Victims

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This one was different.

The first hint was Milo’s tight-voiced eight a.m. message, stripped of details.

Something I need you to see, Alex. Here’s the address.

An hour later, I was showing I.D. to the uniform guarding the tape. He winced. “Up there, Doctor.” Pointing to the second story of a sky-blue duplex trimmed in chocolate-brown, he dropped a hand to his Sam Browne belt, as if ready for self-defense.

Nice older building, the classic Cal-Spanish architecture, but the color was wrong. So was the silence of the street, sawhorsed at both ends. Three squad cars and a liver-colored LTD were parked haphazardly across the asphalt. No crime lab vans or coroner’s vehicles had arrived, yet.

I said, “Bad?”

The uniform said, “There’s probably a better word for it but that works.”

Milo stood on the landing outside the door doing nothing.

No cigar-smoking or jotting in his pad or grumbling orders. Feet planted, arms at his sides, he stared at some faraway galaxy.

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