Early Graves Read Free

number of times over the years. He had his helpers move the plants off the bench and do what they could to change the position of the body. Rigor mortis made the change grotesque. Dave turned away. So did Leppard. They walked out to the front, which was crowded by an unmarked police car, a black-and-white with a light strip on its roof, Carlyle’s car, and a coroner’s wagon. Two young uniformed officers sat in the black-and-white. Leppard leaned down and talked to them.
    He looked at his gold Rolex, and walked back into the courtyard. Carlyle adjusted the clothes on the corpse and closed his kit. A bony man with gray skin and long teeth, he told Leppard, “Body’s lost all heat.” Rain beaded his glasses. He took them off and dried them on a handkerchief. “Stomach contents will tell me the time of death when I get him downtown. But it sure as hell won’t be breakfast. He didn’t arrive here this morning. He arrived in the night.”
    Funt’s bulbous nose was red. He blew it on tissues and stuffed the tissues into a black raincoat pocket. He had a rubbery look, did Funt. His necktie knot was always crooked. “He didn’t die here.” Funt’s voice was a wheeze. “There’s grease, grit, old tire residue on him. He was stabbed in a garage, parking facility, maybe the street.” He held up flakes of yellow in a plastic pouch. “Off his shoes.”
    “Some kind of flower?” Leppard said.
    “Locust tree.” Funt coughed. “At a guess.”
    Leppard grunted thanks, and now it was his turn with the body. He pulled a watch from a wrist, a chain from around the dead man’s neck, rifled pockets for keys, coins, checkbook, wallet, an amber vial of pills. He opened the wallet and frowned. “No money. That’s a switch. None of the other victims was robbed.” Leppard passed a driver’s license to Dave. Harold Andrew Dodge, born September 10, 1954. The photo showed a man thirty pounds heavier than this one but the same, no mistake. The address was in Rancho Vientos, formerly Fergus Oaks, now an expensive development. Dave gave the license back to Leppard, and put away his reading glasses. “I still don’t know him.”
    “Ever heard the name?” Leppard tucked the license back into the wallet. “Still can’t say how he came by your card?”
    “Never heard the name,” Dave said. “Still can’t say.”
    The two men from the coroner’s wagon were young, one Asian, one Latino. The Asian had skin like ivory. The Latino’s face was scarred by acne. He was trying to grow a beard to cover the scars, but the hairs were sparse and silky. He said, “Lieutenant, can we have the body now?” A body bag hung folded over his arm. A collapsed gurney leaned against the leg of the Asian kid, raindrops twinkling on its chrome-plated frame.
    When Leppard nodded his head, the Asian kid clicked and clacked the gurney open. The Latino boy laid the body bag on it and ran its zipper down. The Asian boy took the rigid shell of Harold Andrew Dodge in its rain-sodden clothes under its arms, the Latino lad took it under the bent knees, and they shifted it onto the gurney on its side, and worked the body bag over it and zipped the body bag. They wheeled the gurney away, rattling and tilting over the uneven bricks. “What about Cecil?” Leppard said. “Does he know him?” Dave said, “He doesn’t know him.” But was that a fact? I’m not sleeping around. Why had he said that? Dave had never suggested it. He trusted Cecil totally, as if a long life in a harsh business had taught him nothing. Cecil was startled to find Dodge’s body here. But more startled than normal? Dave hadn’t thought so. Yet he had cleared out fast after that drink. He had been in a tearing hurry to get away. Dave shook his head angrily to clear out the doubts. Leppard was manipulating him.
    “He does live here with you.” Leppard put watch, chain, the rest of the trove from the dead man’s pockets into a five-by-eight manila envelope. He wrote on the