by Adira August
“Remember how I worked a full day yesterday when I wasn’t even employed here, yet?” Avia Rivers hung in the doorway of Hunter’s office.
His desk clock read 7:15. The team meeting was in fifteen minutes. Avia’s tone suggested his schedule was about to get screwed up before his day had officially began.
“What?”
“I already talked to Cam. He’ll fill in for me today and everyone will be delighted. He’s reviewing the files now. I have to go to the airport. I will be back tomorrow, committed and ready to work.”
“Is there some reason I shouldn’t fire you?” He asked her, leaning back in his chair and bracing a booted foot against the edge of his desk.
She came all the way inside and shut the door behind her. “Because Cam really does want to be gone. Really gone. He’s doing me a huge favor and I think you know I wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t about something critical.”
“Critical.” He cocked a skeptical brow. “There’s some life-or-death matter a billionaire’s girlfriend needs to run off and solve?”
“Yes. And I’ll forgive you for the rude remark because you almost never make them and the coffee’s not done, yet.”
He went around the desk to stand in front of her, searching her face. “If I knew what this was would I tell you to go?”
Avia felt a rush of affection for this friend who trusted her because he knew her.
“Hunter, if you knew what this was you’d arrange a lights and sirens escort to the airport.”
He nodded. She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek quickly. “Love you, Lieutenant Dane.”
“Yeah-yeah.” He sighed. It made Diane Natani crazy when this shit happened and she had to figure out how to log hours and adjust payroll.
He held the door open for Avia. She hurried out, passing Twee and Merisi coming in.
Cam was already working at the high table. “Lieutenant.”
“Snow.”
He went to Natani’s office. Better she went berserker in private.
“OKAY, MERISI, YOU want to start us off?”
“The cover girl I passed on the way in was Rivers?”
“Oh yeah, you haven’t met her, yet!” Twee exclaimed. Twee rarely spoke when she had the opportunity to exclaim.
“It was; you’ll meet her tomorrow. Briefing?” Hunter wasn’t in the mood to admit he had no idea why Avia had left.
“There’re not many facts to brief on that everyone here doesn’t know,” Merisi said. “I’m shut out of interviewing friends, co-workers and family at this point. I can’t compel anyone to talk to me without evidence of criminal intent. So I’m available for the John and Jane Doe case until DNA results came back.”
“That’ll be what? Two or three weeks?” Natani was not in a good mood.
“Days,” he said. “Tomorrow or Wednesday.”
“You can’t get DNA-”
“Paternity!” Twee piped up. “You asked for paternity?”
“Sort of,” he said, with a glance at Hunter.
Hunt remained quiet and attentive. It was Mike’s case and Hunter now had a big cup of coffee in front him and Cam back at the table. He was content. Tuned in.
“What do you have that’s not a fact?” Hunt asked.
“Speculation on facts. The platter was white. Cam?”
Images of plates of delicately arranged raw fish slices appeared. The platters were blue and red and black. The paper-thin slices formed dragons and swans, one large flower covering the round platter.
“Sashimi,” Cam said.
“See, sashimi isn’t put on white plates because the thin slices are also white and translucent,” Merisi explained. “Where it overlaps it’s opaque. It forms a white - pastel - dark pattern. Penelope Maki’s white platter made the design disappear. White on white. White is the color of death in Japan.”
“You mean like black is for Westerners?” Hunter asked.
“Right. And the pattern she made is called ‘driving rain.’ It’s a thing they do, training chrysanthemums to grow in a very specific way. Perfect control. It’s a fall thing, death season.”
Hunter considered this. “You think she felt dead before she took her life.”
Merisi’s dark eyes flashed his anger, but his voice was steady. “Yes, sir. I think someone erased her. Also, that paper in her hand was a sticky note.” He looked at Twee.
“I found the pad in a drawer in the kitchen,” she said.
Cam had the shot of the open drawer up. “Fugu poisoning kills you very quickly,” he said. “She had to have written the note before she ate. She would have barely made it to the bed.”
“I don’t think there’s any doubt she did this to herself,” Merisi said. “But her missing cell phone is the real issue.”
“No phone in her apartment,” Twee explained. “No charging cord. No landline. Also, no purse. Of any kind.”
“What do you mean ‘of any kind’?” Natani frowned.
Twee shrugged. “Just that. No kind of pouch or anything that would hold I.D.”
“Her driver’s license on the nightstand had no prints.” Merisi chimed in. “There are also no house keys. Not in the pockets of her clothes, not in a drawer, nowhere. How did she get in?”
“What’s your feel on this, Merisi?” Hunter asked. “It was how she lived or someone took her purse?”
He looked troubled. “How does a twenty-something American girl not have a cell phone? The only people I ever heard of who live like this are like, contemplatives. Nuns and monks. But there was nothing to indicate she had any belief system that would support that. If I could talk to someone who knew her…”
He flipped his pen around in his hand. “She had that note in her fist, clutched in her fist under the blanket. No one would see it until the cover was taken off.”
Merisi slammed the pen down on the table. “That note was left for us. That’s my ‘feel’ There wasn’t anyone to call before she died, so she left us a note.”
Hunter held up one hand, scrolling through his phone with the other. He found the text Avia had forwarded with Maki’s address. The number it came from wasn’t a DPD number.
“Cam, run this down.” He read off the numbers.
Everyone waited. Cam’s lips pressed. “Sunrise International Holdings.” He looked at Hunter. “Hideyoshi Maki’s company.”
“Give me the number.” Natani snarled. It was not a request. Hunt showed her the text. She made a note and stalked off to her office to get a warrant for the phone records.
“Hang on, Diane,” Hunter called to Natani. “Where are we on the autopsy, Merisi?”
“She’ll do it this morning, but Zee’s releasing the body this afternoon. She says she has no justification to delay, there’s nothing to indicate it was anything but suicide. They’ve scheduled the cremation for tomorrow. Taberu, the restaurant, re-opens Thursday morning. Then I can interview employees and Ken Ikeda, the chef who’s our lawyer’s father,” Merisi told him.
“Zee’s getting pressure?” This from Natani, poised to enter her office with one hand on the knob.
“Oh yeah. She wouldn’t say from who, though. But”—he hesitated—“I’m playing a hunch on the DNA,” he finished with a note of defiance in his voice.
“You think it was family?” Hunter asked.
“I do!” Twee popped up. ”That lawyer.”
“Maybe,” Merisi answered. “I can’t figure what else he was doing there at that time of the morning. But Twee blacklighted every inch of that place. Not a drop of semen.”
She nodded.
“But-”
“But?” Hunter prompted.
He shook his head. “I can’t explain it, he just felt wrong when I interviewed him at the scene. I asked Zee if we could learn anything from the fetal DNA, like the ethnicity of the father. That does take weeks, but paternity is quick. With him being her first cousin, which is creepy as hell to think about, the results won’t be in doubt at all.”
“We also can’t assume
because Ikeda implied he was acting on Hideyoshi Maki’s orders, that he actually was,” Hunter said. “Men with that kind of wealth tend to be isolated by an inner circle of lawyers, bodymen and assistants. He’ll only know what Ikeda tells him.”
Mike nodded. “If Ikeda was the father of the baby…” He looked to Natani.
“We can get an order to compel him to appear for questioning,” she said. “I can try to get a court order today to hold the body until the DNA comes back. It’s a thin argument for a murder motive at this point, though.”
“Cam, you have anything for us?” Hunt asked.
“Some data Rivers found. ” He put an image of a blunt-headed fish on the monitor. “Takifugu rubripes. The species of Takifugu in the tank and on the counter. Most fugu fish is imported with the poison removed before transport. But the processed fish loses quality fast and is very expensive. There is some private in-country breeding.”
‘“In country’ meaning our country?” Twee asked.
“Right. This species has had complete genome sequencing. One article mentioned attempts to breed a poison-free variety. In Japan, the demand means it’s being overfished onto the endangered species list.”
Mike frowned, his dark eyebrows pulled down. The team recognized it as Merisi’s hang on a minute face. “Doesn’t the FDA control the source of fugu fish for public consumption?”
An advisory from the FDA popped onto the monitor. “Rivers looked and so did I. There doesn’t seem to be any regulation of sources. Only of which restaurants can serve it,” Cam answered. “And”—he looked to Hunter—“there’s only one importer.”
“So the quantity available to the restaurants is controlled by one outfit?” Merisi’s frown deepened. “That creates a profit motive.”
“Perfect.” Natani said. “Money is always convincing.” She finally disappeared into her office to stop the release of the body.
“Merisi, stick with your case,” Hunter told him. “Take Twee’s place at the fish autopsy this morning.”
“I don’t know anything about filming it, though.”
“Rivers said she set the cameras up last night,” Cam said. “I have one other thing.”
Hunter gestured for him to go ahead.
“It’s a note Rivers left for Merisi. I’m not sure she knew how to get it into his specific queue.” It appeared onscreen as he read it out. “‘Check cameras in neighborhood business as per the matchstick case’.” Cam looked at Hunter. “I don’t know what this means.”
“She means the Bryant case,” Hunter explained. “After the shooting we checked cameras on downtown businesses along the one-ways out of downtown. A jewelry store caught both cars. Bryant’s and the killer’s.”
“How did I not think if that? They do it on fucking TV.” Merisi made a note. “Maybe I can get his arrival time that morning.”
“I didn’t think of it yet, either,” Hunter told him. “And I ordered it the first time.” He turned to Cam. “You have anything else?”
“I can take the laptop along and record the fish autopsy if you want.”
“Yes!” Merisi was fervent.
Twee giggled. Merisi turned red with a look at his boss, who shrugged.
“It’s your case,” he said. “Twee and I will be back at the”—he waved a hand at Cam—“what’s the actual name, anyway?”
“Hortt Orchards, originally.”
“Thanks. The warrant’s good for twenty-four hours. Merisi, will your friend have time to meet us?”
The friend was Calvin Derricksen, a construction site manager. The friendship was one with seriously hot benefits.
“He says anything you want as long as it isn’t during a concrete pour.” Merisi grinned. “He doesn’t stop to pee during a pour. He’ll be there at ten with a ladder.”
“Gordi send us the autopsy findings?” Hunt asked Cam.
“In brief,” he said, putting the two victim reports on screen side-by-side.
“They were positively identified by dental records from the original investigation. Natani and the Adams County D.A. wrangled jurisdiction and it’s ours, but the original investigator will do the family notifications. We’re picking up the boy’s car from their impound today.”
“Gordi gave us a synopsis only?”
“For now.” Lateral and posterior views of James Dobbs’ skull popped onto the monitor.
“Somebody’d bashed the back of the boy’s head in,” Cam said. “Gordi’s calling it ‘probable’ cause of death because the bone edge is damaged by rodent predation. He can tell almost nothing about how the damage was inflicted, including the angle of the strike.”
Cam put up another skull, front and lateral views. “This is Francis Gardia. She has a perimortem depression of one nasal bone resulting in the lateral displacement of the contralateral nasal bone. That means the other side.”
“He thinks she was smothered?” Hunter asked.
Cam read from a portion of the report on screen that he highlighted. “The injury is consistent with manually reducing airflow. No other skeletal injuries are present.”
“He doesn’t know how they died,” Hunter said. “What does he know?”
Cam expanded the notes to make them easier to read.
“‘The remains were placed at location of discovery post mortem at an undetermined time after death’, Cam quoted. “It goes on to say rodents have been at the remains, but there are hardly any droppings around the bodies.”
“That’s it?”
Cam shrugged.
“He’s holding back,” Natani said rejoining them. “I got you forty-eight hours, Merisi.” He nodded. “I think Gordi has interrogation keys. You’ll have to talk to him, Dane.”
Hunter agreed. There were things in every case that were held back because only the killer would know them.
“I’ll get samples from the shed.” Twee made a note for herself. “We’ll be able to tell if they were skeletonized before they were dumped.” She considered. “If they were, they’d be pretty light.”
“Twenty-two and twenty-six point four pounds,” Cam supplied from the report.
“So the remains could have been moved by almost anyone,” Hunter mused. “Male, female, even a biggish kid.”
The scope of his investigation was wide open.
UNDISGUISED CONTEMPT. It was a phrase that perfectly described the way Candace Hortt Farleigh regarded the badge Hunter held out for identification. The forty-something woman in a tailored black pantsuit, wearing a richly printed silk scarf held in place with an ornate gold butterfly pin, had arrived at the door with a pad and pen.
She didn’t so much stand in her doorway as body block it.
“Name again?” she asked, pen poised.
“I’m Detective Lieutenant Hunter Dane. This is crime scene specialist Carol Twee.”
Candace sneered a little, whether at Twee’s name or height or blackness or the world generally, Hunter didn’t know. She finished jotting down the names.
“Did you find out who killed my mother?”
“No, ma’am. We’re here becau—” She slammed the door. A deadbolt turned and a chain slid home.
Hunter looked around the neighborhood. The very large and very expensive homes sat close together. They were what his father used to call “McMansions.”
About 100 feet away, one of Farleigh’s neighbors leaned on a porch railing speaking to a man on her lawn holding a leaf blower.
“This is why God gave uniforms big, heavy flashlights,” Hunter sighed. He made a fist and pounded hard on the front door. Twee jumped and stepped back.
The people in the next yard stared.
“Mrs. Farleigh?” Hunter shouted very loudly. “We found some dead children in your yard, would you like to help out the grieving parents?”
The door swung wide and a furiously red-faced Candace Hortt Farleigh gesticulated wildly for them to move into the house. She slammed the door behind them.
“Do you think you’re going to keep your job
after that little display?” She spit the words at Hunter.
“Do you think I care when two kids were murdered, dumped inside your cider press and laid there until only their bones and scraps of clothing were left?” he asked her calmly.
The color drained from her face. “No. You just said that to get me to let you in. There’s nothing on the news.” She turned as if she could see her television from the foyer. “There was nothing.”
“Mrs. Farleigh?” Hunter filled his voice with warm concern. “I read your case files. I know this has to bring up very bad memories. But it is real. Could we all sit down together? Please.”
Tears welled. “Oh my God.” The tears spilled. “He’s done it again.”
“Who has?”
“The demon.”
“NO ONE BELIEVES me but people who live in the neighborhood,” Candace Farleigh told them. Her face was still pale under precisely cut bangs. Her hazel eyes seemed to be watching for something far beyond the confines of the sunny room.
“I don’t think it can get me here, though.” She seemed to be talking to herself. “I don’t think it can leave the orchard.” Another tear slipped down her face.
“Technically, the cider press isn’t on your property now,” Hunter said.
“Demons don’t take much notice of property lines,” she smiled ruefully. “The original orchard was several hundred acres. All land my great-grandfather killed for. The whole neighborhood is its hunting ground.” She barked a harsh laugh. “Its happy hunting ground.”
Twee shot Hunter a look, but he kept his voice concerned. “You believe the demon is a Native American ghost or deity?”
The skin of her face stretched so tightly across the bones it looked as if it might split open and pour blood.
“There were children.” She wasn’t referring to the remains found in her cider press. “These were, too? Children?”
“Highschool students who were at a dance last spring,” Hunter answered. “Mrs. Farleigh, I’d like permission to search the house.”
“It won’t do any good,” she said, brushing at her face. “After it killed my father my mother would hear it. In the walls. She kept a radio on in my room at night so I wouldn’t hear. She looked. The police looked. The neighbors looked.”
