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Marisa
You know know something’s gotta be really wrong with you when you’d rather be bent over a dead body than having coffee with the guy you took home last night.
My long, brown hair was pulled tight against my scalp in a bun. Was it the tightness of the bun or the snapshots of last night’s poor decisions flashing through my mind that was giving me a colossal headache right now?
“All right, whadda we got?” I asked, squatting on my hindquarters, removing the tarp so I could examine the body.
“Vic’s a Latino male. Early twenties. GSWs to the chest and head,” Dr. Myah Daniels, the medical examiner, said. “Body was called in by a homeless man.”
“Where’s he at?” I followed the direction of her chin nod to where two other detectives were talking to the caller.
“Being questioned by Lockett and Pearson.”
I scanned the body and listened as she listed her initial findings.
“Any shell casings recovered?” I asked.
“Yep, already bagged and tagged. Fairly large caliber, too.”
“Yeah,” I agreed as I took a closer inspection of the entry wounds.
“What about a phone? ID?” Chad Davis, my partner, asked.
“We have the phone. We’ll get tech on it ASAP. Victim is John Zepeda, twenty-four, Chula Vista.”
“He was shot over there. But he must’ve been coming after his attacker since his body dropped here from the second bullet. If I had to take a guess, based on body temp and lividity, sometime early this morning.”
“Bled out here. Shot to the head’s what got him.”
“See his tat?” Chad asked me.
I moved the head and looked at the tattoo on his neck. “Shark tooth dripping blood.”
“Known member of Los Tiburónes.”
“Alonso López,” I said, not trying to hide my contempt.
This was not good. Not good at all.
* * *
“That’s the third body we’ve got that links back to those assholes,” Chad reminded me as I took my seat behind my desk.
“Yup,” I said, taking a sip of the coffee I just poured.
“That’s been reported anyway.” He popped the top of his vending machine soda, sat back in his chair, and propped his feet on the desk. “It’s been nothing but lights and sirens for us. And dead bodies.” The audible “ahh” he released sounded more like approval than satisfaction from his caffeine intake.
Jimmy Lockett and Rick Pearson sauntered in from the call they were returning from. The story they regaled us with about the little old lady who called to report a drunk and disorderly made us laugh hysterically. Apparently, the guy decided to go streaking down the street after a few too many beers at a friend’s party. And Lockett and Pearson had to chase him down and tackle him on the front lawn of a house at the end of the block.
I rolled my eyes and took another sip of my coffee. “Glad we didn’t have to see that.” At least it was some drunk knucklehead and not a call about a kid. Those ones always got to me.
Davis ran a hand over his jaw and shook his head as our captain, Fernando Gomez, poked his head out of his door and motioned us to join him in his office.
“He’s been a little bitchy lately. Been in a shit mood since he got called onto the carpet for all this,” Pearson said. It wasn’t a good sign that there was another body. It wasn’t a good look for our department that we still didn’t have a hold on all of it either.
“Worse than when he was doing that cleanse and some idiot genius brought in those donuts?” Davis asked.
“Hey, that was me,” Lockett said.
