Chapter 28

After we'd all thanked Kevin and he'd left, Lt. Stubblefield made a call on his cell phone to have someone query the NCIC computer for whatever it had on Lorenzo "Leech" Mathis. "But there won't be anything," he growled. "We already fed his prints into AFIS and got nothing back." NCIC is the National Crime Information Center, and AFIS is the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, both useful databases that – like all databases – are only as good as the information people put into them.

"How does a biker in a violent gang manage not to have his prints on file?" Cecelia asked.

"Assuming that it's just not a matter of about 26 different police departments not bothering to feed the information to the computers, we got one of two very odd ducks – either he was a biker who never committed a crime, or he was a crook who somehow managed never to get caught."

"Neither of those possibilities seems terribly likely."

"Nope – but one of 'em's got to be right, and I'd guess the last one. Very occasionally someone's either lucky enough, or smart enough, to go through a life of crime without ever gettin' busted."

Rudy grinned down the table at me. "I think it's a good thing we're not checking your friend's prints."

"If anyone else said that, amigo," I told him, "I'd bust my knuckles on his teeth."

"Lo sé," he said.

Beside me Cecelia rattled something off in Spanish, so fast that I couldn't catch even a word.

"Es verdad," Rudy replied.

"And what," I demanded, "is the truth?"

Cecelia grinned at me. "Just that if you tried to harm him, you would find yourself in a hospital bed wondering what happened to you."

I grunted. "The sorry thing is you're probably right – Rudy's a tough old bird."

"Si soy viejo, hermano, " he told me, "tu eres muy antiguo."

"I actually understood that," I said.

"And on that note," Stubblefield said, "let's get back to work."

"Sure," I said. "But before I dive in again, I want to remind y'all of how useful this review is. I'd seen those photos before – and never realized I was lookin' at the colors of the Fresno Skulls. Without this review, I wouldn't have realized it today, and we'd still be callin' this guy John Doe #3. Y'all are professionals an' know this as well as I do – but if you decide to just skim through a file an' go on, remember just how silly I look right now havin' to recognize the tattoo on my second time through instead o' the first."

Everyone laughed, and we did in fact dive in again.

And having dived in the morass of the files for a little over two weeks, we didn't find anything else that we'd previously missed. And meanwhile more information was coming in – while the task force proper was huddled in the conference room poring over documents and pictures, other officers were out on the streets, trying to come up with more information. Uniformed officers and detectives both were at it, some under Lt. Stubblefield's direction and others on their own, in between the other things they had to do. And none of it was helpful, at least not that we could see. And the longer we went without a break in the case, the closer we came to finding another body – we knew that for certain.

And the day after we ended the review in frustration, the next body in fact turned up. I was in my office listening to Enya – still – while Cecelia went over the books with Cris. Darlia was out with Mama and Daddy, seeing who knew what – our daughter's a good tour guide. The review had taken us away from the office and the family, and we both hoped that now that it was over we could break loose a day or two.

The phone rang, and before I could grab it the steady light went on that indicated someone else had. I leaned back and stuck my boots back on the corner of the desk, prepared to vegetate some more, but I'd hardly gotten comfortable when Cecelia was in the doorway, shrugging into her trench coat, which she's taken to wearing more and more. "We need to go," she said. "There's another body, and they're holding the scene for you."

I didn't say a word – just stood up, slung my jacket on, grabbed my hat, and followed Cecelia out the door. Cris waved as we went, but I was too angry to do more than nod – angry not at her, but at whoever was massacring people in my city.

Cecelia had a sticky paper she'd written the location on, and she navigated while I drove. It was along Tramway, between Cloudview and Copper, in the weeds and brush between the road and an apartment complex. There were a couple of dirt foot trails there, one close to the road and another down in the hollow closer to the apartment fence, but at any given moment there might be no one in view, and traffic on Tramway couldn't see the body where it was down in the brush. And of course the perp would have dumped the body at night – once more in a semi-public spot where someone would come across it fairly soon.

There was the requisite crime scene tape, and the requisite flock of cop cars with lights flashing parked haphazardly around. The right lane southbound was closed, and traffic was creeping along in the left lane – everyone deciding that it was more important to gawk at the police activity than pay attention to the road and get where they were going. A cop at the intersection with Cloudview – it's Encantado on the east side of Tramway – must have recognized the Blazer, for he halted traffic and waved me over toward the scene, where another cop lifted the tape so I could ease under it. I parked on the shoulder facing north, and Cecelia and I got out of the Blazer.