suggest it. As far as she could tell, this wasn’t Mexico’s problem. It was their problem. “There’s no evidence to support it. The victims all crossed the border from Mexico, but that’s about the only thing they have in common. Most of the people we’ve identified came from different regions and had no contact with organized crime. All the indications are that they didn’t previously know one another, either.”

      “I’m still hoping it’s a drug lord,” he muttered. “Because if this is a vigilante, it’s going to get ugly around here.”

      Sophia grimaced. “Take a look. It’s already ugly.”

      “Yeah, well, unless you can stop this guy, it’ll get worse.”

      “Thanks for stating the obvious.”

      He rolled the male onto his back. The victim had a goatee and the tattoo of a cross on his neck. A bloodstain indicated he’d been shot in the chest, but he hadn’t bled much more than the female.

      “Son of a bitch knows how to make quick work of it.”

      Vonnegut was talking about the killer, of course. Sophia had noticed that, too, but she wasn’t impressed. “A bullet at point-blank range is pretty effective.”

      Crouching beside him, she began to search the victim’s pockets. Sometimes UDAs carried voter registration cards. These cards seemed to hold more significance to Mexicans than the same thing did to Americans. Maybe because they included a photo, in addition to the standard name and address.

      Unfortunately, this guy didn’t have any ID. Sophia found five hundred pesos—roughly the equivalent of fifty bucks—tucked into his right sock, as well as a piece of paper with a phone number that had a Tucson area code.

      Suddenly light-headed, she swatted at the flies buzzing around the bodies and rocked back to fill her lungs with air that wasn’t pregnant with the smell of stale sweat and unwashed clothing. She hadn’t searched the woman yet, but she needed a moment to recover or she was going to be sick. Judging by the nausea roiling in her stomach, she was as pale as Grant had been the first time he saw one of the bodies.

      “Why do you live here?” she asked Dr. Vonnegut while watching Grant finish with the yellow tape.

      He was busy getting a body temperature. “What’d you say?”

      “Why do you live near the border if you hate Mexicans?”

      “I don’t hate Mexicans. I just want them to stay in their own country. Besides, my wife is from around here. And I like to be able to golf year-round.”

      “Makes sense.”

      “What about you?”

      Breathe. Mind over matter. Do not embarrass yourself. These are not dead humans. These are…objects.

      Squeezing her eyes closed, she turned her face up to the sun. “I’ve got family here, too,” she said, but she wasn’t talking about her mother and stepfather or her older brother. He didn’t live there anymore, anyway. She was thinking about Starkey. These days, she hated the Hells Angels and everything they stood for, hated that she’d ever had anything to do with them. She and Starkey had gotten together her junior year in high school, when her stepfather had moved in. Since her mother wouldn’t believe her complaints, and her older brother was away at college, Starkey had provided a deterrent to her stepfather’s advances. No one dared mess with her once Starkey came into her life. They knew there’d be hell to pay. She’d enjoyed the protection, as well as rolling on his Harley and wearing all that leather. But the longer she’d stayed with him, the more certain she was that she didn’t want to be an “old lady,” as the Hells Angels referred to their women. Determined to become a full patch member, Starkey was getting more and more committed to the club, which was so involved in drug and gun trafficking that she faced a different kind of risk from the one posed by her stepfather.

      So she’d broken free, moved out on her own and migrated to the opposite extreme—law enforcement. After feeling so vulnerable, both at home and with Starkey’s pals as she became more aware of what they were really like, being able to protect herself had meant everything to her. She loved being a cop. But there was one person from the Starkey era she couldn’t let go of, and that was Starkey’s son, Rafe. She didn’t care that he wasn’t technically hers; she’d taken care of him those three years she’d been with Starkey—especially the two years she’d lived with him—and she wouldn’t walk out on the boy. His real mother was a crackhead who’d sell her soul for another bump. In many ways, Sophia was all Rafe had.

      And she loved him. It came down to that.

      “Someday I’m going to move,” she added, and forced herself to search the dead woman. There was nothing in her pockets except some nuts and a folded piece of paper with several words written in Spanish.

      Sophia expected it to be a paper prayer. A lot of illegal immigrants carried them. But it wasn’t. It was a love note.

      Although Sophia wasn’t fluent in Spanish, she could read and understand most of what she heard. She’d taken two years of Spanish classes in high school and she’d come into contact with it almost constantly since, via the ranch hands who frequented her stepfather’s feed store and the Mexicans she apprehended. Fortunately, that was enough to be able to decipher the few sentences she saw written there.

      “You’re beautiful. Will you marry me? I love you. José.”

      This woman had left behind everything she owned except this note? That meant it had to be important to her. She was wearing a thin gold band. It wasn’t very expensive, but it was a wedding ring all the same. Obviously, she’d said yes to that proposal.

      Tears welled up in Sophia’s eyes. Trying to hide her reaction, she ducked her head, but Dr. Vonnegut immediately caught on that something was wrong.

      “Hey, you okay?”

      She averted her face. “Fine. Just doing my job. Why?”

      “You’re acting strange.”

      Was it so strange to experience grief for these people? To feel that their deaths mattered?

      She swallowed in spite of the lump clogging her throat. “I think the guy’s name was José.”

      “José what?”

      “That’s what I have to find out. And this—” she gazed at a face that, in life, would’ve been as pretty as the note suggested “—this was his wife.”

      “Dumb wetbacks,” he mumbled.

      Sophia whirled on him before she could stop herself. “Shut up!” she shouted. “Just…shut up!”

      Anger quickly replaced his initial shock. “You’re not cut out for this job. I knew it when they hired you,” he said. Then he got up, removed his plastic gloves and stomped away, leaving the bodies to the boys from the morgue, who put bags around the victims’ hands, in case they could СКАЧАТЬ