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“Nope, somebody found him and called us. By the time we got here, whatever huddled masses were living here hightailed it.”
So the house was a “coyote” hideout, a place where smugglers brought their human cargo to disperse to the kitchens, lawn services, and sweatshops of the nation’s fifth largest city, or for points beyond. Phoenix was a major transit point in the people-smuggling trade. If an illegal immigrant made it across the border and through some of the most inhospitable desert on earth, he rested in Phoenix before heading off to find work in the slaughterhouses of Nebraska or the chicken processing plants of North Carolina. That is, if he didn’t wind up in a shoot-out between rival smugglers. It was a hell of a way to get to a low-wage job.
I kept my thoughts to myself as the cop editorialized. “I grew up out here,” Markowitz said. “Right here in Maryvale. We lived maybe a mile from this spot. It was nice. Now it’s all Mexicans, living ten to a room. Gangs. Turned to shit.”
He watched me, and the line down his forehead deepened like a river channel in a reddish landscape of skin. “I’m not a racist, Mapstone. I just don’t understand why they don’t stay in their own country.”
I said, “Following the American dream, I guess.”
Markowitz spat into the yard and the moisture disappeared in the dust just beyond my shadow. It was the shadow of a tall, broad-shouldered man, all six-feet-two of me there as a target for t
he sun. My hair was wavy and dark, better to absorb the goddamned heat. I was a few months away from forty-five years of age and feeling too old to be broiling in a backyard with the stench of a stranger’s corpse. I knew I was in a mood, and tried to keep a lid on.
I asked, “Anybody know who he is?”
“Homeless guy, looks like. An Anglo, I’d bet. But he’s got no ID that we could find. Looks like his wallet was taken, if he had one.”
“Homicide?”
Markowitz shrugged. “Hard to tell. He’d been down in that water a few days.”
It didn’t seem like my kind of trouble. That is, trouble with a past. I’m a failed history professor, or maybe a failed lawman. In any event, I make my living doing a little of both, working for the Maricopa County Sheriff, my old friend Mike Peralta. Now they call me a cold case consultant, researching unsolved crimes that can be as old as the city. But I also carry a badge as a sworn deputy, and sometimes a gun.
I could have written a fascinating paper on the evolution of the American automobile suburb in Phoenix, how the places like Maryvale that once seemed so full of promise had evolved into postmodern slums. How abandonment of place in the West is as old as the Hohokam, the ancient Indians who first settled in the river valley that became Phoenix, and then disappeared. It would be fascinating to me, at least. But I didn’t see any need for that skill in what looked like one more dreary west-side killing-the “curse of the Avenues,” as my wife Lindsey called it, referring to Phoenix’s grid of numbered avenues on the west of Central, numbered streets on the east.
I said, “So why do you need me?”
“That’s exactly what I was wondering, Mapstone.” Kate Vare emerged from the patio and marched toward us, her jaw set to confront me as an intruder. Sgt. Kate Vare of the Phoenix Police cold case unit and, “Christ, what’s he doing here?” She was a businesslike blonde with short boyish-cut hair and brown eyebrows. As usual, she wore a pants suit with shoulder pads, exaggerating her natural angularity, making her look like an androgynous toy soldier.
“We don’t need any history lessons,” she said. “And this is a city case.”
“Give it a break, Kate,” Markowitz said. “Mapstone is here at the request of Chief Wilson, Sheriff Peralta, and the feds.”
As if on cue, a group emerged from the house, better dressed than your average city detectives. The leader came out and shook my hand.
“Mapstone, I’m Eric Pham,” the man said. He had a strong grip but a face of fine-boned details. “I’m special agent in charge of the Phoenix FBI. I’m a big admirer of your work.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But why do you need me or the sheriff’s office? Detective Vare is as good a cold case expert as you’ll find.” I fantasized about pushing her into the pool. “Not that I see an obvious cold case.”
Vare glared at me.
Eric Pham said, “Our John Doe there was found with this sewn in his jacket. And this has been missing since1948.”
Pham held up an evidence bag containing a single metal object. I took the bag and studied what was inside. It was tarnished and battered, but unmistakable.
“Is this real?” I asked Pham. He nodded, his lips pursing together until the color drained out.
It never ceased to surprise me-how small an FBI badge is.
Chapter Two
The rubber bag held a misshapen fat man. But the bones of his face, with their narrow planes and prominent juts, seemed to go with a man of average, even lean, build. The sun had done its relentless job bloating, burning, breaking down the remains. Even a few days in this heat were enough to do it. I searched the sore-ridden face, darkened by the pooling of blood. It was an old face with wrinkles around the mouth. He had spiky yellow-white whiskers, like the weeds in the yard, maybe a week’s growth of beard that would grow no more. The pupils were blown out black, the tear ducts large. Parts of his face had a hint of fair skin. A mole was still distinct on the crease running below his right cheek. The smell was god-awful, rotting human flesh. I fought my gag reflex and breathed through my mouth.
Pham handed me a pair of gloves, but I didn’t put them on. What I knew about forensics I had mostly learned as a young deputy on the street years ago. When I got my Ph.D. in history, emphasis on America from 1900 to 1940, I thought it was my ticket away from dead bodies. Funny how things turned out.
I asked, “How do we know he’s homeless?”
Markowitz pointed to a raggedy backpack and two white plastic shopping bags on the ground nearby. An evidence technician was starting to separate and inventory their contents. Another technician used a digital camera to record each piece of evidence.
