Air Dance Iguana Read Online Free PDF Page A

two killers or one had hung the men. Also, had Kansas Jack and Milton Navarre known each other? Had they known their killers, simply answered their doors without suspicion? Or had they been wakened, pistol barrels to their noses, and marched outside to their executions?
    The wind had picked up. Navarre swung like a dead-weight pendulum.
    I took forty photos in three minutes—of the davit, the dirt under Navarre, his neighbors, his palace, the Dumpster, his distance from the dredged canal, and close-ups of his face and the noose. He wore the plaid pants common to street people and nothing else. He probably had gone five-eight before his air dance, close to six-even with his neck stretched. Kansas Jack had been low-rent, but Navarre, at best, was one step up from a weedsleeper. He had a carbo belly, but unlike Kansas Jack, he wore no duct tape. He may have been handsome once, but his new ruggedness spoke of tobacco, whisky, sunshine, and coffee. Dried blood coated his teeth and lips. Copper splotches covered his chest.
    With so many cops and spectators, my shots of the general area would be useless unless the killer had returned to gape and gloat. I fitted a wide-angle lens, shot the crowd without even peering through my viewfinder, then quit and looked for Bohner. I wanted a beer more than a ride. I felt assured that my return trip to Ramrod would come first.
    Detective Millican approached. “How would an expert like you describe the corpse?”
    “No shirt, no shoes, no problems.”
    “That’s the dead man’s point of view. Now he’s my problem.”
    “Guess that’s the deal. I get to go home.”
    “Tell me again why you came,” he said.
    “If you find out, let me know. Are all these nearby trailers occupied?”
    “If any was empty,” said Millican, “some liquid-brain would find his way in.”
    “Who owns the davits? Do they go with one of the trailers, or does the landlord maintain them?”
    “I don’t fucking know.”
    “How is the electric hooked up?”
    Millican shrugged.
    “Can anyone operate them, or is there a lock on the switch box?”
    “I don’t know,” he said. “Call ahead before you come next time.”
    “I feel unwanted. It’s a shame because this is how I like to spend my Thursdays.”
    “We’ll call you when we need to test another steel cable.”
    Bohner left a circle of deputies, joined me at his car. “Navarre was a plumber, part-time if ever,” he said. “No one enjoyed his company. His income was lean and mean, but he had cash for cheap bourbon.”
    “The goofball that found him,” I said. “He’s not a suspect?”
    “He’s got a passive defense. He was in a bar on the highway at three A.M. , too drunk to walk. The saloon owner drove him here, rolled him into the trailer’s front door. That lovely fact, and his knuckles aren’t beat up from tapping the vic’s teeth.”
    I pointed to a trash can full of empty bottles. “Is the murder weapon in there, or was it chucked in the canal?”
    “The murder weapon was a noose.”
    “Then why no duct tape? Why didn’t the victim call out for help? Even if he was passed-out drunk, getting hung would’ve wakened him. He died before he was yanked up the davit.”
    “Fuck.” Bohner pivoted on one foot, left me standing there, and strode the best he could back to Millican.
    A minute later I watched the result of my logic. A black deputy with a grim face and rubber gloves pushed the dead man’s roommate into his cruiser’s backseat. I heard him promise the dude a shower and a shave. Two deputies began to string yellow crime-scene tape around the trash can. Detective Millican’s body language broadcast a massive grudge.
    It wouldn’t spoil the rest of my day.
     
    On the way back to Ramrod, I asked Bohner why Liska had fired the Marathon-based photographer.
    “The boy heaved every time he saw blood,” said Bohner.
    “How was his photo work?”
    “Fuck if I know. You need to be blessed with genius to point and shoot? He