Read Octopus Alibi for Free Online Page A

morning before dawn. He spent two years reconsidering his leverage at Union Correctional.
    Dexito, as young Dexter was called, had left for college within weeks of his high school graduation. Except for rare visits to his parents’ home, he hadn’t returned until he’d accepted this new job. Many old locals wondered if he hadn’t come back to rectify the bad his father had done in the Sixties and Seventies. A few wondered aloud if his job was a ruse, if he was setting himself up to follow in the big man’s footsteps.
    Dexter dumped his coffee dregs into a crown-of-thorns shrub. “You can thank me now or later. Technically, we have a crime scene, a violent death with no witnesses. You, on the other hand, have a skate gig. You don’t have a body, and you don’t have to hurry, except I don’t want you to take all night.”
    “He was in that van I saw go?”
    “He was in it. Go around back, be a genius. Give me up and down, frontward and backward. You’re here to shoot scenery.”
    Had I heard an echo? “You don’t trust me with real evidence?”
    “I had to call in our marine recovery team, to collect … you know, brain and hair in the canal. I needed to get the remains out quick, due to gawkers in boats and because of the family. I shot two rolls of Polaroids myself. One boat team guy had a camera. I had him shoot the juicy ones.”
    “What kind of camera?” I said.
    “A yellow waterproof job.”
    Wide-angle hell, I thought.
    “Waterborne gawkers,” I said. “No wonder it upset the next of kin.”
    Hayes turned away from me, stifled a yawn. “Some family members were the gawkers. Like they wanted a jump on the eleven o’clock news. Anyway, go run a couple rolls. Do a nature tour, catch some rays. It’s pretty back there. Gomez put the same care into his garden that he gave to the city.”
    “Tell me again. What am I supposed to shoot?”
    “It’s your job to be clairvoyant. Think of a few pictures we haven’t taken yet. And do me two favors: Don’t touch the shotgun; it’s in my custody, but I don’t feel like toting it around. After you’re done, draw me a scene diagram, like you learned to do in your correspondence course.”
    Dexter had ordered me to boost my forensic skills if I wanted to keep working for the city. I had never signed up for the course.
    He let my mind fumble, then said, “Just kidding.”
    “Come steer me around,” I said. “Help me document the air.”
    “What, I should hold your hand? I’d rather stand in the shade, save my energy so I can authorize your paycheck.”
    I exited the walkway. The police marine recovery team—four men the size of Mark McGwire with skin the color of Sammy Sosa’s—had blocked the canal with “Crime Scene” tape. They wore wet suit vests and shorts, rubber shoes, belts cluttered with penlights, clippers, and other tools. They looked bored, sleepwalking through the motions. Two sifted surface water with scoop nets. I thought it unlikely that splatter had stayed afloat, that hungry fish had ignored it. An officer in a stubby gray Avon argued with a boatload of irate residents who wanted to get home for supper.
    Winding paths split Gomez’s yard into three sections, two filled with Barbados cherry, sugar apple, and mango trees. In the third section, a sea grape loomed above a teak rack that held potted bromeliad. Gomez had built a brick and stainless steel barbecue at the yard’s west end and disguised a large equipment shed as a grass shack. I had never seen so many orchids.
    Had he built himself a paradise, then shot himself to celebrate?
    I found his body’s outline painted parallel to the seawall, next to a small bloodstain. Someone had chalked lines and arrows around the outline. Tiny numerals noted distances from the mayor’s hands to the shotgun, from his feet to the seawall’s edge. Nothing about the scene looked right. If the gunshot had gone south, over the canal, why had he fallen sideways? Wouldn’t the force have