Sloe Ride (14 page)

“Well, that’s stupid,” Quinn murmured, stroking at Rafe’s back. “You saw me when I was so broken I wanted to fall… wanted to die… and you didn’t care. You were there for me. You left the road to be with me. Why would you think I’d turn away from you when you needed me the most?”

“’Cause I’m stupid? I was scared?” Rafe laughed, sniffing through his tears. “I couldn’t lose you, Q. I was so fucking ashamed, and now I’m scared shitless I’m not good enough to stand up next to those guys and play… because they’re that good, and I’m a fucking broken mess. And you’ll see me fail there too. Then what?”

“I’m yours, Rafe. Through everything. I’ll always be here.” He held on tight, feeling Rafe’s sob shudder through their entwined bodies. “They’d be stupid to not want you. You’re Rafe fucking Andrade, rock god. Who is now leaking down my neck.”

“I think that’s snot,” Rafe mumbled.

“Oh.” Quinn chuckled. “That’s okay, then. Just glycoproteins and water. Drool you’ve got to watch out for. Being a god and everything. Your saliva could turn out to be venomous.”

“You are so damned weird, Q.” Rafe’s burst of laughter felt good against Quinn’s skin. “And thank fucking God for it because I wouldn’t have you any other way.”

T
HERE
WAS
no mistaking death had come. It’d struck often in San Francisco, and Kane knew of at least three people in the city who’d gone pining for the fjords just that Sunday morning. The bloody, pulpy remains lying at Kane’s feet brought the number to four.

Chinatown stretched out around them, a draconian maze of alleys and buildings layered thick with soot and desperation. It was too early for tourists, but the back streets were already bustling with deliveries and people who saw nothing, heard nothing, and who slipped away into the shadows like liquid when anyone who smelled of cop drew near.

Fog settled down deep into the cracks between the pressed-in buildings, pushing back the dank, ripe-green stench leeching out from the old cobblestone corridors. The cold mists ran thick, steeping the alleys in its own tongue-scraping shadowy tea, providing enough cover for a rattle of roaches to brave the heavy cop boots stomping back and forth. The insects slipped out from under a row of green dumpsters, their sides scraped and black with cast-off food, a skittering tide of chitin and antenna rolling in and out to sip at the body’s leaking remains.

Restaurants dominated this end of the area, cramped little holes manned by generations of silent, angry people working off loan-shark debts incurred by their grandfathers. Smaller unmarked businesses pocked the alleys, slender thresholds with cracked wooden doors and no signage, but the rough murmur of angry Cantonese shook through the cracks, quieting when a uniform rapped on the door in his hunt for a witness. Near the victim, a crate of cabbage sat on its side, rotting blackened heads oozing out from between wooden slats, and Kane stepped carefully around it, spotting a bristle of whiskers poking out of the sticky mess.

“Should I push in, sir?”

The uniform, a scrub-faced blond kid who creased his pants nearly to a razor point, adjusted his cap and called out to Kane as he walked by. Even in the alley’s milky dimness, Kane could see the green tint in the young cop’s face and how his too-bright eyes slid away from the remains.

“Nah, leave it.” He steered the young man to a pack of hunched-over elderly women at the far end of the alley, their fingers coated with a layer of flour. “Chances are they’re prepping the kitchen and left the security door open. It gets hot as shit in the back, and they’d want the cold air. See if any of them saw something. Take Muñoz with you if you need help with translating.”

Kane knew enough Cantonese to know it would be bad news all around if one of those doors opened up. He’d run with Vice for a few years before being tapped for Homicide, and he’d been quickly educated on how much violence lay behind Chinatown’s thin wooden planks.

Cause of death was going to be muddied, despite the apparent battering. Crouching a few feet away from the victim, Horan from Medical and Forensics took pictures of teeth and bone splinters while instructing her assistant on how to angle a measuring T so she could capture a reference scale. The blonde medical examiner looked up when Kane stepped over, and he held out a hand to help her up as she began to rise.

“Thanks.” She took his hand, using it to support herself. “Where’s your partner? I thought he was back on the job.”

“Yeah, he’s all blessed and Pope-ified. Kel’s doing a perimeter run around the block with the cadaver dogs.” Kane stood steady as Horan got herself upright.

Perky and amiable, Horan was both a blessing and a curse on a crime scene. Blessing because Kane knew if there was something to be found, she’d be the one to dig it out, but a curse because the petite blonde was exacting, taking hours to process a scene before kicking information out for an investigating officer.

He was going to try anyway. “Got anything?”

“Really? We’ve been here for an hour, and you want something?” Her snort was a touch away from derisive, but Horan’s smile lessened its sting. “Cause of death could be a beating or a gunshot. I won’t know until I get him on the slab. I can tell you we found a wallet, but I can’t confirm ID or even if it’s the right guy until I match the body to prints.”

“Lots of blood,” Kane murmured, sniffing the air. “Can’t tell if there’s body decay or if that’s the damned rotten food.”

“I’d say he’s fresh. Rigor and body temp are pretty consistent with death happening a few hours out. I’m even going to go out on a limb and say he was killed elsewhere and dumped here. Alessia! Do you have a moment to give to Detective Morgan here?”

The morgue doctor called out to a tall, willowy young woman in forensic scrubs digging carefully through an overturned trash can. The Italian woman picked her way carefully out of the area, avoiding the evidence lines the forensics team laid down.

“Alessia—Doctor De Gustibus—just joined our team. Alessia, this one’s Kane. There’s a few other Morgans you’ll run into. If you’re lucky, and it’s a long night, this one will bring you coffee.”

“My da would bring you coffee,” Kane muttered. “I think.”

“Morgan, if your father ever is called onto a scene I’m working, coffee’s going to be the last thing on my mind.” Horan snorted. “I heard about what happened over at your brother’s place. Apparently one of the tech guys told Donal he didn’t know when he’d get to working on the debris. Last I heard, the guy’s working the road-kill unit on the Bay bridge.”

“Good to meet you, sir.” Smiling broadly at Kane, she brought up her notes on the tablet she’d been using.

“Oh no, sir’s my da. Can’t miss him. He’s the one with captain bars. Kane’s fine. Or Morgan. What do you have so far?”

“Victim appears to have been killed off-site—”

“Still say there’s a lot of blood for an off-site kill here, Horan,” Kane rumbled.

“She’s getting to it. Patience, Morgan,” the doctor shushed him. “Go on, Alessia. He’s probably just grumpy because he hasn’t had coffee yet.”

“It’s five in the morning, and I left Miki curled up in bed more than an hour ago. Coffee’s been had. I’m about ready for my third cup,” Kane grunted. “Sorry, go on.”

“There’s a bloodied tarp tucked under the edge of the dumpster. I’m going to go out on a limb and say the victim was killed on top of it, then rolled up and transported here.” The technician tapped through her notes. “Splatter marks on the tarp are consistent with a blunt object hit, and when he stashed the tarp, he took it out of the elements, protecting the evidence. The kill was pretty recent. Some of the inside folds are still damp and sticky.”

“Question we’d be asking is, did he shove the tarp there on purpose? Or was it convenient?” Kane mulled, turning to look at the scene. “There’s bits and pieces of the victim strewn from that box there to the dumpster. Alleyway’s tight. Our killer would have had to pull, then drag the victim over there, then back out to the street. I wouldn’t trust getting anything wider than a speck of a car in here.”

“Unless he backed in,” the technician suggested.

“Either way, there’s no getting around the dumpster unless you’re on a motorcycle, and that wouldn’t happen here. Too hard to handle and balance. Had to be a car.” Kane took another look at the battered body. “It’s a good forty feet from the street to here. If our doer parked on the street, there’d be more bits and pieces from the sidewalk over to the dumpster, and he’d have run the risk of being seen by the restaurant crews.”

“Delivery truck wouldn’t have fit,” Horan agreed. “Those have wider wheelbases. Even some SUVs would be too wide to get in here. I can see where you’re going with this, Morgan. I’ll have my team check for fresh paint scrapes on the walls.”

“Needle in the haystack shit, but it might help. Kel’s going to see if there’s cameras on the street. It’ll be on this side. Hopefully we’ll catch a break here.” Kane tried to rub the tired out of his face. “What’s the ID say? Sanchez and I can at least go hunt that down. If we knock on the door and find the guy in his bathrobe, we’ll have to wait until the print run to verify ID.”

“Kappelhoff. Simon Paul Kappelhoff. His address is—”

Kane didn’t need to hear the rest of it. Instead he stepped in close and stared at the picture of the victim’s ID. It’d been a few years since he’d seen Kappelhoff, but the man probably hadn’t updated his license picture either. Kane’s memory of Kappelhoff hadn’t been a good one, especially since he’d been throwing books out onto the street as Kane drove up to the curb. It’d been an ugly breakup on Simon’s part, a lot of shouting and accusations of emotional immaturity.

“Well, fucking hell,” Kane muttered under his breath. “Professor Simon Kappelhoff.”

“You know him, Morgan?” Horan asked gently.

“Yeah, kind of.” Any chance of the day brightening was washed away by a flood of dread and gloom, and Kane sighed, “He’s Quinn’s ex-boyfriend.”

Midnight, On the Phone

Rafe: It was great eating lunch with you today, Q.

Quinn: You listened to me on the phone as I ate a ham sandwich in my office and talk about why I thought it was a shitty thing people never developed the ability to see other spectrums.

R: To be fair, it sounded like a really kickass ham sandwich.

S
AN
F
RANCISCO
flirted with Quinn from behind its veil of fog and drizzle. It stretched out in front of him, a lushly curved and redolent landscape of mounds and flats shimmering between thinning misty patches, a coy Rubenesque tease, casually seducing him with a peekaboo dance. He’d woken up too early to do anything other than make coffee, dress his cat in a sweater, and take her to the one spot he’d found he could breathe without the walls closing in on him—the warehouse’s rooftop shanty-house tent overlooking San Francisco Bay.

Unfortunately, it was also where everyone was able to find him.

A thick faux mink blanket kept back most of the Sunday morning chill, and Harley settled her floppy body beneath the crimson cover with a contented sigh, her whippet-thin tail slowly marking time in slow slashes over his toes. Along with the cat, he’d brought up a large, thick-walled thermos big enough to hold nearly a quart of coffee and a book he’d been meaning to finish for years, but as captivating as Kingsbury’s world-building was, Quinn’s thoughts wandered away from the maran-Kaiel of Geta and back to the profane destruction of his peaceful life.

The truck didn’t make sense. The fire didn’t make sense. Someone fucking up his car and house was insane, but as often as Quinn turned the events over in his mind, he couldn’t find a connection to an event or person to the craziness he’d found himself in. And if the police didn’t find one soon, he’d go crazy living in his older brother’s back pocket.

“Or I’ll kill all of them.” He spoke to Harley’s serpentine tail, nudging at his cat’s belly with his bare toes. She lazily grabbed at them, a molasses-fluid movement beneath the plush cover, and her teeth gently gnawed at his anklebone, a halfhearted attack she lost interest in nearly as soon as she launched it. A few licks at the barely fanged skin, and she went slack again, her soft, even snorfling tickling the bottom of Quinn’s foot.

It was a comfortable three-sided tent, and Miki’d built a nest out of papasan frames and about a thousand soft pillows on the large riser Kane’d built to keep the area out of any standing water. The Miki-nest was set to the side, away from a circle of chairs and tables where they normally gathered on clear nights, a slice of an Irish pub set above the busy streets below.

In the rain-drenched mornings, however, the nest was all Quinn’s.

He dreaded the sound of the rooftop door opening, its telltale creak nearly as ominous as any below-board thump written by Poe, but he knew it would come. Hardly an hour went by without
someone
seeking him out and hunting him down, as if he’d become a fragile glass ornament being tossed around in a game of hot potato.