Joseph Kanon - Los Alamos

The drive down from the mesa was spectacular. The morning was beautiful, and under the cloudless blue sky the land stretched out for miles, waves of pink and brown earth dotted with clumps of pinons rolling all the way to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the far distance. After the busy claustrophobia of the base, the country felt even larger, and Connolly’s spirits rose to meet it the minute he passed through the gate. The fences and sentry boxes were behind, ahead only the bright freedom of the high desert. Mills had told him that Oppenheimer had selected the site-he’d had a vacation ranch in the area, about sixty miles away-and Connolly wondered if this was another of those paradoxes he relished, working with the smallest particles of matter in one of the most open landscapes in the world.

The Rio Grande was swollen and brown, muddy with spring runoff, and Connolly could see in its long valley the cottonwood groves and new green fields that had drawn the first settlers in from the desert. He had never been to the West before, and the sheer size of it overwhelmed him. But it was exhilarating, not lonely-you expanded to its scale. His mind had been cluttered with a hundred questions, but the sight of the country emptied it. There was no brooding in this clearheaded sky.

The road was no better than the day before, however, and he lurched and bounced, afraid for his new tires, all the way to the outskirts of Santa Fe. He drove around the cathedral, lost in the unfamiliar streets, until he found the police station in a large adobe building that resembled a Western movie jail. Inside, however, everything was up-to-date and all business.

“You can call me Doc,” Holliday said. “Everyone does, sooner or later, and I’ve got no time for the suspense. Now if you’re going to start by dumping all over us and telling us how top secret and important you all are, you can save your breath, ‘cause I’ve heard it all before. I don’t suppose you’ve come to tell me just who our John Doe is.”

“His name is-was-Karl Bruner.”

“Well, I’ll be damned. First time a liaison man ever told me anything. Usually the way we liaise around here is kind of one-way-you don’t tell me anything and I get to like it. A German?”

“By birth. American citizen. Army. Also a cop.”

Holliday stared at him. “You don’t say. What kind of cop?”

“Security officer.”

Holliday continued staring at him, as if he needed time to take this in. Finally he said, “Do I keep going, or is this where you cut me off with all the classified horse-shit?”

“I’m new. They usually give you a hard time?”

“They don’t tell me much.”

“They don’t tell me much either. Maybe there’s not much to tell. But that’s who he was. And now that you know, you’ll have to forget it again. Officially, he’s still a John Doe. Now you know most of what I know. What’s important to me is what you know.”

“You’re not trying to flatter me by any chance, are you?”

“Would it work?”

Holliday grinned. “Never fails. I don’t suppose while you’re in the mood you’d like to tell me what you boys are doing up there?”

“Doc.”

“Well, a try. Actually, I don’t give a good goddamn. The only reason anybody wants to know is you won’t tell him. You got explosions going off up there at five o’clock in the morning you can hear clear across the valley, but nobody’s supposed to hear them. The smart money says it’s rockets, some kind of new V-2. I just hope you don’t aim them over here. One goes off and there’d be a hell of a time explaining that away.”

“At the moment all we’ve got is a body.”

“Yeah. If he was security, are you telling me the army’s taking this over? Just put my feet up and have a cup of coffee and politely butt out. You want some, by the way?” he said, nodding toward the hot plate behind him. “It’s cowboy coffee, just boiled in the pot and tastes like shit, but since we’re such great friends—”

“I’m okay, thanks. You still have a case. To tell you the truth, nobody thinks it’s connected to the Hill anyway, so you might have the only case.”

“But without a name, rank, and serial number.”

“Let’s go over what you do have. Who found the body?”

“Mexican woman. Just about had a heart attack and been gibbering ever since. None of it means a thing, or maybe my Spanish isn’t what it used to be. Priest says she’s practically living in the church now to get over the shock. Nothing there. She found him in the morning, but he’d obviously been out all night.”

“How obviously?”

“Rigor. Plus he got rained on a lot. Coroner estimates time of death anywhere the evening before and won’t budge on getting more detailed. I tried. I’ve been assuming he was killed sometime after eleven-earlier than that and you figure someone would have seen something. After that, it gets pretty quiet here, even on the Alameda.”

“State of the body consistent with that time?”

“Coroner says so. You’ve seen his report, haven’t you?”

“Not very specific, is it?”

“Well, let’s just say Ritter’s a careful kind of guy. You can’t hold him to much.”

“Let’s just say he’s incompetent. What’s your guess?”

“Figure midnight, one o’clock at the outside.”

“No witnesses, no signs of struggle, nothing that tells us anything?”

“Right. Rain did a good job on the site. Some broken branches on the bushes, but that could be from falling down. From the looks of it, though, I’d say he was dragged in.”

“Why?”

“There wouldn’t have been room for two of them there where we found him. You know, if they’d been together. So I have to assume he was put there. We did find footprints, partial ones anyway.”

“That’s interesting.”

“No it isn’t. No special marks, just a standard workboot. All the Mexicans around here wear them.”

“Just the Mexicans?”

“No, I didn’t mean that. Anybody. Any working man.”

Connolly frowned. “Hmm. Does that seem right to you?”

“They’ve got dicks too.”

Connolly looked up, surprised at the sharpness of it. “Okay, let’s get down to it. I read about the pants. Any evidence of anal penetration?”

“No.”

“Semen?”

“No.”

“What about the park? Is it one of the meeting places?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must. You’re chief of police.”

“Well, you know, this is a quiet town. I’m not saying we’re Dogpatch-we know what it is. You go up to Taos, where all the artists are, or down to Albuquerque, and I guess you’d find plenty of what you’re looking for. We’ve got a few antique dealers and sandalmakers-well, one look, you can see they’re covered in fairy dust, but they don’t bother anybody. We’ve never had this kind of trouble. Honest to God, I don’t even know where to look.”

“You mean you haven’t checked the bars or anywhere someone’s likely to have heard something?”

“Well, I’ll make you a deal. You find out where they are and I’ll check them out for you.”

“I’ll make you a deal. You get your men to talk to their snitches and get them to tell you where people go at night. Then check it out and talk to people nice so they talk back to you and see what you can see. You do that and I’ll forget you haven’t even got around to basic police work. You’re putting it out this guy was homosexual and then you turn around and say you haven’t got any here. Who do you think killed him, then?”

Holliday stared at him, offended. “You tell me. What I’m telling you is we’ve got no problem in that park. Take it or leave it.”

“All right,” Connolly said, “let’s leave it for now. But check about the bars, will you?”