Strip Search

by Rex Burns

  Jo unlocked the screen door and took his coat; her black hair—longer than regulations allowed—was gathered for coolness into a loose braid down her back. A brief hug, comfortable in its familiarity: “Beer’s in the refrigerator—but it smells like you’ve already had some.”

  Wager told her why he was late.

  “What does Tom want you to do?”

  “See what I can find out without letting his kids know about it.” He finished pouring the Killian’s into a half-empty glass as he lounged against the kitchen sink and watched her stir things into a salad.

  She blotted her forehead with the back of her wrist. “That’s a long way from the homicide business. Do you know anyone you can talk to?”

  “I might. I’ll see what I can find out, anyway.” He shrugged. “I told him I would.”

  It was Wager’s job to grill the steaks in the tiny backyard, and he built up the charcoal fire that had burned to ash as Jo waited for him. This time she sat while he worked, the freckled shade of a locust tree playing across that jet-black hair and the gold-brown eyes that watched him. He seared the meat on one side and then flipped it and coated it with Wager’s Own Peculiar Picante Sauce. When, twelve minutes later, the steaks were done, the two of them sat at the round picnic table covered with a red-and-white-checked cloth and toasted each other with a glass of Bardolino.

  “I like your new house, Officer Fabrizio.”

  “And I like having you here, Detective Sergeant Wager.”

  Standing, she was almost as tall as he was; but when they sat he gained a couple of inches. That was because of her long legs, the second thing he had noticed about her that day a few years ago when, leaning across the counter of Records, he watched her bend to take a file from a lower drawer. The thing he noticed first had been covered by her skirt. And the thing he noticed third was the laughter in those golden eyes when she straightened and turned and caught his stare.

  They hadn’t dated then—she had a boyfriend and Wager a recent divorce—but later, when he finally asked her out for a beer, the laughter had come back when she told him, “I remember the first time I saw you.” Now he felt the kind of comfort with her that he never thought possible with any woman, and certainly had never felt with his wife. Which wasn’t her fault, but his; as Jo had said one night, when a man goes into the military at sixteen and comes out twelve years later, he probably knows a lot about life, but not much about women. Wager had never thought about that himself; it hadn’t seemed important and it didn’t contribute much to his job. But occasionally now he wondered what else he might have lost by spending his teen years on the end of one war and his youth at the beginning of another. But if he knew it all, he’d be a different person; and he might not be sitting here learning to drink fancy imported wine and gnawing a steak bone across the table from a woman with the best-looking legs in Colorado. Among other things.

  “When are you putting your grape vine in?”

  “What grape vine?”

  He held up his glass. “I thought all you Italians had to hava da grape.”

  Jo looked around the tiny backyard bordered by chest-high wooden fences. An untended flower bed ran down one side toward the garage and alley beyond; a scattering of water-starved zinnias made bright explosions here and there. Along the other fence, dead vines from last year’s zucchini crop tangled among the tall grass. “What I need is a Mexican gardener to clean this place up first. You’ve got some vacation time coming—want to moonlight?”

  “I tried growing a petunia once. It died.”

  “In your apartment, I can understand it. You even have a photograph of a dead tree.”

  “That was from a case. Besides, I like it.”

  “I do too: Noble Defiance Even in Death. It says something about you. That, and the sword on the wall.”

  Wager hadn’t given much thought to that, either; the wall had looked blank and the old NCO’s sword kept falling out of the closet, so it just made sense to put them together. Which is what he told her.

  “Uh oh, I stepped on his Mexican macho.” She uncovered a bowl of sliced melons and fruits. “Here—have something to sweeten up your disposition. And don’t try to hardnose me, buster; I’m a cop, too.”

  And Wager guessed that was why he liked her. No, more than liked—but that was an area he wasn’t ready to delve into. And as long as she was willing to do without definitions, so was he.

  They spent a lot of the afternoon watching the sun drop below the trees and feeling the day’s heat cool into the freshness of evening. They talked about the people in Records and in Homicide, the various lieutenants and captains, and the political shifts and alignments of the new city administration. Every now and then one of them—Jo, usually—would say, “That’s enough shop talk,” and they would grope for some other topic, occasionally finding one. But inevitably it led back to the world of the department, because that was where they both felt most alive and most comfortable. It wasn’t until much later when, warmth to warmth under the light blanket that kept off the chill air of a late-spring night, Jo again mentioned Wager’s long-delayed vacation.

  He lifted himself on an elbow and peered through the dimness at the oval of her face. “Have you been building up to this? Wine, dinner, a fine evening—was all this a setup?”

  He didn’t know whether or not he meant the accusation, and she must have heard that in his voice, because when she finally answered, she was only half joking, too. “That’s a pretty crummy thing to say, Wager. It crossed my mind, and I said what was on my mind. I’m not trying to manipulate you and I’m not trying to emasculate you.”

  That wasn’t exactly what he meant, but since she mentioned it, he’d clarify things: “I had a woman who never let on what she was really after, and I sure as hell don’t want another like that.”

  “You arrogant bas—”

  “She’d hint around and I was supposed to guess what she meant. Then she’d get pissed when I wouldn’t play her game.”

  “I’m not playing a game. And you don’t have me, Wager. Nobody has me.”

  “I didn’t say I did. But by God, I don’t see why a man has to be on his guard around a person he … he …”

  “I wasn’t trying to hint anything. I was trying to talk to you. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But if you’re so damned defensive and insecure that you want to go looking for plots and accusing me of trying to manipulate you, well, Sergeant Wager, maybe you’d better get your shoes out from under my bed!” She sat up too, now, the vague shadows of eyes and mouth staring hotly at him and the fall of her dark hair straight down over both shoulders where her pale breasts lifted to part it. “Go on, dammit—either apologize or get out.”

  His lips felt like a line between the fingers of a clenched fist, and the inertia of stubbornness stifled any apology. Silently, he swung his feet to the floor and groped for his clothes. Silently, she stared across the foot of the bed into the darkness.

  When he had his jacket on and his tie stiffly in place, he managed to say, “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I.”

  But he went, nevertheless; and she did not try to stop him.

  CHAPTER 2

  “WHAT’S WITH YOU, Gabe?” Max Axton rose from his desk, his wide torso darkening the windows that looked out over Denver with its changing skyline of growing office towers.

  Wager looked up from the scrawled report he had been attempting to complete. “What’s that mean?”

  “Hey, partner, take it easy. You’ve been talking to yourself for half an hour.”

  “Have I?” He looked with surprise at the crumpled sheet. It dealt with a domestic shooting, a familiar story of ex-husband walking in on ex-wife and blowing away her now ex-boyfriend with a sawed-off shotgun. And then saving the state money by using the other barrel on himself. Maybe it was supposed to make the woman feel sorry, but from what Wager had seen, she was glad to be rid of both of them. You’d think the dumb son of a bitch would’ve known when to let go.

&nb
sp; His partner, Max the Axe, as he didn’t like to be called, glanced at the yellow tablet with its smears of pencilings and lines through words here and there. “Just put down what happened—at about seven forty-five a.m., Mr. Otis Neal Smith walked into the kitchen where he found his ex-wife and her boyfriend having breakfast et cetera et cetera.” He slid several papers onto the desk. “Here’s the responding officer’s letter and the witnesses’ statements. You want to package it up when you’re through? I’ve got to be in court in half an hour.”

  “Right.” Wager scratched out another word and added “alleged” in front of the killer’s name. He felt Max gaze at him briefly before the big man turned to telephone the police photographer and find out if the pictures had been developed yet. The call had come in at 8:05, just after the shift began, and could be filed for the captain by noon if information from all the other units could be gathered together by then. Not that there was any rush to clear the case today—the murderer wasn’t at large in this world. But there was no reason to let it drag, either, when a telephone or the radio might call them to another one before the shift was out. Besides, this one would count on the daily case load, the ten to fifteen folders assigned to each of the homicide detectives now that the new administration had stopped pooling them under the “team approach,” where everyone—and no one—was responsible for all the cases. Other types of requests could come in, too, at any minute: “We got a rape and some clues and a witness—can you come and take over the investigation?” Homicide cops, like all members of the Investigations Division—Assault, the bomb squad, others—had backup duties for the uniformed division. Street cops had the same Procedure Manual, which they were supposed to read, but a lot of them didn’t or wouldn’t. It was easier to call out the detectives. And they went. Because that might be the difference that got a conviction. But things could be worse; Wager could be in Assault, the pressure cooker, where 90 percent of the crimes had a suspect and witnesses right there, and every suspect had to be charged or cleared within seventy-two hours. Now that was paperwork.

  Wager finished his report and glanced over the dry paragraphs that it all boiled down to. Then he put it in the basket for the typist. “I’m going down to Records.”

  Max was shrugging into a sport coat that was too tight across the shoulders. “Say hello to Jo for me.”

  “Right.”

  He started that way, taking the stairwell instead of the oversized elevators. But the closer he came the slower he walked, because he wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to say and, more important, he wasn’t sure what she would say. That had been the problem with that routine report—rather than focusing on the shootings and the woman’s broken statements, his mind had been framing words to Jo. And, the thought twisted the corners of his mouth, both narratives, the one on the page and the one in his mind, had the odor of death to them. Finally his feet stopped on the gray pebbled rug that hushed the constant traffic and tried to hide the street dirt that was tracked in by pair after pair of black shoes. He still hadn’t answered his own question of what the hell he had to apologize for. She was the one who got wound up over what he said—and he hadn’t meant it all that seriously anyway. But the way she took it, well, that indicated she probably did mean something when she kept harping on his accumulated vacation time. He damned well knew he stood to lose it; he’d lost more than a few weeks of vacation over the years because it seemed to pile up so quickly. And besides, he didn’t like vacations; he’d tried one once and it was lousy. Lorraine never could understand that, either, so now she was married to a guy who was always taking vacations—some kind of stockbroker or something. And one thing Wager didn’t need in his life was another Lorraine nagging about his damned vacation time.

  With mingled loss and relief, Wager turned from the glass-faced entry of the records section and trudged back to the homicide office. Max was gone, the stand for the radio-pack empty on his desk, and Wager was glad. All morning he had felt the questions the big man had been on the verge of asking. And whenever Max neared Wager’s desk, he would hunch lower over the scattered papers and memos and quick-reference telephone numbers to fend off Max’s curiosity. Nosiness he’d call it in anyone except his partner. But Wager was having enough trouble trying to explain his feelings to himself without having to explain them to someone who had no business in it anyway.

  He stared at the telephone on his desk; the records section was four numbers away—that close: just dial four numbers and ask for Officer Fabrizio. But first he had to make his arm move, and he felt the same kind of palsy that had silenced him last night and which had just slowed his steps outside her office. If he called and apologized, she would win that vague but very real thing Wager felt was threatened—the thing she labeled his insecurity or his macho. And all those complexities would be back again. He had been given this opportunity to regain a simple, untangled life. Now, if he wanted to, he could live without a schedule that accommodated someone else. It was a chance to get back to a life as free and alone as Tommy Sanchez’s. All he had to do was nothing—just let enough time pass.

  When he finally dialed a number, it was not to Records but to the Organized Crime Unit, an outfit he’d served in several years ago before coming to Homicide. The voice that answered gave him that peculiar feeling of stepping back to a place he had left long ago, and finding that not only was everyone else the same, but so was their view of him.

  “Hello, Suzy—this is Gabe Wager.”

  “Gabe! I mean Sergeant Wager—how are you?”

  “Fine. How are things over there?”

  “Oh, golly, don’t ask. It’s budget time again—you know what that means.”

  “I sure do.” And he also knew of the pressures the new city administration had brought for reorganizing the unit. That would make the budget narrative and its justifications all the more important. “Is Sergeant Johnston in?”

  “Sure—just a minute.”

  Which was about how long it took before he heard the equally familiar voice, “Gabe! How’s it going? Hey, what about the Gold? Six and one and a win over the Outlaws! That’s playoffs, man!”

  Things had not changed much at all, and Wager slipped into his familiar reply: “That’s fine, Ed. It sure is.”

  “It really makes a difference to have a decent line, doesn’t it? Gives the quarterback all day to throw.”

  “Right.” Wager could still remember being called one of the front four, while Johnston spoke of himself as the quarterback. Sonnenberg, the unit commander, had been the coach. They were all supposed to go out and score against the bad guys. “What I called about, Ed—”

  “And the running! Jesus, the running’s really something this year!”

  “Right, it’s real good. Ed, do you have anything on a couple of kids named Sanchez? John and James. Brothers—late teens, early twenties, maybe. They work rodeo and probably do some ranching. Hired hands, most likely.”

  “Rodeo? I don’t think we’ve got a thing on rodeo. What kind of ranch work do they do?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Does it have to do with horses? Track betting? We got a Sanchez who’s doing a little off-track action.”

  “What’s his first name?”

  “Emory. He’s got a place out in Lakewood.”

  “That doesn’t sound like it.”

  “Well, if I knew the crime category you wanted, I could look it up faster. That’s how we reference our files now, by crime category: arson, embezzlement, extortion, fraud, gambling—”

  “Try anything to do with horses and cows.”

  “Cows? They race cows now?”

  “Ranches sell cow meat. Maybe there’s something going on there.”

  “You usually find that with the processors, Gabe. We’ve got that listed under three headings: Fraud, Quality, and Weights and Measures.”

  “I’d appreciate a search, Ed.”

  “It’s going to take a while. That’s a lot of categories to cover. You have any other names? W
e can run the names through real quick.”

  “Just John and James Sanchez.”

  “Sanchez, John.” Sergeant Johnston wrote it down. “Sanchez, James. I’ll start with them. But like I say, it’s going to take a while. We got budget hearing coming up and Suzy’s all tied up in that.”

  “I understand.”

  “You’re still over in Homicide?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll let you know what we find.”

  He thanked Johnston and thumbed his way through the directory of state offices. Ed was right—if the boys’ names weren’t on file somewhere, there was damned little to go on. DPD had the state’s largest collection of contact cards, and he already knew they weren’t there. And though there were ten million ways to reference and cross-reference material, an office only had time and space for a few methods, so that meant calling a lot of offices. The computer was supposed to improve on that, and it had in a few areas. But for some reason, Wager often found himself working outside those areas.

  His eyes snagged on the number for the Animal Protection Office in the State Department of Agriculture. A woman answered, and when she heard what he wanted, the voice gained a note of bureaucratic worry over something that violated routine. “We’re not allowed to divulge information like that over the telephone, Sergeant Wager. Any investigations we run or respondents we contact are treated as confidential.”

  “You can’t tell me if a couple of rodeo cowboys have ever had problems with your office?”

  “No, sir. Not without clearance from the director. I can connect you with him, if you wish.”

  “Not that important.” And not what he wanted, either: a blizzard of request and approval forms that needed signatures from unit commanders and woke official curiosity about what in the hell Wager was doing. So much for the regulatory agencies. He pondered over whether or not to make the next call. In fact, if he hadn’t promised Tommy, Wager wouldn’t—he was beginning to feel more than a little foolish going around asking about the Sanchez kids. But like a lot of people, especially older ones, when Tom got a question in his head he’d fret and worry himself and everyone else until it was answered; and if Wager had to lie to him, he’d feel a lot worse than foolish.