Free Spiral by David L Lindsey Page A

We'd better go talk to him tomorrow."
Mooney bobbed his head up and down, holding his wrist up to Haydon as he tapped his watch face. "The operative word there is manana. I was kinda hoping to sneak out of here a little early today. What do you say, Stuart? It's already two-forty."
Haydon looked at his coffee. He didn't know why in the hell he had poured it. As both men stood, getting their guns out of the carrel drawers, they became aware of a commotion out in the squad room and heard Dystal's booming voice. Haydon looked out just in time to hear Dystal call his name. He stepped to the door and saw other detectives coming out of their offices into the squad room, looking toward Dystal.
"Everybody listen up," Dystal was bellowing. He had walked out toward the middle of the room. "We just got a call on a shooting out at Richmond and the Loop. Coupla boys on motorsickles pulled up to a limo and opened up on it with automatic weapons. Shot up a Mercedes behind the limo, too. Four or five men down, includin' one of the sickle boys. Lapierre and Nunn are first out, but they're gonna need a lot of help on this one."
    He called out the names of five teams of detectives who were nearing the end of their shifts. He wanted them to stay and work through.
    Haydon turned around to his desk and called Nina.

Chapter 9
    I T couldn't have happened at a worse time for traffic. It was approaching four o'clock and the afternoon sun was burning in at an angle just above the overpass and the traffic overhead was at a standstill. The motorists who happened to be stalled above the intersection had ringside seats to a first-class slaughter. The traffic on Richmond was being diverted north and south at Weslayan, causing forty-five-minute delays on its feeders to the Southwest Freeway as well as those at Westheimer and San Felipe. The inbound traffic on the west side of the Loop at the Richmond intersection was easily diverted onto the access roads, thereby creating a relatively isolated crime scene below the overpass where the limousine and Mercedes had finally come to rest.
Haydon had to put gas in the car at the motor pool, and there were two blue-and-white units ahead of them. By the time they got to the intersection, the crime-scene ribbons were already in place, including a ten-foot-wide aisle of ribbons stretching along the north side of Richmond to the Guiton intersection. All the bodies were still in place. The crime-lab and morgue vans were standing with opened doors, and several teams of detectives were peering inside the two cars and talking to motorists who had been at the intersection when the shooting occurred.
Haydon parked about fifty yards from the intersection, and he and Mooney got out and started across to the wrecked cars. Bob Dystal spotted them and came to meet them, his bearish frame leaning slightly forward as his size-twelve boots pounded the hot asphalt. He was cutting a wedge of Tinsley's chewing tobacco with his pocket knife, which he then folded closed with one thick hand as he placed the tobacco in his mouth. He squinted in the sunlight despite the drugstore sunglasses.
"Hell of a thing," Dystal said as they approached, turning and walking with them. "Looks like some kinda 'sassination." He quickly recapped what they believed had occurred, based on the stories of the motorists who had witnessed the shooting. They stopped at the Mercedes.
" 'Cordin' to his driver's license, guy behind the wheel here is . . Dystal flipped through a creased and sweat-stained pocket notebook. "Raul Saenz Sales. Guy on the other side is . . . Vicente Gonzales Gonzales."
They looked through the shattered windows at the two men, who sat in their seats as if dozing, Saenz leaning his head against the splintered remains of his window, Gonzales with his head thrown back against the headrest, his mouth open as if snoring. There were holes in their faces and upper torsos, but the entry wounds were not that unpleasant. However, both men were