Blood Passage (28 page)

“
Look at the badge,” Charley said, holding it out.

“
Very nice,” Jenkins said. “Where’d you get it, Charley?”

“
Him.” He pointed at Hank.

“
It’s very nice, Charley. You should give it back to the policeman now because he’ll need it.”

“
Okay, Papa.”

Hank took it back and clipped it onto his belt, noting the contrast between father and son as they stood together in the hallway. Charley was tall and thick where his father was small and slight. Charley looked as though he’d wandered in from a farm with his rubber boots, uncut hair and thick beard while his father looked as though he could walk into a library and resume putting books on a shelf without missing a beat.

The intellectual difference between them was just as obvious. It must have been difficult for Jenkins to raise the boy entirely by himself while coping with his disability. It must have been very lonely for such an intellectual man not to have been able to share his learning and his interests with his only son. But the love between father and son was as plain as day.

Hank led the way down the hall past the elevator to the stairwell. “How long’s the elevator been out?”

“
Several months,” Jenkins replied. “It fell. Mrs. Candelaria broke her hip. She’s suing the landlord, but I don’t think she’ll have much luck. She weighs three hundred and fifty pounds and they’ll use it against her.”

“
Probably a better idea to use the stairs anyway, then,” Johnson said, holding the door for them.

Karen started the Firebird and closed her eyes. “Christ, I’m beat.”

Dawn had arrived unnoticed, and with it a fine mist had begun to fall. She opened her eyes and flicked on the windshield wipers before looking over at Hank. “I need a big-assed cup of coffee right about now. And a steak sandwich. And about ten hours sleep.”

“
Sounds good to me.”

They drove back across the bridge and found an all-night place that was gearing up for the morning rush. They took a booth at the back. Once Karen had her coffee and steak sandwich and Hank had his coffee and cheeseburger with French fries, they were ready to compare notes.

Karen swallowed coffee. “Connected to the Liu killing.”

“
Yeah. Not an exact copy. The body was positioned differently, the gun was left, there was the double-tap, things like that, but it was obviously staged in the alley to make us think of Martin Liu.”

“
Yeah. Packet of heroin, syringe, through-and-through in the left thigh, same alley.” She bit hungrily and then had something else to say. Hank waited for her to swallow. “Mm. ShonDale worked security for the R Boyz, right?”

Hank nodded, eating.

“
Your CI say whether he was known to have offed anyone?”

Hank shook his head, swallowing.

Karen slurped at her coffee. “Let’s say our man ShonDale was there when Liu was killed four years ago. So maybe Mah decided it’s time for payback.” She slurped again. “Got no evidence to connect the two killings other than they look alike. We got little Taylor saying he’s Martin Liu and that some bad guy named Shawn, a.k.a. ShonDale, shot him in the leg, and we got a scene that looks like the Liu scene, but other than that, there’s zippo. I like it anyways.”

“
It’s a place to start,” Hank agreed. “The staging’s difficult. There’s the hassle of stealing the car, grabbing some heroin to plant, transporting the body from the primary scene, dumping it and getting away without being seen, but Mah would have gone to the trouble. Annoying as hell that ShonDale’s popped within twenty-four hours of us getting his name.”

“
Maybe your CI told someone you were interested in him.”

“
Not a chance. The guy lives like he’s behind enemy lines. Talk like that could cost him his life, and he’s far too careful. Besides, he doesn’t have any interaction with Asians where he is. How does word get to Asians that fast?”

“
Asians are going to that gangsta club where ShonDale worked,” Karen shrugged.

“
Yeah, but that sounds more like Tommy Leung and his fun boys than Peter Mah.”

Karen drained her coffee and looked at the bottom of the cup in disgust. “Christ, that didn’t last five seconds.” She stood up. “Want another one?”

Hank shook his head. She went up to the front and returned a few minutes later with another cup of coffee and a breakfast muffin.

She sat down and began to peel the paper off the bottom of the muffin. “So if this is Shawn, who’s Gary?”

Hank looked at her. “You think there was a Gary?”

She destroyed half of her muffin in vicious bites before answering. “Am I buying into the kid’s talk? Yes, I am. Call me insane if you want, but this was Shawn, and somewhere there’s a Gary who’s next on Mah’s shopping list.”

“
We’d better find him.”

“
You’re tellin’ me.” She made the rest of the muffin disappear and took out her notebook. “All right. We’re looking for two Asians who either shot ShonDale Gregg or helped clean it up. Easton said he’ll be doing the autopsy this afternoon, so there’s that. They’ve already run the gun and it belonged to Gregg. We need to take a look at his crib, check into family, all that stuff. You said he did a little time. I’ll contact his parole officer and see what I can get.” She began to jot things down in her notebook.

“
I’ll get a list of Peter Mah’s known employees and we’ll start bringing them in,” Hank said, taking out his own notebook. “Check out their alibis. I’ll check out Gregg’s residence and see what I can find.”

Karen tapped her pen on the table top. “We’ll see if the lab comes up with anything interesting from the scene. Maybe the car will have something good. You know what’d be cool?” She pointed her pen at Hank. “Some rock-hard
evidence
. That’d be cool.”

“
Evidence would be cool,” Hank agreed.

“
Glad you could join us, Detective,” Dr. Jim Easton said, glancing up from his laptop. “We’ve already finished the external examination. Mr. Shaniwatru will give you a rundown while I catch up on my notes.”

“
Yeah, sorry.” Karen’s unfastened surgical gown billowing around her as she hurried into the autopsy theater. She was running late because Charley Jenkins had shown up downtown with his father to look through a set of photo arrays of Asian men, including eight who worked for Peter Mah. He hadn’t recognized anyone, unfortunately. It had been too far away for him to have seen their faces clearly.

“
Please tie your gown,” Easton said, “and finish your coffee over there before you come any closer.” He pointed at the corner of the theater.

Karen drained her coffee in three long gulps and threw the cup into a waste receptacle in the corner before tying her gown and heading back toward the table on which lay the body of ShonDale Gregg.

The Forensic Medical Center was only three years old and still felt brand new to the detectives who had to drive across town to get there. The old building had been right downtown but had been a nightmare for the Medical Examiner’s Office in their struggle to maintain its national accreditation. Refrigeration units were prone to failure, storage space was very limited, and the ventilation system occasionally stopped working, resulting in a stink that filled the entire facility for days. Additionally, there was virtually no parking for visitors. This new building, however, had ample parking, the HVAC system kept the air as fresh as possible, and the corpses stayed at the proper temperature, which meant that Karen had to listen to fewer complaints when she showed up for an autopsy. The longer drive was a fair exchange.

“
Good afternoon, Detective Stainer,” said Harry Shaniwatru, a tiny man of Thai descent in his mid-twenties who worked for the Medical Examiner’s Office as a contract forensic investigator while completing his MD at State University. He usually worked the midnight shift, and it was rumored that he got by on only three hours of sleep each day. He also boxed professionally as a flyweight to help pay the bills, with a record of 16 wins and two losses. He was a serious-minded and extremely tough little son of a bitch, and Karen liked him.

“
Hi, Harry. I didn’t expect to see you up so late.”

“
I’m pulling a double. Fall tuition’s coming up.”

“
So bring me up to speed.”

“
The deceased is ShonDale Gregg,” Harry said. “He weighed 111.58 kilograms, or 246 pounds and measured 1.98 meters or six feet, six inches tall.”

“
Taking notes, Detective?” Easton asked, still typing.

“
Should I? Are you going to be leaving this kind of stuff out of your report?”

Silence.

Harry waited, knowing that Easton liked to bait some detectives in the autopsy theater. When it was apparent that the exchange was finished, he went on. “We’ve already washed him, Detective, but I’ll take you through what there was. We removed the bags from his hands and the plastic strap from his wrists and sent them to Byrne’s lab for trace analysis. I scraped under the fingernails and there was a bit of dirt but nothing hopeful in terms of DNA sources that I could see. There were bags on the feet and I removed these, along with the shoes, and sent them to Byrne as well. There were a lot of particles of various types on the soles of the shoes that should keep them busy for a while. Clothing was removed and bagged. Blood was swabbed from the bullet holes front and back in the leg of the pants and from other places on the body. Everything was photographed.”

“
All right.”

“
Features of interest,” Harry went on, his voice rising in a sing-song imitation of a tour guide, “include this gang tattoo on the right side of his neck, an R in a graffiti-style script, and this old scar on the left pectoral, likely a knife wound. As you can see the victim was circumcised. Here’s the entrance of the through-and-through in the left thigh. Looks like the gun was held about six inches away when it was fired. Here you can see the exit wound; these are very old scars on both kneecaps, probably from childhood accidents. These abrasions on the knees were ante-mortem; I expect he was kneeling on grit-covered pavement. This scar on the back of the right calf is quite old and possibly from a piece of glass. Moving back up here on the left shoulder we have a nice tat of a heart and the word ‘Candie,’ perhaps a girlfriend, and here below it another one of a horse’s head, I think it is, and another name, ‘Patty,’ and the numeral nine. A few old scars on each forearm, burns and cuts and what not. These–” he pointed at a cluster of knotted white scars on ShonDale’s left wrist “–look like old dog bites. These narrow contusions on both wrists are ante-mortem, from the plastic locking strap. Of particular interest are his hands. Both left and right hands show extensive damage, broken knuckles, scars, left little finger broken and healed badly; see how crooked it is? Obviously a fighter who liked to swing at the face of his victim where it would make the biggest splash, so to speak.”

“
Career bouncer and tough guy,” Karen said.

“
Makes sense. I recognize the tattoo on the neck. R Boyz. He also had two broken toes on his right foot, maybe a year or so ago. Might have kicked something hard without proper footwear.”

“
Probably some loser’s ass,” Karen said.

“
Anyhow, so much for that.” Harry moved back up to the top of ShonDale’s body. “He sustained a fair bit of damage ante-mortem, as you can see. Contusion on the left side of the neck from a sharp blow from something round and blunt. Maybe an elbow. Then we have this collection of abrasions, contusions and lacerations on his face, scalp and neck from the beating that he took, the aforementioned scrapes on the knees, and also contusions on the torso, groin area, backs of both legs, I’d say from being kicked.”

“
Okay,” Karen said, “I got it. Had the snot beaten out of him, got shot in the leg and then a double tap to the head.”

“
In a nutshell,” Harry agreed. “We took swabs of all the blood, as I said, in case someone else might have donated to the cause. Of particular interest are the particles I gathered, Detective. Stuck to his scalp, cheeks and clothing and especially inside his mouth. Abrasions inside his lips and on his gums suggest his face was being ground against the pavement during the beating, and he picked up a fair collection of particles that stayed inside his mouth for us to examine. The lab has them now.”

Easton abandoned his laptop and moved over to the table. “All right, time for the main event.”

“
Yes, Dr. Easton,” Harry said, reaching for a scalpel. “Shall I begin?”

“
Please do.” Easton looked at Karen. “Detective, a little elbow room, please?”

“
Uh, yeah, sure, Doc,” Karen said, stepping back. “Be my guest.”

She hated autopsies because they were long and boring. Even the thrill of discovery was sucked out of the experience for her because Easton was extremely observant and never missed a thing. If there was anything to learn from the body, Easton would find it first and then dangle it in front of her like a dog toy that she was expected to jump and snap at like an excited terrier. The bastard. Hopefully this wouldn’t kill the rest of the day. She didn’t want Hank to have all the fun, for chrissakes.

Hank rode over to ShonDale Gregg’s condominium with Butternut Allenson. He gave a copy of their search warrant to Anwar Boublil, the building’s live-in concierge, who invited them into his condo while flipping through the documentation. They stepped into a tastefully decorated living room that featured a fireplace and large curtained windows.