Read Online Night of the Jaguar by Joe Gannon - Free Book Online Page A

he’s got family here.”
    Ajax holstered the Python. “If he’s got family here, they’ll look for him when he doesn’t show. Eventually they’ll go to the morgue.” He opened his eyes. “I hope you’re taking notes.”
    She fished for her notebook. “No, sorry, I mean…”
    â€œJust kidding, Gladys. What do you think?”
    â€œIt’s a lot of ideas, but why not robbery?”
    â€œWhy, because of the method of murder. Come here.”
    Before Gladys could react Ajax had seized her, pressed her back against his belly, and pulled her head back with his left hand, exposing her throat.
    â€œEver killed anyone with a knife?”
    Her body stiffened. “No, Captain.”
    â€œOur stiff has stab wounds to the throat and the chest.”
    He held up his right hand with the thumb skyward like a Roman emperor about to decide someone’s fate.
    â€œTo get someone in the throat like this”—he brought the thumb slowly in until it pressed lightly against her larynx—“is not so hard, if he’s still, like you are now. But if he fights, fights at all, not so easy. You might even miss and get yourself.”
    He pulled his hand back, and thrust in again, thumb poised between her breasts. “To hit the heart, or at least a lung, is easier, again, if the victim doesn’t struggle. But if you get him in the heart, why then go for the throat at all?”
    Gladys managed to nod. “I don’t know.”
    â€œNow if it was a knife fight”—he spun her around and brought quick blows with his hand—“a blow to your throat, what do you do? Bend over, fall down; same with the chest. If you’re not dead, you wave your arms. Instinct says, do anything to live. But there were no defensive wounds on the hands or arms. No other blows but those two, one to the chest, one at least to the throat. So he never fought back. And like you said, he looks middle-aged. From his clothes, he wasn’t poor. From the calluses on his hands, I’d guess he worked for a living, but not too hard, thus a landowner. So there was no knife fight. Gimme your hand.”
    Gladys looked at her hands, then reluctantly held out the left one. In one deft movement, Ajax bent her arm over her head, tripped her, gently dropped her onto her back and straddled her.
    â€œBut if you put the victim on his back”—with his left hand on her chin, he pushed her head back—“then you can come down clean.” He brought his hand down on her throat, raised it over his head to demonstrate the blow to the heart, but then he froze as if turned to salt. His eyes went to the hand holding the imaginary knife and the world seemed to melt away. The harsh sunlight of a city without trees dimmed. The hot urban jungle cooled.
    *   *   *
    Ajax was surrounded by forest, touched by dappled sunlight, chilled by mountain air putrid with death. The woman beneath him was not Gladys in her dusty uniform, but a middle-aged lady caked in the dark earth of the selva. Ajax had brushed the soil from her ashen, bloated face. Their faces. There had been four of them: two health workers, a teacher, and a local militiaman. All had the same wounds, stabbed once in the throat and twice through the heart. He’d found out later that the Contra had made them dig their common grave. Lie in it and fold their arms over their chests. Then a Contra had straddled each and delivered the fatal blows. This was March or April 1982. It was the first of many such graves unearthed in the mountains during the early days of the counterrevolution. But he remembered that one woman most. She’d had a hole in her sneaker and her big toe had poked out. The toenail painted red. The little piggy that went to market had gotten all prettied up for it. But the toe had been very white, not discolored like the rest of her. He couldn’t stop looking at that toe and had