Out Cold by William G. Tapply Page A

a coincidence,” said Mendoza. “Or maybe there’s a connection.” She shrugged. “I don’t really believe in coincidences. I believe in cause and effect. I always go on the assumption that for every effect, there’s a logical cause.” She looked up at me and shook her head. “But sometimes there just isn’t. Sometimes things just…happen. Things without causes. Coincidences. They happen all the time. Especially to homeless people. Homeless people get killed all the time.”
    â€œMurdered,” I said.
    She shrugged.
    â€œAll the time?”
    â€œYou know what I mean. Too much. Homeless people are instant victims.”
    â€œYou don’t hear much about those cases,” I said.
    â€œSometimes we can’t even identify the victims,” said Mendoza. “Even when we do, it’s often a person without anybody who cares about them anymore. We take every single one of them seriously, believe me. Murder is murder. But when homeless people get murdered, it’s generally they’re killing each other, no particular motive, and nobody ever knows anything. The six o’clock news, they aren’t much interested in stories about homeless, nameless people. We do our best, but we’re not proud of our solve rate.”
    â€œAre you going to tell me what happened to Sunshine?”
    She nodded. “Last night—this morning, actually, around two a.m.—they found her—her body—her dead body—in an alley behind a Chinese restaurant down off Beach Street, few blocks from the Shamrock, where she was staying. Old Chinese guy was closing up, emptying the night’s trash, saw her lying there beside the Dumpster. Her throat had been ripped open. Not what you’d call sliced. Not neat and clean like you’d get with a nice sharp razor or knife. More like somebody had taken the neck of a broken bottle and rammed in into her throat, twisted it around.” She looked up at me.
    I blew out a breath. “Okay,” I said. “You’re trying to upset me.”
    She shrugged. “It’s upsetting. What do you want?”
    â€œA broken bottle?” I said. “The kind of weapon some homeless person would use, you think?”
    â€œA spur-of-the-moment weapon,” said Hunter. It was the first thing he’d said. His voice was deeper and raspier than I’d expected. “A weapon of opportunity.”
    â€œOr maybe somebody trying to make it look like a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
    He gave a little cynical shrug.
    I looked at him. “You think this was an argument or something random like that?”
    â€œSure, like that,” Hunter said. “We seen it before. Homeless people, you know?”
    â€œThe people we talked to,” said Mendoza, “said everybody knew that Mrs. Quinlan had a job and was saving her money. There wasn’t any money on her when they found her body this morning. That’s what we’ve got for a motive, such as it is. They took her money. Emptied her pockets, probably.”
    â€œThey killed her for a few bucks?”
    She shrugged. “They kill each other for less.”
    â€œThey took the photo, too,” I said.
    She shrugged “Whatever. It’s the usual violent bullshit that goes on among marginal people, and we’re trying to get a handle on it. Who her allies and enemies and sexual partners were. Who was jealous of her, whose feelings she’d hurt, who wanted something she had. Homeless people are always on the edge of disaster. Just about all of them have serious psychological problems. They have diseases, but they don’t have the medication they need. AIDS is rampant. So is hepatitis. You name it. They’re extremely possessive and jealous and territorial. Paranoia is the norm. And violence. Homeless people tend to get murdered, Mr. Coyne. They’ll kill each other over a pair of boots or a crust of yesterday’s pizza