He remembered an older cop who retired shortly after Williams joined the PPD. He told him about the riots and what the police commissioner, a man whose name still struck fear into the hearts of many and elicited pride in others, had done. Every cop on duty tucked their badges inside their uniforms when the order went out to do so. Then the order went out to “clear the streets”. Police vans hauled scores of people to the holding cells until released. For the next two months, each block in the neighborhood where the riot took place had a cop on every corner. All anyone had to do if they needed an officer was to stick their head out and yell.
But the diner where they were having lunch was quiet today. William knew it would be loud and noisy on a weekend at two in the morning when all the bars closed. It never failed to attract every idiot who couldn’t get any action after two. When he wore a uniform, the late Saturday shift was the worst one for an assignment. New graduates from the police academy got the time slot to see if they lasted. Most didn’t.
“We need to find the flash drive,” Yuan stated to his partner. “Find the flash drive and we’ll be one step closer to locating the perpetrator.”
Williams sipped his drink. “I don’t know why the flash drive angle never occurred to me. I assumed it was a cigarette lighter she was handed in the picture.”
“It’s a basic assumption. You would be surprised the assumptions people make when I’m out with any one of my women. People assume I’m there’s no relationship unless the girl happens to be Asian. Then they automatically figure we’re a couple.”
“Do you think the purse was real or a fake?” Williams asked him again. “I can’t figure it out either. It’s not turned up, so I’m thinking real.”
“Someone must think it’s real. Why keep it if not? We should be checking one of the online auction sites to see if anyone local is trying to sell it. I’m guessing they don’t appear on them very often.
“You may be right,” Yuan commented as he flicked a speck of dust off his jacket. He fingered his silk tie and thought about buying a bowtie. They were painfully difficult to knot, but at least stayed out of the way once you were done.
“I can’t understand what she was doing in the alley,” Yuan brought up, just as the waitress brought them their food. She looked nineteen and had peroxide blond hair. Yuan looked at her as they made eye contact. The waitress remained in eye contact with him for a few seconds longer than appropriate and turned to look at him again as she left their table. The waitress had a pair of dice in her ear lobes instead of earrings and tattoos on her arms.
“You wouldn’t expect a woman in an evening dress to be in an alley at night,” Williams mentioned. “Unless she was lured out there for some reason. I still think Martinez is telling us only part of what he knows. His whole story about protecting the ambassador’s daughter was full of crap and he knew it. Did you see the look on his face when we left?”
“What?” Yuan said to him. He’d been watching the waitress. She had some potential. When she returned for the check, he’d slip a business card casually in his hand with his personal phone number written on the back. It was just enough of a come-on to test the waters, but not so strong it looked déclassé.
“Sorry,” Yuan said to his partner. “I was distracted by the waitress. We should head back to the Kimmel Center and look at that alley where they found Sandra Alvarez. We might find something useful that was missed.”
“You sure are the female magnet,” Williams laughed. He turned and looked at the waitress who bent over the counter. “Healthy woman I might add. I just don’t understand these kids and their tattoo obsession. When I came up the only guys who had them were bikers and soldiers. You never saw a woman with a tattoo. Now they get their entire backside done when they hit eighteen. And that’s not all; they get these piercings done and have metal driven through weird parts of their body. I don’t get it.”
“The piercings can be removed,” Yuan told him. “I like them on women. It gives you something to play with. Now look at the waitress, you might not notice it but I can tell she has several piercings you can’t see.”
“How do you know?”
“The way she walks.”
Williams laughed and picked up the check. After they finished eating, he took out his wallet and started to grab his credit card. Yuan told him not to worry; it was on him this time.
“Why so generous?” Williams asked the other detective as his partner made sure his tie was just right in the reflective chrome of the table.
“Just you watch,” Yuan told him and called to the waitress.
As they pulled the SUV up into the alley, Williams finally had the nerve to ask the question which had been in his mind ever since he saw the woman appear out of nowhere and put the watch on Yuan.
“How do you do it?” he said to his partner.
“Do what? You mean how did I get the waitress to go out with me this weekend?”
“Yeah, you not only got her number but arranged a date with her on the only day she had off. Furthermore she told you she had a boyfriend.”
“You didn’t hear? The boyfriend works part-time at a convenience store and is a folk singer. I didn’t consider him an obstacle at all. Think about it, do you really think she wants to spend her productive years with a guy who can’t support her and has no future. Saturday night she’ll be downtown in a piano bar with a police detective who wears tailored suits. Really, you don’t see what I just did?”
“You make it seem so easy,” Williams told his partner. “I suppose anyone can learn.”
“I did. I was a five foot nothing kid in high school with a burning heart for the cheerleaders. They all rejected me for jocks. I figured out all it took was waiting and watching. You know something else? I went to my tenth high school reunion last month and saw the cheerleaders. I didn’t have to ask about them because over the past ten years I’ve slept with them all.”
Williams shook his head. Every man needed a hobby but Yuan was using his as a kind of vengeance. What would happen when there were no more blondes to conquer?
He turned and looked down the alley. “Isn’t that Steve who works with the evidence unit?”
Against the back wall, Steve Norris, a crime scene technician everyone knew was carefully lifting for fingerprints on the alley wall. He ignored them at first so they honked the horn of the SUV. Steve turned around, saw the two detectives and went over to say hello.
Steve was in his early twenties, a graduate of one of the forensic programs who was working his way up the civil service ladder. He wore a light jacket with the logo of the PPD on it. Underneath the logo were the words Crime Scene Unit. There weren’t very many of those jackets and the technicians from Evidence Collection jealously guarded everyone.
Steve was black, had grown up in the Germantown area and had wanted to be a cop ever since his uncle came home in his uniform to tell the family about Steve’s older brother’s death while being in the wrong place during a hold-up. He grew up watching the medical detective shows on TV, although he knew life on the streets was different from what he saw on TV.
“So what brings you here?” Yuan asked Norris. “I thought you’d have the chief’s job by now.”
“I will when they realize who is better qualified to do it,” he told them. Behind Norris stood all the evidence cases and collection materials of his job. He took it very seriously.
“Are you looking for something we missed the first time?” Williams asked him. Norris had a reputation as someone who wouldn’t quit looking for the solution to a problem until he’d exhausted all avenues. Some people on the force claimed he slept in his office.
“I find it a little strange,” Norris said to them, “we found only the fingerprints of Sandra Alvarez when we lifted them the other day. How many people do you think come out here in a given day?”
“Good question,” Yuan said to him. “Why do I feel you are about to give me the answer?”
“Thirty
,” he told him. “I stood out here yesterday with a clicker and counted everyone in a four hour period. From that sample, which is representative of a typical day since I did it from three to seven in the evening on a weekday, I extrapolated thirty. So where are the other fingerprints?”
“Now that’s dedication,” Williams told him. “I get bored on stake-outs.”
“It’s why I’m out here,” Norris continued. “I’m sure there is something we’re missing in this murder. It’s high profile, so no one is going to come forward with the information we need.”
“It’s never easy finding someone who’ll tell you what you want to know,” Yuan pointed out. “Just try getting someone to come out and finger the perpetrator in a drug deal shooting.”
“Anyway,” Norris concluded. “No one checked the dumpster. Garbage collection isn’t until tomorrow. I think we might find what we need to find in it.” He pointed to a large commercial dumpster with a lock on it outside the back door. The lock was to keep the homeless from using it as shelter. It was also to keep “midnight dumpers” from disposing of garbage bags inside it.
“You want some help lifting the prints?” Williams asked him. “I learned how to do it years ago. I haven’t done it in a long time, but I need to keep my technique up to standard.”
Norris told him he could use all the help he could get and soon all three of them were searching the alley for prints. They found a number to lift, but most were too smudged to get a decent lift. After an hour of trying they had only found five more sets and all of them matched the ones to Sandra Alvarez. They despaired of ever finding anything useable.
The alley was more of a back loading dock than anything else. It was where the teamsters brought in everything they needed to make the sounds of the Philly Orchestra and Opera performances. The center was world famous for its musical acoustics and plenty of touring companies would visit the site every year. It was Philadelphia’s claim to musical fame.
The entire lower section of Broad Street was called “The Avenue of the Arts” because of the music and concert halls that lined it. At one time, several mega-book stores were part of the area too, but they’d gone by the wayside in the digital revolution. Williams loved the place and spent many hours there as a young man going to the concerts and attending many of the shows. The city had done its best to keep it safe and clean. Beyond the avenue stood the old, majestic condominiums where patrons of the arts lived to be close to the activity of the city. Williams had looked into buying a condominium there once, but it was too rich for his blood. Even when the realtor called him up every other day trying to make a deal, he still couldn’t afford it. Perhaps someday, when he retired, he could afford one, but not now. He still loved the place.
This is a very clean alley,” Williams pointed out to Yuan and Norris after an hour of fruitless print lifting had passed. “Do you see any paper or trash in here at all?”
The other two looked at it and began to search the alley over. There was nothing they could find in it which indicated anyone had been using it in the past two days. No trash, no empty bottles, no cigarettes, no soda cans. There were no cheap whisky bottles, which always appeared in Philly. Plenty of hoboes passed through the city and left them behind. It was as if the alien sanitation squad had made an appearance and removed every bit of trash from the location.
“I think it’s time to check the dumpster,” Norris announced.
“I knew you were going to say that,” Yuan grumbled as he looked down at his pressed suit.
“The dumpster’s got a lock on it,” Williams pointed out, “you’re going to need the key. I’ll run over to the security office and get it.”
“I don’t think it’s necessary,” Norris announced as he walked over to the dumpster lid and pulled the lock off. He held it up to show it open and dangling from the clasp. The lock, turned inside, did not appear to be unlatched unless one looked at it closely.
He tossed back the plastic lid of the dumpster and the sick, disgusting smell of cola syrup, trash, old food and spoiled milk drifted up. Norris produced a respirator from his bag and offered two paper air filter masks to the detectives. They gladly put them on to kill the smell.
They waited until a black cloud of houseflies had left the container. It was early in autumn, but the disgusting purveyors of disease were still breeding in the trash left on the city streets. Norris was familiar with them and knew about the infections they carried. He put on his latex gloves and offered a pair to each of the men with him, which they gladly accepted.
It wasn’t only the houseflies they had to watch out for in the dumpster. The local rat population was still out of control, no matter what the city vermin control tried to do. Norris had seen them team up when he investigated a very filthy place on the west side of Philly near the river. He learned not to turn his back on a collection of rats after that day and took a low caliber pistol with him wherever he went. The cockroaches were another problem, although the cold weather would end them soon enough. The entire city was one big petri dish with all kinds of infection and disease ready to breed at the drop of a hat. He had to avoid the disgusting mess every day and still investigate the self-inflicted gunshot wounds and senseless violence that continued to grow in intensity. It never seemed to end and guaranteed him an income far into the future.
They looked through the trash for the next hour with the help of a few more crime scene technicians Norris was able to bribe into helping them. The trash was thick inside the dumpster and one of the other technicians found himself drafted into going inside and pulling it out onto the ground.
“This is going to cost you, Steve!” he yelled at Norris while working on the mess. Norris laughed at him and let him know the technician already owed him several favors.
“Found the purse!” Norris announced at the end of the first hour. He held it up for everyone to see. It was the white crocodile skin purse with the diamond-encrusted clasp that they’d searched for over the past few days. He handed it to Yuan, who had done his best to keep the filth off his suit. At one point Yuan had donned a lab coat from one of the technicians to keep his suit clean.
“Is it the one you’ve been trying to find?” Norris asked as Williams looked it over and showed the purse to Yuan with his latex gloves.
Yuan opened the purse and withdrew the flash drive, holding it up. It was small and plastic. Everyone could tell how easy it might be to mistake it for a cigarette lighter. He took it out and handed it to Williams.
“We can’t tell just now,” Yuan responded to him. “We’ll need to take it downtown and let an expert look it over. Should know when the right person can authenticate it.” One of the technicians put it in an evidence bag and sealed it. We’ll need to put the flash drive in another evidence bag, but we need to see what’s inside it too.”
“There is a procedure for that,” Norris told them.
“I thought you would know,” Yuan told him, “if anyone would.”
“Hello, what’s this?” one of the other technicians called out, pushing some trash away from something on the ground. Yuan and Williams went over to look at what he found. The technician pulled out a digital camera and took a picture of it.
It was a gun. A thirty-eight snub nose revolver to be exact. The detectives walked over and looked at it carefully. Yuan reached over with one of his gloved hands and picked it up to look at it. It wasn’t a new model, but he recognized something about it right away.
It wasn’t a gun at all. It didn’t even have a firing pin. The chambers were sealed shut and the trigger wouldn’t pull. It was a movie stage prop. However, it was a very realistic stage prop, he had to admit. Yuan handed it over to Williams.
“Not a real gun,” the older detective announced as he looked at it. “I’m guessing it came out of the Kimmel Center. Don’t they have a prop department?”
“Plenty of theaters around here,” Yuan told them. “It could have come from one of a dozen places around here.”<
br />
“Still might have been used in the murder. Somebody bag it for evidence.”
Chapter 6
It took another two hours to lift the prints from both the purse and the flash drive inside it. The stage gun proved to be much easier to get the prints off, due to its location in the trash pile. The gun, tossed between two bags of trash, lodged in the void between them. As it was stuck in the void for the entire time it was inside the dumpster, it was not as smudged as the other two items.
Just to play it safe, Yuan and Williams had the technicians go around and collect prints from Martinez, Bella, and, the Czech ambassador and his daughter. Getting the prints from the ambassador and his daughter proved to be difficult, but they relented and let them take the images. By five in the evening, the technicians had all they needed and identified the prints on the items found inside the dumpster.
Every single one belonged to Isabella Simpson, the production assistant to Martinez the film director.
Yuan put the phone down after calling and receiving the news. They were back at the diner from earlier in the day. The waitress who interested Yuan was still there, and she let him know her shift would end soon and she was free for the evening. Yuan considered it fortunate both he and his partner were able to go to the station house and shower down before returning to the diner to wait for the news from the forensic laboratory. He didn’t think she would have been as interested in the way he looked two hours ago. The suit was going to cost him quite a bit if cleaned the right way, but Mrs. Kim at his cleaners told him it could be done.
“You’ll love this even more,” Williams told his partner as he read an email on his smart phone. “The lab also brought in someone to authenticate the purse. They say it’s a fake, probably a stage prop just like the gun. They said it’s a good one, but the white crocodile skin is plastic. The diamonds on the clasp are fake, but extremely good ones.”
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