50
"WHAT ARE YOU talking about?"
"Marks is in charge of the case. He has the right to use his resources as he sees fit."
"Stop talking political rhetoric and tell me what the little shithead has done now."
He smiled. "Okay. The men assigned to the case are one of those resources. He decided that I was best used at the police property room going over the items that we've confiscated from the victim's homes, and matching them to the pictures and video we have of some of the houses before the murders."
"Pictures and videos for what?" I asked.
"Insurance purposes. A lot of the houses hit had enough rare and antique pieces that they insured them, and that meant they needed proof that they had the pieces to begin with."
"What pieces did you find in the last scene I was at, the one on the Ranch?"
The smile didn't change, but the eyes did. They went from pleasant to shrewd. "It's not just that you're cute. I like the way you think."
"Just tell me."
"There were a lot of similar pieces since most of the people had collected things from this area, or the southwest in general, but nothing out of the ordinary. Except for this." He reached behind his back underneath the suit jacket and pulled a manila envelope out that must have been inside his belt underneath the jacket.
"I knew you had to be wearing the suit jacket for some reason."
He laughed. He unfolded the envelope and spilled out pictures into my lap. Half of them were semiprofessional shots of a small carved piece of turquoise. A glance and I wanted to say Mayan, Aztec, something like that. I still couldn't tell the difference at a glance. The second set were a few better shots of the object in the study of the man that had been killed. The one that had used salt to interrupt the critter. Then a series of Polaroids, taken from every angle.
"You took the Polaroids?" I asked.
He nodded. "This afternoon after he decided my best use was not at the murder site."
I lifted one of the first series of pictures. "These are sitting on a wooden surface, much better light, natural, I think. Insurance pictures?"
He nodded.
"Who did it belong to?"
"The first house you saw."
"The Bromwells'," I said.
He lifted another picture. "This one was from the Carsons', and that's it. Either no one else owned one, or they didn't think to get it insured."
"Did the people who didn't try to get it insured, try to insure their other pieces?"
"Yes."
"Shit," I said. "I don't know much about this stuff, but I know that it's valuable. Why wouldn't they try to insure it, if they owned one?"
"What if they thought it was hot?"
"Illegal? Why would they think that?" I asked.
"Maybe because of the two houses we can prove had it, their history of the piece ¨C where they got it and when ¨C isn't real."
"What do you mean?"
"Something like this doesn't just show up. It has to have a history if you want it insured. They gave their papers, what they'd been given, to the insurance company, and just a little investigation showed that the people that were supposed to have unearthed the piece, sold the piece, had never heard of it."
"They refused to insure it," I said.
"Yes." There was something in his face, a suppressed excitement like a kid with a secret.
"You're holding something back. What is it?"
"You know what Riker is?"
"He's a pot hunter, an illegal dealer in artifacts."
"Why would he be so interested in you and this case?"
"I have no idea." I looked at the pictures in my lap. "You're saying that he sold these to the victims?"
"Not him personally, but Thad Bromwell, the teenage son, he was with his mother when she purchased it. It was a present for Mr. Bromwell's birthday. They bought it from a shop that is a known associate of Riker. It takes pieces and makes them look legit."
"Have you talked to the shop owners?"
"Unless you've got a ouija board, we're not going to be talking to him."
"He's the newest victim," I said.
Ramirez nodded, smiling. "You got it."
I shook my head. "Okay, Riker is unusually interested in the case. He wanted to see me specifically about it. At least two of the victims are people who bought one of his pieces. The shop owner that sold it is dead now, too." I looked up at him. "Is it enough for a warrant?"
"We already searched his house. Riker's men are suspected in the killing of two local cops. It wasn't hard to find a judge that would give us a warrant on the crap they pulled out at Ted's house."
"What the hell did the warrant give you permission to search for? They didn't mention stolen artifacts at Ted's house. They just pointed guns at us and said Riker wanted to talk about the case."
"The warrant was to search for weapons."
I shook my head. "So even if you found stolen artifacts, you wouldn't be able to use them in court."
"It was just an excuse to search the house, Anita. You know how that goes,"
"Did you find anything?"