LITMIR.BIZ

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we got?” John asked the San Antonio policeman he knew who’d phoned him for assistance. John was a specialist in gang warfare.

      “A mess,” the patrolman sighed as he indicated the body of a boy. “Looks like it might be the beginning of a gang war.”

      John went down on one knee beside the body and narrowed his eyes. He noted the tattoos on both arms and the neck of the dead male, who’d been shot neatly through the chest, twice.

      “Tats,” he murmured, noting the cobra’s head on both arms and a small one on his neck.

      “Yes. And you know who those belong to,” the officer said with a resigned sigh.

      “Los Serpientes.” John nodded, his black eyes flashing. “They’re recruiting them younger and younger. This kid looks no older than twelve. Maybe thirteen.” It set him off, because his own son, Tonio, was eleven, not much younger than the victim.

      John’s keen eyes noted a small chalk drawing just at the top of the boy’s head, on the pavement. It was a wolf’s head.

      “Los Diablos Lobitos,” he murmured. “A warning to the rival gang not to trespass.” He looked up. “Los Lobitos are trying to take over Los Serpientes’ territory.” He knew that Los Lobitos operated in the alternative school where Tonio was a student, near the hospital where his cousin worked.

      “They’re getting bolder. Going against Los Serpientes with a vengeance. This is simple retribution, warning Los Serpientes to back off from the territory, I’d bet my badge on it. They’re making an example of this kid to show that they mean business.” He looked at John. “This is not going to end well, if we wind up with a gang war.”

      “Tell me about it.” John’s keen eyes were scanning the body for anything out of place, for any clue that might indicate the assailant. “He isn’t wearing a coat. Not even a hoodie.”

      “I noticed that.” The officer stood up. “It’s damned cold out here. I’d say he couldn’t afford a coat, but he’s wearing about a thousand dollars’ worth of gold. Maybe a coat wasn’t a priority.”

      He was, indeed, wearing his wealth, in the form of rings and a watch and layers of thick gold chains around his neck. The pattern was recognizable, and they were eighteen-karat gold. Some were twenty-four karat. Very expensive. John didn’t mention that to the officer. He wasn’t comfortable telling anyone how he could recognize high-ticket items. He kept his private life quiet.

      “Los Diablos Lobitos,” John muttered. “Little wolf devils. They are, too. This is just their latest victim. Your department nabbed one of them last month for the rape and murder of an eighty-year-old woman.” His face mirrored his distaste. “An initiation. The would-be gang member responsible will do time. A lot of time.”

      “He sure will. He took the woman out of her own home and transported her to a deserted parking lot. That’s kidnapping. Federal charges. And they tried him as an adult, because of the nature of the crime.”

      “I have to confess that I was glad the feds took over the case. I understand that Senior FBI Agent Jon Blackhawk taught the crime unit guys some brand-new words when he saw the victim.”

      “His mother is elderly,” John replied. “The crime would have outraged him on that basis alone.”

      “The crime unit should have already been here,” the officer remarked, looking around. He looked down at the body again. “I hate having to leave DBs out here like this,” he added. “It seems vaguely indecent.”

      “But if we cover them up before the crime unit does its job, we contaminate the crime scene. And then some brilliant defense attorney puts us through a sausage grinder on the stand and saves his poor, sad client from the criminal justice system.”

      The officer made a sound deep in his throat. “If you ask me, it’s the honest citizens who need saving from the poor, oppressed criminals.”

      “Shhh,” John said with twinkling eyes. “The thought police will come and arrest you for hate speech.”

      That brought a smile from the younger man. “I hate political correctness.”

      “I do, as well, but we can’t turn back time. We have to live in the society that’s being warped around us.” He shook his head. “I asked my son how he liked studying about the second world war in his history section. His teacher’s course of study was so broad that he couldn’t name me a single individual European general who commanded an army.”

      “Santayana said that those who don’t study history and learn the lessons it teaches will be condemned to repeat it,” the officer said quietly, loosely quoting a philosopher from the past.

      “And those of us who only serve will suffer right along with the people who make the big decisions,” John chuckled. “But by then, we may be hit by a giant asteroid or a comet or an EMP, or a coronal mass ejection...”

      “Stop!” the officer groaned. “I get enough anxiety just watching the national news.”

      “I stopped years ago,” John confessed. “I get so much stress on the job that I couldn’t handle any more. It helps to remember that the news is news because what they report is the exception, not the rule. Dog bites man, who cares. But man bites dog, then you have a story.”

      “I see what you mean.”

      “And there they are,” John remarked, standing to watch a white van pull up in the parking lot beside them.

      A tall brunette with short hair and blue eyes gave them a wry look. “And here we are again, Ruiz,” Alice Mayfield Jones Fowler teased. “We were just together last week on another homicide. We really have to stop meeting like this. My husband thinks I have a secret yen for you.”

      “You tell gang members to stop killing other gang members in my jurisdiction, and I’ll be happy to wave you goodbye,” John chuckled.

      “That’s never going to happen.” She slipped on latex gloves and put booties over her shoes. She went to kneel by the victim.

      “How long dead?” John asked.

      She was examining his eyelids, neck and jaw, as she listened. “Rigor’s just now setting in. I can’t give you an exact time, you know that. But rigor usually presents two to six hours after death, first in the areas I’m checking.” She looked up at them with pursed lips. “As many autopsies as you Texas Rangers have attended, Ruiz, I expect you already knew that.”

      John gave her a Latin shrug and a smile.

      “An approximate time of death will help us retrace his steps,” the officer interjected.

      “Double tap,” she noted after inspecting the wounds, both of which had penetrated the boy’s heart. “Execution?” she asked, looking up at the men.

      “That would be my call,” John replied. “He made someone very angry, apparently. Note the tats as well.”

      “Los Serpientes,” she muttered, grimacing. “And unless my eyes are going, that little wolf’s head in chalk means that the little devil wolves are responsible for the DB. If there’s a hell on earth, that gang of teenage imbeciles created it.”

      “They’re trying to take over some gang territory that’s owned by Los Serpientes,” John noted. “And I’ll tell you frankly that Los Serpientes is a better class of gang. They operate mostly in Houston. They don’t require initiates to shoot people and they actually do some good in low-rent areas where crime is rampant. They never hurt children or old people. And they go after people who do.”

      “A gang is a gang, Ruiz,” she said heavily. “Why do we still have gangs in the twenty-first century?”

      “I was going to ask you that,” he chuckled. “I don’t know. I guess we’ve got Mom and Dad both working to keep the bills paid, or just Mom or Dad trying to support several children. The kids get left in daycare or on their own too much. Gangs offer lonely

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