Free Strip Search by Rex Burns Page B

Williams?”
    Sheldon frowned and tugged at the corner of his mustache. “I don’t think so. Why?”
    “She’s an exotic dancer. She was killed sometime last week, in the same manner as your wife.”
    Large and blurry behind their lenses, the blue eyes stared at Wager.
    “Mr. Sheldon?”
    They blinked rapidly and turned to the picture. “So it is some nut. It’s some goddamned nut with a thing for killing dancers.”
    “It looks that way. But you’re sure there’s no link between your wife and Angela Williams?”
    “Was she from the Cinnamon Club?”
    “Foxy Dick’s.”
    The man shook his head. “Annette never had anything to do with that place. It’s a dump.” His eyes met Wager’s and held them. “Some sick, crazy bastard. …”

CHAPTER 5
    I T WAS W AGER’S turn to drive. As usual, they cruised the two northern districts of the city, with an occasional dip into the southwest quadrant where the West Ridge projects huddled in the smoky glow of a generator plant. They looped through those neighborhoods where trouble often burst out of sagging, crowded houses and apartments, filling the streets with blood and curses. But tonight, midweek, was a quiet one for Homicide, and the partners rode in a silence that had become as easy as conversation between them. Once, Axton mentioned that he was going to take his oldest boy camping on his next day off; Wager recommended Red Feather Lakes.
    “This time of year they’re still stocked. And it shouldn’t be too crowded if it’s not a weekend.”
    It had been one of his favorite spots when he was a kid and his old man was still alive. You could camp and then fish the small lakes for trout, casting your bubble almost silently on the glassy water just after sunup. Then, on the long drive back to Denver, you’d take that steep dirt road down into the Cache La Poudre valley and stream-fish. That was the best kind. It was a swift river with occasional deep holes where the big trout liked to hold themselves against the current. Wager had never caught one of those. But in the shallower parts of the stream, where the water widened over polished stones, the smaller trout would hit a tiny spinner with that solid thud that only stream fish have. A lot of the river was restricted to artificial lures, and the state wildlife agency was trying to bring back the green trout that so long ago had been fished out of the waters of Colorado. They’d have to be quick, though. There was more talk of damming the stream across a narrow part of the canyon. An Arab investment company had bought a million or so acres of high desert and suddenly discovered they’d need water in order to farm that land. The Cache La Poudre was one of the last undammed rivers along the east face of the Rockies, and to some it now seemed a shame to let all that water run free as far as the reservoirs on the prairie.
    “The Cache La Poudre’s up that way, isn’t it?” Axton asked.
    “Yes.”
    “That’s a nice canyon. One of the prettiest.”
    It was. He hoped it stayed that way: free of dams and wild enough to worry people every spring with its runoff. But a lot of things never stayed the way they should. Maybe nothing did. Maybe when things stayed, they were dead. Still, he wondered why change so often seemed to be for the worse.
    Turning into an ill-lit alley, he cut behind one of the newer housing projects for the evening’s first routine sweep. These buildings were among the better offered by the city, and a hell of a lot finer than some of the places he had lived in as a kid. Two-story brown-brick townhouses, they had grassy lawns trimmed by the state and fenced playgrounds and a subsidized daycare center. It reminded him of the married housing provided for the NCOs at some of the military bases where he had been stationed. But Wager did not want to live here. Despite its surface placidity, maybe nobody wanted to live here. It was as if the place dammed the people up into a reservoir and they,