by Harper Kim
It’s a quarter to one when I leave the Soowon Galbi KBBQ restaurant. I don’t think I’ll have time to see Hollywood after all, so I decide to head back to Union Station and pick up the Gold Line to East L.A. I feel a strong gravitational pull to the east. I almost start to panic at the thought of coming all this way and not going where my gut told me to go. I’m not sure why. Maybe it has something to do with the name of the rail: The Gold Line, the golden thread that will pull me out from the smothered bubble of my so-called life, and into my real life, my destiny.
Something about East L.A. steals my heart. I plan to jump off at each rail stop so I can see it all, absorb my surroundings. As I exit the Gold Line underground at Mariachi Plaza and walk up the steps into the bright sunshine, something about the feel of the place just clicks with me. It is lived in, like a worn pair of sneakers, yet it is fresh and vibrant and alive.
The small shops—beauty salons, panaderias, liquor stores—just seem so much more accessible than the shops back home. And there are no subways in San Carlos. This definitely isn’t plain-vanilla suburbia.
Next stop: Soto Station. There I am greeted with brightly pigmented buildings amid a warm, glary sea of smooth concrete. Wide arcs of fan palms grace the signature SoCal horizon. A group of scroungy kids that probably should have been in school are instead playing soccer in the abandoned lot beside the station. The necks of their oversized t-shirts are stretched from overuse. There is hooting and hollering and teasing in a cacophony of garbled Spanish.
In the shade of the station awning, a group of elderly gentlemen huddle over a small folding card table playing poker and puffing on cheap cigars. Aged apartments and sagging homes cram up and out along the rutted streets with women peering from barred windows and metal balconies, pinning laundry on well-used lines.
I walk past the liquor store on the corner to find a magazine stand. Spanish Magazines & Newspapers, the awning boasts. I suddenly wish I had concentrated more in Spanish class. No matter; if I live in this neighborhood, the skill will come organically. The smell of tortillas and tamales lines my nose as I breathe it in, all of it.
Maravilla Station impresses me with its whimsical, parachute-like awnings. The station looks so fresh and new; a bud of new urban life nestled in the shadows of giant mega-freeways crisscrossing overhead, casting roaring shadows on the residential area to the south. There are a few small shops, a few women walking toward the metro platform laden with bags of groceries, nothing much else. I jump back on the next railcar and move on.
The last stop I make—the second to last stop before the end of the Gold Line—is the East L.A. Civic Center. The first thing I notice is a neon pink taco truck parked at the curb. The smell makes me drool, even though I stuffed myself silly with KBBQ just a few hours earlier. The second thing I notice is the line: it stretches clear around the block! I figure I’ll have to give it a try.
Waiting in line I have a chance to blend in with the locals. The thought keeps crossing my mind: what would Tess think if she knew I was here? Would she care? Would she worry? Sometimes I feel like Tess assumes I am a responsible adult that doesn’t need guidance or insights. It’s not like I need her to hold my hand or grant me permission, but I’d like it if she’d invest some interest in my thoughts, ideas, and future. It would be so cool if we could play hooky together and go somewhere new for the day, get out of San Diego and go on an adventure. But no, she’s too invested in her interests and her troubles to notice anyone else’s.
The tacos are worth the wait, and in the forty-five minutes I wait in line I get to know a few of the people around me. Nina is a twenty-year-old single mom with a four-year-old son named Teddy. Nina keeps wrangling Teddy as we speak. He wedges through her legs trying to get a closer look at a passing beetle. Then she catches him by the arm without looking and picks him up. He squeals and she sets him down again with a fatigued huff. An automated dance, performed tirelessly by the tired-out. Teddy reminds me of Bella when she was four and I start to miss home a bit.
Behind me in line are a couple of skater kids, or so I think. When I turn around I notice they are dressed like teenagers, hold skateboards like teenagers, but wear scrawled tattoos, thick gold chains and grim, bearded faces while chain-smoking cigarettes. They are probably closer to thirty-five than eighteen. It is the only uneasy feeling I’ve gotten so far. Gang bangers? I’m not sure.
There is an elderly man in front of Nina who is also interesting. He is very short—about five-three—with a pudgy midsection, slicked gray hair, and a pencil-thin mustache, and he waves his arms exuberantly when he speaks. He knows all about this particular taco truck, as well as all the taco trucks in the area. He apparently follows all of them on Twitter, and since he retired, his main adventure has been hunting for delicious fare-on-wheels.
“Follow the food,” he says many times with a wag of the finger as he indoctrinates those around him with the basics of food-truckdom. “Follow the food.”
I have seen these types of gourmet food trucks on television, but seeing this man beam as he spouts factoid after factoid about 21st Century mobile cuisine and the social networking revolution, I find that television can never quite capture the loyalty of the clientele.
I also find that television cannot capture how delicious the food is. And cheap! I buy one taco and a can of soda for three dollars, walk over to Belvedere Park Lake, and lounge in the grass near the water’s edge as I eat.
If nothing else, I have to move here for the food.
I start to make my way back to Union Station. Breathing in the heavily congested city with all my senses, seeing the colorful artwork tagging the walls and trashcans, feeling the old blending with the new as lights twinkle on in the dusty hue of evening, and walking the streets which so many walked before me in search of fame, fortune, or new beginnings makes me giggle in anticipation. This is it. This is the place. The place in which I’ll start over, start fresh. Here, I’ll make a name for myself, and be happy. The change of venue will provide a clean break. I will be hidden in plain sight within a bustling, diverse crowd. There are lots of low-brow jobs in this part of town that I can pick up with no prior experience, and there are tons of cheap places to live. Maybe I will even get lucky enough to work at a place that also provides sleeping accommodations.
At a quarter to midnight I creep into my dark house and slip upstairs, unseen. The girls are at a slumber party so the room is quiet. The room Tess and Brett share is dark and the door is closed. No one seems to be waiting up for me. A part of me wishes someone was.
I spend the next hour writing down the events in my notebook. The plan is set. I will start my new life this summer. I haven’t been this excited in a long time. I have finally found a purpose.
Chapter Nineteen:
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
12:17 P.M.
Detective Kylie Kang:
Contrary to Dr. Eve Darling’s sentiments earlier that day, the morgue isn’t what I would consider my home away from home. It’s more like a medieval dungeon, only cleaner when not in use. And much, much quieter. Disquietingly quiet. Even seasoned homicide detectives who have seen the worst the world has to offer shudder at the thought of being alone down there.
It has something to do with the odors of vinyl and formalin, the subterranean location, the harsh contrast between the light table and the dark recesses of drawers, the cutting, jabbing, poking, prying, resecting and removing of body parts that brings even the macho cops to their knees in search of the nearest sink or trashcan. But mostly it’s the quiet, the hum of the fume hoods circulating stale air the dead will never breathe. It’s like drowning.
Donning the fashionable one-size-fits-all morgue garb (surgical mask, gown, paper booties, cap, and gloves) I push through the double doors to the refrigerated chill of the autopsy room. The room, although well lit, seems to cast an eerie greenish veneer over the clear-coated cement floors, shiny steel tables, and floor-to-ceiling metal refrigeration lockers. The fluorescent lights osc
illate in a barely perceivable strobe.
Eve stands over the partially uncovered vic, her gloves covered in blood and chunks of Loral’s internal tissue, her face unmasked and deeply focused. The Y-incision is already made, major organs removed and set aside for further examination. Her large brown eyes are trained on Loral’s neck.
Waiting for Eve to address me, I keep silent and continue to observe from afar. Loral’s skin is a pale gray. Her once flushed cheeks and cherry-tinted lips are now a cold blue. A face of marbled stone, inspired by the beauty of youth, now an exquisite artifact to be examined and dissected. What did she do to deserve this fate?
There is no evidence at the crime scene indicating the killer is male. Maybe the killer is a woman who envied Loral. The idea isn’t farfetched; even I can understand the power of jealousy. Loral was growing to be a beautiful woman, a beauty that could rival her mother’s. Was Tess capable of murdering her child? Maybe the mother’s sleepover buddy got bored with the mother and pursued the daughter, things got heated, turned south, and he got rid of her? Wouldn’t be the first time.
“You made it.” Eve pushes the tray of implements soaking in bleach solution away from the table.
“Yeah, the interview with the family wasn’t really getting anywhere when I received your text so we wrapped things up and came straight here.”
With a smug expression, Eve casually states, “I see Pickering couldn’t make it for the show, again.”
Tightening my lips, I brush off the snide remark. Why my two best friends can’t get along is beyond me; at least they are somewhat civil. “Pickering’s back at the office checking on the facts we received so far.”
Changing her gloves, probably for the hundredth time that day, Eve smiles and nods. Pickering has a weak stomach when it comes to autopsies. And the Level B-3 morgue gives him the willies—something about being buried alive. Although the guys at the station sometimes give him flack for it, at least Eve never does—well, not to his face. She prefers he stay away. The last time he was in her lair, he didn’t quite make it to the sink in time and the scene he created was worse than what was splayed out on her table.
Eve offers me some vaporub to mask the stench.
“That’s okay. I already slathered some on before I entered.”
“Good. I don’t think she’s going to smell as bad as the last one did but,” she shrugs, “you never know.” Her eyes flicker into a gleam. “Now for the fun stuff. I had the blanket analyzed and found trace strands of hair. But before you go running to the moon and back I have to tell you that, in layman’s terms, it’s pug hair. Not human.”
“Pug hair? You’re saying the UNSUB covered the vic with a dog blanket?”
Eve shrugs. “You’re the detective. I’m just supplying you with the facts, however strange they might be. Anyways, she died before she was dragged and repositioned. The scratch marks under her arms and ankles corroborate postmortem damage, showing no hemorrhagic tissue. The notebook found on the body does have two sets of fingerprints: the vic’s and an unknown.”
“Good. I’ll check that out. What about the bruising at the back of the neck?”
“Blunt force trauma between the C1 and C2 vertebrae. Ultimately it looks like the result of either a small piston-like weapon or one hell of a martial arts strike. The bruise pattern does not indicate a cylindrical weapon such as a baseball bat, which would swing in an arced plane and have a much more oblong striking surface. The victim’s spinal cord was severed by the blow, which is what killed her. There are no other relevant injuries made to the body except postmortem scratches made during transit. Embedded debris is consistent with the garden of poppies where she was found. Stomach contents normal and no alcohol was traceable in the system.”
“Is this consistent with Pickering’s first thought, that this could be some kind of martial arts pressure point submission attempt gone wrong?”
“Seems like it. I haven’t had much study in acupuncture or oriental medicine so I couldn’t say with much confidence. I’ll ask around, see if I can find you someone in that field.”
I nod slowly.
Wasn’t there a case years back that dealt with pressure points?
Chapter Twenty:
Thursday, June 28, 2012
9:00 A.M.
Detective Kylie Kang:
For a week now I’ve been working on the UNSUB’s signature. This morning starts off the same as the previous few, sitting at my tidy desk sipping some strong coffee while scanning the computer database for archived cases with similar MO’s. The pressure point death blow is a crucial clue in the investigation as well as a total mindfuck. The unknown fingerprint on the notebook turned out to be the boyfriend’s, which isn’t a surprise since we now know he handled the notebook days before her death.
Normally, I’d be ecstatic to work on such an interesting case, but why does it have to be this case? Right now I would give anything to have this be a boring, straight-laced case, neatly contained within an ordinary square box, giftwrapped with a pretty bow and stored immediately away in the back of the storage closet, beside the neighbor who cried smoking turd. But no, the case that involves an old and inauspicious acquaintance has to have dead ends, perplexing evidence, and a COD that offers no leads, fluids, residues, fingerprints, or profile of the UNSUB. Either this guy is extremely skilled and brilliant, or more likely, extremely lucky.
Pressure points aren’t something the feds encounter on a daily basis and so far it doesn’t seem to be in any cases that I or the department ever filed. Usually the UNSUB uses a knife, a gun, a hammer, a dangerous weapon that can be bought from any hardware or sporting goods store or found in the kitchen. In this case, the UNSUB most likely used the edge of his hand, once in a quick downward motion, focusing on the vulnerable space a half inch below the base of the skull. I feel like I am trapped in a Jackie Chan movie or something.
After spending an hour scanning through case files with strangulations, blunt force traumas, and drunken fistfights that turned deadly, Pickering strolls in humming a silly tune and munching on a bag of greasy doughnut holes. He wears his usual haggard look: scruffy five-day beard, purple bags flapping beneath his beady eyes, thinning hair sticking up wildly, capped off by a knock-off suit that is wrinkled and always has some kind of food stain darkening the lapel. Despite the Pig-Pen cloud of disarray he slogs along with him, his appearance lightens a bit when he grins. His little song and dance routine gets me tapping my feet and even picks up my mood a bit.
I eye him amusingly and say, “You sure are chipper this morning. What did you do, walk into a happy stick?”
“Even better,” he winks his beady eye and plops a folder on my desk, “you can thank me by working your little ka-boom magic and cleaning my desk.”
Leaning forward, I glance at a desk hidden by slumping mounds of manila folders, crumpled sandwich wrappers, extra condiment packets, binders, newspapers, and who knows what else. Wrinkling my nose I give him an incredulous look and sigh. He crinkles the translucent doughnut bag and tosses it free-throw style into his trashcan.
“What? Didn’t think your partner would want a powdery doughnut?”
Grinning, he licks his fingers. “Didn’t think a germ freak like you would want to dip your hand into the same bag.”
“Where did you get the idea I was a germ freak?”
“Hmmm, let me see. One, look at your clean desk. Two, you have an economy size hand sanitizer on your desk, plus a travel size bottle in your car and another in your purse. Three, you take Echinacea every day, and don’t think I haven’t noticed. Then there’s the known fact that you never touch the sandwich or cookie platters that we get delivered to the break room during the holidays.”
I frown.
“Do you need to me to go on?”
Grumbling, I shake my head, “You could have brought me one in a separate bag, that’s all.”
“I’ll remember that next time. Powdered doughnuts your thing?”
“Or chocolate…
or glazed…or maple.” Slurping back the drool, I turn my attention back to the mysterious folder. My eyebrows lift and then crease, confused. “What am I looking at?”
He slaps a sticky, wet finger on the line that says “owns black pug.”
Grimacing, I take a Purell-soaked tissue and wipe the smudge. “You’re excited because a Jim Kingsbee owns a black p—,” my eyes widen, “Wait. Back up. Who’s Kingsbee?”
“The mystery man, a.k.a. vic’s mom’s sleepover buddy, a.k.a. suspect numero dos.”
I turn back to the smudged page. The pieces of the bizarre puzzle are starting to fit into place. “And Mr. A-K-A man owns a black pug.”
When Eve had her band of eager squints analyze the blanket the UNSUB used to cover the body, they found traces of hair that turned out to be Canis familiaris, more specifically, black pug. For all we know the blanket could have come from a nearby trashcan or garage sale, been found abandoned in the nearby park, or perhaps a lost black pug just happened to wander aimlessly onto the school grounds between the time of her death and six in the morning. All are possible explanations for how the short bristly hairs got embedded in the blanket, but none helps the case unless the pug belongs to the UNSUB or an accomplice.
Now with Jim Kingsbee in the picture, we have a suspect that ties back to the scene of the crime. This might be the lucky break we’re looking for.
“Yup, it belonged to his ex-wife but he got it in the custody battle and has had it solely in his possession for a few months now.” He grins, extremely proud of himself, “So you want to drive, or shall I do the honors?”
Quickly, I scribble a note to mark my place in the database search, and also to remind myself to pry Declan’s memory bank. Grabbing my keys and leather jacket off the back of my chair, I say, “I’ll drive. You talk.”
