contestants to another and then snapped it off and padded barefoot into the kitchen to begin chopping onion for a small breakfast steak. Despite years of rotating day and night shifts, he had never adapted to a combination of eggs and late-afternoon sun.
And, as usual, the apartment’s faint echo made him think of Lorraine. Which was silly, because the victim didn’t look anything like Lorraine. His ex-wife’s hair was reddish brown and long, and turned gold only when she fanned it smoothly over her shoulders in the sun. He wondered if it was still that way, if she still wore it straight down her back. And he wondered why he bothered wondering; two years was a long time, and even then he had not often seen her hair spread in the sun like that. Una mujer sabrosa . That’s what he called her—a savory woman. And she had been. But she was not a cop’s wife.
On his last visit to his mother’s, his sister had been sure to tell him—using the voice that went all the way back to the smell of chalk dust and oiled schoolroom halls, to the pervasive rotting-apple-and-wet-paper-bag smell of third grade—that Lorraine now had a boyfriend. Who was not a cop.
“What’s he do?” Wager couldn’t help the question.
“What business is it of yours?”
It wasn’t, any more. But what business did his sister have to say anything in the first place? Not that it ever stopped her. “It’s a cop’s question. I’m a cop.”
“You sure are.”
The rest of the dinner had been very strained.
He poured himself another cup of coffee and wandered out on his apartment’s small balcony thrust over Downing Street ten floors below. Behind Denver, the tops of the shadowed mountains merged with piles of cloud pushing in from Utah to make the peaks seem even taller, even darker. Above the heavy cloud banks, an orange streak of contrail caught the sun as an airplane left Stapleton International for San Francisco or Los Angeles. Wager had been to California once. Camp Pendleton. He remembered the hills lying tawny and empty to a steady wind; and the ocean, even emptier, which moved and writhed wherever his eye rested, and which, despite its name, was never peaceful. Maybe he would take a vacation someday and see more of California. God knows he had the time coming. He drained his coffee and padded back to the kitchen to rinse the cup out. Crap on a vacation. He didn’t really want one. He didn’t know anybody in California. What he really wanted was the victim’s name. There wasn’t one more goddamned thing he could do until he knew her name, and the longer that took, the longer the odds were against a conviction.
He dressed and glanced over the items in his small green notebook, deciding to put off the telephone work until later and to do the legwork while it was still light. His first stop was the area where the torso had been found the previous afternoon. It took him awhile to twist his way over the rough streets and bumpy railroad tracks between grimy columns that lifted the bed of the Valley Freeway above this part of Denver. The old factories and foundries lining the railroad spurs were closed for the day, and the empty remnants of buildings that had been condemned long ago but never torn down were boarded shut with faded plywood or rotten beams. He finally passed the tangle of weeds and willow and stretches of wet sand that was the shallow South Platte River, and turned in to a short street of sagging buildings. Here and there, sprayed graffiti spelled gang names; Wager remembered “Los Lobos” from ten years past. The “Iron Men” had been even before his time. There were no new names. In a small turret capping the second floor of a deserted office building, a square stone held the date 1892. He stopped in the middle of the empty street to listen. Behind, from the Valley Highway on the other side of the South Platte, came the roar of heavy traffic; in front, but out of sight behind a treeless embankment, were the hiss and
And, as usual, the apartment’s faint echo made him think of Lorraine. Which was silly, because the victim didn’t look anything like Lorraine. His ex-wife’s hair was reddish brown and long, and turned gold only when she fanned it smoothly over her shoulders in the sun. He wondered if it was still that way, if she still wore it straight down her back. And he wondered why he bothered wondering; two years was a long time, and even then he had not often seen her hair spread in the sun like that. Una mujer sabrosa . That’s what he called her—a savory woman. And she had been. But she was not a cop’s wife.
On his last visit to his mother’s, his sister had been sure to tell him—using the voice that went all the way back to the smell of chalk dust and oiled schoolroom halls, to the pervasive rotting-apple-and-wet-paper-bag smell of third grade—that Lorraine now had a boyfriend. Who was not a cop.
“What’s he do?” Wager couldn’t help the question.
“What business is it of yours?”
It wasn’t, any more. But what business did his sister have to say anything in the first place? Not that it ever stopped her. “It’s a cop’s question. I’m a cop.”
“You sure are.”
The rest of the dinner had been very strained.
He poured himself another cup of coffee and wandered out on his apartment’s small balcony thrust over Downing Street ten floors below. Behind Denver, the tops of the shadowed mountains merged with piles of cloud pushing in from Utah to make the peaks seem even taller, even darker. Above the heavy cloud banks, an orange streak of contrail caught the sun as an airplane left Stapleton International for San Francisco or Los Angeles. Wager had been to California once. Camp Pendleton. He remembered the hills lying tawny and empty to a steady wind; and the ocean, even emptier, which moved and writhed wherever his eye rested, and which, despite its name, was never peaceful. Maybe he would take a vacation someday and see more of California. God knows he had the time coming. He drained his coffee and padded back to the kitchen to rinse the cup out. Crap on a vacation. He didn’t really want one. He didn’t know anybody in California. What he really wanted was the victim’s name. There wasn’t one more goddamned thing he could do until he knew her name, and the longer that took, the longer the odds were against a conviction.
He dressed and glanced over the items in his small green notebook, deciding to put off the telephone work until later and to do the legwork while it was still light. His first stop was the area where the torso had been found the previous afternoon. It took him awhile to twist his way over the rough streets and bumpy railroad tracks between grimy columns that lifted the bed of the Valley Freeway above this part of Denver. The old factories and foundries lining the railroad spurs were closed for the day, and the empty remnants of buildings that had been condemned long ago but never torn down were boarded shut with faded plywood or rotten beams. He finally passed the tangle of weeds and willow and stretches of wet sand that was the shallow South Platte River, and turned in to a short street of sagging buildings. Here and there, sprayed graffiti spelled gang names; Wager remembered “Los Lobos” from ten years past. The “Iron Men” had been even before his time. There were no new names. In a small turret capping the second floor of a deserted office building, a square stone held the date 1892. He stopped in the middle of the empty street to listen. Behind, from the Valley Highway on the other side of the South Platte, came the roar of heavy traffic; in front, but out of sight behind a treeless embankment, were the hiss and
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