Inherit the Dead

dreamed of becoming a nurse once she kicked her heroin habit. Perry was the detective on Lighton’s case; Henry Watson was the detective on Barton’s.
    All those dead women. Six states, but not one of them with an active death penalty. The killer was already serving four consecutive life sentences without parole. So the district attorneys in the five remaining states cut a deal: life sentences to run concurrently with Oregon’s in exchange for information about the location of the bodies. It would bring the families “closure,” they explained.
    We can’t touch him. Perry and Watson drank together for six hours after the sentencing hearing.
    Four minutes after he’d flashed five fingers, Perry’s old friend, Watson, waved him into the precinct, patting him on the back as he entered. It was all the greeting they needed.
    “Is that Nicorette I saw you chewing?” Perry had recognized the packaging when Watson first popped the gum on the street. He realized it had been too long since the two men had talked.
    “Feel like an eleven-year-old girl, all the gum I’m gnawing these days,” Watson said. “Maria didn’t want me smoking around the baby. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I know she’s right but, man, I’ve tried everything. The patch. The electric cigarette. Acupuncture. Meditation. Self-help recordings. All kinds of crap Maria brings home from the natural-food store. Hypnosis.” He lowered his voice for that last one. “I got newfound empathy for all those junkies I pulled in over the years.”
    “Right. Because when I think of Henry Watson, that’s what I think of—empathy for the hard-lived and downtrodden. You have any contact with this Hunter College thing I’m hearing about?”
    Watson shook his head and sighed. In context, he was answering in the affirmative. “Bad guy’s got diplomatic immunity. He claims she OD’d, but we say he dosed her. Turns out it doesn’t matter, because his country won’t waive. That’s what I was talking to the grunt about. Poor girl’s parents are getting hounded by the media. Figured this convoy to babysit the protestors could spare one car to keep watch at the family’s front door.”
    “It’s not easy working those cases,” Perry said. “Especially now that you’ve got a daughter.”
    “Tell me about it. I was holding Anna’s little hand last night and found myself wanting to microchip her. One tiny GPS tracker under her soft, pale skin, and maybe I’d never have to worry about her again.”
    There was a time when Perry had been the young married father, and Watson had been out every night collecting numbers scrawled on matchbooks. Now the tables had turned. Except Perry’s form of bachelordom wasn’t holding up its end of the swap.
    Watson fell hard into the chair at his desk. “Jesus. I’ve turned into frickin’ Jabba the Hutt.”
    Perry noticed for the first time that Watson had added a good fifteen pounds to his already large frame. “Having kids will do that to you. I remember with Nicky.”
    Watson waved off the comment, and Perry knew his friend was saving him from the funk that would come from talking about the old days with the family. “Listen to us talking about weight gain and babies and health regimens. Like a couple hausfraus on Dr. Phil . Not what you came here for.”
    He gestured for Perry to take a seat in the wooden chair next to his desk and removed a file folder from the top drawer. “I ran all the names you gave me. In no particular order, we’ve got Randall, aka Randy, Hyde.”
    Perry took the printout Watson handed him.
    “We’ve got juvie pops for a residential daytime burg and starting a brawl at a multiplex. Turns out when you’re fifteen, you’re young enough to take a girl to see a cartoon movie about talking cars, but old enough to bean the head of a kid three rows in front of you with a popcorn bucket for talking smack about said girl. Seven teenage boys kicking the crap out of each other by the time it was over.”
    “Who said chivalry was dead?” Perry scanned the rap sheet. “Nothing as a grown-up?”
    “Nada. Next on your list are Julia Drusilla and Norman Lawkey or Lowkey .”
    “Loki,” Perry said, spelling it: “L-o-k-i.”
    “Whatever. I found him.” Another two printouts. “I swear, Ithought you made up these names to screw with me until I got hits on them. No criminal history, but they were in the system as complainants.”
    Perry was still scanning the documents. “Anything