Day of the Dead - J. A. Jance [51]
A middle-aged woman emerged from a back room pushing a cart loaded with cardboard containers of bananas. The striking resemblance between her and Emma Orozco was enough to tell Brandon this was Andrea Tashquinth.
“Mrs. Tashquinth?” he asked, flashing the windowed wallet that identified Brandon Walker as a member of TLC. “Could I speak to you for a moment?”
Andrea Tashquinth eyed him suspiciously. “What about?” she asked.
“Your sister,” he said. “Gabe Ortiz suggested I talk to you. So did your mother.”
“I can’t talk to you,” she said. “I’m working.”
Brandon hadn’t expected a warm welcome, but this straight-out rejection surprised him. Before he could say anything more, however, Andrea had a sudden change of heart. “I’ll be off at three,” she said. “I’ll talk to you then.”
“Fine,” Brandon told her. “I’ll be waiting right outside.”
As Andrea turned away and began unpacking the boxes of bananas, it occurred to Brandon that Fat Crack might be right. Maybe I’itoi was helping to solve this case after all.
While a records clerk ran background checks on the name Erik LaGrange, Detective Fellows turned back to Sue Lammers. “I’ll have a deputy give you and your dog a ride home,” he said. “If we need anything more, I’ll be in touch.”
“Thank you,” she said gratefully. “I’d appreciate it. I’m still pretty shaky.”
After flagging down a newly arrived deputy to take charge of Sue Lammers and Ranger, Brian headed for the crime scene. On the shoulder of the road, one of the crime techs was making casts of tire tracks. Ten yards off the road, someone else was taking photos. The detective approached the photographer and found a grisly jumble of bloodied body parts spilled out of several black plastic garbage bags. Stumps of a severed arm and leg showed signs of having been hacked apart at the joints. The head, detached at the neck, lay facedown beneath a clump of blooming prickly pear. And on the ribs and tiny breasts of the naked torso were scores of ugly marks that he recognized instantly as scabbed-over cigarette burns.
Brian had been in Homicide long enough to expect to be immune, but seeing not only the wanton slaughter but also signs of long-term torture caused those last few bites of burrito to rise dangerously in his throat.
“It’s pretty rough,” Ruben Gomez remarked as Brian turned away, swallowing hard.
The detective nodded. “Whoever did this wasn’t interested in concealing the body.”
“Just the opposite,” Gomez agreed. “In fact, a freight-train engineer just called in a report on it as well. Dispatch told him we’re already working the problem.”
“Well, well,” a brusque female voice commented from behind them. “Welcome to the dumping ground.”
Brian and Deputy Gomez turned as associate medical examiner Fran Daly arrived on the scene. Dr. Daly was a sturdy woman with an unruly mop of cotton-white hair. Backlit in bright sunlight, her hair resembled a halo, but her vocabulary was distinctly non-angelic. She was known for showing up at crime scenes and autopsies alike in Western shirts, jeans, and various pairs of Tony Lama cowboy boots. Today her somewhat portly middle sported a wide leather belt with a silver buckle the size of a saucer.
“How’s it going, Doc?” Brian asked.
“It was better before I got here,” she said, taking in the scatter of dismembered human flesh without blanching. “Only one body, or more?” she asked.
“Just the one, as far as we can tell,” Brian answered. “Female Hispanic, somewhere in her teens.”
Fran Daly nodded. “Any idea how long she’s been here?”
“The initial call came in a little before noon,” Ruben Gomez told her. “A witness was out walking her dog and saw what she thought was someone illegally dumping garbage.”
“It’s illegal dumping all right,” Dr. Daly agreed. “So it’s not been all that