Killing Zone Read Free Page A

elbows of reporters toward the voice saying over and over, “We don’t have a positive identification, yet, ladies and gentlemen, so I can’t say who the victim is. As soon as we know something, we’ll have a statement. The next of kin—Stubbs, where the hell have you been?”
    “Knocking on doors, Lieutenant.”
    “Wager with you?”
    “Yessir.”
    The lieutenant shoved away from the crowd and past the picket line of uniformed police to find an almost-quiet circle of mashed grass near the tape. “Jesus, what a madhouse—God damn it, Sergeant, get that goddamned camera out of the crime scene. And keep those goddamned people back on the sidewalks!”
    He stared hotly while two blue uniforms headed off a television crew and walked them protesting toward the crowd near the street. Then he turned to Wager. “Do you have a positive on the victim?”
    Wager handed him the brown evidence envelope that dangled heavily with the victim’s wallet. “City Councilman Horace Green.”
    “So it’s true. God damn.” He flipped through the plastic windows of the wallet. “Next of kin been notified?”
    “Not yet. You told us to wait for you here,” Wager reminded him.
    Wolfard sighed and pulled his GE radiopack from the holster riding on his hip. “Definite homicide?”
    Wager nodded.
    The lieutenant keyed the microphone and called the number for Chief of Police Sullivan. The dispatcher answered that the chief had signed out for the day. “This is Lieutenant Wolfard in Crimes Against Persons. We’ve got a V.I.P. homicide and the press is already on it. It’s something we want to keep the lid on, and the chief should know about it.”
    “Who’s the victim, sir?”
    “I’ll give him a ten-twenty-five on that.”
    The ten-code was no longer official procedure, but most officers still used it; it marked them as veterans. Ten-twenty-five meant “report in person,” and Wager wondered why, if Wolfard was going to talk to the chief anyway, he wanted the eavesdropping reporters aroused by radio.
    Then he decided that the lieutenant, despite the stone face and outside calm, was sweating with nervousness because Chief Doyle, head of Crimes Against Persons, would be out of town until next week, and that left Wolfard holding the sack all by himself.
    The dispatcher asked Wolfard to wait while he checked; then, a few minutes later, the voice came up to tell them the chief was on his way in.
    “The Administration Building,” Wolfard said to them. “Let’s go.”
    They pushed toward their cars through the newly excited reporters crammed behind the police line.
    “Wager—Hey, Gabe!” The shout jabbed through the rising volume of voices. “Wager, it’s me, Gargan. Was it Councilman Green? Come on, Wager, was it?”
    “Hello, Gargan.”
    A television camera swung toward him, its alert light a bright mark of interest.
    “Wager, goddamn it, come on, man! This is real news!”
    “Good-bye, Gargan.”
    The sedan’s doors slammed against the still shouting voices and the steady, glassy winks of camera lenses. Wager bumped the horn a couple of times and then eased forward, the car’s fenders nudging through dodging bodies.
    “Jesus!” Stubbs wiped at his neck, his breath a mixture of fresh chewing gum and old vomit. As they pulled free of the shouting faces he rolled down the window to let out the trapped heat. “I hate those damned television cameras.”
    Wager pulled close behind the lieutenant’s car as it angled across the lane of traffic toward the office towers that framed the vacant sky marking the old Brown Palace Hotel. In the rearview mirror, the television and newspaper reporters piled into their cars and darted after them. “That’s why we have lieutenants and captains.”
    “You think it’s funny, don’t you?”
    Wager felt the skin of his cheeks grow taut with a grin. “I could refer all questions to you, Stubbs.”
    “Hell, no!”

CHAPTER 2
THURSDAY, 12 JUNE, 1827 Hours
    That was also the