The Demands of the Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

floor.
    “It's two Mexican police who were killed,” he started before I could offer him coffee. “So your first question is probably why involve Americans in an investigation when two Mexican police died?”
    “Sorry,” I said to Hoffman, as Maria came out of the bathroom. “Professor Hoffman, this is Maria Alvarez. She is a doctoral student in criminology, but also does research at the firm. I believe you may have met.”
    Hoffman looked at Maria in a completely professional appraisal, apparently completely immune to the fact that she was a gorgeous woman in her twenties. I have to learn how to do that , I thought.
    “Alvarez? You're a student of Dr. Murdoch, right? You co-authored the paper on alternatives to Broken Windows theory?”
    Maria moved forward to shake his hand. “I am very flattered that you know the paper, Dr. Hoffman.”
    “If I remember, you argued that the reductions in crime over the past two administrations were not due to the policy reforms of the police commissioners and the mayor in developing the Compstat system and cracking down on quality-of-life crimes, but to the leveling off of the crack epidemic, the economic upswing, and demographic considerations.”
    Maria replied in a completely different language than the one I knew her to speak. I watched, impressed. “We considered a range of alternative explanations, but I believe that the peaking of crack addiction is the primary factor. My primary contention, which I am also pursuing in my dissertation, is that patterns of crime should be understood as outcomes of public health, which itself is an outcome of the broader political and economic context.”
    “I'll make coffee,” I said. Maria flashed me a smile to thank me. Hoffman ignored me completely.
    “So you do not believe that the improved computer and statistical analysis and the other policing innovations made any difference at all?”
    Maria shrugged as I went to the stove. “The reduction in crime, especially homicide, is too dramatic to be explained by any police innovations. If anything, they played a minor role. Mark was working in homicide and on the computer systems during the whole period. What do you think, Mark?”
    “I don't know,” I said over my shoulder as I filled the stove-top coffee maker with water. “I think we made some difference, but probably minor.”
    “Well you're in a minority in the NYPD, Mr. Brown,” Hoffman said. You have no idea, I thought. But I said: “Maybe that's why I'm not in it any more.” Then I said, “Please, sit down.” My apartment was slightly crowded with three people in it, but it would suffice for this meeting.
    “With your permission, I would like to get back to our business. Perhaps you would be interested in getting involved as well, Ms. Alvarez. I suspect from your last name and your features that you from the Latin American region?”
    “Mexican, actually.”
    “Do you follow events there as well?”
    “I do.”
     
    “The Mexican government wants an international nongovernmental organization, specifically a US-based one, involved in the investigation because the murders took place in a conflict zone where the government's is accused of partiality.”
    “Chiapas,” Maria said.
    “Chiapas,” Hoffman repeated, “Where the rebels are smart, wear masks, speak in poems, and are on the web. In fact, one of their leaders, a guy named Subcommander Marcos, was a literature professor before becoming a guerrilla. The whole world, and especially Mexico, loves these rebels. They are indigenous people fighting for their land, they have virtually never killed any non-combatants, and the Mexican government has consequent political difficulties cracking down on them. Since 1994 they have controlled large sections of territory in the state and they have filled the state with foreigners, foreign eyes and ears and voices that make a great deal of noise at every government encroachment on rebel territory.”
    A picture was beginning