Read Online Cool in Tucson by Elizabeth Gunn - Free Book Online Page A

warrant and sure, they’d put a rush on it.  Phyllis was another of the good-to-know people Sarah was constantly collecting inside the system—they made all the difference when you needed to move a case along. 
    She tried to hold onto the warm feeling from Phyllis’s favors while she passed the victim’s ID to Jenny Cunningham in Public Information.  Something about Jenny’s perkier-than-thou persona ticked her off.  She didn’t know why, and she didn’t want to think about it today, so she focused on the ceiling light while she reeled off the facts and got off the phone.
    Still waiting for Ibarra, she read over the dead man’s prison record again, and dialed an outside line. 
    “Dietz.”  Good voice today, steady, no tremor.  
    “Will, it’s Sarah.”
    “Hey.”  The voice warmed up half a notch.  “What’s shakin’?”
                “Quite a bit.  I went to work before sunup this morning.”
    “Oh?  What’d you draw?”
    “A jogger found a body in Rillito Park.”   
    “Ah.  Le Fever said he saw a scene getting taped up there.  Up near the racetrack, right?”
    “Yes.  Almost on the bike path, actually.  Started out as a John Doe, no ID on him at all, but we got lucky and matched his prints.  So I thought I might tap your vast store of information.”
    “My vast store, ach du lieber.”  A tiny chuckle, almost soundless.  “My store’s pretty empty these days, but you’re welcome to what I’ve got.”  The new Will Dietz.  Before he got shot, he’d been undercover in narcotics and not inclined to tell her much more than the date and time.         
    Sarah had greatly admired the old Will Dietz.  Before the bullets found him, he had seemed like an unshakeable iron man, capable and smart, a tower of strength.  But she was beginning to like the new, vulnerable Will Dietz so much she wasn’t sure she wanted to see his rehab succeed all the way.  Where was I?   “Our victim was a guy named Adolph Alvin Perkins.  Any chance you’d know him?”
    “Uh…don’t think so.  Should I?”
    “Well, he was released early this year from Florence.  Three-to-ten for dealing.  I thought he might be your collar.” 
    “The name doesn’t ring any bells.  Tell you what, though, I haven’t gone to work yet, I’m in my car a couple of blocks from you.  Why don’t I come up and look at what you’ve got?”  
    “Oh?”  She had intended to fax it to him if he showed any interest.  “Well, if you have time—”
    “Won’t be ten minutes.”  He hung up before she could argue.  
    Eight minutes later he stood in her doorway, a medium-sized nondescript man with plenty of mileage on his face.  Working undercover had augmented his natural tendency to disappear into the woodwork; he was usually the last person in the room people noticed. 
    A seasoned homicide detective when she transferred in from auto theft, he had helped her plenty during her first months in the section.  Impressed by his skills and savvy, she maneuvered to get put on his cases.  He was thorough and shrewd, had a wry sense of humor that helped on rough cases and an instinct for organizing information so the hard kernel of truth dropped out of the chaff of conflicting testimony.
    “Everybody tries to put lipstick on the pig,” he told her.  “Even when they mean  to tell you the truth, they’ll still do their best to make their part of the story look better.  Watch their eyes and hands when they tell you the parts where they come in.”  He was totally professional, so they had been colleagues rather than friends.  But she came to rely on his judgement and missed him when he transferred to narcotics a few months later. 
    Six months ago, after sirens had wailed around town for an hour, the detectives at Stone Avenue began hearing the terrible story of how Will Dietz and his partner, on what should have been a routine interview, happened into a shoot-out between dealers.