Shadowfires

department's concerned, there is no
case for you to work on here. The files on Hernandez, Klienstad, and
Leben have all been pulled from your records, as if they never
existed, and from now on we handle everything.
I've got my own forensics team driving in from L.A. right now. We don't
need or want anything you can provide. Comprende, amigo? Listen, Lieutenant Verdad,
you're gone. Check with your superiors if you don't believe
me.”
    “I don't like it,” Julio said.
    “You don't have to like it,” Sharp said.
Julio drove only two blocks from Rachael
Leben's house before he had to pull over to the curb and stop. He threw the car into park with a violent swipe at the gearshift and said, “Damn! Sharp's
so sold on himself he probably thinks someone ought to bottle his
piss and sell it as perfume.”
    During the ten years Reese had worked with Julio, he. had never
seen his partner this angry. Furious. His eyes looked hard and hot. A
tic in his right cheek made half his face twitch. The muscles in his
jaws clenched and unclenched, and the cords in his neck were taut. He
looked like he wanted to break something in half. Reese was struck by
the weird thought that if Julio had been a cartoon character, steam
would have been pouring from his ears.
    Reese said, “He's an asshole, sure, but he's an asshole with a lot
of authority and connections.”
    “Acts like a damn storm trooper.”
    “I suppose he's got his job to do.”
    “Yeah, but it's our job he's doing.”
    “Let it go,” Reese said.
    “I can't.”
    “Let it go.”
    Julio shook his head. “No. This is a special case. I feel a
special obligation to that Hernandez girl.
Don't ask me to explain it. You'd think I was getting sentimental in
my old age. Anyway, if it was just an ordinary case, just the usual
homicide, I'd let it go in a minute, I would, I really would, but this one is special.”
    Reese sighed.
    To Julio, nearly every case was special. He was a small man,
especially for a detective, but he was committed, damned if he
wasn't, and one way or another he found an excuse for persevering in a case when any other cop would have given up, when common sense said there was no point in continuing, and when the law of diminishing returns made it perfectly clear that the time had come to move on to something else. Sometimes he said, “Reese, I feel a special commitment to this victim 'cause
he was so young, never had a chance to know life, and it
isn't fair, it eats at me.” And sometimes he said, “Reese, this case is personal and special to me because the victim was so old, so old and defenseless, and if we don't
go an extra mile to protect our elderly citizens, then
we're a very sick society; this eats at me, Reese.” Sometimes the case was special to Julio because the victim was pretty, and it seemed such a tragedy for any beauty to be lost to the world that it just ate at him. But he could be equally eaten because the victim was ugly, therefore already disadvantaged in life, which made the additional curse of death too unfair to be borne. This time, Reese suspected that Julio had formed a special attachment to Ernestina because her name was similar to that of his long-dead little brother. It didn't
take much to elicit a fierce commitment from Julio Verdad. Almost any
little thing would do. The problem was that Julio had such a deep
reservoir of compassion and empathy that he was always in danger of
drowning in it.
    Sitting rigidly behind the steering wheel, lightly but repeatedly
thumping one fist against his thigh, Julio said, “Obviously, the
snatching of Eric
Leben's corpse and the murders of these two women are connected. But how? Did the people who stole his body kill Ernestina and Becky? And why? And why nail her to the wall in Mrs. Leben's
bedroom? That's so grotesque!”
    Reese said, “Let it go.”
    “And where's Mrs. Leben? What's she know about this? Something.
When I questioned her, I sensed she was holding something back.”
    “Let it go.”
    “And why would this be a national security matter requiring Anson
Sharp and his damn Defense Security Agency?”
    “Let it go,” Reese said, sounding like a broken record, aware that
it was useless to attempt to divert Julio, but making the effort
anyway. It was their usual litany; he would have felt incomplete if
he had not upheld his end of it.
    Less angry now than thoughtful, Julio said, “It must have
something to do with work Leben's company is doing for the government. A defense