The Mia Quinn Collection

by Lis Wiehl

  “Maybe he was too poor to see a dentist.” Charlie swept his tongue over his back molars, dislodging an almond slice. Over the years, his teeth had been supplemented and buttressed with a variety of fillings and crowns. He was glad that the City of Seattle offered a decent dental plan.

  “Yeah, but it’s mostly adults that fall through the safety net, and this guy hasn’t been an adult for that long. Minors can usually get dental care, unless their parents are totally negligent. I would expect to see at least an old filling or two, not missing teeth.” Doug shook his head. “I’m starting to wonder if we’re dealing with an undocumented immigrant. Someone poor enough that he wouldn’t have had dental care in his home country. And then once he came here, he certainly wouldn’t have been able to afford it.”

  “If that’s true, we may never figure out who he is.” This idea bothered Charlie far more than the prospect of watching Doug pick up the saw and open up the dead man. “We can’t identify him by matching his prints. We can’t identify him by matching dental work. And there’s no point in running DNA if we don’t have a missing person to match him to.” He squinted at the man’s thin face. “And so far I can’t find a single report that comes close to sounding like this guy. Someone’s going to have to tell us he’s missing first.”

  But what if they never did?

  “If we totally come up blank, there may be another way to narrow things down,” Doug offered. “The water you drink deposits isotopes in your hair. So we could have his hair analyzed to see what part of the world he’s from. It takes awhile, though, to get results.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Charlie said.

  The autopsy resumed. Doug carefully swabbed under the fingernails, in case there was still a fragment of the killer’s skin under them. He examined the man’s skin from head to toe, noting injuries that were both pre- and postmortem. Some might have come from the body scraping rough surfaces, others from fish. He took note of multiple blunt force traumas in varying sizes and varying stages of healing. Rows of oval-shaped fingertip bruises dotted the man’s wrists and upper arms where someone had grabbed him, with slightly larger bruises marking the thumbs. Pinch-mark bruises marred the soft skin of his inner arms. And then there were the lines of burns on his wrists—three on the right and two on the left.

  “I’m going to have to look at these under the microscope,” Doug told Charlie. “But like the bruises, these burn marks also look like they may have been made at different times.”

  Charlie wondered if that ruled out torture. Or maybe it had been more a type of punishment, the burns doled out along with the bruises? He had seen more burns on bodies, living and dead, than he liked to remember. Burns from cigarettes and cigarette lighters. Burns from clothes irons and hair irons. Once from a blow torch. Usually the shape of the burn revealed something about its source. So what would leave a line like that?

  As Charlie took the last bite of his Danish, Doug made the Y-incision in the chest, opened the guy up, and began the process of inspecting and weighing and measuring what he found inside. Midway through, he held out something on his red-streaked glove, offering it like a prize. Charlie leaned closer to the glass. It was a bullet.

  “I think you’re in luck, Charlie. It severed the aorta but it didn’t hit any bone, so it didn’t get too dinged up. Looks like it came from a .22. We’ll get the crime lab to put it into NIBIN and see if they can get a match.” NIBIN, the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network, was like a fingerprint database for bullets. It held scans of markings from bullets and cartridge cases found at crime scenes across the nation. With luck, there might be a match.

  “Maybe we’re finally catching a break.” Charlie swallowed the rest of his coffee. “Because I’ll tell you, Doug, this doesn’t feel like a one-time thing.”

  On his way out to the parking lot, Charlie called Mia. Knowing she was anxious, he didn’t ask about the jury’s deliberations.

  “Doug just finished the autopsy on that floater.” He pulled his keys from his pocket. “It looks like wherever he was before he ended up in the water, someone got mad at him pretty regularly. There were lots of bruises, plus these weird burns shaped like lines on his wrists. At first I thought someone had tortured him, but Doug says they were made at different times, just like the bruises. So maybe he wasn’t tortured. Maybe he was being punished.”

  “What was the cause of death?”

  “Definitely a gunshot. He was dead before he even went into the water, which Doug thinks happened a week ago, maybe two. His fingerprints don’t match anything on file. And he’s never had any dental work, so Doug’s wondering if he might be undocumented.”

  “What nationality did you say he was?” Mia asked.

  “At first I said he was Asian and Doug thought he was Latino.” As he spoke, Charlie realized Doug hadn’t actually made any plans for that promised beer. “But with the shape of the teeth and the skull and the eyelids, it looks like I was right.”

  Mia’s voice sharpened. “Tell me some more about these marks on his wrists.”

  “Second-degree burns. About two inches long, but not very wide. Like lines. Doug says they’re consistent with someone having brief contact with a very hot surface.” He opened his car door and climbed in. “Why are you asking?”

  “Do you remember that guy at the Jade Kitchen who talked to me about Scott helping him? The one who called me Mrs. Scott?”

  “He worked in the back as a cook or a dishwasher? Yeah, what about him?” Charlie put his key in the ignition but didn’t turn it.

  “One of the baristas at a coffee place near work told me he came in super early one morning about ten days ago, asking for me. She could barely understand him, but he showed her my business card.”

  “But you never saw him after she talked to him?”

  “No. She said he left with friends. But, Charlie—?”

  “Yeah?”

  “The last time I saw him, I noticed burn marks on his wrists. Like from the dishwasher or maybe an oven.”

  Charlie pulled his keys from the ignition. “Can you meet me down here? Now?”

  CHAPTER 15

  Could the man in the morgue be Lihong? Mia’s stomach seized up as if someone had just kicked her. A bitter taste flooded her tongue. She dimly realized she was squeezing her cell phone so hard that it was hurting her fingers, but she still didn’t loosen her grip.

  “How long did Doug say that body had been in the water?” she asked Charlie.

  “He said if you’re fatter, you float sooner. But this guy was skinny. So a week, maybe two. No more than that.”

  And the barista had talked to Lihong about ten days ago. Still, the place where the body had been discovered was at least a mile from the coffee shop. But who knew exactly where it had gone into the water? The current could have carried it a long way.

  Mia remembered how Lihong had tried to tell her something about Scott promising to help. But the communication between Mia and the Chinese man had been so sketchy that she had never quite understood what Scott was supposed to have been doing.

  Lihong had also said his boss was a bad person. Or at least that was how her five-dollar phone app had translated it. Judging by the mangled English it had given her when translating Lihong’s other words, its accuracy was more than suspect. But the idea had been underlined when Mia secretly witnessed Kenny Zhong, the Jade Kitchen’s owner, deliver a stinging slap to Lihong’s face. Now the memory stung her as well. She had honestly planned to follow up with Lihong, but then life had gotten in the way.

  Less than ten blocks separated the courthouse from the morgue. It hardly seemed worth it to pull her car out of the parking garage. Outside of Mia’s window, the sky was the kind of pale gray that any Seattlite could tell you promised neither sun nor rain. At least no more than a sprinkle.

  “I think I’m going to walk it,” she told Charlie. “It probably won’t take any longer than driving, and I need to clear my head. But if the jury comes ba
ck in while I’m there, could you drive me back?”

  “I could drive you back either way if you wanted. See you soon.”

  Mia shrugged into her coat and picked up her purse. Before she even made it out the door, three colleagues asked her if the jury had returned a verdict. She just shook her head and didn’t make eye contact, making it clear she didn’t want to talk about it.

  It was a relief to be out in the cold air and away from familiar faces. Away from sitting in her office, time moving so slowly the clock might as well be ticking backward.

  Every time she was waiting on a verdict, Mia entered a fuzzy zone where she couldn’t think about anything else. In another trial, when the deliberations had gone into their fourth day, she had gone to the grocery store, shopped, paid, walked out, gotten in her car, and driven back to the courthouse—leaving her bags behind at the store.

  Knowing that the jury might be hung was like having a throbbing cavity in her mouth. No matter how much she tried to ignore it, her thoughts kept sneaking back to probe. Was the jury still hung? In whose favor? Why? Would Judge Ortega’s instructions shake things loose?

  The idea of having to go through all the work again was disheartening. And next time Wheeler would know every one of her arguments and fine-tune his counters. With the help of Leacham’s deep pockets, he would bring in new and better experts. As for Mia, she couldn’t change the evidence. She only had the truth, and lies came in a million flavors.

  As she walked over I-5 she thought about Eli. She was still in shock that Eli Hall—someone who was so upstanding that he sometimes seemed rigid—was not officially divorced, despite the way he acted toward her. She thought of how his face lit up when he saw her and how he dawdled after classes so that they would walk out to the parking lot together. He always insisted on opening doors for her and helping her on with her coat. But maybe that was simply the way he treated women. And the time he had asked her to brunch? He had never actually said the word date. Maybe she was the only one who had seen it as one. She didn’t know whether she was angry or disappointed—and if so, who those emotions were directed at.

  And then there was Charlie. The two men didn’t have much in common, except Mia. In fact, they were like some sort of reverse mirror image of one another. Eli had close-cropped blond hair; Charlie’s was dark and worn as long as his bosses would let him get away with. Even more than a decade out of the service, Eli had kept his military bearing, while Charlie just switched from one slouch to another.

  Both men were devoted to justice, but in very different ways. That military aura of Eli’s was more than physical; it showed in his systematic approach to life. Charlie played by the rules only as far as he thought they made sense.

  Both, she sometimes thought, wanted to be something more to her than a friend. But maybe she was as deluded about Charlie as she evidently had been about Eli. Maybe friendship was all either of them wanted. Or should want.

  At the morgue, she showed her ID. Charlie came out to meet her and then brought her back to where Doug was waiting next to rows of galvanized-steel body refrigerators.

  “I understand you might know the identity of our floater,” Doug said.

  Mia nodded. She only had eyes for the closed steel doors.

  He pulled one open, releasing a wave of cold air and a smell so thick it was almost a taste. It was rotten and sweet and ultimately indescribable, furring her tongue. Doug slid out the top shelf, revealing the body of a young, skinny Asian man.

  The Y-incision in his chest had been stitched closed with thick black stitches. Mia forced herself to focus on the young man’s face, not to think about how he had been taken apart and reassembled. Even though the eyes were closed, the lids sagged over what seemed to be empty sockets. His face was not only scraped and battered, it was also starting to decompose.

  She had only seen Lihong twice. At night. In the dark. When both of them were nervous, jumping at every sound. When they were focusing on trying to communicate, not on what the other person looked like. Focused on their lack of connection, their frustration.

  Now they would never connect. But was this Lihong? She looked at the man’s wreck of a face, tried to match it up with her memories—and found that she didn’t know.

  “These are the burn marks on his wrists.” Doug lifted the dead man’s wrists to show her.

  “The thing is, I can’t tell if it’s him or not. It could be. Or it could be someone else. This guy’s face is just too”—she sought a word besides disintegrating—“damaged.” She looked from Charlie to Doug. “I’m sorry if I wasted your time.”

  With a shrug, Doug slid the body back and closed the door. “It’s not a waste if it would have helped narrow things down. Because right now we don’t have much to go on.”

  “I think our next step is to go back to the Jade Kitchen,” Charlie said to Mia. “See if Lihong’s there. And if he’s not . . .” He let his words trail off. “So do you want a ride back to work, or do you want to walk it?”

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to be alone with her thoughts again. “How about a ride?”

  After saying good-bye to Doug, they walked out to Charlie’s car. “It’s strange,” she said, “to think that a couple of weeks ago that guy, whoever he was, was walking around, breathing, talking.”

  “Are you thinking about Scott too?” He clicked the fob to unlock both doors and climbed in.

  She was thinking about Scott, she realized, as she waited for Charlie to lean over and relocate a half dozen discarded fast food wrappers scattered on the passenger’s seat. With a sigh, she got in. “It’s just hard to believe that you’ll never see someone again, at least not in this world.”

  As she turned to buckle her seat belt, Charlie’s eyes met hers. He was so close, she involuntarily caught her breath. He didn’t move, his eyes studying her. She met his gaze for a second, then turned away.

  Charlie broke the silence. “You didn’t see Scott’s body before it was cremated, did you?”

  “Everyone told me it was a bad idea, with his face so broken.” For a moment she pressed her fingers to her lips. “The problem is that you only get one choice, and you’ll never know if it was the right one.”

  “That describes a lot of life,” Charlie said as he started the car.

  He was just pulling up to the courthouse when Mia’s phone rang. It was the judge’s clerk, telling her the jury had sent out another note. Her mouth went dry as chalk.

  “That’s it, Charlie. They’re hung. I know it. They’re hung. It’s going to be a mistrial.”

  “You don’t know that,” he said reasonably. “It could be they’re just asking for clarification on something.”

  But even Charlie didn’t sound like he believed it.

  CHAPTER 16

  As Mia walked into the building, anxiety jockeyed with certainty. Her mind replayed key moments of the trial, imagining different actions and outcomes. What if she had used one of her preemptory strikes on Warren? Would the juror who replaced him have been any better? Or what if Sindy had stuck around long enough to testify? Would that have been enough to tip the balance?

  As they went through security, Charlie joked with Bernard, one of the sheriff’s deputies. “Pay no attention to Mia’s twitching. It’s just that we’ve been called back to the courtroom.”

  Bernard gave her a reassuring smile. She managed to lift the corners of her mouth in return. Her chest felt tight. She realized she was breathing shallowly, almost panting, and made a conscious effort to breathe from her abdomen.

  Before she entered the courtroom, Mia lifted her head and tried to wipe all expression from her face. Behind her, Charlie lightly touched the small of her back.

  Wheeler and Leacham were already at the defense table. Wheeler’s expression betrayed nothing, but David Leacham was bouncing his curled index finger against his slightly parted lips, knocking his front teeth with his knuckle. He stopped when he saw her noticing.

  Through her tinted glasses, Bo Yee was watchin
g her, but she didn’t look upset. Of course, she didn’t know enough to be upset. Mia had tried to explain to Bo the day before that the jury was having trouble deciding, but Bo had seemed serene in her belief that justice would be done. Now Mia managed a nod as she took the last steps to the counsel table.

  She and Charlie sat down. She knew they would be standing again in just a few moments. And deep in her gut she knew they would be hearing that these last few weeks had brought no justice for Dandan.

  She caught a movement in the corner of her eye. Under the defense table, Leacham’s leg was jigging.

  “All rise!”

  As they got to their feet, Mia exchanged a sideways glance with Charlie. He gave her a smile that was more a twist of the lips, as if he were thinking the same anxious thoughts she was.

  After they were seated and Judge Ortega took the bench, she put on her reading glasses and unfolded the note. “We have received a communication from the jury, and it reads: ‘Nothing has changed since your last charge. I am sorry, very sorry, that we cannot come to one accord. I have done the best I know how, but we are still deadlocked. Our discussions have ceased.’ ”

  Behind her, a collective gasp rose from the onlookers. Even though it wasn’t a surprise, Mia slumped as if her strings had been cut. All that work—for nothing. It would just have to be done again. She turned toward the defense table. Wheeler was too much of a pro to let his feelings show, but Leacham was wearing a wide grin.

  Somehow the defense had gotten at least one juror to agree with the ludicrous idea that a petite teenager had been the aggressor, to believe that her death could be construed as self-defense. To believe that Leacham had a right to use her and then take her life.

  Mia tried again to take a deep breath, but it felt like it got stuck halfway. There was nothing up her sleeve now. She had given it her best shot. And what was to say that the next jury wouldn’t hang, or even vote for acquittal?