“There’s one bullet still inside, a higher caliber round, that’s lodged in his bone. The other is gone—and with the coyote bite marks, it’s hard to tell, but I think there was a second lower on the leg. Could have been a clean shot, through and through, or the coyotes swallowed it. I should know after the autopsy.” He looked up from the mangled leg. “Unless you want me to send the body up to Bexar.”
“We don’t want to step on your toes, doctor.”
He waved them off. “No interagency bull crap from me, boys. Our sheriff thought you might want everything, already signed the paperwork so as I don’t interrupt his poker night.”
“Did you search his body? Any ID?”
“Pulled out a wallet. No ID inside, but there are cards and photos, you might be able to find out who it is. We pulled prints from his fingers, they’re with the sheriff’s department. Probably be scanned tonight.”
“Anything else?” Brad asked. “Identifying marks? You mentioned tattoos over the phone.”
“Got a couple of tats. I photographed the visible ones, but like I said, we haven’t stripped and cleaned the body.” He zipped up the bag and pushed the drawer back in. “I’ll call Bexar and tell them to expect the body tonight.”
“Thank you.”
The doctor walked over to his desk and opened the bottom drawer. He took out a sealed plastic bag and handed it to Brad. “That’s everything that was in the victim’s pockets,” he said. He handed a folder to Ryan. “Those are copies of the x-rays of the bullets, and the tats on his arms.”
Brad signed for the evidence, then unsealed the bag and examined the wallet.
Photos of the dead kid with what Brad assumed was his family—multigenerational, like many of the Hispanic families in the area. Grandparents, parents, siblings. This kid wasn’t that old. Twenty, tops. Brad hated that so many young men turned to gangs. Many blamed it on poverty, and that certainly had something to do with it—the allure of drug money was hard to resist. If Nicole Rollins, an educated, middle-class federal agent was attracted to it, why did he expect a kid with nothing and a family to support would turn his back?
But it was more than simple poverty that turned these kids into drug runners. The thrill. The violence. The gang that became their family. Threats. The idea that they would somehow be bigger, more powerful. It was depressing, and Brad had long since put aside trying to reason it out.
Ryan tapped on the photo of a tat from the victim’s right forearm. “Know what that is?”
The skull, crossbones, and rosary were clear and well done. Not a cheap tat.
“The San Antonio Saints,” Brad said. “Well, shit.”
The SAS were run by a thug named Reynardo Reynoso, a wily little prick who’d been in and out of prison. Reynoso had been on Brad’s target list during Operation Heatwave two months ago. They’d never found him to haul his ass back to prison—he was wanted on multiple charges including drug distribution, attempted murder, and grand theft auto. Word on the street was that Reynoso now answered to Marquez, a rising star in the drug underworld—bigger now with Sanchez out of the picture.
“Marquez’s pet gang took out Sanchez’s people,” Brad said.
“Reynoso wouldn’t act on his own?” Ryan asked.
“Not from what I’ve heard, but I should talk to Jerry with SAPD. He knows more about the local gangs.” Brad stared at the photo, but wasn’t seeing anything as he tried to put the puzzle pieces together. “It doesn’t make sense, unless Marquez thought Tobias was rebuilding and wanted to wipe him out for good. Power grab, not retaliation like Rogan thought.”
“Maybe Rogan was wrong,” Ryan said. “No one is right all the time.”
But in the short time Brad had known Kane, he’d never been wrong. What was he missing?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Lucy always felt at home in a crime lab, just like she felt comfortable in the morgue. There was an organization and science to everything; evidence turned clinical. There were no victims in the crime lab, only pieces of a puzzle to put together.
There’d been a time when Lucy thought she’d be better working behind the anonymity of the forensic sciences, where she didn’t have to face the victim or the criminal. Her fourteen months interning for the Medical Examiner in D.C. had been both challenging and satisfying; she could have seen herself working there for the rest of her life. It wouldn’t have been difficult, with her college degree and a master’s in criminal psychology, to continue in school, get a doctorate or a third degree in biology, and become a senior pathologist, or even go to medical school and become a medical examiner.