'Anything else?' he asked Morelli.
'Nope, that's about it,' Morelli said, hands loose at his side, knuckles scraped and bleeding, bruise flowering on his right cheekbone. 'Be nice if you'd move your car, so we could get out of here. And when you go inside you might look for a guy in a red thong. He's with us.'
Morelli was slouched on the couch, holding an ice pack to his bruised cheek, taking in the last minutes of a West Coast ball game.
'It could have been worse,' I said.
'It could have been a lot worse. We could have had to listen to another set of songs.'
'We'd probably be sitting in jail right now if you weren't a cop.'
'My being a cop had nothing to do with it. Gazarra would never arrest you. I went along for the ride on this one.'
'You don't talk much about being a cop anymore.'
Morelli tossed the ice pack to the floor. 'I'm working homicide. There's not much I'd want to talk about. I'm up to my armpits in gang-related killings. The only decent part is usually they kill each other.' He clicked the game off. 'This game is boring. I bet we
can find more interesting things to look at if we go upstairs.'
The first applicant was already in the office when I arrived. He was wearing chaps, and he had a sawed-off strapped to his back.
'We don't actually dress like bounty hunters in this office,' Connie was explaining to him. 'We find it's… too obvious.'
'Yeah, and chaps makes your ass look big,' Lula said. 'You go around looking like that and the fashion police gonna come after you.'
'I always dress like this,' the guy said. 'I ride a Hog.'
'What about the sawed-off ?' Connie asked.
'What about it?'
Two more applicants came and went after the guy with the chaps. I cracked my knuckles through both of them, wanting to move on. I had three FTAs targeted for today, plus Caroline Scarzolli was still at large. And Lonnie Johnson was out there, somewhere. And the truth was, I didn't want to find any of these people. I wanted to find Ranger.
When the last applicant walked out the door, Connie wrenched her bottom drawer open, unscrewed a bottle of Jack Daniel's, and chugged some down.
'Okay,' she said. 'I feel better now.'
'I like this job interviewing shit,' Lula said. 'It's a real boost to my self-esteem. Even with my damaged early years, I'm looking good up against these freaks.'
'Where's Pickle?' I asked Connie.
'He's working Monday through Friday. Since we usually only work half-day on Saturday anyway, I gave him weekends off.'
I looked out the front window at the black SUV. It was starting to feel eerie. No one ever saw Carmen. Just the tinted black windows.
'The SUV is still out there,' I said. 'When was the last time anyone saw that SUV move?'
'It was here when I arrived this morning, and I guess it was here when I left last night,' Connie said.
I took a slurp of booze from Connie's bottle. 'I need to take a look at the car.'
I crossed the street, and I knocked on the driver's side window but nothing happened. I looked in through the windshield. Nobody home. Blood everywhere. I turned and slid down the car until I reached pavement. I sat there with my head between my knees until the nausea was under control and the noise subsided in my head. I got to my knees, waited a moment for the fog to clear, and then got to my feet. I walked to the rear of the SUV where the smell of decomposing flesh was strong. I put my face to the glass and squinted through the tinted window. A tarp had been pulled across the cargo area.
I took my cell phone out and called Morelli. 'You might want to get over here,' I said. 'I think I have a body for you.'
Stephanie Plum 12 - Twelve Sharp
Seven