Free The Samaritan by Mason Cross Page B

personal effects, nothing to identify them beyond the tattoo on the Boden girl.”
    “And he’s smart about DNA. The coroner investigator got jack at the scene: no foreign hairs, no skin under the fingernails. He’s being careful.”
    “I think it’s more than that. It’s like he wanted to strip them of their identities, of everything that made them individuals. Like they belong to him now.”
    Allen narrowed her eyes and gave him a sidelong glance. “You sound like a goddamn shrink, Mazzucco.”
    He laughed. “We’ll be dealing with the real thing soon enough; you know that. Serials equal payday to those guys.”
    “Great. So we pay eight hundred bucks an hour for some pen pusher to tell us we’re looking for a white male between twenty and forty-five with a history of violent relationships.”
    The new Police Administration Building was only a couple of miles from the County Coroner’s Office. Allen went along with the habit of calling it the new building, even though, of course, it was the only headquarters she’d known in this town. The LAPD had been based out of Parker Center for more than fifty years, and she expected it would take a decade or so for the new place a couple of blocks over on West First Street to feel like home, as far as cop folk memory was concerned.
    She didn’t have access to one of the rare and coveted basement parking spots beneath the PAB, so she parked in a more spacious lot a couple of blocks over. A lot of cops parked there, which had a drawback: people could wait around for you to show up. As she pulled past the barrier, she saw her partner’s head snap around as they passed a familiar face on the sidewalk outside. The two exited the car, and she followed his gaze back up the ramp to where the man they’d seen stood. He was a little taller than average, and fairly slim. He wore a vintage T-shirt displaying the poster for the original Evil Dead movie, under a flannel shirt. He wore a skull cap, and a camera dangled from a strap around his neck.
    “Shrinks ain’t the worst we’ll be dealing with,” Mazzucco said as they approached the man. “These bastards bring it all out of the woodwork.”
    “Smith.” Allen sighed. “Thought you’d be out in the hills,” she stated as they drew level with him.
    The man grinned and shook his head. “Got all I could use already. There’s only so many shots you can take of guys digging, you know? Thought I’d try my luck with you, get myself a fresh angle.”
    Allen sighed. Eddie Smith was as bad as the rest of them, maybe worse, but she owed him one. That didn’t mean, of course, that she couldn’t be selective in how she repaid that favor.
    “There’s no angle, Smith. Just an unexplained death.”
    Smith angled his head. “Nice try. I got there just before they found the other two. So tell me, is this a new killer, or somebody who’s already on your radar?”
    “No comment,” Mazzucco said, brushing past.
    “What he said,” Allen added.
    They left Smith standing on the sidewalk, staring after them like he knew something they didn’t.
    “Fucking new mutation,” Mazzucco said under his breath as they reached the doors.
    “Huh?” Allen asked, wondering if she’d misheard.
    “Symptom of the modern world,” he said, jerking his head back in Smith’s general direction. “Used to be there was a dividing line between the paps and the on-the-payroll journalists. You could almost trust some of the traditional guys. Ever since print media started circling the drain, everybody’s gone freelance, doing a little bit of everything. I don’t know how to deal with this new hybrid.”
    “Kids today,” Allen said, mocking only gently.
    Smith ran his own crime blog, operating like a one-man news network. He linked to AP stories around the Greater Los Angeles area and cherry-picked the most sensational for featured articles. He’d built up a good network of sources and was reliably among the first responders to a big story,