Sinner's Gin (5 page)

Wiggling his toes did nothing to hold off the chill in them, but it gave him something to do while the cops decided who to send in next.

The door opened and the Hispanic detective who brought him to the police station walked in. There’d been some noise about Miki’s band and more than a few curious glances as he walked past the blue sea of cops and into the bathroom, where a stone-faced uniformed officer watched him strip off his clothes. They let him keep his underwear but took his battered Vans, giving him a pair of thin flip-flops to wear. Miki almost told the cop he’d kill for some socks, but the cop’s tight lips made him think twice.

Mostly, the cop was overly polite. If anything, his good manners made Miki’s skin crawl more than the uniforms staring at him when he was walked into the station. The ride to the station was a brief, silent torture. He hadn’t been cuffed and was informed he was only there to answer a few questions, but his lack of clothes told him a much different story.

“Mr. St. John? Mieko? Do you remember me? I’m Inspector Kel Sanchez.” The detective sat down in the chair across the table. Shivering, Miki leaned back and waited as the detective shuffled through the folder he’d brought in with him.

“Can I go home? I left the bathtub full of water and the car running.” Miki eyed the folder’s contents from under his lashes. A younger version of himself stared up out of an outdated photo, and a cynical rage flared up in Miki’s belly. Leaning forward, he tapped the piece of paper on top. “Isn’t that supposed to be… like, sealed? Isn’t that the bullshit you’re told? That your juvie records are sealed?”

“Juvenile records aren’t sealed or expunged unless requested, Mr. St. John.” Sanchez’s sympathetic look set Miki’s teeth on edge. “A lawyer can help you with the process, but for right now, what’s in here is relevant to the case. I only have a few questions. Then you can go. Let’s start with the last time you saw Tingzhe Shing?”

“I haven’t seen Shing in years.” Miki closed his eyes, trying to repress the shudder threatening to take over his body. He shoved Shing into a box a long time ago, hammering it shut in the hopes of never seeing the man again. Finding the interior of his car painted with Shing’s guts shocked him deeper than he thought possible. Miki looked up at the detective. “I told my cop… the other cop that. The one who… found him. Shing wasn’t someone I wanted to keep in touch with.”

“But you worked for him when you were younger, about fourteen or fifteen, right? Even lived over the restaurant his family owns when you and your foster father were fighting?” It wasn’t really a question but rather a probing, as if the man was searching for a broken tooth or open nerve. He found it, and Miki bit the inside of his cheek to keep from swearing. “Can you tell me about then?”

“Nope.”

Sanchez looked up, surprised at Miki’s soft whisper. Leaning forward, he placed his hands on the table and relaxed his shoulders, doing everything he could to appear as nonthreatening as possible. Miki wasn’t fooled. He’d been a pawn for cop games for as long as he could remember.

“I just need to know what your relationship with Shing was. Was it a good one? Did you have a falling-out? We’ll just go over a few things. Then you can leave.”

“We didn’t have a relationship,” Miki replied, leaning back in the uncomfortable metal chair he’d been given to sit in. “There never was a falling in. End of story.”

“His son was surprised to find out his father’s body was in your garage. He said you and Shing weren’t close, but he wasn’t sure,” Sanchez pressed. “Have you been in touch with anyone from the Shing family? Perhaps to pay them back for giving you a place to live when you had problems with your foster parents?”

“Shing got everything he was ever going to get from me.” The sourness returned to Miki’s throat, and he swallowed, wishing for a glass of water to wash away the past choking him. “I don’t know how he got into my… car. I started it up because I’m supposed to do that every month or the engine goes to shit. I was inside. Then the dog came in, so I grabbed him to give him a bath. I was filling the tub up when your guy came through the garage door.”

“Do you have any idea who’d want to kill Shing?”

More papers were shuffled out of the folder, and Miki looked away, not wanting to see his life spilled out onto the table. He didn’t know why it bothered him. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know what was in there. Miki had no delusions of where he came from and who he was. Damien had been the one with the plan to wash the street off of him, but Miki didn’t think there was enough soap in the world to get rid of the filth he was born into.

“Maybe he finally ticked someone off who could do something about it.” Miki shrugged. “You want to ask someone about Shing? Start with his son, then work your way around the neighborhood. You’ll find a lot of people in Chinatown Shing pissed on.”

“No one’s talking, Mieko,” the detective said softly. “I was hoping you’d be the one who spoke up.”

“You’d be wrong. I’ve got nothing to say.” Miki kept his voice flat as he met the cop’s steady gaze. “So can I go now?”

Chapter 3

Picked up a piece of silver from the ground,

Used it to end a bit of my strife.

If I’d known I’d need it to get into Heaven,

I’d have carried it with me all of my life.

—Going Over The River

“
T
HAT
boy’s a mess.”

Lt. Mark Casey’s booming voice rattled Kane’s eardrums, and he grunted a greeting at the man, meeting his lieutenant’s eyes in the reflection of the glass. The barrel-chested black man strolled closer to the glass and unwrapped a piece of gum. The senior Inspector folded it into his mouth and chewed at the strip until it was tucked into the corner of his cheek. Within seconds of discarding the foil wrapper, another slice joined the mass in his mouth, its sweet, fruity odor nearly strong enough to cover the stink of Kane’s bitter coffee.

Kane couldn’t do anything but nod. His lieutenant was right. Miki St. John was a hot mess. Unfortunately, he was all they had at the moment.

“He knew Shing.” Kane flipped through the file folder he’d gotten from Sanchez before his partner went into the interview room. “St. John’s got to be connected to this somehow. No one just randomly dumps a body into the front seat of a car, even if it’s owned by a rock star. There are better ways to say I love you.”

“I personally would have gone for chocolates or roses, but then again….” Casey shrugged his massive shoulders. “That’s something I’ve learned from my wife.”

“I spoke with the oldest son.” Kane refused the gum Casey offered him with a shake of his head. “He was wholly unhelpful. ‘Everyone loved Shing. No one had anything bad to say about him.’ Someone universally beloved doesn’t end up looking like he’s been run through a garlic press. Those kind of people die peacefully in their bed.”

“You and Sanchez are on this.” The smell of fruity gum got stronger when Casey leaned in toward him. “I watched a bit of you with the son. That’s a cold son of a bitch.”

“Yeah, Bradley Shing.” Kane made a face at his coffee. “He was too calm. He didn’t ask to see his dad. If it were me, I’d be tearing the place apart until I had proof. You saw him. It was like I was ordering up a bowl of soup. He didn’t give me anything to go on but a bad feeling.”

“Not everyone’s got Donal Morgan for a father,” The lieutenant reminded him. “You believe what the son was selling you? That no one hated his old man?”

“I haven’t spoken to anyone else yet, but Miki St. John seems to hate him,” Kane said, jerking his chin toward the interview room where his partner sat with the singer. “But he’s not talking about it. He could have had someone kill Shing for him, but my gut says the guy was really shocked when he saw Shing’s body in his car. We’ll have to check on his financials to be sure.”

“Find out what Shing and St. John had going on between them.” Casey popped his gum between his teeth. Kane’s partner was still trying to coax more than one-word responses out of the other man in the interview room, and the lieutenant grunted at Miki’s obstinacy. “That kid’s not giving anything up to Sanchez. He’s definitely hiding something.”

“I asked the family if we could take a look at Shing’s office to see if we could find something to point us to who killed him, but the son shut me down fast.” He crossed his arms and quirked a smile.

It was funny to see his smooth-talking partner being outfoxed by a pretty-faced, street-smart asshole for a change. Kel danced as hard as he could with St. John, alternating between sympathetic and nearly aggressive to wedge a crack into the young man’s steely façade. So far, Kel was failing miserably, and the corners of his mouth were tight, a barely noticeable sign of his growing impatience with the singer.

“Kel said something about St. John living over the restaurant.” Kane grabbed at the stray thought before it got away from him. “I want in that room and the office. Think we can get a warrant for a search?”

“It’ll be kind of rough,” Casey drawled. “The family just suffered a loss. Judges tend to frown on making the victim’s family go through shit like that.”

“There’s something there,” Kane said. “Wish I’d known about it before I let the son go. I’d have asked him just to see how he responded. If he hit on it, I’d have pushed harder.”

“St. John had to go through the lab stuff first,” the lieutenant reminded him. “So far, they don’t like him for anything. No blood on his clothes, and the team we left behind said nothing’s in the house but the dog. No blood or anything. Well, except for the spots Lau got on the kitchen floor when the dog bit him.”

“No one shot the dog, did they?” Kane turned and gave his boss a suspicious look.

“No, they tossed it in the bathroom with a water dish. The place came up clean.” Casey popped his gum again, and from the looks of things, Sanchez’s mouth was getting thinner by the minute. “Let me go see about securing a warrant for Shing’s place. We’ll let the rock star go. Have a uniform run him home with our apologies, but put a car on the place for a bit. If he did pay someone to off the guy, that someone’s going to come by.”

“Probably,” Kane agreed. “The car’s registered to him, but he doesn’t have a license. It was up on risers, so it wasn’t going anywhere. The lab said it’ll be a couple of weeks until they release it.”

“You better go save Sanchez before he blows,” Casey commented as a flush turned Kel’s face bright red. “That kid’s going to give him a heart attack if he stays in there much longer.”

“Deal,” he said. “Maybe I’ll take St. John home myself. God knows, I can’t do worse than Sanchez there.”

“Just don’t hit on him until after we clear him as a suspect.” Casey poked Kane in the chest, glaring at him warningly. “Can you promise me that? Or am I just pissing in the wind?”

“Something about him, Lieutenant,” he admitted. There
was
something about Miki St. John. The man had peppered his thoughts ever since he saw him shivering half-naked in the doorway of the warehouse, defending a dog he refused to admit owning. “He grabs at my gut.”

“That’s not your gut he’s grabbing, Kane. Those are your balls.” The man chuckled. “I saw the way you were looking at the boy. He’s trouble… trouble you don’t need, kid.”

Kane finished the rest of his coffee with a gulp and balled up the paper cup in his fist. Lobbing it toward the trash can, he made an open-mouthed hissing noise to mimic a crowd. He grinned at the man who taught him how to play basketball and said, “I’m a Morgan, sir. We always need trouble. It’s how we survive.”

H
IS
cop was waiting for Miki when he came out of the interrogation room. Miki wasn’t sure when the man became
his
cop, but that’s how he felt when he spotted the lanky, loose-hipped Irish man leaning against the wall. The detective had shed the leather jacket at some point, and the stretch of T-shirt across his wide chest made Miki wish his dick would respond with more than a tingling lift at the sight. An ancient pair of jeans, complete with frayed rips and bare spots on the man’s thighs, hugged the inspector’s long legs, but nothing the cop wore unmanned Miki as much as the man’s cocky, uneven smile.

“Hey.” The cop’s deep voice warmed Miki’s cold belly. He held up a blue SFPD T-shirt and a pair of black sweats. “Want to change out of that crap they gave you to wear?”

“You going to watch me get naked like that other cop did?” Miki growled, but he limped closer to take the clothes. Stiff from being in the cold cinder block room, his right knee began its familiar salsa of pain and throbbing.

“You offering?” Kane asked with a wider smile. It faded when Miki stared back with an uncomprehending look on his face. “You have no idea what you just said, do you?”

“Look, I just want to go home and get warm,” Miki replied. “I’ve got to feed the Dude.”

“Home’s off limits for now. Forensics isn’t done with the place yet. Might be another hour before the Lieutenant says you can head back, then. Your dog’s fine. They put him in the bathroom with some food and water.” He shrugged helplessly at Miki’s disgusted hiss. “I was thinking you probably needed some food in you. God knows I do. How about if we get something to eat?”