Cool in Tucson Read Online Free PDF Page A

imitated his hand-rocking motion, “I can hide that in the paperwork.” 
    Greenberg rolled his eyes to the sky and muttered, “Oy vey, a comedian.”  
     “Oh, damn,” Ibarra said, “here’s the wagon and I haven’t diagrammed the crime scene.”
    “Do it now,” Sarah said.  “You got a tape on you?  Gloria, come and help us.”  She called out the distances she wanted and the other two did the measuring, from the body to the trees, to the bike path, to the railing—Ibarra taking a gleeful pleasure in watching Gloria Jackson out on the far end of the tape, running around. 
    “Damn,” he said, his gold tooth flashing in the sunlight, “just like an antelope, ain’t she?”  Even Jimmy Ibarra, whose devotion to his wife was legendary, could not resist the pleasure of watching Gloria Jackson run. 
    He called out the last of the numbers as a county driver parked and got his rear doors open.  Sarah closed her long notebook and stuck it in the back of her pants, gloved up again and helped the driver get the body onto the gurney.  Watching it slide into place in the transport vehicle, she told Jimmy, “Okay, Gloria and I have to follow the body.  You be okay here alone with the rest of the site work?”
    “I have a choice?”
    “No.”  They exchanged jaded smiles.  “Listen, when you’re taking ground samples?  Don’t just get dirt from under the body, take some from out at the edges of the circle, will you?  Always a chance the killer shed something.”
    “So?”
    “So Delaney tells me we’ve got a forensic geologist at the University now that we can use if we don’t get any other leads to the killer.  He can analyze dirt and pebbles, tell us if any of it came from someplace else.”
    “Oh, my.  Way cool.”
    “Uh-huh.  And this case is going to need all the cool we can scare up before it’s ready to go to court, wouldn’t you say?”
    “About as close to nada as I’ve ever seen,” Ibarra said.
    “Right.  So…first I’m going to try to expedite his prints, see if we can get an ID.”  She watched as another Department vehicle turned into the lot.  “Oh, hey, here comes Cunningham.  I forgot—”
    “Go ahead,” Ibarra said, “ I’ll take care of her .”  He did a Groucho Marx thing with his eyebrows.  He wouldn’t really make any moves on the new public information officer, but she was young and attractive and he was a Tucson cop with a Hispanic name; he had to show some cojones.
    “Good.  Tell her a John Doe for now, but say we hope to have an ID by tomorrow.  Try to make us sound like we know what’s going on.”
    “Uh- huh .  The old knowledgeable ploy, that could work.”
    Sarah pulled her car into line behind Gloria and the county van.  Waiting for the break in traffic that would let them all onto First Avenue, she glanced at the clock on the dashboard and thought, as she usually did now on school mornings, Hope Denny’s getting off to school okay.  In her mind, she reached out and gave her favorite niece a little pat .  You get a good breakfast, Babe?   
    Denny had stayed with her for a couple of months last fall, while they got her clothes ready, got her registered and started in school.  The rest of the family thought she should stay in the country till…they didn’t say till when.  But Sarah argued that Denny’s best shot at a successful year was to get started in her own school, get to know her teachers and have that much going for her when her mother got out of detox. 
    Janine came out of the hospital radiant with hope and saying, “I can’t wait to get my baby back.”  So Sarah helped her find a rental and reluctantly took Denny back to her mother.  She didn’t see she had any alternative, but letting the child go set up a jangling conflict in her mind that ate at her nerves.  She’d always been fond of Janine’s child, but now that they’d been alone together for several weeks she felt responsible for her in a new way.