Free The Shadow Man by John Katzenbach Page B

mentally, she forgave him as he roared past her.
    ‘Good luck,’ she said. ‘You’ll need it.’ She hoped the driver of the Porsche would turn out to be some middle-aged doctor or lawyer or developer trying to impress a date who was half his age, and not a twenty-one-year-old coked-up drug smuggler, brain-fried from narcotics and machismo, who kept a machine pistol on the seat beside him.
    The night, she thought, was dangerous. Anger hid so
    successfully after dark, lurking, obscured by the warmth and the rich black air. Espy Martinez pushed her hair away from her face nervously and kept driving.
    She spotted the flashing lights and the haphazardly parked television trucks from a block away, and quickly turned into a parking spot. She hurried down the sidewalk, ducking under the yellow crime scene tape before she was spotted by the dozen reporters and cameramen milling about, waiting for someone to come talk to them.
    A patrolman started to wave at her, but she swiftly produced her badge.
    ‘I’m looking for Detective Robinson,’ she said.
    The patrolman inspected the badge. ‘Sorry, Miss Martinez. But I made you for one of those television reporters. Robinson’s inside.’
    He pointed, and she stepped across the courtyard without noticing the cherub. She paused, almost as if she were abruptly out of breath.
    This was only the third homicide scene she’d been required to visit. The other two had been anonymous narcotics assassinations; in each instance, young Hispanic men lacking identification, probably illegal immigrants from Colombia or Nicaragua. Each had a single gunshot wound to the back of the head, administered by a small handgun. Murder at its neatest and cleanest. Almost delicate. Their bodies had been discarded with little ceremony in vacant lots - gold jewelry, wallets stuffed with cash, expensive clothing - all intact. In many jurisdictions the similarities would have had press and public buzzing, questioning whether these were the work of a serial killer.
    Not in Miami. Prosecutors in the Dade State Attorney’s Office termed such homicides felony littering. There was a macabre theory among prosecutors and police that the
    closer to the center of the city each body was found, the less important the particular victim was. The truly significant narcotistas ended up dead, decomposing beneath the swampy muck of the Everglades or sinking chained to a cinder block in a thousand fathoms of Gulf Stream waters. So, these two men that Espy Martinez had merely glanced at were nobodies who amounted to nothing. Their deaths probably resulted from a single unfortunate flight of ambition, wherein they crossed some invisible but uniquely deadly line. Murder as organizational housekeeping. Even their assassins couldn’t be bothered with the lengthy, messy, and bothersome effort required to dispose of their corpses where they wouldn’t be discovered. No arrests were expected. No trials. Just a pair of numbers tallied on an unfortunate set of statistics.
    Espy Martinez hadn’t even had to approach either body. Her attendance had been requested only by homicide detectives eager to make sure the state attorney understood the inevitability of the failure attached to the investigation of those crimes.
    This case, she knew, was different.
    A real person, with a name. A history. Connections. Not someone who simply dropped in and out of life.
    She hung in the doorway of the apartment, collecting her fears. A crime scene analyst pushed past her carrying an armful of scrapings and other samples. He muttered ‘Coming through’ as he passed her, and to avoid standing in his way, Espy Martinez stepped into the apartment. Another policeman glanced at her, and she took the time to fasten her badge to her pocketbook. When she looked up, she saw the policeman jerk his finger toward the bedroom. Taking a deep breath, she walked through the apartment, trying to see nothing and everything at the same time.
    She lingered for a second