Regina's Song by David Eddings Page A

students have been doing dope for years, but they usually had to go to other neighborhoods to buy it. Julio and his buddies decided to set up a branch office in the university district. Evidently, another gang had the same idea, and they weren’t too happy about the notion of a price war.”
    “Any ideas about
which
gang decided to carve up Julio?”
    “Nothing very specific. Lieutenant Burpee thinks it might have been Cheetah, but Burpee’s sort of obsessed with Cheetah. He’s been trying to nail
that
one for about the last three years.”
    “Burpee?” James asked mildly.
    Bob smiled faintly. “We don’t call him that to his face. His real name’s Belcher.”
    “It
does
kind of fit, I guess,” James agreed.
    “Who’s this Cheetah?” I asked.
    “A downtown drug lord. He’s a mixed breed psychotic—part black, part Mexican, part oriental, part rabid bird dog. That’s one guy we’d
really
like to get off the streets. He swings big-time drug deals and amuses himself with random murders. We haven’t been able to pin him down because he hasn’t got a fixed address. He never sleeps in the same bed twice, and he’s got two or three hundred aliases. Muñoz had a rap sheet as long as your arm, but Cheetah’s never been busted, so we don’t even know what his real name is. We’ve got a rough description of him, and that’s about all. I sort of hate to admit it, but old Burpee might be right this time. Cheetah tends to be exotic, and the cutting last night was
at least
exotic. I’ve seen a few guys that were fairly well cut up, but whoever went after Julio scattered pieces of him all over the grass down by the lake. There’s no way an undertaker’s going to be able to put him back together again, so we’re probably looking at one of those closed casket funerals.”
    “You saw the body, then?” Charlie asked his brother.
    “I sure did. I got to the scene right after the uniforms did. That one’s going to give the coroner a real headache. Whoever took Muñoz out didn’t stab him the way most knife killers do. It was a carving, not a stabbing, and I’d guess that it took Muñoz a long time to die. It wasn’t for money, that’s certain. His wallet was still in his back pocket, and it was loaded.”
    “It was strictly a drug business thing, then?” James asked.
    “That’s our current thinking. Most of Julio’s arrests were drug-related. He’s been busted for that a half dozen times. He’s been a suspect in several shootings and a couple of rapes, but we could never pin him to the mat on those. We haven’t nailed him on a dope deal for over a year now, though. Evidently, he graduated from street dealing and moved up to being a supplier. There’s more money in that, I guess, but last night it looks like he came up against one of the occupational hazards of going big-time.”
    “The rubout?” Charlie guessed.
    “The slice-out in this case. I don’t think there was much rubbing involved. Whoever took him out might have had some experience as a meat cutter, since it sort of looked like he was trying to bone out the carcass even after Muñoz died.”
    “Homicidal maniac stuff?” Charlie asked.
    “Pretty much. It looked to me as if the cutter was pretty well worked up. We’ll probably have to wait for the autopsy to find out what kind of knife was involved. There didn’t seem to be any stab wounds. It was all slices. What’s surprising about it is that nobody in the vicinity heard anything. I’m sure it took Muñoz a long time to die, and nobody I’ve talked to heard any screaming. The only thing anybody heard was a dog howling.”
    “Then you don’t think anybody on campus had any kind of connection with the killing?” Charlie asked him.
    “Probably not. It’s more likely that Muñoz was doing a drug deal down by the lake, and the opposition—whoever it was—caught up with him there. I don’t think you’re going to need a police escort to take you to and from class, Charlie, if