visually identified Chaz Parzarri. “Peabody, they had to have another vehicle here. See what you can find on any traffic cams in this area. They can’t have more than a fifteen-minute window, probably less. What have we got over there?” she asked the uniform, jerking a head toward the junkie.
“We found him trying to get into the bus. Nothing locked on it, but he’s so strung out he couldn’t work the handle.” The uniform set a hand on his hip under his Sam Browne belt. “Says he was just checking to see if anybody was inside. Just being a good citizen.”
“Right.”
“Yeah, we figure he’s messed up, but a junkie like him can smell drugs a mile off. The guys are working him some, but he claims he didn’t see anything.”
The timing said otherwise, Eve thought as she did a quick scan. She spotted the pile of rubble and trash behind one of the pillars. “Is that his hive over there?”
“That’s what we figure.”
“I’m going to talk to him. Stand by here.”
“Good luck.”
The man wore a filthy army-green coat and torn orange sweatpants over the gaunt frame with the distended belly typical of severe malnutrition. His red-rimmed, watery eyes—sunlight wasn’t the funky-junkie’s friend—skittered over at Eve as she approached, then squinted out of a grimy pair of sunshades with a crack in the left lens.
His hands moved, picking at the ragged fringe of the black scarf wrapped around his neck. His feet moved, shuffling inside scarred army boots with no laces and silver tape holding the soles together.
He could have been anywhere from thirty to eighty with that pale, ravaged, soot-streaked face.
He’d been someone’s son, might have been someone’s lover once, or father. He’d had a life at some point before he’d offered it up on the altar of funk.
“Just walking by,” he chanted—moving, moving, moving. “Yep, yep, just walking by. Hey, lady, got anything to spare? Don’t need much.”
She tapped her badge. “See this?”
“Yep, yep.” But those ruined eyes watered and blinked.
“It’s a badge. A lieutenant’s badge. It means I’m not a lady. Give me a name.”
“Check. Were you at home when the ambulance got here?”
“Just walking by.” Those ruined eyes did their skittering dance again. “Just walking.”
“Where to, where from?”
“Nothing, nowhere. Nohow.”
“You were just walking from nothing to nowhere, and happened to see the ambulance parked there, maybe twenty feet from where you live?”
When he smiled, he offered Eve a full view of the unfortunate results of really bad dental hygiene. “Yep. Yep. Check.”
“I don’t think so, Doc. I think, you were tucked up at home. Wrapped up warm on a cold day like this, not walking around without more gear. I bet you’ve got more layers over there you put on when you head out to look for spare change, when you go out to find some funk.”
“Just walking,” he insisted with his voice creeping toward a whine. “Didn’t see nothing, nowhere, nohow. I don’t see good. I got a condition.”
Yeah, she thought, called chronic addiction. “Wait here.”
She went to her car, checked the glove box. As expected she found a couple pair of sunshades either Roarke or Summerset had stocked as she constantly lost them.
She imagined either pair cost more than Doc saw in ten years of panhandling on the street, but grabbed one. She walked back, waved them at Doc.
“Want these?”
“Sure! Sure!” Something desperate came into his abused eyes. “Wanna trade?”
“Yeah, but not for your sunshades. You can have these if you tell me what you saw. No bullshit. Tell me the truth, and they’re yours.”
“I know a true! Stop clock, tic-tock—true two times every day.”
“How about that? No.” She pulled the shades out of his reach. “I want the true about what you saw here. About that ambulance.”
“I didn’t go in. Just looking. Just walking.”
“Who got out?”
He stared at her, bumped his shoulders up and down.
“Okay.” She started to turn away.
“Make the trade!”
“There’s no trade until you tell me. You tell me the truth, I give you the shades. That’s the deal.”
“White coats get out. What you think? White coats in the am’lance. Not gonna take me, no way no how. I set down.”
He skimmed his palms on the air in a downward motion. “Don’t need no white coat, no am’lance.”
“How many white coats got out?”
“Two. Prolly two. I don’t see good. Two. Then no white coats. In the trunk.”