by David Dagley
“Yep.”
Cale put on some green rubber gloves and pulled the knife out of its sheath, asking, “Where was the sheath?”
“The sheath was taken from the victim. He had it in the inside pocket of his suit. It says in the report there,” answered Barbara.
Cale looked at Barbara and joked, “Are you offering a murder suspect a self-defense plea and leaving my dead client in a reefer someplace?”
“The sheath could have easily been planted,” responded Barbara.
“That's better. Good work, Detective. Can you think of any other options?” Cale looked through the window of the instamatic camera and snapped a shot, then positioned the knife so he could read the inscription, and asked, “Barbara, do you read Hongul?”
“Never heard of him.”
“Hongul isn't an author. It's the Korean alphabet. This knife is an Un Jang Do, a ceremonial knife from either China or Korea. Their neighboring border has been in flux for centuries. By the looks of it, the knife belonged to a very wealthy family from Korea.” Cale took a photo of the inscription, turned the knife over to take another photo, and realized, “That's not the same writing. That's kind of odd. See these markings? They're Hongul characters.” Dried blood stained the symbols black. “I saw some of these knives at the museum yesterday. But I'm pretty sure the markings were the same on both sides of the different blades or not there at all.” Cale looked at Barbara, who was still close and hovering over his shoulder. Their faces were inches apart when Cale turned and asked, “Who wears dress shoes to the beach?”
“He could be a rich person not from the beach.”
“Or maybe he's a tourist, self-conscious about his appearance?”
Barbara responded, “People who overdress on the beach look like dorks, and rich people try to avoid that like the plague. How about a rich businessman not from the beach?”
“Or a rich man doing business on the beach?” Cale took a few more photos of the writing on the knife and handed the camera back to Barbra, “Thanks for your time. I'm all through for now.” Cale zipped the knife bag closed.
As they walked out of the room, Cale added, “Remind me never to wear dress shoes to the beach with you around.”
“Oh, I will,” assured Barbara.
They walked back to her desk together, splitting sides at the end of the counter.
“Thanks again,” Cale walked out of the lab with the three manila folders under his arm and headed back to his office.
Cale opened the door and saw Victoria sitting on a couch, reading a book and holding a cup of coffee. She looked up and said, “Good morning.”
“Morning.”
“Thanks for brewing coffee.” Victoria looked at the new folders coming in under Cale's arm and added, “M-m-m-m, more folders. It's getting deep in here.”
“Yeah, I'm starting my third box, and I still don't have all the juice. How's your stuff going?”
“Good. I'm making headway. I tell you, medicinal plant studies and witchcraft are pretty comparable; however, with medicinal plants you're called a health nut and a healer, and in witchcraft, you're outcast, burned at the stake, drowned, or both. But their knowledge levels overlap more than separate.”
Cale grabbed his cup of tea and sat in Victoria's chair behind her desk.
“Where are all of your boxes?” she asked.
“The disks are in the lab. The victim's clothes are still at my place. There's a lot more room there than there is here. I can spread out there without losing anything or getting it mixed up with other projects and all,” Cale explained.
“That's probably a good idea,” she said, while pulling off her reading glasses to look at Cale. “Anything strike you as a lead?”
“No. I'm still in the gathering stages at the local level. But I'm pretty sure Martin made a good choice in dumping this case. It looks like it's going to get complicated. I get to spend tonight looking over the researched fingerprints found at the scene.”
“You have light at the end of your tunnel though. I have a full week of reading, and by that time you're going to be on a Thai beach, at a full moon party, half naked and tan. But you can still call me. I'll come over right away,” she said enthusiastically.
Cale twisted his head to one side in doubt and admitted, “Thailand is looking more like a business trip than a holiday. But you're right; I will find time to hang out on a Thai beach, half naked and buzzing along on Mekong whiskey and authentic Red Bull.”
Victoria was somewhat taken aback, “What business could you possibly have in Thailand?”
“It turns out the stones are from Burma, near or out of the Irraywaddy River Basin. I'm planning to go there for awhile and learn more about the stones. I've never heard of them, and I have no idea of their worth. It sounds like a nice side trip.”
“Have you been to Myanmar before?”
Cale nodded slowly, “Yes, but if you don't mind, could you call it Burma? If you call it Myanmar, you are supporting the changes that a ruthless, gluttonous, military government installed.” Cale took a sip from his cup of tea and held up three fingers before he continued, “I've been there three times.” He watched Victoria, waiting, anticipating where the conversation was going so early in the morning.
Victoria asked inquisitively, “Weren't you in Asia working on a case right before your hearing and suspension period began?”
Cale smirked and nodded again.
Victoria sat up while closing her book with her finger in it, marking her page, and cautioned, “Cale, I wouldn't say anything to the captain about this. If I were you, I'd go on your vacation as planned. What you do on your vacation is your business, not departmental. You can always call me and tell me what's going on. If it gets too strange then I'll suggest to you to leave it alone.” She looked in Cale's eyes, trying to read him. “I don't even know exactly why you were suspended in the first place. The captain kind of brushed over it with a story about a shrink. But working with and learning about you for almost a year now, you must have been getting close to someone or something.”
Cale responded with hesitation in his voice, “Yes, and I don't know. I didn't get any names, fingerprints, or anything to make any solid connections, so the case kind of evaporated out of the department's hands. And I wasn't getting much help from other departments or countries. Their files were considerably thinner than mine. No one knew where to turn, including me.”
“If you don't mind talking about it, could you give me a brief sketch of what transpired?” Victoria asked, intently waiting for the story.
“Sure,” Cale finished his tea, got up, and went over to his desk. He reached to the back of his bottom drawer and pulled out a folder. He explained as he briskly searched through the documents in the folder, “Okay, a year and a half ago, these two photos were taken from separate countries; one in the U.S. and the second in Scotland, England. The photos were taken thirty-five minutes apart, GMT.” Cale walked the photos over and handed them to Victoria.
Victoria looked at the photos of the insides of two banks. In each photo a man posed in the entryway, frozen by the camera. The man wore a light–colored, wide-brim hat and an overcoat of the same light color. He had a bag over his shoulder, which he was holding in place with a gloved hand. He was heading in the direction of the bank tellers. “That's the same man,” Victoria proclaimed.
“That's what I said to the captain. Others say it's two different men dressed identically and probably working together; some go as far to say they're related.” Cale took back the photos and put them back in the folder. He handed Victoria two more photos, “These were taken a day later, one in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and this one, four hours later in Brisbane, Australia.”
“So they have to be different men, two at least.” Victoria shrugged, “Possibly four? I don't know. I agree the guy looks the same in the photos, but, four places in two days, that would be one hell of a connection. I can't get in or out of an airport in four hours.”
“I've done the b
ackground on all commercial and private flights, plus the records at eight air traffic control stations within theoretical perimeters. No such connections exist, and no one resembling this man has surfaced on any of the airport surveillance systems. But that's only one point. In all four robberies, however many people are involved, the guy gets away on foot with the cops hot on his trail. This guy or guys can out hide the dogs. In Brisbane, the guy ran into an abandoned, two–story, auto-parts supply building. No one had been in the building in so long that they could follow the suspect's footprints to a set of stairs, but he wasn't upstairs when they searched. The first cop there said when he opened the door, there were two sets of prints, one coming out and one going in. The cops surrounded the building and found nothing. They ran dogs, spoke with every person who worked or lived in the area, and they found nothing. By the time the cops were done in Brisbane, they couldn't differentiate whose footprints were whose. A group of photos were circulated to banks all over. A week later, a guy was spotted by a bank manager in Surat Thani, Thailand, matching the description, and later that day, he was recognized boarding a ferryboat bound for Ko Lipe, which is on the Andaman Sea side of the Malaysian Peninsula. When the Thai authorities found out that the man had hired a boat to go to Ko Adang, they pursued him. No one lives on Ko Adang. It's a National Park, a gibbon reserve. The island was searched heavily for three days, and they came up with nothing except footprints above the tide line, heading into the hillside jungle, up a stream drainage. This guy vanished into the jungle, and I have a feeling that there are more cases like this scattered around the world, but police departments, especially across country borders, prefer not to communicate their embarrassing cases, ‘those that get away.’” Cale gathered the photos and put them back in the folder.
“So you lost the case because no one could figure it out?”
“You try racing from country to country talking to officials who want to check all your paperwork every time and want in on what you're doing while chasing suspects that know more than you do.” Cale shrugged his shoulders, “The captain had to side with everybody else.”
“That makes sense; he saw it as a failure. I don't think it was. It seems more like a lack of cooperation to me. Thanks for explaining it. And in the case you have right now, what are your gut feelings in the museum case so far?”
“In the museum case the murderer gets in and out cleanly. From the disks I looked at last night, there are some faint whispers, bits of dialogue, and some grumbling. I'm thinking there could have been as many as three people in the museum, not two. One probably got in and out on the guard's timing, and the other between the guard and the police, and of course there's Mr. Who in the fridge. I would have to count all the people who entered the building and tally all those who left the building that evening to find out if anybody used conventional methods of entry, and maybe the day after for exit.”
“I think that can be arranged with the lab. What did you hear that makes you think there were three?” asked Victoria.
“It's all speculation, but on one disk one guy launches a bocce ball to distract the camera long enough to get into position. A second ball gets bowled for the second guy. These guys are arriving and using the bocce balls to distract the cameras, allowing them to get to a blind spot so they can meet and take care of business. There's some whispering, something—a trade perhaps—not money, but information, I think. Anyway, mystery guy gives up the stones, and gets what he wants, and leaves or maybe not. The guard comes down the hall to check out the room but finds everything is in order and walks back towards his desk, dragging the camera's attention with him. Maybe the Asian guy needed the camera to be in a particular position for his escape. That's when the third ball enters the game, a light blue fishing float, from an entirely different direction, and pins the Asian. The Asian man sees this new guy close up, and they aren't friends. In shock, or startled, one of them says clearly, ‘You.’ That's not something you say to someone you've been talking to for a few minutes. This last guy is the murderer, obviously. Unfortunately the knife sheath was found on the victim.”
“The first mystery guy could have set it up or been standing there while the murder took place,” offered Victoria.
Cale nodded, “It's possible, but there are not that many blind spots. No, I think he goes out when the guard returns to his desk. He's done. It's really too bad that the guard makes most of the recognizable noises.” Cale paused in frustration and changed the subject, “I'm heading off to a jeweler to see what he knows about the stones and then back to the museum. It appears we're missing a fish float. There should be one.”
“What if the first guy to leave took his with him?”
Cale thought of a simple explanation, “Where the balls go, the cameras go. These guys go everywhere else, although the bocce balls were moved so the guard wouldn't see them. I'll have to think about that a little more.”
Victoria raised her eyebrows, and nodded in agreement, then added, “You mentioned infrared.”
“Yeah, it covers the hallways, doorways, and much of the floor, except when the guard turns it off to go get coffee or when he does sections of his rounds. It just so happens that the hallway exit is on the same infrared circuit as the room where the murder took place. On his rounds he has to turn off a section to enter or pass through to get to the next section and turn it back on when he's out of it or returning. The bocce balls roll right under the infrared, only triggering the audio on the cameras. The perpetrators knew it all, the whole layout.”
“Was there anything stolen?”
“Apparently not.”
Victoria skeptically responded, “Then why were they in the museum at all instead of outside in a park or somewhere with a little easier access?”
“Right. Good point. Why there?” Cale went silent.
“Well, keep me posted, and I'll try and help.”
Cale closed the file, placed it in back of the bottom drawer, and asked, “Do you need anything while I'm out?”
Victoria shook her head and replied, “No thanks. I've got some errands to run myself later on. I've got to do some follow-up work on the Cooper's orphaned daughter for Martin. The address you gave him turned out to be a probationary women's shelter. He wants me to go ask a few questions regarding Bridget Cooper's violent stay with them. Martin says he wouldn't feel comfortable doing it himself knowing most of those women fear or hate men. And since I know Martin, I see their point.” Victoria enjoyed bad-mouthing Martin, knowing Cale wouldn't respond to it because he knew she was right.
“See ya.” Cale walked out.
—
11
—
A light breeze blew over Rayman Stell as he crouched on a pink sand beach, looking out over the calm blue-green water, lamenting his father's death. Monolith cliffs of limestone, topped with dwarf trees and draped with vines and shrubs, jetted out of the sea, separating the beach from the rest of the world. The equator lay out before him somewhere close, and the sun was hot overhead, searing his skin. The smoldering stand, where his father's body had recently been burned, had turned the sand black and white with ash, and partially dissolved into a cloud in the small shore break. Rayman let a handful of ashes and sand fall between his fingers. The incoming tide brought small waves to the shore, churning up a semicircle of ashes and burned chunks of wood. His father's watch hung on a branch of the last support of a stilted platform. The watch had been put there for his benefit, so when he arrived he would know whose body had been burned. Someone had respectfully stayed with the body while it was ablaze, making sure nothing remained. He thought of the kindness he had missed these last fifteen years, of time spent at the ranch growing up together without his mother, who had been poisoned before his father was kidnapped. The only picture he could come up with for his mother was in her hospital bed, her death bed. The sun fell behind the clouds, turning the sky orange, red, and purple.
—
12
—
Cale walk
ed into the museum and down the green marbled hallway. He turned into the peach marbled room and pulled out the camera floor plan. Locating camera five, Cale began retracing the paths of the bocce balls as he walked through the light crowd of people. He stopped periodically to jot down notes or to shade in areas the camera couldn't see while chasing the bocce balls. Cale stopped and watched two children playing a game of hide-and-seek. A little boy in a dark blue sweater ran past Cale and pulled in behind one of the large black urns. The urn stood nearly five feet tall to the rim. Cale walked over to the balcony double doors between two urns and pushed on the doors. They were locked. Cale remembered how tightly the camera zoomed in on the bocce ball as it rolled. It would be possible to walk through part of the room unseen, somewhere behind the ball. A young girl walked into the room, searching through the showcases for the hidden boy. Cale glanced at the urn where the boy was hiding and didn't see him. The girl walked right past the urn and kept looking around the room. Puzzled, Cale waited for the girl to leave the room before he walked over to the urn to look for the boy himself. He looked behind the urn, and the boy wasn't there. Cale spun around, urgently searching. He moved below camera five, where he could see the whole room, and waited. A few minutes passed before the boy darted out from behind the urn. Cale walked back to the urn and wrapped his knuckles on it all the way to the bottom. He peered into it. The ficus tree was firmly planted within the urn. Cale knelt down as close as he could to the back of the urn, which was a few feet away from the wall, and reached his hand around the back and found an arched hallow underneath the potted ficus tree. Cale managed to crawl into the space below the ficus without much difficulty then spun around and crawled back out.
