What's Left is Right: Book two of The Detective Bill Ross Crime Series Read Free Page A

every day? He had been fully dressed when they dragged him, as the bits of clothing picked up at the scene suggested. According to the notes in the file, forensics had identified some of the clothing as being top-quality wool worsted, light grey in color, used in the manufacture of fine suits and pants. He had also worn a white silk shirt. One black shoe had been found wedged under a large rock. It was a size ten Italian Bacco Bucci sports shoe that retailed for about $300 a pair.
    Bill was convinced that whoever did this had tried to clean the site to ensure that the dead man could not be identified. The fact that they had missed the shoe was a huge mistake.
    Bill remembered that there had been a message left by the body. It was on a large piece of heavy-duty cardboard, the type used to package household appliances like refrigerators and washing machines. It had been nailed to an adjoining tree, and scrawled across the board in heavy black marker were the words:
    Stop illegal immigration - Close the border - Kill Wetbacks.
    As Bill repeated the words there was something that didn’t make sense.
    His mind took him back to the KKK lynchings:
    Kill the Niggers! Only good Nigger is a dead Nigger!
    Stop illegal immigration - Close the border - Kill Wetbacks. This was too perfect. The use of these words was strange. This was not written by some white supremacist full of liquor and spitting nails. Apart from the Kill Wetbacks phrase the rest of the statement could have come from a sign on the floor of a Republican convention. This was another piece of the jigsaw puzzle that didn’t fit and just one more piece of evidence to suggest that this whole thing had been staged.
    Another glass of Glenmorangie, then off to bed. I’m going to get you lot, as God is my witness, you are going down!

Chapter 4: The Tattoo
    The following day they were all back in the conference room. The room would now be locked off from all other officers and administrative personnel in the department. They would update the white board regularly with what they knew or, in some cases, just suspected or speculated. This would form the roadmap and audit trail for their work going forward.
    “I got a call from Bill Dunwoody at home last night,” announced Tommy. “I have to provide him with an update on where we are at four o’clock today. So let’s get to work.”
    “I think that we can say with a fair degree of certainty that this was not a resurgence of the Klan. I don’t think that we are going to see anyone anytime soon walking down 6 th Street dressed in white and with pointy hats unless they are off to a fancy dress party,” said Bill.
    “Do you agree, Marie?” asked Tommy.
    “Yes,” replied Marie.
    “Okay, so we are coming from the angle that this was a murder not a lynching. So who was this guy and why was he killed? We need to focus our efforts on establishing his identity. So what do we have?” said Tommy.
    “We have DNA from blood and hair and the lab work results are in the file. The medical examiner concluded, of course, that the cause of death was blunt force trauma. There was no evidence of any drugs in his system from the toxicology screening.”
    “His assessment is that this guy was in great physical shape before he was killed. He was roughly six feet tall and weighed 180 - 190 pounds. The evidence gathered at the scene, which was mainly fragments of clothing and pieces of flesh, would suggest that he wore high-quality, high-end merchandize. We also have the single size ten Italian shoe, and the initial investigating team has spent hours checking sales outlets trying to find a purchase transaction for the shoes, with no success. That’s all I know at this time,” said Bill.
    “Based on the DNA, can we check if he was Mexican or from Central America as the sign found at the scene suggested?” asked Tommy.
    Marie jumped in. “I did a course on DNA matching a couple of years back and as I understand it you can’t get that