Free Blueblood by Matthew Iden Page B

a concrete pipe.
    I was pondering our region’s on-again, off-again love of history when Bloch pulled up in a blue Elantra. I got out and walked over. He motioned for me to get in the passenger’s seat.
    “This where you bring all your dates?” I asked.
    “Only the ones that want to get their car back,” he said, grinning. Some of the weariness and worry seemed gone from his face. I perked up. Only a breakthrough would give Bloch a lift like that.
    “What’s up?”
    He reached into a jacket pocket and handed me a white business-sized envelope. It was addressed to Danny Garcia, but at HIDTA, not his home. It was from the DC Department of Motor Vehicles. I peered at Bloch, who just raised his eyebrows and motioned for me to open it. I scanned the contents quickly. It was an impound notice for a 1979 Toyota Camry. The reason for its impoundment, it said in the cryptic lettering reserved for government correspondence with the public, was two unpaid parking tickets over sixty days old.
    “Oh, ho,” I said. “This come to your office?”
    He nodded, then jerked a thumb towards the lot in front of us. “This starting to make sense?”
    “You betcha,” I said. “You have the original dates of the tickets?”
    “Took some running down. The DC DMV doesn’t exactly run like clockwork.”
    “Unless you like your clocks to be broken,” I said. “Though even they’re right twice a day. What did they tell you?”
    “The tickets were from three and five days after Danny’s body was found, respectively,” he said.
    “You know my next question.”
    “The registration address was the HIDTA office. Which is why the impound notice was sent there, of course.”
    “He have other cars?”
    “Two,” Bloch said. “A Corolla and a Bronco. Both registered to Danny and Libney Garcia.”
    I closed my eyes, thinking, remembering. “The Corolla was at the house when I talked to her. The son could’ve had the other one. You didn’t call and ask her about the Camry?”
    He shook his head. “Not until we have a chance to look at it.”
    “What are we waiting for?”
    Bloch got a crime scene kit out of his trunk, then we went to the gate where he flashed his badge. We were ushered through to a trailer where, behind the counter, a bored-looking black lady with five-inch fingernails stopped looking at her cell phone long enough to glance at Danny’s impoundment notice. Bloch told her it would be best if we went to the car rather than having it brought to us. She sighed and picked up an office phone. She said three or four syllables and hung up.
    “Darnell pick you up outside,” she said and grabbed her cell phone again, ignoring us as if we’d just evaporated.
    We went out the door and a few minutes later a golf cart pulled up, a stoic-looking black guy in a green windbreaker and a green and yellow John Deere cap behind the wheel. He had a clipboard in his lap and nodded to us as we approached. Bloch got in the passenger’s side, I climbed in the back, and Darnell took off, pushing the upper ten or twelve miles an hour that the cart could do. It made a dull whine that sounded like a large mosquito or a ripcord being unwound into infinity. Darnell drove with confidence, whizzing us past row upon row of cars.
    I leaned forward. “What do you do with all of them?”
    Darnell spoke over his shoulder. “Auction ’em off it they’re good enough. Junk ’em if not.”
    “People don’t come and get their own cars?”
    He shrugged. “They don’t care. Or they’re in jail. Or they can’t pay the bank and just skip town.”
    A minute later we pulled up to the edge of one of the shorter rows. He slowed and glanced down at the clipboard, then pulled up behind a blue Camry spotted gray with body repairs.
    “Here we are, officers,” Darnell said.
    “We don’t exactly have a key,” Bloch said. “Can you help us out?”
    Darnell grinned and shut the golf cart off. He clambered out, slipping something out of a back pocket as