Speak for the Dead Read Free Page A

showed a lock pick, it was damned likely that someone used a key. “You live only a couple of miles away?” he asked Solano.
    “Yeah. It’s a short drive.”
    “Did you recognize the victim?”
    “What?”
    “Have you ever seen her before?”
    “Good gosh, Officer, how could anybody tell? I didn’t even think she was real, you know?”
    “Well, do you know any women who fit the description: maybe twenty-five, short blond hair, regular features?”
    “No. And I better not. The wife would be all over me.”
    “Thanks for your help.” He watched Solano walk in his quick, nervous way toward the lobby doors. Then he searched for Fred Baird. The technician was dusting the smoothest tree trunks and larger branches around the area where the head rested.
    “Have you got anything?” Wager asked.
    “Not yet. Whoever put it here had to come this way—they couldn’t reach across the stream.” This way was down a steep bank past a cluster of banana trees, giant ferns, and a tall eruption of leaves. “Great God, look at the name of this plant.” Baird giggled and pointed to the plastic tag beside the shooting green stalks. It said “Self-Heading Philodendron.”
    Wager didn’t see anything to laugh at. He jotted the fact in his little book. “Any idea how long it’s been there?”
    “Hard to say. The M.E. can make a guess if he ever gets here.”
    Solano had arrived around 6:30; it was now a little past eight. “Two hours? Maybe less?” The utility worker could have brought it in with him and then “found” it.
    “I’d say more—there’s a lot of drainage under it. But you’d better ask the M.E.” Baird stepped back and looked for other likely places a hand would rest. “I’ll bet you’re going to want us to survey this whole goddamned conservatory, aren’t you?”
    “I would like to know how it got here.”
    “Right. And why some son of a bitch would screw up such a pretty place by bringing it here.” He bent to dust another smooth tree trunk. “You want to call an ambulance? When the M.E.’s finished, it should go to the morgue for the pathologist. I sure as hell don’t care to take it back in my car.”
    Besides, Doyle’s procedure manual required corpses to be transported by suitable conveyance, and Wager supposed that meant bits and pieces as well. He keyed the G.E. radio pack holstered on his belt and sent the code for an ambulance, no siren necessary. “The deputy director’s coming down,” he told Baird. “He’s worried about his bushes and stuff.”
    “Right. And I’m worried about knocking off. Is that day shift on its way?”
    “Bauman said he called.” The conservatory’s shadows had faded to reveal, here and there among the towering palm trees, pink and white flowering vines and pulpy clusters of purple banana sprouts. This was the upper end of the area; the lobby was down at the east end where the stream fed a dark still pool whose bottom glinted with pennies and dimes. He half wondered if one of the coins had been tossed by whoever brought the head.
    Wager walked back around to the side path across the stream from the head. The face showed no bruises, no contortions, none of the knotted, frozen cords and sinews that came with agony. Instead, it seemed to have eased its life away in one long, gentle breath as if sighing at the glossiness of leaves, the richness of shoots and tendrils and moist protruding roots, the sudden flame of birds of paradise. There was a reason for it. He had been a cop long enough to know there was always a reason, even when no sane mind could understand it. This was not an easy place to get into, and most killers would dump a whole body. The person or persons unknown had gone out of their way to put just the head here, Wager figured, knowing it would be found within hours. And they’d done it because it was important to them. It was something worth taking such a chance for, something that had a reason for them.
    Wager no longer saw the gray skin