Gregg Hurwitz - Troubleshooter

"Torrance," Tim said.

"I thought I read Torrance. Nothing there anyway. Just that chick who died on vacation."

"Vacation where?"

"Cabo San Lucas."

"You crossed files. Jennifer Villarosa was from Sylmar."

"Not Villarosa. Sanchez, I think it was." Thomas wrinkled his forehead. "Villarosa died in Cabo?"

Tim thumbed through a line of file tabs, then whisked out the folder and flipped it open. An Immigration-application photo of Lupe Sanchez, plump face smiling beneath a heap of curly hair, was stapled above the report. Date of death: November 30.

A jolt of adrenaline made Tim's skin crawl, the tingle of still-dawning epiphany. The buried thread of the answer started to rise through the sand.

Bear was on his feet. "How'd she die?"

Thomas said, "Hiking accident."

"Jesus." Guerrera was already dialing. The room quieted as everyone became aware of the sudden shift in energy.

Tim grabbed the three packs of film, spilling some of the black rectangles as he pulled out the negatives. The first set of strips were foggy, as were the second. The third roll's negatives were clear bluish gray.

He looked back at the Post-it-24.92 gallons.

Den's sneering comment over Dray's bleeding body echoed in his head-We should practice on this heifer. In her ninth month, Dray was big. Big like Marisol Juarez. Like Jennifer Villarosa. Like Lupe Sanchez. Tim had read Den's lips on the vehicle cam's recording, missing the intonation shift on the second-to-last word. We should practice on this heifer.

He felt a meshing of gears, then the drop of cog into slot as the facts aligned and the solution pulled up into awareness.

He knew how the Sinners were muling the drugs in even before Guerrera racked the phone and said, with bright, excited eyes, "Sanchez won a free Mexico trip through Good Morning Vacations."

Drops of sweat cutting through the dust powdering his dark face, Gustavo Alonso readjusted the obese cadaver onto its left side, struggling with its weight until he found a better resting position. He paused to catch his breath, then tipped the chin to the chest to keep the esophagus open. A thin placement catheter ran down the girl's throat, attached to an intragastric balloon that he'd already positioned in the ample stomach cavity. The endoscope dangled from the monitor cart like a black snake. He inserted the scope through the mouth, following the catheter down. His trembling hands made it difficult to steer past the hump of the lower esophageal sphincter, but he managed, and the weight-loss balloon loomed on the viscera-flecked monitor.

Now he had eyes on the inside.

He paused, exhaling and wiping his brow. His frayed scrubs were damp, with dark splotches extending down the sides. The task at hand was not making him perspire-he'd operated as a mortician on a forged license for the better part of twenty years, and between floaters, decomps, and barbecues, little could turn his stomach. He was sweating because of the scabs on his arms. They were hungry.

Funeraria Sueno del Angel was located up Highway 1 from Cabo San Lucas, on the inland outskirts of San Jose del Cabo. The rundown funeral home hid off a dirt road in a throw of local houses left unwatered by the tourist corridor. The noises of the bikers, carried on a dry breeze from the sagging porch, reached Gustavo in the mortuary. A loud punch line, slapstick shuffling, smokers' laughter. Earlier, one of them had accidentally put a boot through the rotting wood.

Checking on Gustavo, Toe-Tag pressed his face to the screen door. Always within gunshot range. He and Whelp had arrived last night and taken over possession of Allah's Tears from the well-dressed Middle Eastern gentleman who'd shown up around midnight.

Gustavo refocused on the body; his arms would not get fed until he completed his work. He removed the guide wire from the fill tube protruding from the cadaver's gaping mouth. A bag of Allah's Tears lay on the surgical tray to his side, labeled as saline but holding instead a liter of fluid euphoria. He primed the fill tube, then spiked the bag. Using a 50-cc syringe, he withdrew the liquid heroin, then shot it down the filling tube. On the monitor the intragastric balloon swelled, the pulse of a synthetic fetus.

Taking great care to ensure that the fill tube stayed slack, he repeated the process, each plunger push street-valued at over a million dollars.

It was painstaking work.

The embalming table had not been well maintained; flakes of rust stuck up, lodging in the doughy white flesh of the eighteen-year-old body. Because the corpse had to look presentable at the end of its travails-with Catholics you could count on an open casket-he'd taken all the appropriate steps. He'd removed the clothes, then massaged the mounds of blue-veined flesh, manipulating the extremities to break up the incipient rigor mortis. He'd cleansed the body with antibacterial soap, working up a good lather, then sprayed it down with disinfectant. He'd swabbed the orifices with cavity fluid and packed them, except for the mouth, which he left accessible. Because of the facial cyanosis, he'd applied massage cream with a light touch to avoid further bloodstaining. He'd rinsed the eyeballs with a mild solution before inserting eye cups to hold the lids in place. The big toes he'd tied together to keep the legs in line, and he'd sutured the pillowy breasts together near the nipples so they'd be held in position. He'd inserted the trocar above and to the left of the belly button and used the long, pointed instrument to suck out the contents of the organs. He'd lifted arteries at the embalmer's six points-the right and left carotids, axillaries, and femorals. The right carotid protruded just above the breastbone, the tongue depressor underneath still holding it above skin level though he'd long disconnected the pump. He'd already drained the blood, replacing it with embalming fluid and a solution to keep the skin bile pigment from turning the flesh green.

It was a well-cared-for corpse.

The shadows at the screen were steady now as the bikers watched from the safety of twenty feet and an outdoor breeze. The first intragastric balloon reached its liter limit. After the syringe's final stroke, Gustavo pushed the residual through the line, then pulled back on the plunger, creating a vacuum in the valve and sealing the balloon. Gently, he withdrew the tubing, leaving the freestanding balloon inside the stomach. Though obese corpses were difficult to work with, larger stomach capacity was required for the procedure, and abdominal fat would help disguise the distention.

He laid the corpse flat on its back. He embedded a hooked barb in the upper and lower gum line, then used a wire to cinch the mouth neatly closed. The chubby hands he positioned left over right, leaving the fingers slightly cupped.

Relieved and exhausted, he leaned over and kissed the girl's pale forehead.

Shirt up over his nose, Whelp entered and retrieved the final fill bag from the crate of tribal trinkets. For all their rough-and-tumble posturing, the bikers were feeble around cadavers. They were skilled at making corpses; they just couldn't stomach the extended aftermath. After all Gustavo's meticulous preparations, they'd mucked up the first three corpses on the other end, unable to cleanly incise the stomachs. He sincerely hoped that the new guy, with his much-ballyhooed blade skills, would prove a more effective craftsman.

Drops of sweat hung from the ends of Gustavo's hair. He rubbed his nose, and his fingers came away greasy. He scratched his arms-the imaginary bugs were back, just beneath the skin. "A taste?" he said in strong-accented English. "Just a taste?"

"Not yet." Toe-Tag stood behind Whelp, arms crossed.

Gustavo followed his gaze to the far side of the mortuary, taking in the enormous corpse lying humped and naked on the second embalming table.