Chapter 3

We'd ridden south again, and were nearing the station in Albuquerque, which is on the south side of Central Avenue, when someone ahead of us in the car and on our side said, "How can he sleep right there next to the tracks?"

I looked out the window, and saw the man the voice must have been talking about. But I didn't think he was asleep. His clothes were ripped but not as you'd expect from normal hard wear, and the rips seemed to have stains around them. And he was as pale as I've ever seen anyone. As we drew slowly abreast of the man, I realized his eyes were open, unblinking. And though the sun was by now settling toward the western horizon, no one just stares up into the sky like that.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cell phone. I dialed 911 – some people may program that into speed dial, but I don't have occasion to use 911 every day, and anyway it's quicker to just enter the numbers and hit Send.

When the dispatcher answered, I said, "You'll need to respond a couple of homicide detectives and a crime scene team to the tracks just north of Central – about 100 yards, I'd guess." I'd looked out the window as I reached for my phone. "There's what appears to be a DB on the west side of the tracks."

I heard someone asking Cecelia what DB meant, and jumped in before she could be too honest. "It stands for drunken bum – not very PC, I know, but cop slang isn't." The man – for it had been a man who asked the question – nodded and retracted himself into his seat, apparently not having caught the reference to homicide cops.

"I'm on the Railrunner," I said in response to the 911 operator's question. "You'll find me and my wife – we both saw it – at the station. I'd suggest responding forthwith and talking to everyone sitting on the west side."

"Yes, sir," said the operator, no doubt thinking to herself that she knew her job and didn't need me telling her how to do it. But I was right – the sooner the cops got there the more people would be available to interview, and anyone sitting on that side of the train might have seen the corpse, and might have noticed something useful. A year ago, in Red Hawk, I'd have ordered exactly the same sort of response – except that town's so small that each of the four investigators handles whatever case he catches regardless of what it is, there aren't any tracks through town, and the murder we'd had during my one-year tenure as police chief had been the first in several years.

Cecelia didn't say anything about my lie while we were on the train, but once we'd gotten off she took me aside. "Why were you mendacious in your response to the meaning of DB?" she asked me.

"You wanna panic everyone?" I asked her in return, grinning a bit.

She nodded as the realization hit her. "You are of course correct." She gave me a very direct look. "You've told me before – many times over the years – that your work sometimes requires deceit in order to achieve justice. I abhor prevarication, but in this instance I must admit that you did the right thing, even if it was the dishonest one."

"You know my views on the point too," I said.

"Yes, I do. And there is no need to be short with me."

I took off my bullrider hat – the cowboy hat with the brim that, from the side, has a curve like a banana, like Charlie Daniels wears – and ran my hand through my hair. "I didn't mean to be short, C. I just got stuff on my mind. I've got all sorts of cop questions runnin' through my head just now."

"I appreciate you apology, Darvin," she said. "And I realize that I snapped at you without justification. I therefore tender my own apology. Now that I examine my own mind, I find that it too is occupied – and to some extent with 'cop questions, ' though I have far less law enforcement experience than you do." And she rubbed her hand on her stomach, where she'd gotten shot back in Red Hawk ... actually she'd gotten shot twice, but the other hit had been in her pocket, and even when she doesn't realize she's doing something, Cecelia's an exceedingly modest woman.

"Rememberin' the bruises, C?" I asked.

She looked startled, and then stared at her hand. "I suppose I am." She looked up at me – though it's not far up, since she's only an inch shorter. "I am, and always will be, grateful that you required me to wear my vest. Without it, even that small weapon Ramos had would have probably killed me."

"A 'mouse gun, ' China Bayles calls it," I said with a grin, speaking of the main character in one of the mystery series I like. "But a .22 is enough caliber to whack someone out, yeah."

I turned my head, for I heard sirens coming. And now that I realized it, I'd subconsciously noticed a siren or two already, and the blue and red flashing of light bars as cops pulled up and started holding us all in the station area – what the city calls the Alvarado Transportation Center.

I looked back at Cecelia. "Let's go find someone with a shield and tell 'im I called it in."

"Very well," she said, taking my hand. "It will be interesting to be on this side of an interview."

Yeah, that it would most definitely be.

In my years as a PI – 22 of them, now – I've had plenty of occasions to give information to the police. It's not like in fiction, where the PI would rather amputate his own head than tell the cops what time it is. A private investigator isn't a cop, but he's got obligations to the law and to justice, and if he wants to remain in business he'll make it a point to live up to those obligations. He has no more powers of arrest than any other citizen – there really is such a thing as citizen's arrest – and he has fewer powers when it comes to compelling people to give him information or let him examine evidence. One of the absolutely essential features of my long experience is cooperation with the police – I tell them things, especially when I've gathered evidence sufficient to justify an arrest in a case, and in return they tell me things. Without my sources in the Albuquerque Police Department, the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office, and the New Mexico State Police, I'd only be half as effective as I am.