Chapter 15
They say I’m nobody to fear
And no one to love,
Soul blacker than ink.
Sin fits like a glove.
And the soft damning whispers,
Follow me where ever I go.
They can’t hear me crying.
Even as they kill me real slow.
—Forgotten Son
DISPATCH gave Kane an address that led to a worn-out strip mall straddling the line between decrepit and seedy. Several police cars blocked off the two driveways leading into the cracked asphalt parking lot. A small group of Hispanic women clustered at the doorway of a small Laundromat at one end of the strip mall’s L, watching the steady stream of people going in and out of a boarded-up Mexican taco shop thinly disguised as an Italian ristorante. From the plywood sheets and cut chains dangling from the steel mesh doors, the neighborhood didn’t care much for spaghetti and antipasto.
From the looks of the people gathering near the sidewalk, the area needed more in the line of entertainment. A Mexican fruit salad vendor dealt a swift business on the corner, loading up plastic cups of tropical fruit before sprinkling the mixture with lime juice, salt, and chili peppers. Kane’s mouth watered at the sight, and his stomach grumbled, reminding him it was empty.
“Trust me, belly, you don’t want anything in you when we walk into this shit.” Kane flashed his badge to get past the uniforms and parked his SUV next to Sanchez’s Porsche. Climbing out of his car, he nodded to the pair of older women gossiping at the front of the check-cashing place kitty-corner of the restaurant.
Passing them, he gave them a winning smile and a nod. “Ladies.”
He jostled the chains as he edged past the steel door, and the foul smell of rotten meat hit him hard. Enormous spotlight tripods were set up to illuminate the scene, chasing away any shadow that might hide a sliver of evidence. Standing in the middle of the room, Sanchez looked like death warmed over, lack of sleep hanging creases beneath his dark eyes. Still, he was a damned sight prettier than the man strewn all over the cement floor of the abandoned restaurant. Handing his partner one of the coffees he’d grabbed from a drive-thru, Kane stepped around the circle of carnage in the middle of what was once a dining room.
“This guy is a butcher,” Kel muttered. Sipping the hot coffee, he sighed in gratitude. “Thanks for the hit. This case is killing me.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.” He looked around the place. “Who called this in?”
“Lady across the street. Her cat brought home a nose. She figured she should tell someone about it.” Sanchez handed Kane a pair of plastic booties and gloves. “Suit up and I’ll show you what’s left of our pedophile.”
The restaurant wore its history on its walls. Dust and cobwebs covered nearly every flat surface, and the industrial gray rug was mostly ripped up off the floor. Only wide swaths of the gummy patterned carpet remained near a broken podium that had probably served as a hostess station. Plastic grapes and fabric ivy vines looped over nails to frame the Spanish-style arches at the entrance. More baskets of grapes and straw were fastened to the walls, a few sagging from the molly bolts giving way under their weight.
A faded mural of a salsa dancer took up most of a long wall, its background altered by a less-skilled artist to depict what Kane guessed was supposed to be an Italian vineyard. Even in the gloom, the splotches of bright purple and yellow squiggles looked more like disease cells than something he’d want a wine squeezed out of.
In the middle of the grime and filth lay a man Kane would say was the dirtiest thing in the room.
Lack of circulation hung the stink of Carl Vega’s body in the air, covering everything in a greasy feel from the gaseous expulsions of his intestines giving way. It was hard to tell what was left of Carl. Too much of him was scattered about the area, and Kane thought he spotted an ear beneath one of the banquette tables sitting askew against the wall. A circle of black dried blood pooled around the remains, its edges marred by a series of boot prints leading in and out of the mess.
One of the technicians stood near the blood mass, snapping pictures of the clearest prints. He lifted up his foot to reposition himself into a different angle and to avoid the flap of scalp and hair that had been tossed away from the body. From what Kane could see, most of the skeleton was present, although broken apart as if a wild animal had ravaged the corpse. Long shreds of skin were spread out from Carl’s kinked spine, giving the remains curling, dried fragments of wings.
“Jesus, what a fucking mess,” Kel muttered, snapping on his gloves. He snagged a tech standing nearby with a clipboard. “Did we get positive ID that it’s Vega?”
“Yes.” The man began to rattle off particulars of fingerprints and blood type, but Kel wandered off to inspect the evidence the techs had already gathered, leaving Kane to take down the details. “I’ve got ID on Vega but nothing on the perp other than boot prints. He smeared the hell out of anything he touched, so we’re assuming he was wearing gloves.”
“Still, it was a fast ID,” Kane murmured. “Thanks. We owe you one.”
“We were processing the other fingers from the St. John crime scene. Since the remains are missing quite a few digits, it made sense they were connected.” The tech nodded. “We’ve been here a couple of hours already. Once we got positive identification, the call was made to you guys. Until then, Browne over there caught the case. He can tell you about the call.”
“Thanks.” Kane took a few steps over to where Browne, a grizzled salt-and-pepper haired inspector, stood near the hostess podium. He’d come in after Kane, obviously returning from a hunt for a hot cup of coffee, and lifted his hand to wave Kane over.
Mark Browne was a stereotype of a cop. He wore ill-fitting polyester pants and cotton button-up white shirts that invariably had a coffee or food stain down the front. Often, he wore ties that were obviously gifts from his children, silkscreened cartoon characters or oddly colored plaids bright enough to hurt the eyes, but hidden behind the stomach paunch, thinning ginger hair, and walrus mustache lay a bloodhound of a cop most of the district admired.
“How are you doing, Morgan?” Browne slurped at his lidless cup, dunking most of his mustache into the creamy liquid. He licked at the coffee, careful not to drip on the floor. “Just sent your baby brother outside. Might as well make him good for something.”
“Riley?” Kane snorted. “He’s doing walkarounds in the neighborhood?”
“Yeah, I figured a pretty face will get people talking if they know anything.” The inspector grunted. “Might as well put that Morgan charm of his to use. Don’t know if he’ll get anything. Spoke to one Charlene Martes. She’s the one with the cat. Nice lady, used to be a schoolteacher, so she wasn’t all that panicky when Frisky dropped a piece of Vega down in front of her. She thought it was a lizard but then got a small shock when she grabbed it with a paper towel. Dialed us up right after that.”
“How long did it take you guys to find him?” Kane rocked back on his heels, watching the forensics techs scrape and gather up what they needed. A body bag lay on a gurney, waiting to transport the remains, but there was some discussion going on about the whereabouts of Carl’s facial bits.
“Not long. Let’s go outside for a bit. The air in here’s thick, if you know what I mean,” Browne nodded toward the expanding sacks of organs on the floor. “He couldn’t have been here too long. The heat in here’s going to make those bits pop, and I don’t want to be in here when they go.”
The check-cashing storefront gave up on its evening business and was closed up tight when Kane and Browne emerged from the restaurant, but the Laundromat looked like it was doing a bang-up business, even though it appeared no one was actually washing or drying clothes. Outside, the chilled air was steeped with the smell of car exhaust and a whiff of garbage from a pair of dumpsters set up against a wall the stores shared with an apartment building next door.
Even as sour as the air was, it was still a cleaner smell than what lay stagnant inside the restaurant. Browne fumbled at the inside of his jacket, then sighed heavily, giving Kane a remorseful look. “Gave up smoking a few years ago when my wife got pregnant. I love my daughter to death, but, fuck it, I miss having a cigarette sometimes. I’d been smoking since I was sixteen. What the hell do I do with my hands?”
“Never smoked,” Kane admitted. “Have you met my mother? She’d have skinned us alive if she found one of us smoking.”
“You think that’s what happened to Vega?” Browne jerked his chin toward the restaurant. “Your mom caught him smoking?”
“Nah, but who ever did that to him really was pissed off.” He shuffled his feet and glanced around at the faces of people gathered around the corner strip.
Someone, a person probably still in the crowd, had taken a few sharp knives to Vega’s still-quivering body and carved the life out of him. It was a brutal act and a selfish one. Someone wanted to take credit for it, even if it was merely watching the cops taking Vega’s body out in a bag. Kane scanned the crowd, looking for someone alone trying to look nonchalant, but everyone clustered about seemed to be in packs and talking, more curious than disinterested.
Until he spotted a tall young man smoking a cigarette directly across the one-way, single-lane street where Kane and Browne stood. From a distance, he looked like he was waiting for someone, leaning against a bus-stop post and glancing down the street, but Kane saw the catch in his gaze when he let his eyes roam over the police cars and the soft tug of something smug on his thin lips before he brought his cigarette up for another drag.
That was when Kane noticed the dark marks over the man’s knuckles, deep gouges barely scabbed over and cracking when he flexed. His attention was keenly on the uniforms when Kane stepped forward, but he swept his eyes up the street and caught Kane staring at him.
The man was about Miki’s age, and his look of shock would have been comical if it hadn’t been quickly replaced by something more sinister. A dirty blue beanie masked most of his hair, but strings of dark strands escaped near his temples. His brows were nearly black, bushy, crawling things that jerked when his eyes skittered away from Kane’s face, and his barely grown-in mustache fluttered when he licked at it, spitting out something caught on his lips. His fingers trembled slightly when he brought his cigarette up again, his bare forearm rippling with sinew and muscle as he moved. There was a coiled strength to him, a nervous energy balled up under his skin, and Kane tapped Browne on the shoulder, whispering under his breath.
“See that kid across the street? The one smoking, wearing a cap?”
“Yeah,” Browne casually skimmed the crowd, seemingly unengaged in anything other than what Kane was saying. “Seems kind of jumpy.”
“Yep, funny, isn’t it?” Kane stared out into the parking lot, then dragged his gaze back down the street.
The jittering young man was still staring at him, shifting back and forth between the people passing by. The crowd parted momentarily, and Kane could see him more clearly, taking in the torn jeans, much-laundered shirt, and army jacket he wore. The sight of the young man’s worn Sinner’s Gin T-shirt peeking out from between the jacket’s lapels froze Kane’s blood solid, and his heart seemed to stop in midbeat.
They stared at one another for a split second; then the man let his cigarette tumble from his fingers and took off running.
“That’s him!” Kane shouted at the other inspector and sprinted across the street. Drawing his badge, he shouted at the people gathered on the uneven sidewalk. “SFPD! Get out of the way!”
There was something sadistic about San Francisco. Either the reputation of thumbing its nose at authority seeded little pockets of anarchy in people, or its residents were more curious than possessing common sense, because instead of parting to let Kane through, the crowd clustered in to watch Kane’s lanky prey bolt down the narrow alleyway.
Cursing, Kane shoved past a group of teen girls snapping pictures of themselves in front of the lit-up police cars and took off down the tight causeway. He could hear Browne behind him, his heavy feet slapping at the concrete as he struggled to keep up with Kane’s long strides. Despite his bulk, Browne kept up a good pace, and Kane turned the corner between buildings, pausing only long enough to hunt for his suspect.
The blue beanie bobbed up and down behind a dumpster, getting smaller by the second, and Kane took off again, dodging a pile of pallets left on the concrete drive. Cut behind the block of buildings, the alley served as a way station for dumpsters and back-door deliveries. Between the chaotic angles of the garbage bins and that the only lights warding off the dark evening were bare bulbs above stores’ rear entrances, it was difficult to see where the man was.
Rotting food set out for slop pickup made running a slippery business, and Kane nearly lost his balance when he hit a slimy piece of bok choy. Careening sideways, he slammed into the brick wall of a restaurant, jolting him down to his teeth.
“Hey!” The shout was heavy with a Cali-Mex accent and followed by a few curse words that would have made Kane’s mother blush. A few feet away, a green dumpster blocked much of the alleyway, making it hard to see down the walk, but from the sounds of things, Kane’s prey had run into some trouble.
Recovering from his spill, Kane scraped the rotten vegetation off of his foot as Browne pushed aside the pile of stacked, wet cardboard boxes as he ran past him. The sounds of a struggle reached them, and they got around the bin in a hurry. Twenty yards away, Kane’s suspect wrestled to get away from a large-bellied Hispanic man dressed in kitchen whites. A crushed, still-smoking cigarette lay on the ground by their feet, and the cook’s beefy hands were clamped tight on the man’s shoulders. They twisted about, and Kane saw the flash of a knife in the young man’s hand as the dim back-door light caught on the crenulated blade.
“Shit, he’s got a knife!” Kane shouted, pulling his gun.
It happened too fast, too far away for them to do anything, but even with the cook’s back to him, Kane knew the blade slid in and cut deep. The Hispanic man’s spine stiffened, and his shoulders suddenly went slack. His hands clawed at the young man’s jacket, crumpling the khaki-green material as he hooked his fingers into the fabric. With the bloody knife still clenched tight in his fist, the slender man shoved against the cook’s body hard, sending him to his knees.
Gasping, the cook went down on his knees, trying to keep a hold on the man who’d stabbed him, but as the blood poured out of his side, his muscles went slack and he fell, slamming into the concrete slab. His head bounced with a sickening thud, and the sliced apart tie of his apron flew up, exposing his gaping wound. The white T-shirt he wore beneath was soaked through, and the rent in the fabric parted under the gush of an intestinal coil escaping his sliced-open abdominal wall.
By the time Kane reached the cook, his quarry had been swallowed up by the shadows.
There wasn’t a question of what he’d do. Despite being so close to catching the man terrorizing Miki, Kane kneeled down and pressed in on the cook’s wound. The man’s hand trembled as he reached for Kane, and blood dripped from his palm, dribbling down his arm.
“Está bien. Yo soy un policía.” Kane struggled with his broken Spanish, trying to say something that made sense from the lessons he’d had drummed into his head. Applying pressure on the gut wound, he murmured, “La ayuda está en camino.”
“I’ve called it in.” Browne bent over and clasped his knees, panting to catch his breath. “Medics were on the scene for the body. They’re bringing the bus around for him. Hold on.”
“I’m holding,” Kane muttered. “Hey, stay with me, sir.”
The man mumbled something too rapid for Kane to catch, but his grip on Kane’s wrist was bruising. What seemed like an eternity later, the tight alleyway lit up with red lights, and a blue-uniformed paramedic squatted next to Kane’s legs. Other men came rushing out of the back door of the restaurant, peppering the air with a multilingual confusion. An older man with hang-dog features slammed the door behind him and hurried over to where Kane and the cook were. The paramedic gave the man a nod and made a motion for him to keep back.
“Mi hermano,” the older man asserted, motioning to the cook, then to himself. “This is my brother. I won’t leave him.”
“No, you can stay. Just stay out of the way, please, sir.” The blond EMT smiled down at the cook. “Hey, how are you doing? ¿Prefieres que hable en español?”
The cook nodded, and the blond man fired off a rapid string of Spanish Kane couldn’t understand, but whatever he said eased the tension in the man’s face. Browne moved to the side as the other paramedic, a brawny black man whose arms strained at the seams of his sleeves, wheeled a gurney over and set down a body board next to the cook. The blond placed his hands over Kane’s and pressed down, counting to three before instructing Kane to pull away. They swapped places, and the cook groaned loudly, rolling his head to the side.
“Intestine’s intact. No sign of perforation or seepage,” the blond rattled off to his partner. “Abdominal wall open, but organs appear to be uncompromised. I think we can roll him without too much trouble.”
“Good. Let’s do a roll and get him on the board,” the other paramedic instructed. “We’ll get his vitals, then move him up onto the truck. On the count of three.”
Kane stepped back, giving the paramedics room to work. The restaurant workers were hustled back inside into the restaurant, but the older man lingered, refusing to leave the cook’s side. After a small discussion, he was persuaded to follow the ambulance in his own car. Once on the gurney, the cook patted the man’s hand, murmuring reassuring sounds.
A tall, broad-shouldered man wearing a Morgan scowl stepped around the uniforms cordoning off the area. Kane knew from experience that the frown plastered over his friendly features could be wiped away with a well-timed joke or even, if necessary, a few jabs to a ticklish spot under his armpit. While both were highly unprofessional while on the job, as an older brother, Kane still contemplated it. Especially after Inspector Riley Morgan stomped up to Kane and stuck a sharp index finger into Kane’s chest.
“What the hell are you doing at my scene?” Riley growled. Although few inches shorter than his brother, Riley still tried to edge his brother back with a push of his palm on Kane’s shoulder. “And what the hell are you doing back here? Trying to get everyone around you killed? Bad enough I’ve got Kiki and Dad breathing down my neck. I’ve got to worry about you too?”
“Easy there, Junior,” Browne chuckled. “The case belongs to your brother. It’s connected to something he’s on. While you’re standing there, see if you can’t find an evidence bag. Looks like your suspect dropped his sticker over here, Morgan. If I can get your baby brother there moving, we might be able to get something off of it.”
“Fuck,” Riley swore loudly and threw his hands up. “I should have become a fireman like Brae. He doesn’t get a family reunion on every case he gets called on. Last time, it was Connor. Now, I’ve got to worry about you showing up too?”
Kane watched in gentle amusement as his long-legged younger brother stalked off toward one of the cop cars arriving on the scene. Shaking his head, he crouched and inspected the knife lying on the ground. “Blade’s been used a lot. God, I’m hoping this is our murder weapon. The jagged cuts on the edge should be easy to match if it was used on Vega.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” Browne agreed, standing up with a huff. “Shit, listen to me creak. See? This is why I got a younger partner. So I don’t have to do this running shit anymore. Where the hell was he when I needed him? Out knocking on doors and chatting up the ladies.”
“No worries. You got an upgrade. A better Morgan to work with for a bit,” Kane replied. “Junior, huh?”
“Well, not like I can call him Morgan,” The senior inspector scoffed. After laying down a paper ruler strip next to it for scale, he snapped a few pictures of the knife with his phone “Screaming Morgan in a cop house is like yelling for an Oompa Loompa at a chocolate factory. You guys pop up like gophers.”
“That’s pretty much what dinner’s like at our house,” Kane acknowledged. “Like a game of whack-a-mole.”
Riley returned with an unsealed evidence bag and a magic marker. Handing his partner a plastic-wrap sleeve to grab the knife with, he held the bag open for Browne to drop the knife into. After pressing down on the seal, Riley jotted down the time and place they’d secured the knife and held it out to his partner to sign. The senior inspector grunted a thanks at the younger Morgan and headed over to the lab tech scurrying down the alleyway toward their scene.
Like most of the Morgan boys, Riley ran large, with dark-lashed blue eyes and thick black hair. He kept it closely cropped to his skull, something he’d learned made it difficult for suspects to grab at his head after he ran them down. Newly out of uniform and wearing an inspector’s badge, the younger Morgan stood shoulder to shoulder with his older brother, eyeing Kane suspiciously.
“Hey, I didn’t know you were paired up with Browne. He’s a good cop. You’ll learn a lot.” Kane slapped his younger brother on the back. Riley stumbled forward a step, then turned to glare back at his older brother.
“You’d know that if you’d shown up for dinner, asshat,” Riley muttered. “Mom’s about to pop a vein if she doesn’t see you soon.”
“Trust me, her vein’s fine,” Kane grumbled. “She showed up at Miki’s house with roast beef and cabbage rolls. I tried shoving her into her car before I left, but I don’t think it took.”
“Good luck with that. There’s a reason we never had a terrier growing up. Mom didn’t want any competition.” He snorted. “Miki’s that guy you’re seeing? That singer?”
“See? I don’t need to show up for dinner,” he groused playfully. “Everyone knows what’s going on in my life anyway.”
“Connor spilled the beans. Says he’s prettier in person than in pictures, which had Ryan going. She’s going to nail your ass to the wall if you don’t bring him around. It’s either that or she’s going to stalk your front door like some groupie.”
“Not going to do her any good. He likes boys,” Kane said, jabbing his thumb at his chest. “This one in particular.”
Riley jerked his head back toward the street. “So the DB in the restaurant is yours?”
“Yeah, and that asshole with the knife is the guy I think did him.” Exhaling, he puffed out his cheeks and watched the ambulance pull away, disappearing around the building. A second later, the sirens hit, and the wailing sounds pulsed through the neighborhood. “This case is getting shittier by the minute. I’ve got two murders and a stabbing I can put on that guy’s head. The DB’s wife committed suicide… shit, yesterday? Day before? Dude, I don’t know if I’m coming or going at this point. It’s been a bit crazy.”
“I saw Sanchez,” Riley murmured. “He looked like hell. You guys need some sleep.”
“Sleep, I’ve been getting.” Kane shrugged, then grinned foolishly. “Mostly. What we need’s a break. I’m hoping that knife handle’s got a print we can use. I want to find out who this fucker is.”
“Wish you luck with that, man,” his brother said, patting him on the shoulder.
Sighing, he drew out his cell phone and grinned at Riley. “Betcha this is Sanchez ripping me a new asshole for running off without him.”
“Hell, tell him to come over.” Riley bared his teeth at his brother in a playful snarl. “I’ll help.”
Kane ground his teeth when he read Quinn’s message. “Son of a bitch, I told her to go home. Damn it to hell. He must be going insane over there. I’ve got to go find Sanchez.”
“What’s up?” Riley leaned over and read Quinn’s message. “‘Get to the house ASAP. Mom’s stolen Miki and the dog. Not letting him go until shit going down is done with. Think he’s freaking out.’ Well, big brother, looks like a murderer’s the least of your worries now.”