Read L. A. Heat for Free Online Page B

line, bust them.”
    Schmidt smiled weakly. “Yes, sir.”
    “What do they teach ’em these days?” Martinez
muttered after Schmidt left.
    David crouched to examine an impression in the
stained and cracked pavement in the alley behind North Mission Road, where the
latest body had been found. “Same thing they taught us. Why?”
    “So how come we’re so much smarter than them?”
    He couldn’t help it. He laughed.
    “What? You’re saying we’re not smarter?”
    “Come on, Einstein.” David clapped Martinez on the
back. “Let’s have another go at your wit. See if we can wrap this up before
morning. I really don’t want to see what this place looks like in broad
daylight.” Two men loaded the body into the coroner’s wagon. The flashing
lights of the emergency vehicles strobed over the alley.
    After making sure the vehicle got through the
growing mob, David slipped back between the two buildings. He watched where he
put his feet. Gelatinous puddles littered the alley; the odor of urine underlay
the stench of rotting garbage. SID had already been over the whole length,
photographing and sampling everything. Photos were taken of the crumbling walls
and cardboard boxes and even a discarded bicycle found behind one pile of
garbage.
    He followed Martinez back to the dumpster where
the body had been found. A luckless scavenger had made the discovery while
looking for tin cans to exchange for a bottle of Thunderbird. The shivering man
now huddled under a broken lean-to that some inventive soul had erected using
discarded tin and rotting pallets.
    Martinez had sent one of the uniforms to get
coffee for their witness. Now he hovered around while the man greedily sucked
back coffee and mumbled answers to Martinez’s questions. The witness, in a
cast-off overcoat two sizes too big, and Martinez, in a green jacket over a
paisley shirt and dark brown pants, made quite a pair. Fashion was not
Martinez’s strong suit.
    “Any luck?” David asked.
    Martinez shook his head. “Guy’s having trouble
giving me his name, at least one he can remember more than five minutes. He
does claim he found the body before it got completely dark. I checked with LAX,
sunset was at 19:25 tonight. Full dark would have come twenty, thirty minutes
later.”
    The call hadn’t come into the switchboard until
nearly nine o’clock. Long after sunset. “Is he saying he hung around for nearly
an hour after he found the thing?”
    “He won’t say. I think he took advantage of the
light that was left to collect more cans.”
    “He hung around a body that Lopez thinks has been
dead at least three weeks looking for scrap?”
    “Hey, SID got the cans away from him. A couple
even contained fluid from the body. At least one housed some wandering
maggots.”
    David grimaced. “How’d he call it in?”
    “Pay phone at the end of the alley. Good
Samaritan, huh?”
    “Any chance your guy knew the victim?”
    “He didn’t seem to think so. But then I’m not sure
at what level he’s actually thinking. Lopez seems to figure this victim’s
another young guy. Can’t see them running in the same circles, can you?”
    “So, this is just another dumping ground.”
    “Techs are still running luminol tests, but so far
there’s precious little blood.” The luminol spray reacted chemically to blood
and this released light.
    “One thing I’ll give him, our doer’s tidy.”
    “He’s not geographically impaired, either,”
Martinez said. “He likes to move around.”
    “A mobile serial killer. Not exactly unique.”
    David had seen the body after Lopez was done with
it. Maggot activity had been so far advanced there was no telling what
condition that body had been in when dumped. Still, he had to ask, “Raped?”
    “You think Lopez would say? You know she keeps
things close to her chest. I figure we’re lucky to get her to speculate on his
age.”
    “Your guy see anyone else hanging around?”
    “I was working on that when the coffee got