“Looks like him.”
“Hard to tell,” Detective Elijah Boucher answered, nudging the dead body with the toe of his Italian Girotti loafer.
“Yeah,” his partner, Miguel Garcia, agreed, leaning over for a closer look. “That’s a lot of rage.” Garcia stood up straight and glanced at Boucher for a second before looking at the body again. “Course, you’d think it would take a lot of rage to beat a man to death with your fists.”
“Nobody is saying that’s what happened,” Boucher groused. He walked around the body for a different view, taking care not to step where forensics had placed numbered yellow markers on the damp pavement of the parking lot, all while avoiding getting mud or water on his Brioni dress trousers.
“Twenty says it is,” Garcia fired back, grinning at his partner. Boucher shrugged, ignoring Garcia’s challenge.
“I say we wait till the coroner can say for sure.”
Both detectives stood silently, staring down at the bloody corpse, its face so severely battered identification would be difficult.
“This isn’t a robbery,” Boucher volunteered. “I’m with you on that, too much rage. The perp just took the vic’s wallet to make it look like a robbery or to at least slow down identification of the body.”
“There’s the tattoo, though,” Garcia pointed out.
“Oh, I’m pretty sure its Wolf Pfeiffer,” Boucher muttered. He looked up, locking eyes with his partner. “You going to make the call, or am I?”
“You think he did it?”
Boucher shrugged again. “Hard to say. Things haven’t been good between them for a long time.”
Garcia took his turn and nudged the body with his toe. “It would explain the rage.”
A loud crack ripped through the sky as a peel of thunder exploded and lightning lit up the dark night sky. The rain didn’t wait as heavy drops began to pelt both the two detectives and the crime scene. The pair hurried back to their car as the forensics team scurried to erect a tent over the body to preserve the scene as best as possible under the conditions.
Detectives Boucher and Garcia watched with interest from the dry confines of their car as the forensics crew went about their job.
“Figure it went down here?”
“Yeah,” Garcia said after a second’s thought. “Parking for a welding shop at night. Good place for a meet, nobody to witness anything. Plenty of blood at the scene. You’d have to figure it was bad luck one of Houston’s homeless stumbled across the body and called it in. Otherwise, the body wouldn’t be found until, say six in the morning when the first workers showed up.”
Another lightning bolt lit up the dark sky with a thundering boom, allowing the detectives to see the litter and weeds lining the parking lot’s hurricane fencing.
“Yeah,” Boucher replied, slowly nodding as he rubbed the two-day old growth of stubble on his chin as he inserted the key in the ignition and started the engine. The former Louisiana native watched as the meat wagon pulled up to take the body away. “We ain’t going to learn nothin’ else staying here.”
Removing a comb from his pocket, Boucher combed his hair straight back, patting his hair carefully to make sure every strand was where it belonged. Upon returning the comb to its place and putting the car in drive, Boucher grinned. “You have to make the call.”
“Why?”
“Cuz, I had to break the news last time, Garcia. It’s your turn.”
“Man, I was hoping you’d forgotten about that. Heat ain’t gonna like it, one way or another.”
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