Desert Noir (9781615952236) Read Online Free PDF Page A

time I drive along this raped section of the Valley of the Sun, my trigger finger starts to itch.
    But back to the business at hand.
    What had I learned so far? Although the Violent Crimes Unit had a strong case against Kobe, McKinnon could still have a field day with the loopholes. The shoes looked good for the prosecution, but after the Simpson case, cops were no longer sanguine about the holiness of DNA and other material evidence. What if Kobe’s girlfriend decided to alibi him after all? What if she swore upon her father’s grave that Kobe was snoring next to her all night? She had no police record herself and might make an unfortunately credible witness.
    I tried to think like a prosecutor. If Kobe’d been with Alison all evening, he could have hired someone to punch out Clarice’s lights. Still, hiring a hit man to beat your wife to death sounded pretty lame, even for Kobe. Hit men ran to .22 caliber bullets strategically aimed above the ear, not battered faces and broken necks. They were professionals carrying out business contracts and usually held no particular animosity towards their victims. Hit men were dispassionate when carrying out their duties. If not, they became victims themselves.
    By the time I drove the eight miles east from downtown Phoenix to the Scottsdale city limits and the Jeep shot between the two cave-pocked sandstone buttes which straddled McDowell Boulevard, I’d decided to find out more about Clarice herself. I needed to know if there was anyone besides her husband who hated her enough to beat her to death.

    Jimmy no longer hovered over his beloved computer when I got back to the office. Instead, he was relaxing in a deep leather chair, sipping a tall glass of bright pink cactus juice.
    â€œI’m in,” he announced with satisfaction. “Took me less than two hours. A child could do it.” 
    Not this child. But as Jimmy launched into an explanation of how he’d hacked past Seriad’s security and slashed his way through their encryption system, he did make it seem easy—if you shared his IQ of one-sixty-four. While he droned on I walked over to the small refrigerator in the corner and dumped several cubes of ice into a tall glass. In a nod to clean living, I filled it up with caffeine-free Diet Coke.
    I waved away the rest of Jimmy’s techno-babble as I felt the happy bubbles dance their way down my parched throat. A healthy burp followed. “You know I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”
    â€œIf you would just try…”
    â€œI have tried and it makes my head hurt. Now, about that other matter we’ve been working on. What have you come up with?” 
    The smug look left his face. “Lena, please understand that computers aren’t God in a box. They have to have input. Garbage in, garbage out, right? But it’s also true that nothing in, nothing out. You don’t have the name of the woman who left you at the hospital. All you’ve got here is a date and a vague description. Hispanic, about twenty, long black hair in a braid, cotton print dress, sandals. That’s it. I’ve hacked my way through every single hospital file and police report in the state for the two weeks surrounding that date but I just can’t come up with anything. It’s like you appeared out of thin air.” 
    Or from out of state. After all, the woman told the receiving nurse she’d found me lying by the roadway.
    â€œOK. For a minute, let’s forget the woman who took me to the hospital. What about my mother? Where is she? Where did she come from? I think you should check whatever missing persons reports you can find, say, in Nevada or Utah, California, or even New Mexico. Or any state where a woman or little girl turned up missing.” 
    A woman . Why hadn’t I asked Jimmy to find a man and a woman—two parents, not one? Was it because my subconscious knew something my