by Elle Gray
Brody looks closely at it and nods. “Might take a minute, but yeah, I think I should be able to crack it.”
“Good. Let me know what you find out,” I say. “I’m going to see if I can figure out what the rest of his riddle is. He seems to think I have a key, so I need to figure out if I actually do or not. Or figure out what he’s talking about anyway.”
I get to my feet and head for the door, but Brody stops me. I turn back to face him to see that his expression has darkened.
“You really think he’s dead?” he asks.
I shrug. “I don’t know anything yet. Not for sure,” I respond. “But I’m going to find out.”
Five
Cascadia Crest Condominium Community; Belltown District, Seattle
Gloved up in a pair of black nitriles, I slide the tip of my lock picking gun into the lock on Takahashi’s door, then pull the trigger. The door swings open noiselessly. I slip inside and close the door behind me, making sure to throw the locks. The last thing I want is for anybody to get in behind me without me knowing about it. I will not let somebody get the drop on me if I can help it.
I pause for a moment in the doorway, straining my ears, listening for the slightest sound. If Takahashi’s dead, there shouldn’t be anybody in the apartment, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
“Good God, I’m starting to sound as paranoid as him,” I mutter to myself as I slide the lock pick gun into my backpack.
His apartment hasn’t changed much since the last time I broke in. The piles of newspapers and magazines are a little bit taller, but it’s still cluttered. It’s not dirty, surprisingly. It’s not like something out of an episode of Hoarders—I’m not going to find a dozen dead cats under a pile of trash or anything like that. But it’s not tidy either. There are stacks of things—notepads, notebooks, magazines, and newspapers, on every surface. But for the hodgepodge of stuff, there is a surprising lack of dust or dirt. It’s a strange contradiction.
I’ve called Takahashi’s cell half a dozen times and gotten no answer. Now, finding his apartment empty is making me think he wasn’t screwing around with the email—he really might be dead. As long as I’m here though, I might as well take a look around. I set to work poking through his closets, looking under his bed, going through his drawers, all to no avail. I even look for secret spaces but come up with nothing. It’s not like I was expecting to find a box labeled “Secret Project With Veronica Arrington,” or anything like that, but it would have been nice.
Still, Brian is careful. Meticulous. Paranoid. I know it’s probably pretty callous to be rifling through his things like this. But his email all but dared me to do it, and he’s the link between Victoria’s death and the people who murdered her. Besides, I don’t think he’ll complain too loudly. If his paranoia turns out to be prescience, then the people who killed Veronica are the same people who killed him. I have to believe Takahashi would like his killers found and brought to justice.
Or maybe that’s just how I’m justifying the fact that I’m rifling through a dead man’s things. The simple fact is the case has been stalled for a long time, but his email proved to me there is definitely fire under all that smoke. Veronica was murdered. His email confirmed my suspicions, and now that I’m sure of it, I need to find out if he’s sitting on anything that can be useful to me. Anything that can point me to the killers.
My preliminary sweep has netted me exactly zip, though. I drop my bag on his table and sit down at his desk, then open up his laptop, looking around the space as I wait for it to boot up. When the screen comes to life, I’m not surprised to see that it’s password-protected. He lives alone and never has visitors but he still password-protects his stuff. Of course, believing that government agents were keeping tabs on him, it’s not all that surprising. Annoying, but not all that surprising.
I pull out my cellphone, call up my contacts, and hit the button to call Brody. I lean back in the chair and press the phone to my ear. He picks up the call on the second ring and in the background, I hear some sort of loud indie punk rock playing and Marcy singing along with the song. She’s actually pretty good. She’s a woman of many talents.
“Singer’s house of profound intellectual thought and wisdom, Grand Poobah Brody speaking,” he answers. “What’s up, boss?”
“Somebody’s in a good mood.”
“Pax, my friend, my brother, when will you learn that I am a perpetual ray of sunshine?”
“Your rosy and optimistic outlook is truly inspirational and something people can learn from. But it’s also entirely nauseating at the same time,” I tell him.
“You do know you’re like Eeyore, don’t you?” he jabs. “Always hanging out under a rain cloud of gloom and doom.”
“I’ve been told it’s part of my charm.”
“Then somebody lied to you, brother.”
I chuckle to myself. “Listen, I need your help with something.”
“Your wish is my command,” he replies. “What is it, mon Capitan?”
“I’m at Takahashi’s place and I need to see if we can break into his computer,” I say.
“Why haven’t you just gone to that address? I mean, he did point you right to it.”
“Because I have no idea what ‘key’ he’s talking about for one thing,” I tell him. “But also, I want to know if he has anything else that might be of some value on his computer.”
“Thorough. That’s why you make the big bucks,” he says. “Okay, I need you to give me a little information first.”
Brody asks me to give him the computer’s information, his IP address, and some other things. I drum my fingers on the desk as I wait for Brody. I can hear the tapping of keys on the other end of the line and Marcy’s voice is muffled, meaning he went into the other room to work. Brody is muttering quietly to himself as he works, and he doesn’t sound happy.
“This guy is good,” Brody comments. “He’s really good. Or was really good. I mean, do we actually know he’s dead, Pax? What if he just bolted town and forgot to reset the timer on that email?”
“Would you forget to reset it?”
He sighed heavily. “Yeah, probably not.”
Takahashi is as thorough as he is paranoid. Like Brody, he’s not the type who’d skip town without making sure everything was taken care of first. His affairs would be taken care of, his tracks would be covered, and the preset emails that declared his death would most definitely be handled. Which means he’s either being held captive somewhere, in a coma, or dead. Personally, I’m betting on dead. And once I’m done here, I’m going to see if I can prove it.
“Well, bad news. I’m not going to be able to break into it remotely,” Brody sighs in frustration. “I need to have the physical computer in front of me.”
“I’ll bring it with me to the office.”
“Isn’t that tampering with evidence?”
I shrug. “Technically, this isn’t a crime scene. If Takahashi’s dead—”
“Which he probably is.”
“Probably. But it hasn’t been confirmed yet,” I say. “He wasn’t killed here. No blood, no sign of a struggle, no nothing. It just looks like he went out and hasn’t come home yet.”
“Yeah well, you’d better not be leaving any trace that you were there.”
“I’m a big boy. I know how to cover my tracks,” I tell him. “Anyway, sorry to disturb you at home.”
“Please. You aren’t disturbing me.”
“I think Marcy might have a different answer to that,” I say.
He chuckles. “She’s so busy cooking and singing up a storm out there I don’t think she’s even noticed that I’m gone.”
“Well, I’ll let you get back to her.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Find Takahashi.”
“Well, happy hunting then, my friend.”
“Thanks, Brody.”
I disconnect the call then stand up and slide the phone back into my pocket. I unplug the laptop and slip
it into my bag, then sling it up onto my shoulders. I take another look around the apartment with a frown, making sure that I haven’t missed anything. I give a quick perusal of his bookshelves and see that he’s quite a collector of strange little knick-knacks. Action figures, old baseball cards encased in plastic, and a strange-looking owl. As I look around, I notice a few different owls scattered around his apartment and shrug. People collect some of the weirdest things. But Takahashi was eccentric, to say the least, so I shouldn’t be too surprised.
Satisfied that I’m not missing anything overt, I back out of his apartment. It’s time to go see if I can figure out what happened to him.
Six
King County Medical Examiner’s Office; Downtown Seattle
“Paxton Arrington, how are you, man?”
I shake his hand. “I’m good, Hugh, how are you?”
He nods. “Can’t complain.”
“Deb and the girls still driving you crazy?”
“Of course they are,” he grins. “In the best way possible.”
“Good to hear it.”
Hugh Martin is a medical examiner for King County, an old buddy from my days with the SPD. He’s a good guy. Smart. Efficient. Devoted family man. He’s five-eight and lean, but carries himself with a swagger that makes him seem a lot larger than that. Hugh’s got a shaggy mop of sandy blonde hair, blue eyes, and a laid back, surfer-boy demeanor which fits him well: when he’s not at the office or with his family, he takes the two-hour drive to catch the waves at Half Moon Bay down in Westport.
“It’s been a while. How’s life in the private sector treating you, man?” he asks.
“Can’t complain. Business is good and I don’t have to put up with the office politics and bureaucratic crap that comes with working for the SPD.”
“I hear that, man. I hear that.”
We’re standing in his autopsy suite, and it looks like he’s getting set up to do a postmortem. The suite is cold, sterile, and devoid of any sense of warmth whatsoever, done in black and white tile and stainless steel. He’s got a rolling table in the middle of the suite with a microphone set up hanging over it that’s operated with a foot pedal. He steps on the pedal to open the mic and start recording, then takes his foot off to close it. On a stand-up table next to the rolling gurney is his set of bowls and tools, all the steel glittering coldly under the harsh fluorescent lighting from above.
“So, what brings you down here?” he asks. “Slumming?”
“Actually, I needed to check to see if you had somebody named Brian Takahashi come in tonight,” I tell him.
“Takahashi?” he asks.
I nod as Hugh walks over to the computer station set up on the side of the room. He taps away on the keyboard and stares at the screen, a small frown on his lips.
“No, I don’t see anybody named Takahashi on the intake list.”
I frown and pace the suite for a moment. If Takahashi had been killed, his body would have been brought here. So, perhaps he’s not really dead after all. Maybe as Brody said, he skipped town and forgot to update his email delivery. I stop pacing and turn to Hugh as another thought occurs to me.
“What about John Does?” I ask. “I’m looking for an Asian-American male. Five-six or so. Heavy set. Dark hair. Any Does come in that fit that description?”
Hugh taps away at his keyboard and nods as he looks up at me. “Yeah, we did, actually,” he says. “Mugging gone bad, apparently. Let me walk you over to the Lost and Found.”
I follow Hugh out of his suite and through a warren of corridors. He leads me over to a section of the ME’s office they affectionately—or distastefully, depending upon your point of view—refer to as the Lost and Found. It’s where they store the John and Jane Does that come into the facility, where they’re kept for thirty days, pending identification. Some of them are ID’ed and get a proper burial by loved ones, which is the happy ending. Others don’t and end up in a potter’s field.
The room is large, covered in a black and mint green tile that’s more distasteful than the colloquialism for the room, if you ask me. It’s an eyesore. Banks of stainless steel refrigerated drawers are set into every wall in the room and there is a small workstation—desk, computer, chair—set unobtrusively off in the corner. It’s currently unmanned, but Hugh doesn’t need help anyway. He makes a beeline straight for drawer 289-C, grabs hold of the handle, and pulls the drawer out. He lets it slide to a stop then pulls the sheet back, uncovering the face of the corpse beneath it.
“This your guy?” he asks.
I look with trepidation into the face of Brian Takahashi. Both eyes are blackened, large bruises color both cheeks, and his nose is probably broken, given the way it’s bent. Takahashi took a beating before he died. I feel bad for him. Turns out his paranoia actually was justified.
“Yep. That’s him,” I say. “What happened?”
Hugh picks up the clipboard that’s sitting on the lower part of his legs and scans the pages attached to it. I wait while he acquaints himself with the particulars and looks at Takahashi. Knowing the people who murdered my wife very likely did this to him fills me with a dark, smoldering rage. I know it’s possible somebody else did this. It’s even possible that Takahashi was the victim of a random mugging like they’re saying. But it’s an awfully big coincidence, and I’m definitely not somebody who believes in coincidences on the best of days. And when I’m investigating my wife’s murder and somebody who was doing some work for her turns up dead, that strains credulity to the breaking point.
“Well, he was obviously beaten pretty good. I note a couple of skull fractures, broken arm, busted ribs,” Hugh reports. “Whoever did this really worked him over, man.”
“Were any of those fatal?” I ask. “What was the cause of death?”
“The skull fractures were serious and could have killed him. But it was a single knife wound that went between the ribs and pierced his heart,” Hugh tells me. “That’s not easy. Mugger got a damn lucky shot in. But then they put a bullet in the back of his skull for the coup de grace, I guess. Not that it was needed.”
Or it was somebody well trained in the art of death who got a highly skilled shot in. The beating was to mask the fact that Takahashi was killed by somebody who knew what they were doing. I know it sounds as paranoid as something Takahashi here would say, but I’d bet my entire inheritance on it. This wasn’t a random mugging. It was a hit.
That brings a rash of questions to mind immediately though. Why kill him now? After all this time has passed since Veronica’s death, why would they choose now to murder him? The world has moved on and I’m the only one looking into her death, so why go after him now? Was he still looking into Veronica’s murder? Had he discovered something? Or was this just whoever killed my wife biding their time and finally pulling the trigger to tie up all their loose ends?
After all this time, it makes it less likely that anybody would connect Takahashi’s murder with Veronica’s. Too much time has passed to make that leap of logic. To anybody except me, that is, because for me, the world hasn’t moved on. I’m still caught in the immediate aftermath of Veronica’s death and haven’t been able to move forward from it. Not until I get to the bottom of it and bring her killer, or killers, to justice.
“So, who is this guy?” Hugh asks.
“Just somebody I met on a case. Got an email saying he was dead, and I just needed to confirm it,” I reply.
“So, you’re sure this is Brian Takahashi?”
“One hundred percent.”
“Good. Then I’ll start the process of trying to track down his next of kin.”
“Hopefully, you have some luck there. He was a recluse.”
Hugh frowned. “Well, I’ll do my best.”
“If you can’t find any living relatives, let me know,” I say. “I’ll pay to have him buried. He shouldn’t end up in a potter’s field.”
Hugh nodded. “You’re a good man, Pax.”
“Don’t let that get around.”<
br />
He chuckles and we shake hands as I thank him for the peek behind the curtain. I turn and head out of the Lost and Found, then out of the ME’s offices altogether. As I’m crossing the parking lot, my head spinning a thousand miles a minute, I hear somebody call my name. I turn to see TJ Lee walking toward me.
“Well, if it isn’t Deputy Chief Lee,” I say.
Lee stops a few feet from me but doesn’t offer to shake hands. His posture is stiff and he’s looking at me with an expression that just radiates disapproval. There’s always been tension between Lee and me, but we’ve always managed to get along. For the most part. I mean, we’re not drinking buddies and probably never will be, but we both know the other is working for the greater good. The way he’s looking at me now though reminds me of the way somebody looks when they step in a pile of dog crap. Barefoot.
“Interim,” he clarifies stiffly. “I’m the interim deputy chief.”
I nod. “All right. What can I do for you?”
“What are you doing here?”
His tone is hostile, which I find puzzling. I haven’t done anything, haven’t stepped on his toes, haven’t even publicly lambasted the SPD in a while—despite my extreme temptation to do so ever since Torres got taken down. I have no idea why he’s coming off so aggressively. He should know by now that approach doesn’t work with me. The harder he pushes, the harder I’m going to push back. It’s like a reflex as automatic as breathing to me.
“I had some business,” I tell him.
“You never have business here unless you’re doing something you shouldn’t—like interfering with an active investigation.”
I smirk. “In this case, I was trying to help you close an active investigation by providing an ID for a John Doe you guys have stashed up in the Lost and Found.”
“And why would you do that? You never do something without playing an angle, Pax.”
“Because the victim sent me a time-released email that said if I got it, he was dead,” I admit. “I came down here to confirm and provide the ID.”
