The Killing Hands

by P. D. Martin

  I shrug. “It’s not very far.”

  “At this hour? Don’t know if you’re dedicated or crazy.” Ramos smiles. “However, Monterey Park really is on my way home. We can sit fender to fender.”

  “Sounds like you guys are in for a fun night.” De Luca stands up. “That’s all I need for now. Keep me posted and we’ll see where this thing takes us.”

  Ramos and I both stand and gather our things and then De Luca leads us back to the elevator.

  “Nice to meet you, Agent Anderson.” He shakes my hand. “And you, Detective Ramos.” As the elevator arrives, De Luca disappears.

  Once the elevator doors close, Ramos says, “That was quick.”

  “Yeah. I guess DEA isn’t taking it over.”

  “Not yet, at least.”

  Ramos and I don’t caravan—it would be impossible to keep him in my sights on the freeway during peak hour with cars constantly lane-hopping. When I arrive at the Lincoln Plaza Hotel, he’s managed to get a spot directly opposite the main entrance and is leaning on his car. The next open space is nearly a block away.

  When I get back to the hotel, Ramos is still leaning on his car. “What kept you?”

  I smile. “You only got here a couple minutes before me.” No way it could have been more than that.

  He grins and pushes himself off the car.

  The Lincoln Plaza Hotel is a cream building, and while the entrance is at the base of a single story, to the right the hotel extends upward six. The doors open automatically, but Ramos gestures “after you.” Always the gentleman. The foyer has an old-world style to it, with beige marble floors, square columns and a couple of elaborate chandeliers scattered in between downlights. We cross to the reception, both reaching for our IDs.

  “We’re here to look at Jo Kume’s room,” Ramos says. “Detective Ramos, LAPD, and this is Special Agent Anderson, FBI.”

  “Yes, your colleagues are up there now. Room 412.” She hesitates. “Do you think it’ll be much longer? It’s just—” she lowers her voice “—I’ve already had a few guests ask me about the police presence. It doesn’t look good, you know?”

  “I understand.” Ramos nods. “We’ll be as fast as we can, ma’am, but we need to look over the room thoroughly.”

  She nods, but also sighs. “Okay.” She points to the far wall. “The elevators are over there. Take a right at the fourth floor, and room 412 is down the end.”

  “I wonder what made our vic choose this hotel?” I muse out loud as we wait for the lift.

  “You’re right. It’s not exactly close to Long Beach.” Ramos pauses. “Little Tokyo’s only a couple of miles away. Maybe he just wanted to feel close to home.”

  “Maybe. But there are hotels right in Little Tokyo if he was looking for the home-away-from-home experience.”

  The elevator arrives and Ramos holds his arm across the doors while I walk in. “So you’re thinking something or someone drew him to Monterey Park?”

  “It’s one possibility.”

  The fourth-floor corridor is lined with patterned, dark burgundy carpet. At the end of the corridor, a man with LAPD in big yellow letters on his vest kneels down, dusting the last door frame for prints. Once we’re closer, he looks up. “Detective Ramos. Hey.” He stands up and arches his back, stretching.

  “Hi, Kowoski. How’s it coming along?”

  “Another hour and we should be done.”

  Ramos nods. “Great.” He looks at me. “Agent Anderson, this is Ian Kowoski. Kowoski, this is Agent Anderson from the Bureau.”

  Kowoski’s wearing gloves, so he gives me a wave rather than shaking hands. I return the gesture and follow Ramos as he enters the hotel room.

  Kume had booked himself into one of the Lincoln Plaza’s suites, which includes a small living room.

  “What have you got, Jackson?”

  A tall African-American in his mid-twenties moves from the window toward us. After Ramos introduces Jackson as another homicide detective, Jackson flips open his notebook.

  “Jo Kume checked into the hotel at 4:00 p.m. on November 24. He booked online only three days before arriving and was paid up through until January 1. He paid with a credit card, VISA, and I’ve organized a search on transactions. No special requests, no room service, no phone calls. I showed the desk clerk on duty Kume’s picture and she recognized him. Apparently he did have an accent, but his English was perfect. I’ve got the names of all the other desk clerks to interview them, too, but the woman on duty said he didn’t talk much.” Jackson looks up at the corner desk. “Newman’s looking over the computer before taking it back to the lab.”

  We all move toward the laptop, which should give us e-mails and Internet usage, plus whatever files might be stored on the hard drive.

  Again, Ramos introduces me, before Newman gives us an update. “Everything looks in order, but I’ll still copy the hard drive and run a few tests in the lab tomorrow before I boot it up, just to be on the safe side.” He slips the laptop into a large plastic evidence bag and then into another padded bag.

  “Nothing for us tonight?” I ask.

  Newman glances at Ramos, then me.

  “I told Newman not to worry about it until morning. Nothing time critical in this case.”

  Ramos is right. My request is based on my own desire to get the case moving, and blatant curiosity. “Sure. Sorry.”

  Newman swings the padded laptop back over his shoulder. “Good.” He smiles. “I’ve got dinner plans. But first thing tomorrow…”

  “Thanks.”

  Newman says goodbye to the other crime-scene techs before heading off.

  I look around the room and cross my arms. “So we wait.”

  Ramos chuckles. “You’re not good at waiting, are you?”

  I smile. “Am I that transparent?”

  “Uh-huh.” He checks his watch. “It’s seven-thirty, Anderson. Go home, relax. Go out.”

  I give him a weak smile. Truth is, my social life’s pretty much nonexistent here in L.A. Apart from the occasional dinner or drinks with Melissa or Mercedes, I’m a hermit. Besides, I’ve got the Santorini profile to finish off tonight and that’ll keep me busy for at least two hours.

  “Me,” Ramos says, walking toward the door, “I’m going home to my wife and kids. They may even have waited for me for dinner.”

  He turns to Jackson. “You okay to finish up here?”

  “Sure thing.”

  I can tell by Jackson’s age and eagerness that he’s new to Homicide and keen to please the more senior detective—Ramos.

  Being at crime scenes is the best way to learn.

  Seven

  As usual, I’m at the office before 8:00 a.m., having already done a thirty-minute jog and fifteen minutes of stretching, despite waking up exhausted. I was working on the arcade-murder profile until midnight last night, giving me less than six hours’ sleep…that’s going to hurt. I prefer something around the eight-hour mark, especially when my days are so busy. I could have finished the profile and been tucked up in bed much earlier, except my train of thought was interrupted by a phone call from my mum in Melbourne. She was in the mood to chat and I didn’t have the heart—or courage—to tell her I was working at nine-thirty at night. I’d never hear the end of it.

  First thing on my agenda this morning is Interpol. We need to gather as much information as we can on our Japanese victim, who may have been living in Singapore. It’s not the first time I’ve had to deal with the US Bureau of Interpol—when AmericanPsycho fled the country I contacted them immediately. Unfortunately we couldn’t alert the French police in time for him to be intercepted at the Paris airport, but I check in with the US Bureau and the head office in France every now and again. One time we managed to get through the many layers of high-tech security he sets up and traced one of his online flower orders to an Internet café in Paris. But he’d made sure cameras in the area were out for an hour on either side of the online order and our knowledge that he was there was useless, althoug
h it did confirm my suspicions that he was still in Paris.

  My contact at the Washington, D.C. office is Latoya Burges. I look up her direct line in Outlook and punch in the number.

  “Hey, Latoya. It’s Agent Sophie Anderson.”

  “Hey, Sophie. What’s up? Any more contact from our friend?”

  “Just the usual.” As much as I’d like to ignore the monthly red rose that he sends my way, it’s impossible.

  “I see.”

  I change the subject. “We’ve got ourselves a Japanese homicide vic here in L.A. I was hoping you could help.”

  “Sure. What you got?”

  “His name, passport details and fingerprints. And we know he flew in from Singapore.”

  “I’ll look him up. Shoot.”

  I read out the information.

  “Hold on a sec.”

  I hear typing in the background.

  “No criminal record coming up. Nothing on a Jo Kume in our database. But I’ll place a call to our Singapore and Japanese offices later today and get a full file together for you.”

  “That’d be great. Thanks.” I pause. “How long do you think it’ll take?”

  “Should only be a day or two, honey. But we’ve also got to factor in the time difference.”

  I do the calculation in my head. If memory serves me right, Singapore is three hours behind Melbourne. So given it’s 8:00 a.m. here, it’s midnight in Singapore. It’ll be at least another eight hours before anyone even sees my request. “No worries. I’ll e-mail you his prints, too. Maybe you’ll come up with a hit on those, or Singapore or Japan will. Can you call me on my cell if you get something?”

  “Sure thing, honey.”

  Next on my list is the offender profile for Santorini’s murder. It feels good to finally have it done. The past few weeks it’s almost felt as though I’ve had the boy’s death hanging over my head in some way. But I know that’s just me losing my sense of objectivity—a common struggle for me when it comes to victims, especially the young ones. I read over the profile and add a few finishing touches before sending it through to the requesting officer in LAPD, and CC’ing George Rosen.

  I’ve profiled Santorini’s killer as someone he knew, possibly quite well. There’s something very personal about the blitz-style attack, a case of a youth who was angry with the victim and lost control. I doubt he intended to kill James Santorini, but that’s meaningless. The killer will have a history of anger management issues, and is most likely someone from Santorini’s school or part of a shared club or group. It’s also possible the killer is a family member, although not immediate—perhaps a cousin. Despite my initial thoughts that the murder could be linked to gangs, I’ve now ruled that out. The attack was personal and the work of only one perpetrator. Presumably the LAPD will act on the profile, going back through all the statements they took from Santorini’s school and other networks, or maybe starting in these areas again.

  I’m going over Kume’s crime-scene photos again when my speakers chirp with the arrival of an e-mail. It’s from the forensic pathologist Lloyd Grove and the subject line reads Racial background of Little Tokyo victim. Even though we now know the victim is Japanese, I click on the e-mail.

  After I’ve read it, I immediately dial Ramos’s cell. “Ramos, Anderson. You seen Grove’s e-mail yet?”

  “No. I’m actually with Newman and our vic’s laptop at the moment.”

  “Oh, cool,” I say, excited by the prospect of getting the guy’s computer history.

  “What’s the e-mail say?”

  “That our vic is half Korean and half Japanese, with a bit of Chinese heritage thrown in, too.”

  “Really? So not just Japanese.”

  “No. I’ve already been on the phone to Interpol this morning, but I’ll give them a call back and ask them to expand their search to Korea and maybe even China, too, just in case.”

  “Great.”

  “It will take a couple of days, though. So what’s up with Kume’s computer?”

  “It’s looking good, Anderson. Newman said Kume hasn’t even tried to hide anything on his laptop, so we’ve got e-mails, Internet history, favorites, everything. We’re starting with financials and we’ve managed to trace regular transfers from a Singapore bank to a GCE account here in the States. It came out of a business account Kume had under the name Best Enterprises.”

  “Really? Drug payments? Blackmail?”

  “All possible. Newman’s not sure yet whether we’ll have to get a warrant for GCE to release the account holder’s details or if he’ll be able to get a name from the computer records. See how we go in the next few hours.”

  “Things are looking up,” I say. Sometimes cases crawl along, and other times the snowball effect of evidence and information can make it hard to keep up. But I always prefer the snowball cases. Makes our jobs easier and generally leads to a better outcome—the bad guy in prison sooner. Just the way I like my murder cases.

  “We’ve come a long way from a John Doe yesterday,” Ramos comments.

  “We sure have.”

  Once I’ve said goodbye and hung up, I call Latoya and ask her to expand the search to Korea and China, given our vic’s heritage.

  “Can do on South Korea, but not with North Korea or China. They’re not part of the Interpol program. The best I can do is try to contact their federal police, but I can’t guarantee anything. To be honest, I doubt either country will be interested in helping us out.”

  “Okay.” I sigh. With the world getting smaller, we need as much international cooperation as we can get. But given it can be hard enough getting all the US law-enforcement agencies working together, it’s not that surprising that the world is a lot to ask. I thank her once again before hanging up and moving back to the crime-scene photos and reports.

  It’s still too early to draft an offender profile—I don’t know enough about the vic yet—but I am starting to get a feeling for our killer. He’s orderly…methodical. He picked the crime scene well, an isolated location within a busy section of a big city, cased it and eliminated the potential danger of the parking lot’s lights. Then he lured Jo Kume to the parking lot and killed him using a weapon that an experienced forensic pathologist hasn’t been able to trace.

  By the time I’ve gone over the case file another two times, my sense of achievement has vanished. Despite all our inroads into the victim’s identity and actions, I get the feeling this killer is going to be hard to catch. He’s planned the murder exceedingly well.

  I sigh, and check my watch—1:00 p.m. I’ve still got two hours before the division-heads meeting at 3:00 p.m. While I could continue revising the case details, I decide to concentrate on my vision of someone getting shot. If it’s related to Kume’s murder, maybe it means his killer has murdered before and his handiwork could be in ViCAP. The Violent Criminal Apprehension Program runs a national online database into which law-enforcement professionals from all around the US can enter details about violent crimes. Problem is, if my vision’s right and a past or future victim of the killer’s is shot, that’ll be useless to plug into ViCAP—I’d get thousands upon thousands of shooting victims coming up. That’s not going to work. I could, however, do a search on the throat wound. Maybe our killer has struck before using the same weapon…whatever it is.

  I open up the ViCAP software on my computer and do a search across all US states, with the cause of death as throat wounds. With no other variables like victim race, sex, age, signature or keywords plugged into the system, I get lots of results—four hundred and twelve, to be precise. And here I was thinking I had time up my sleeve. Trying to work in my dream, I narrow the search down by adding gunshot wound to the injuries. This time, I only get thirty-five results. So there are thirty-five victims who were shot and experienced some sort of throat wound. I open up the first entry, only to find the person was shot in the throat. It could be a long two hours…

  I’m still scanning through the results when my computer gives me the second mee
ting reminder—it’s 3:00 p.m. I flip my notebook over to a fresh page and grab my BlackBerry, before scurrying to the boardroom. I walk in just as Brady kicks the meeting off.

  Sitting around the boardroom table are the division heads; Brady’s direct reports, like me; some of the unit heads, like Petrov; and Melissa, who takes the minutes. The L.A. field office has four main divisions. Counterterrorism led by Brad Jones, Criminal headed by George Rosen, Counterintelligence led by Sandy Peters and Cyber Crime headed by Ed Garcia. In addition, it’s got programs in white-collar crime, civil rights and organized crime, including gang-related activities, and at least one person from each area is at the meeting. Except for Melissa, all the attendees are much higher up in the food chain than I am, but it’s useful if I’m aware of all the cases and on hand to give my opinion from a behavioral perspective.

  Brady asks for Ed Garcia’s update first. Garcia has a team of computer specialists who work under him, focusing on any use of the Internet for criminal activities. It could be online credit-card scams, identity theft, money laundering or simply checking out the computer of a suspect, but most of his team is devoted to stopping the proliferation of online child pornography. With pedophiles able to download illegal photos and videos with the click of a mouse, and the World Wide Web as big as it is, it’s a massive area to police.

  I take notes as we move around the table, and then give everyone a very brief update of my cases, focusing on my top priority, the Little Tokyo murder.

  We’re almost done when my BlackBerry rings. Damn, forgot to switch it to Silent. “Sorry, I’m waiting on a few calls.” I take my notebook and pencil and slip out. I answer softly, aware that I’ve already disrupted the meeting.

  “Hey, it’s Latoya. I’ve got something real interesting for you, honey. I got a match on those prints of yours, but not under Jo Kume. The name I got coming up is Jun Saito.”

  That is big news—although if our vic was a drug dealer it’s not surprising he’d have fake ID, fake documents.

  “Does the name ring a bell?” she asks.

  “No.” I bring my notebook up to the wall. “Can you spell it please, Latoya.”