Shiver Read Free Page A

yeah. But without the murder weapon, I don’t know if the D.A. will file.”
    Delgado frowned. “Let me talk to him. What’s his name?”
    “Leon Crowell.”
    Delgado pushed open the door and entered the interrogation room. A young black man, his head shaved bald, sat in a straight-backed chair, his left wrist handcuffed to a steel ring bolted to the wall. He wore a leather jacket emblazoned with the silver and black logo of the Los Angeles Raiders, an outfit favored by youthful offenders in L.A. Delgado had never been sure whether it was the team’s rebel image or simply the bold color scheme that attracted the interest of streetwise criminals; but he’d caught himself thinking, at times, that the city’s crime rate might not be rising quite so fast if the Raiders had stayed in Oakland.
    “Hello, Leon,” he said, making no effort to sound friendly.
    Leon pursed his lips like a pouting child. “I got nothing to say.”
    “My friend here”—Delgado indicated Sachetti—“seems to think you killed a man tonight. Want to tell me why he’s wrong?”
    A shrug. “Man, I don’t know nothing about that. I was just out for a walk, you know?”
    “At one-fifteen in the morning?”
    “I get sort of restless sometimes.”
    “Why were you running?”
    “I like to run, is all. Exercise.”
    He scratched his nose with his right hand. Delgado studied that hand. A ring of dirt, a perfect circle an inch and a half in diameter, was printed faintly on the palm.
    “It’s a public street, man,” Leon was saying. “Public property. I can run on it if I want to. Says so in the Constitution.”
    Delgado smiled. “You’re a smart fellow, aren’t you, Leon?”
    “Smart enough.”
    “I’ll bet. But I’m smart too. Do you want to see how smart I am?”
    “I don’t want to see nothing.”
    Delgado turned to Sachetti. “You said there are cars in that alley?”
    “Yeah. It’s right behind the bar, and some of the staff park there. But we searched the cars, Seb. Nothing underneath, and nothing inside.”
    “No,” Delgado said. “Leon’s too smart for that. Leon, show Detective Sachetti your hand. Your right hand.”
    “Say what?”
    “Do it.”
    Slowly, suspiciously, Leon raised his hand. Delgado twisted his wrist, angling the dirty palm at the overhead fluorescents.
    “Hey, man,” Leon whined, “let go of me.”
    Delgado ignored him. “See that, Tony?”
    Sachetti leaned closed. “I see it. Now tell me what it means.”
    “It means Mr. Crowell is a quick thinker. He sprinted into that alley, and he knew he had no more than two or three seconds to dispose of the knife.”
    “There never was no knife,” Leon said, his voice reedy with the first piping note of desperation.
    “So he ran to the nearest available hiding place,” Delgado continued. “One of those cars. He crouched down and shoved the knife into the exhaust pipe. When he did so, his palm made contact with the end of the pipe, which left the circle of dirt marked there.”
    “I’ll be damned,” Sachetti muttered.
    Delgado released Leon’s hand. “Tell your people to check the exhaust pipes, Tony. One of them will contain a surprise. A surprise with Mr. Crowell’s fingerprints on it, not to mention Mr. Ruiz’s blood.”
    Leon shifted in his seat and knocked his sneakers together. “Shit.”
    “I’ll tell you something, Seb,” Sachetti said with a smile. “That fucking birdman you’re looking for doesn’t stand a chance.”
    Delgado sighed. “I hope you’re right.”
    As he returned to his office, Delgado found himself envying Tony Sachetti. The man was out there working the streets, hauling in punks like Leon Crowell, accomplishing something. Yes, that must be nice.
    He remembered the quiet excitement he’d felt when he’d been assigned to lead the task force a month ago, after the second victim was found. He hadn’t even minded seeing the rest of his caseload transferred to other officers. He was intoxicated with the luxury of