“Off the record?” She glanced at him, saw him nod, then continued. “The problem becomes ours when the sheriff is running for reelection.”
He nodded once. “I hear you. Any suspects yet?”
“No, not even a good lead. But I’ll find answers. Count on it.”
It was her tone that revealed more than her words. “You have something to prove on this case,” he observed.
Valerie swallowed back her annoyance. If it had been anyone else, she would have told him to stuff it. Yet there’d been no censure or disapproval in Luca’s tone. He’d simply stated his opinion. Knowing that he had to get to know her—after all, their lives might depend on each other—she decided to cut him some slack.
“I’ve had to work very hard to establish myself in my department,” she answered after a brief pause. “When I first signed up, the deputy at the desk tried to talk me out of it. I’m smaller and lighter than most of the other officers. From day one, all I kept hearing was that I’d be a liability, and that I’d cost another officer his or her life someday.”
He nodded but didn’t speak.
“During training, I was forced to fight twice as hard as any other recruit. Nobody thought I’d make it, even when my physical training scores were better than some,” she said. “Since those days, I’ve worked my way up the ranks to detective, but it hasn’t been easy. A lot of people back from my rookie days would still like to see me fail, just so I’d prove them right.”
“Why was becoming an officer so important to you?”
“Because I know I can make a difference in my job,” she said in a firm voice. “My methods may be different than some of the textbook procedures, but I can get results.”
“Different how?” he asked.
“Let me give you an example. Last week at the downtown office, a suspect slipped off his handcuffs at the booking desk and jumped the arresting deputy. He knocked the officer to the floor and grabbed his weapon. I was coming around the corner just then and, not seeing my weapon beneath my jacket, he motioned me over. I think he wanted a helpless woman hostage. I went over to him as meekly as possible. Then before he could see it coming, I grabbed the weapon and kneed him in the groin,” she said. “I used the fact that I’m not threatening—the very thing they said was my biggest liability—to do what had to be done.”
Luca gave her a huge, devastatingly masculine grin. “Way to go.”
As she looked into his eyes and saw the approval and admiration there, her heart began to hammer. Telling herself it was low blood sugar, Valerie focused. “In this game it’s all about winning, and you do that when you put the bad guys away.”
“Winning…I wouldn’t put it that way exactly. To me, it’s more about restoring harmony—for others and within yourself.”
“Inner peace? That sounds very ’60s,” she said with a hesitant smile, then added, “I’m not sure that kind of thing really applies to police work.”
“It does. Try keeping your sanity after years of busting bad guys without it.”
She kept her eyes on the road as she thought about what he’d said. Luca sure wasn’t like anyone else she’d ever met. There was a quiet dignity about him and a strength that didn’t rely on machismo to back it up.
“Okay, we’re here,” Valerie said at long last, driving down a shabby-looking neighborhood just south of Central Avenue. The street had been cordoned off at both ends of the block by APD police barriers. As Valerie held up her badge a city officer in his dark blue uniform motioned them through.
Valerie parked beside another Sheriff’s Department vehicle just outside the yellow tape that defined the crime scene. The perimeter included an unoccupied-looking, flat-roofed house and a section of the alley.
It was midmorning and there were two television cameras and at least a hundred curious onlookers lining the outside of the tape. As she climbed out of the vehicle, Valerie glanced over at Luca. He was clipping his service pistol to the right side of his belt, next to his badge and a small leather pouch. Coming around the front of the car a few seconds later, he fell into step beside her as they walked toward the crime scene.
“Crazies can be real proud of their handiwork, and sometimes stick around to see us work the scene. Keep a sharp eye out for anyone who fits the profile,” she said.
“Don’t concentrate too much on profiles just yet. Keep an open mind,” he said, then in a whisper-thin voice added, “Patience.”
It was the way he’d said that word that teased her imagination, making her think of steamy summer nights someplace far away and exotic…. She shook her head, banishing the thought as quickly as it had come.
“Detective Jonas,” a tall, ruddy-faced officer called out as he jogged up to meet them. “The body’s through that alley at the other end, inside a private property and not visible from the outside of the yard unless you look over the wall,” he said. Then, lowering his voice, he added, “the entire hood is pretty restless at the moment, so watch yourself in case a relative or friend of the victim shows up. Things could explode in a hurry.”
She knew this type of neighborhood well. The residents were mostly Hispanic and Native American—people who often believed that you were either one of them or an outsider. It wouldn’t make their investigation easy.
“A deputy is tracking down her family, right?”
The officer nodded. “Her residence is in the North Valley, and an officer is en route. She apparently lives with her parents.”
“Anything else on the dead woman?” Valerie asked.
“She’s got a student ID card from the university and crime scene found a paycheck from an area print shop in her purse. The amount suggested a part-time job. Deputy Gonzales is following up on that lead, hoping to backtrack her recent activities,” the officer replied.
“Call the campus police and get her class schedule,” Valerie ordered, increasing her stride.
To their left there were several old multistory apartment buildings that took up several blocks. Ahead of them, on their side of the street, were run-down single-family homes a decade or so older than the apartment structures. The fronts of the homes were open to the street, and several of the houses had low cinder-block walls in the rear.
“From what I recall, a lot of Navajo families live in this neighborhood, but I don’t see any among the onlookers,” she said, glancing at the crowd that lined the yellow tape cutting across the alley at both ends of the property.
“We avoid the dead. Contact with them doesn’t bring anything good.”
Valerie and Luca followed the tall deputy through an open wooden gate at the midpoint of the block wall and found themselves in a small backyard—the crime scene. The body hadn’t been covered yet, but its location close to the wall blocked it from the view of the onlookers.
Her attention already on the body, which rested not five feet from the wall, Valerie reached into her pocket. “We’ll need gloves,” she said, handing him a pair.
“I’ll need a second pair,” he answered.
“Why?”
“Tribal officers prefer to wear two. That way we don’t inadvertently touch anything that came into direct contact with the body.”
Valerie called another officer over and soon Luca had his second pair. As they approached the body she glanced back at him. His focus had shifted from the body itself, and the fact that the fingertip joints were missing, to the bare earth and the items left around the victim.
“Let me know when you get the results on the green powder placed on her lips,” Luca said. “I think it comes from plants used in our rituals but I’d like to