City of the Dead (Alex Delaware, #37)(3)

“A house four blocks up. They came from San Diego, slept in Orange County, set out early to avoid traffic. Claim they were going slow, saw nothing, just felt impact.”

Moe said, “Any signs of a deuce on the driver?”

“No evidence of any impairment at all, Detective, and their logbooks say they had adequate sleep. Actually, they both look totally aware and with it. And freaked out. They estimate they were going maybe fifteen per, felt a bump on the passenger side, figured it was an animal. Then they saw the victim.”

“I.D. on the victim?”

“Nothing on him,” said the uniform. “Literally. He’s buck naked.”

Moe blinked. “That’s different. Young, old, medium?”

“Looks young. Smallish. To be honest, there’s probably not enough intact face for an I.D. Unless you guys have some new high-tech thing. My guess, he’s a stoned-out student.”

Moe said, “High-tech? If only. Naked, huh?”

The patrolman said, “The sororities on Hilgard aren’t far, maybe there was a party and some idiot wandered off and got slammed.”

“Worth checking out. Thanks.”

Moe left him and walked around to the front of the van. Huge thing, white, well kept. A national company named Armour, Inc., with a muscular arm logo. A slogan below the logo.

We treat your belongings like ours.

Which sounded good on the face of it. Unless you were dealing with a client who was a slob.

Moe took out his flashlight and ran it over the van. Was surprised to find no damage or blood on the hood or the windshield. No damage, period, until he got to the right side and the beam caught a dent just above the bumper.

Lateral impact. Vehicular wasn’t his strong point but this was a bit different.

He phone-photo’d the dent. Maybe an inch deep, two, three inches in diameter. Concave. Flecked with blood. For a human head to do that to heavy-duty steel there had to be considerable force.

He got closer to the damage. Cup-shaped, perfect fit for a skull. He pictured the victim, maybe a naked frat boy, staggering around in the dark, too out of it to hear or see the van.

Even with the headlights on? Assuming they were on.

No reason they shouldn’t have been on, the drivers were pros. Plus, they’d driven a hundred plus miles, no way they could’ve pulled that off without lights. So, lights on, but the victim hadn’t paid attention.

So accidental was likely: some poor stoned kid had walked right into a mass of metal, got caught on the head, and flew backward. If Moe’s luck held, he could wrap this up and wait for a real case.

Unless, despite what the uniform thought, the drivers had been impaired. Or had done something else that made them culpable.

Time to talk to them. The body could wait, it wasn’t going anywhere.



* * *



—

Donnell “Donny” Backus had been crying. Huge, baby-faced, kettle-gut guy in his early thirties. Muttonchops, body ink up the neck. What the guys at the gym called soft-strong.

Moe introduced himself, played friendly while checking Backus’s eyes and breath and overall body odor. Nothing. Guy was sweating but not giving off anything alcoholic or dope-like. On the contrary, a pleasant, piney shampoo aroma wafted from him. Recent shower; good hygiene.

Alfred “Alfie” LaMotta was dry-eyed, looked more angry than upset. Dark hair, ponytail, fox-featured, wiry build, no tats. His lined, chiseled face was dominated by steady dark eyes. Nothing overtly impaired about him, either, and anyway, he’d been the passenger.

Moe’s gut feeling intensified: wrong place, wrong time for everyone.

But you never put on blinders.

He had the two of them go over it again, mostly LaMotta doing the talking with Backus sniffing. Heard the same thing the uniform had related, copied it down in his pad. “Thanks, anything else you can think of?”

Alfie LaMotta said, “Dude has no clothes on. Got to be a nutcase or a junkie, right? Charging into us like that.”

Waiting for Moe’s confirmation. Moe didn’t offer it.

LaMotta frowned. “Sir, we did nothing wrong, this is our worst nightmare. We came here especially early to avoid traffic and people and any kind of hassle. Who’d figure some guy’s going to dart out in the darkness? If he’d of been in front of us, we might’ve even seen him. But from the side? We thought it was a critter. A cay-ote or a deer. We see them all the time. Especially deer, they’re the worst. Kill more people ’cause of accidents than bears do. Right?”

Leveling the question at Backus, who sniffed and nodded and shook his head and bit his lip and said something unintelligible.

Moe said, “What’s that?”

“I am so, so sorry.”

LaMotta frowned. “What could you do, man?”

“Nothing,” said Backus. “I’m just sorry. For it happening.”

LaMotta sighed and turned to Moe. “My man was a choirboy.”

Backus said, “I’d be sorry anyway.”

Moe said, “So your destination is four blocks away.”

LaMotta said, “Four friggin’ blocks north then we unload, go figure. Don’t imagine we can get there anytime soon.”

“We’ll need photos of the van’s exterior, photographer’s on the way. And if you don’t mind, a go-through of the interior.”