tumble out of bed, as the mother claimed. There was the enraged shooting of two teenagers by a third, who was now known as Pepe the Pistol Aguilar. Five .25-caliber bullets into one corpse; reload; six into the other. Pepe the Pistol was still hiding in the shadowy corners of the city, but it was only a matter of time before one of the friends of those he had killed spotted him and made a quick, anonymous phone call to the police. There was the knife fight between two drifters along upper Larimer Street; one died from a severed artery—and, a witness swore, the shock of breaking his wine bottle. Wager and Axton picked up the other one ten minutes later, painted with his own blood and that of the victim. Most of that night’s tour was spent taking statements from the soberest witnesses and fending off the gabble of the drunkest. There was the killing and burning of an old woman by a neighbor’s son who had only been looking for some loose change in the lady’s bureau when she caught him. It wasn’t fair for that old lady to have more money than she knew what to do with and not give any to him—it wasn’t fair for her to start yelling like that when all he wanted was her fucking loose change. So he thumped her and then tried to burn the evidence, which wasn’t quite dead yet, and had shrieked the neighborhood awake. All these and more came into the night watch and were rotated through the division as each team picked up the cases in turn, and handed them on to the relief shift while the clock swung through another twenty-four hours. Except for the infrequent times when Wager’s eyes paused at the name on the manila folder in the Open drawer, Annette Sheldon was left farther behind. In the minds of the Homicide detectives, she had become another wait-and-see, another victim of a stranger-to-stranger murder whose solution, if it ever came, would depend on luck. Right now there was a stack of corpses in the morgue whose slayers were within easier reach of the Homicide team. And the team invested its time where the payoff was most likely.
Wager was already at his desk and checking the crime reports of the preceding watch when Axton, the latest mail dwarfed by his fist, came on duty. Max liked to deliver the letters and Wager let him; it was a kind of ritual for the big man. It helped make the homicide business routine and put some kind of psychic distance between the fact that Max and his family and friends were human, and the things he investigated had once been human, too.
“Ross tells me there’s another one.”
Wager looked up. Ross preferred to talk to Max because Wager had refused to join the police union. Max had joined—”We need some protection, too, Gabe”—but never urged it on Wager. But Ross was the union rep for the division and believed that if a cop wasn’t for the union, he was against it. To which Wager agreed: anything Ross was for, he was against. “Another what?”
“Exotic dancer.” Axton tossed Wager’s letters to him and began leafing through his own. “She’s not ours—she was found out in Adams County. But she lived and worked in Denver.”
Wager’s envelopes were always the kind that had postage meter franks instead of stamps, and those little plastic windows with his name preprinted on the easy-return, postage-paid acceptance card. He shoved them unopened off his desk into the circular file. “Let’s hear it.”
Axton thumbed through his letters. He liked to look at the pictures of all the prizes and free gifts he could win. “One shot in the back of the head, probably from a small-caliber handgun.” He tossed most of his mail after Wager’s and poured a cup of coffee from the stained Silex. “Got a dime?”
Wager rattled it into the dish with the coffee-splattered card that read PLEASE.
“Half-nude, dumped along a roadside in Adams County. The sheriff’s report came in a couple days ago, but it went to Missing Persons. Our copy came in today.”
“The same m.o.
Wager was already at his desk and checking the crime reports of the preceding watch when Axton, the latest mail dwarfed by his fist, came on duty. Max liked to deliver the letters and Wager let him; it was a kind of ritual for the big man. It helped make the homicide business routine and put some kind of psychic distance between the fact that Max and his family and friends were human, and the things he investigated had once been human, too.
“Ross tells me there’s another one.”
Wager looked up. Ross preferred to talk to Max because Wager had refused to join the police union. Max had joined—”We need some protection, too, Gabe”—but never urged it on Wager. But Ross was the union rep for the division and believed that if a cop wasn’t for the union, he was against it. To which Wager agreed: anything Ross was for, he was against. “Another what?”
“Exotic dancer.” Axton tossed Wager’s letters to him and began leafing through his own. “She’s not ours—she was found out in Adams County. But she lived and worked in Denver.”
Wager’s envelopes were always the kind that had postage meter franks instead of stamps, and those little plastic windows with his name preprinted on the easy-return, postage-paid acceptance card. He shoved them unopened off his desk into the circular file. “Let’s hear it.”
Axton thumbed through his letters. He liked to look at the pictures of all the prizes and free gifts he could win. “One shot in the back of the head, probably from a small-caliber handgun.” He tossed most of his mail after Wager’s and poured a cup of coffee from the stained Silex. “Got a dime?”
Wager rattled it into the dish with the coffee-splattered card that read PLEASE.
“Half-nude, dumped along a roadside in Adams County. The sheriff’s report came in a couple days ago, but it went to Missing Persons. Our copy came in today.”
“The same m.o.
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