Angle of Attack by Rex Burns

Author:Rex Burns [Burns, Rex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-4791-4
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2012-10-15T16:00:00+00:00

Eleven

WHEN AXTON ENTERED the office the next morning, Wager first told him the latest on the case, then drew the day’s initial cup of coffee.

“Let me call down to Cañon City,” said Axton. “I know some people there, and maybe they’ll give us the scoop and save a long drive.”

He dialed and waited and then, as Wager handled the morning paper work, began asking questions of someone named Allen. “Right, Al, the one yesterday. It has a bearing on something we’re working with up here. Right. Sure, I’ll hang on.” He covered the mouthpiece with two broad fingers. “Al’s calling the officer in charge of the investigation,” he explained.

Wager nodded and focused on the stack of requests and queries, the bulletins, alerts, advisements, and warnings, the reports, statistical summaries, graphs, and diagrams that flowed in rivers and rivulets through the police routing system. Many were to be noted and shoved elsewhere, others to rest in homicide in various files and with varying degrees of permanence. Most would never be looked at again, but only a few could be thrown out immediately. When Max hung up at last, Wager was ready for him. “Well?”

“They’re calling it a local fight. Gerald and a black guy got into a squabble during a softball game the afternoon before, and the guard thinks they carried it over. They met the next morning and the other prisoners say Covino started it, and of course he’s not around to say he didn’t. Anyway, they tangled, and by the time the guard got there, Covino had a sharpened spoon handle in the heart.”

“What’s the black’s name?”

“Ronald Greenlee, a.k.a. Ali Uhuru.”

“Anybody mention Scorvelli’s name?”

“Christ, Gabe, I wouldn’t ask that!”

Wager would. But he let it pass—Axton was probably right not to talk the name around any more than they had already. “Any hints at all that it was a setup?”

“I asked him twice; he said no. Greenlee has been in for about four years on a murder conviction. About three months ago he was transferred out of maximum security into Covino’s cell block; and as far as past records show, there was never any connection between him and Covino. The fight seems to be the first time the two ever talked.”

“Do we have a jacket on Greenlee?”

“Yeah—they gave me his file number. Want to look at it?”

“Might as well.” Besides, it would delay a little longer the thing they had to do today, which had awakened Wager this morning with that weary feeling of wanting to drop this day out of the calendar.

Axton brought the jacket back from the Records Section and they started going down the column of entries that was the man’s life according to the law.

“Busy dude,” said Axton.

He had been. The juvenile record started at thirteen; they skipped over that. The adult record, which began at eighteen with an arrest for attempted rape, listed a conviction for robbery, another for assault—this one with intent—and finally first-degree murder with life imprisonment. That usually meant parole in six to ten years.

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