Грегори Бенфорд - Not One of Us - Stories of Aliens on Earth

“Any dental ID?”

“Not yet.”

“I need pictures,” McKenna said. “Cases like this cool off fast.”

“Use my digital, I’ll e-mail them to you. He looks like a Latino,” the ME said. “Maybe that’s why no known fingerprints or dental. Illegal.”

Ever since the first big hurricanes, Katrina and Rita, swarms of Mexicans had poured in to do the grunt work. Most stayed, irritating the working class who then competed for the construction and restaurant and fishing jobs. The ME prepared his instruments for further opening the swollen body and McKenna knew he could not take that. “Where… where’s the clothes?”

The ME looked carefully at McKenna’s eyes. “Over there. Say, maybe you should sit down.”

“I’m okay.” It came out as a croak. McKenna went over to the evidence bag and pulled out the jeans. Nothing in the pockets. He was stuffing them back in when he felt something solid in the fabric. There was a little inner pocket at the back, sewed in by hand. He fished out a key ring with a crab-shaped ornament and one key on it.

“They log this in?” He went through the paperwork lying on the steel table. The ME was cutting but came over. Nothing in the log.

“Just a cheap plastic thingy,” the ME said, holding it up to the light. “Door key, maybe. Not a car.”

“Guy with one key on his ring. Maybe worked boats, like Anselmo.”

“That’s the first guy, the one who had those same kinda marks?”

McKenna nodded. “Any idea what they are?”

The ME studied the crab ornament. “Not really. Both bodies had pretty rough hands, too. Manual labor.”

“Workin’ stiffs. You figure he drowned?”

“Prob’ly. Got all the usual signs. Stick around, I’ll know soon.”

McKenna very carefully did not look back at the body. The smell was getting to him even over the air conditioning sucking air out of the room with a loud hum. “I’ll pick up the report later.” He left right away.

His supe sipped coffee, considered the sound-absorbing ceiling, and said, “You might see if VICAP got anything like this.”

The Violent Criminal Apprehension Program computer would cross-filter the wounds and tell him if anything like that turned up in other floaters. “Okay. Thought I’d try to track that crab thing on the key chain.”

The supe leaned back and crossed his arms, showing scars on both like scratches on ebony. “Kinda unlikely.”

“I want to see if anybody recognizes it. Otherwise this guy’s a John Doe.”

“It’s a big gulf. The ME think it could’ve floated from Mexico?”

“No. Local, from the wear and tear.”

“Still a lot of coastline.”

McKenna nodded. The body had washed up about forty miles to the east of Bayou La Batre, but the currents could have brought it from anywhere. “I got to follow my hunches on this.”

The supe studied McKenna’s face like it was a map. He studied the ceiling again and sighed. “Don’t burn a lot of time, okay?”

There were assorted types working in homicide but he broke them into two different sorts.

Most saw the work as a craft, a skill they learned. He counted himself in those, though wondered lately if he was sliding into the second group: those who thought it was a mission in life, the only thing worth doing. Speakers for the dead, he called them.

At the crime scene a bond formed, a promise from the decaying corpse to the homicide detective: that this would be avenged. It went with the job.

The job was all about death, of course. He had shot only two perps in his career. Killed one in a messy attempt at an arrest, back when he was just getting started. A second when a smart guy whose strategy had gone way wrong decided he could still shoot his way out of his confusion. All he had done was put a hole through McKenna’s car.

But nowadays he felt more like an avenging angel than he had when young. Closer to the edge. Teetering above the abyss.

Maybe it had something to do with his own wife’s death, wasting away, but he didn’t go there anymore. Maybe it was just about death itself, the eternal human problem without solution. If you can’t solve it you might as well work at it anyway.

Murderers were driven, sometimes just for a crazed moment that shaped all the rest of their lives. McKenna was a cool professional, calm and sure—or so he told himself.

But something about the Anselmo body—drowned and electrocuted both—got to him. And now the anonymous illegal, apparently known to nobody, silent in his doom.

Yet he, the seasoned professional, saw no place to go next. No leads. This was the worse part of any case, where most of them went cold and stayed that way. Another murder file, buried just like the bodies.

McKenna started in the west, at the Mississippi state line. The Gulf towns were much worse off after getting slammed with Katrina and Rita and the one nobody could pronounce right several years after. The towns never got off the ropes. The Gulf kept punching them hard, maybe fed by global warming and maybe just out of some kind of natural rage. Mother Earth Kicks Ass, part umpty-million.

He had the tech guy Photoshop the photos of the Latino’s face, taking away the swelling and water bleaching. With eyes open he looked alive. Then he started showing it around.

He talked to them all—landlords and labor in-between men, Mexicans who worked the fields, labor center types. Nothing. So he went to the small-time boosters, hookers, creeps in alleys, button men, strong-arm types slow and low of word, addicts galore, those who thrived on the dark suffering around them—the underlife of the decaying coast. He saw plenty of thick-bodied, smoldering anger that would be bad news someday for someone, of vascular crew-cut slick boys, stained jeans, arms ridged with muscle that needed to be working. Some had done time in the bucket and would again.

Still, nothing. The Latino face rang no bells.

He was coming out of a gardening shop that used a lot of Latinos when the two suits walked up. One wore a Marine-style bare-skull haircut and the other had on dark glasses and both those told him Federal.

“You’re local law?” the Marine type said.

Without a word McKenna showed them his badge. Dark Glasses and Marine both showed theirs, FBI, and Dark Glasses said, “Aren’t you a long way beyond Mobile city lines?”

“We’re allowed to follow cases out into the county,” McKenna said levelly.

“May we see the fellow you’re looking for?” Mr. Marine asked, voice just as flat.

McKenna showed the photo. “What did he do?” Mr. Marine asked.

“Died. I’m Homicide.”

“We had a report you were looking in this community for someone who worked boats,” Dark Glasses said casually.

“Why would that interest the FBI?”

“We’re looking for a similar man,” Mr. Marine said. “On a Federal issue.”

“So this is the clue that I should let you know if I see him? Got a picture?”

Dark Glasses started a smile and thought better of it. “Since there’s no overlap, I think not.”

“But you have enough sources around here that as soon as I show up, you get word.” McKenna said it flatly and let it lie there in the sun.

“We have our ways,” Dark Glasses said. “How’d this guy die?”

“Drowned.”

“Why think it’s homicide?” Mr. Marine came in.

“Just a hunch.”

“Something tells me you have more than that,” Mr. Marine shot back.

“You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”

They looked at each other and McKenna wondered if they got the joke. They turned and walked away without a word.

His bravado with them made him feel good but it didn’t advance his case. His mind spun with speculations about the FBI and then he put them away. The perpetual rivalry between local and federal always simmered, since the Feds could step in and capture a case when they thought they could profit from it. Or solve it better. Sometimes they were even right.