Wolf in the Shadows - Marcia Muller [65]
Viner sighed and tossed his pen on the desk, then turned to his computer terminal. He typed, stared at the screen, then brought up some more information. “Male Caucasian. Six foot three, medium build, brown hair, no identifying marks. Shot in the gut with a forty-four Magnum. Anonymous tip was phoned in to south station—in case you aren’t aware of it, San Ysidro’s part of the city, which is why we’ve got jurisdiction—at two fifty-one Monday morning. Body’s in the morgue. No I.D. on him. We’re trying to get a print match, but you know how that goes.”
At first I didn’t speak, afraid my voice would betray my agitation. The description could fit Hy—or Timothy Mourning. Finally I asked, “Anything about a ring on the body?”
Viner stared at the screen, then shook his head. “Could’ve been stolen before we got to the scene. What the hell he was doing down there at that time of night …” He sighed again. “Beaners, that’s who shot him, and odds’re we’ll never get the perp. If they stuck up something like the Berlin Wall at the border, it’d make my job a hundred percent easier.”
I ignored that, merely said, “I’d be glad to try to make an I.D.”
“Okay, you go on up there to the county center. I’ll call and let them know you’re on the way. Report back to me afterward.”
I stood and started for the door.
“McCone,” he called after me.
“Yes?”
“Can you still turn a cartwheel?”
“What?”
“A cartwheel, like you girls did every time the team scored.” His smile was tinged with both nostalgia and lustfulness. “God, I used to wait for those touchdowns! You wore the prettiest little bikini pants of anybody on the squad.”
Amazed, I just stared at him for a moment. Then I turned and headed for the county morgue.
* * *
The day had warmed fast, and the air conditioning at the severely functional County Operations Center up north near NAS Miramar wasn’t working worth a damn. In spite of how cold such places usually feel, it was warm even in Building 14, which housed the medical examiner’s office—formerly the coroner’s office, a sign on the street had told me as I’d turned off Overland Avenue.
I waited in the viewing room for the unidentified man’s body to appear on the TV screen, glad that I didn’t need to look at it up close in the cold room, my stomach knotted tight enough as it was, my breath coming shallow. Even at such a remove the sight of the dead is unsettling, more so if the person is someone dear to you.
“Ready, Ms. McCone?” the attendant asked.
I nodded, realizing I held the arm of the chair in a steely grip.
The man appeared on the screen then: surreally bluish green, through some flaw in the transmission. He was tall, slender. Had dark blond hair, a droopy mustache, razor-sharp features. In death he looked peaceful, almost serene.
He wasn’t Hy.
He wasn’t Timothy Mourning.
I’d never seen him before.
* * *
I used the attendant’s phone to call Gary Viner. “It’s not my clients’ son. I have no idea who he is.”
“You sure you’re not holding anything back, McCone?”
Only the killer’s name, a kidnapping, a botched two-million-dollar ransom payment, and a disappearance. “I’m sure. The people I talked with misled me.”
“Beaners.” Viner sighed. “Fuckin’ stupid beaners. Well, thanks for trying.”
“De nada,” I said ironically, and hung up.
* * *
Back at my father’s house, I sat down at the little desk in the family room, where my mother used to pay the bills. Found a scratch pad in the center drawer and began to doodle as I thought.
No ideas came, and my mind drifted to the previous night and my confrontation with Marty Salazar. Salazar had lied, of course, giving me a description that was a composite of Hy and the man in the morgue. Which proved one thing: he’d gotten a good look at both of them before committing the murder.
I wished I could feel certain Hy was alive, but I knew that wasn’t necessarily the case. Salazar might have killed him too, disposed of his body but been prevented from removing the other man’s by the arrival of the police. Or Hy could have escaped