Chapter 16

I don't know how much later it was when the intercom buzzed. I hit the button on the phone, and Cris' voice said, "Darvin, your wife is on line 1 – I think it's urgent."

"Thanks," I said, and punched off the intercom and grabbed the receiver in one motion. "Yeah?"

"Darvin, I have just now finished speaking with Bennie. He reports that he saw a friend of his, whom he knows only as Chief, getting into a vehicle near the university yesterday evening. He indicates that Chief did not seem to be willing; the appearance was of the application of duress. Do I report to you or the police?"

"To me, and then call Stubblefield."

"Very well. Chief is a male American Indian, black and black," she meant hair and eyes, "between 5'8" and 5'10", 170 to 180," she was referring to height and weight, "pot belly, hair shoulder blade length, usually in a ponytail, scanty mustache and goatee. Last seen wearing worn leather jacket, worn t-shirt, jeans, leather belt with brass buckle, no details on the buckle, and sneakers.

"The vehicle was some sort of SUV, Bennie believes a Chevrolet, dark – perhaps black or blue, New Mexico plates but no number, slightly dirty but no more than other vehicles.

"The other person Bennie did not get a very good look at – he was perhaps an Anglo, perhaps Hispanic, several inches shorter than Chief but stockier, perhaps powerful or perhaps fat, wearing a 'hoodie' and jeans." I could hear Cecelia giving the term for a hooded sweatshirt the slight emphasis that meant she regarded it as an uncouth word. Even in a report, speaking in a more clipped fashion than she usually does, she has her standards about what's proper.

"Bennie witnessed this from across the street – he was on the north side of Central at University, and Chief was in the parking lot of the 7-11 on the south side of Central."

"That's a pretty good description of Chief, about par on the vehicle. You must have pumped him good."

"I impressed upon him the vital nature of the information. I went over the descriptions three times, varying the approach; this is as good as I could get, and I rely on it as far as I would rely on any untrained witness' observations. I only wish I could have obtained more information about the suspect – at least I presume he is as much of a suspect as we have at present."

"Yeah, that's as good a term as any, but don't worry about it. You can't force people to observe or remember better. As to the rest, cool. Call Stubblefield, give him what you've given me, then come back here and write it up for the task force. When you talk to Stubblefield, ask if he's gonna put out a BOLO – I'm sure he will, and we don't wanna insult his intelligence, but by just asking for info we'll remind him if he needs it." A BOLO is an advisory to the street cops to Be On the LookOut for a person or vehicle.

"Acknowledged, Darvin – or, perhaps, I should say 10-4; you sound remarkably like a chief of police under whom I served." And she hung up.

I grinned as I hung up the phone. I'd been the chief she'd served under, during our year in Red Hawk, and as chief I'd issued orders from time to time. And I suppose that just now I'd sounded like I had back in Oklahoma whenever I needed to give orders.

I glanced at my watch, and saw that it was time for lunch. Cecelia wouldn't be back for a while yet – she had to call Stubblefield, she'd probably be a bit after that finishing up at the VIC, as I've heard veterans call it, and then she'd have to come back through Albuquerque traffic, which is about as courteous and rational as an angry alligator. I could go back to the house and nuke something, or I could go out – but it had been cold that morning as we'd walked across the yards to the office, and I didn't care to go back out in it, nor was I in the mood for nuked food.

I punched the intercom, and when Cris answered I asked, "You in the mood for pizza?"

"Siempre, patrón – soy una Chicana italiana."

"That's a lie, Cris," I told her with a grin, though of course she couldn't see the grin. "They ain't no such thing as Italian Chicanos. But if you'll call the pizza place and order – say, one pepperoni and one supreme, both large, with some breadsticks and beverages, I'll pretend I believe every word you said."

She rattled off something in Spanish so fast and complex I couldn't understand it – not that it's hard to baffle me in that language. I speak a bit of Spanish, and practice it whenever I can, but I'm about as fluent as I am female.

"Yeah, the same to you," I said with a laugh, and punched off the intercom. Cris had by now learned my very warped sense of humor, and even enjoyed my jokes, which proved both that she was adaptable and that she was completely insane – for only someone out of her mind could dig my jokes, which at best are about half funny. I knew she'd order the pizza, and what we didn't eat Cecelia would snarf down ... though Cecelia would never say "snarf," or "scarf," or any other such word. If she didn't want to simply say "eat," she'd fork a word out of her thesaurus mind that had about 32 syllables to it. She loves big words, and uses them as easily and naturally as the rest of us use the little ones.

It was two days after that, toward evening, and I was riding shotgun while Cecelia tried to track down a bail skip. We had other cases along, though most of our time went into the serial investigation – every day one or the other of us, if not both, would spend some time either at the mission or on the street talking to people, and three or four days a week we'd do nothing but the murder case. But murders are very rare for private investigators, no matter what you read or see on TV – our bread and butter is serving papers, tracking bail skips, searching for runaways, background checks, looking into whether an injury claim on an insurance company is valid or phony. I was determined that no matter what else was going on, I was going to train Cecelia in the stuff she'd be doing forever, or at least as long as she chose to be an investigator.