Speak for the Dead by Rex Burns Page B

blat of Federal Avenue, with its neon and glass, its chrome gas stations, its street lights, its drive-in banks. But here, in this short lane of deserted buildings, inert trash, and black, glassless windows, was nothing. Not a voice, not a flower, not even a stray cat. It was one of the few corners of Denver that seemed, to Wager, absolutely dead. And at the far end of the silent street was the junkyard.
    Sprawling over half a block and across to the Federal Avenue embankment, the crumpled and rusting cars washed up against a sagging chain-link fence and around the rotting walls of a lone house that served as an office. A single bulb burned whitely over the closed front door where the porch had been ripped away to leave a pale A-shaped scar like a startled eyebrow. Not even a junkyard dog answered when Wager called through the locked and rusted gate. He crossed the brick street to the pile of twisted cars and trucks tossed into the weeds. The dark Buick, one of those round bulging models, sat in an unfenced portion of the lot a short dozen paces from the curb. Wager gazed at it, at the empty buildings. Not far south rose the belching smokestacks of the power company’s downtown plant; if he stood on the Buick’s fender, he could just glimpse the access road that tied this forgotten corner with Federal Avenue. North, but hidden behind the Colfax viaduct, were the basketball arena and Mile-High Stadium. If a person knew which twists of road to follow, he could get here from the stadium’s parking lots. Otherwise it was damned hard to find. Yet someone—in the dark and without much fumbling around—had found it. Somebody had parked close to the Buick, knowing where in the lightless street to stop; he had lifted an awkward body in a slippery plastic bag and carried it to the trunk that he knew would be unlocked. Slammed the lid; maybe cleaned up a bit in the night, even dragged the clay patches that cracked here and there among the weed clumps to smear the trace of his footprints. And had left.
    A dead corner that the city had thrown away, stripped and broken cars rusting away in the brown weeds. Wager knew this spot had not been picked by accident. The head was set in a living place, the lifeless body tossed aside with other worthless junk.
    Wager could feel that as clearly as he felt the points of shattered bottles beneath his shoes. But to know it didn’t answer why. Or who.
    He spent the next four hours visiting the apartments near the Botanic Gardens, knocking at the list of numbers bearing Ross’s “O” that said no one answered the first time. Like Ross and Devereaux, Wager didn’t bother with units above the fifth floor; at that distance in the dark, no one could have seen anything anyway. And, like Ross and Devereaux, he got negative answers. The routine was pretty much the same at each door: a sudden blotting of the tiny light in the peephole after Wager knocked, and a muffled “Yes?”
    “Detective Wager,” holding his shield up to the peephole. “I’m investigating a death on some property behind the apartments. Can I ask you a question or two?”
    A moment of startled silence, then the door opening to the end of its safety chain to show half a face. “Who?”
    “Detective Wager. Denver Police. Did you happen to notice anything at all unusual taking place in the Botanic Gardens during the night of Tuesday October 19th?”
    “No! We keep our curtains closed at night.”
    “Thank you.” And on to the next “O”.
    It was nearing ten. The women who now answered had faces scoured of make-up and the men wore sport-shirts with little alligators on the front or shiny robes tied over their pajamas. Wager moved to the last apartment on the fourth floor. There the answer was different.
    “That was last Tuesday, you say?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “You know, I did see something weird. I kind of wondered about it at the time.”
    “You did? What?”
    The man’s half-face in the doorway was thin, with dark,