“What?”
“You’re really buying that little douche lunch just to get him to do his job?”
“He’s doing his job anyway, but if he feels good about doing a little extra, it could mean the difference between us catching an important detail or not.”
“That kind of motivation shouldn’t have to be bribed. Those guys are paid to be OCD detail freaks. And you can’t afford to keep buying people lunch.”
“I don’t recall you ever turning it down.” She nodded at his screen, angled discretely away from her desk. “Is that your fantasy football team you were slaving over while I was on the phone?”
“Just killing time until you were done.”
“Uh-huh.”
He spread his hands and raised his eyebrows. “My desk work is finished, partner.”
“You find anything?”
“The BFD lists more sword crimes than you’d expect.”
“BFD?”
“Big Fuckin Database. You know, whatever DHS is calling that cross-referencing interdepartmental algorithmic circle jerk that would give Stalin a stiffy this week. I can’t keep up with the acronyms anymore, so you and me are gonna go with BFD from now on. You cool with that?”
“Sure. BFD. And?”
“After you rule out the satanic weirdo teens who maybe accidentally stabbed a friend with a replica from a Hobbit movie, and the nervous college kid with a ninja fetish who killed an intruder in self-defense, you’re still left with a fair amount of actual sword murders in the past decade. In most cases the weapon just happened to be on the scene as a decorative item and somebody grabbed it when things got tense. That includes one Greg Harwood, a schizoid homeless man in Massachusetts. Harwood broke into a home where a Japanese sword could be spotted through a window, hanging on the wall. Seems he tried to steal it and then used it on the lady of the house when she caught him in the backyard while letting the dog out shortly before dawn.”
“He killed her?”
“And the dog. Decapitation both, which makes it the closest match I could find to the Lamprey case. But Harwood was put away in March of last year.”
“Huh. Any other decapitations?”
“A couple, and not with swords. In both cases the killer was identified right away and was incarcerated at the time of the Lamprey murder. Seems most decapitations are done by sawing the head off with a knife, like in those jihad videos. The only recent instance of a single cut by a long blade is this Sandra Carmichael—the woman killed by Greg Harwood in Massachusetts.”
“Okay, we should look into that one even though they apparently got the guy.”
“I also ran a list of minor offenses like carrying a sword in public. Plenty of those.”
“How many in California?”
“A whopping thirteen, but we are the mecca of film fanatics, freaks, and actor wannabes.”
“True. Still, our killer could be on that list. Maybe we should make some house calls, feel people out. If nothing else, we might learn a thing or two about the culture.”
“Culture?”
“Samurai sword culture.”
“What makes you so sure Lamprey was killed with a samurai sword and not some other long blade?”
“Only the fact that we found his head at Manzanar. The killer was sending a clear message, leaving it there.”
“Pretend I’m stupid. Spell it out for me.”
“The murder has something to do with retribution for the way Japanese Americans were treated when they were rounded up and interned in the camps. Maybe the killer’s ancestors were prisoners there. They may have suffered abuses. Maybe the killer even spent his early childhood in the camp.”
Pasco’s fingers twitched with calculation. “Nineteen forty-two, forty-three…if he was a kid in the camp, a young kid, that still puts him in his seventies now. A little old to be jumping fences and chopping heads off.”
She shrugged. “Probably. Or it could be someone younger who has some obsession with the subject. Channeling psychopathic violence through a cultural filter, a historical event, to give it meaning so he feels like he’s dealing social justice instead of just getting his rocks off.”
“Wow, that’s deep.”
“Just a guess.”
“But why Lamprey? He wasn’t even born when Manzanar was operational.”
“Which brings us to today’s tasks. I need you to research Geoff Lamprey’s family history. Look beyond the locational. If you find an obvious connection to Manzanar, great, but it could be something less direct, like political support for the camps by an ancestor.”
“Yay, more desk work. And what will you be doing while I’m having all this fun?”
“I’m going to visit a Subject Matter Expert and pick up Chinese food.”
“What’s the subject?”
“Edged weapons. Waraska gave me a number for a martial arts instructor who trains cops in knife defense.”
“Great. I’m cramming Genealogy and American History while you watch dudes throw each other around a dojo? No fair. Let me come with you.”
“Because the director just loves to pay two people to do the job of one. What do you want from Uncle Charlie’s?”
“The usual.”
“One spicy beef and broccoli, you got it. You know feeding people earns you more loyalty than paying them?”
“Is that right?”
“Taps into the tribal family part of the brain.”
“Did you always know you’d end up using your psych degree mainly to get favors from lab rats?”
She grinned and nodded.
“Well, here’s a psych tip for you: Want to tap into the primal brain, flash them some cleavage. You’re an attractive woman. It’s cheaper and just as effective.” Pasco ducked before he’d finished the sentence, just in time for the flying pen to miss his face. It wasn’t a government-issued Bic; Drelick favored steel-tipped rollerballs, and this one stuck in the corkboard behind him, shaking a Post-it note loose to drift like an autumn leaf to the floor.
* * *
The dojo was in a bad part of town. Agent Drelick could see right away that it wasn’t thriving on after-school programs. The entrance was just a metal door in a graffiti-stricken cinderblock wall. The studio itself occupied the second floor of a warehouse. A mongrel dog and her litter of pups sniffed human-height piss stains on the concrete at the end of the alley. To reach the door, Drelick had to step around a truck tire lying on the ground beside a sledgehammer—the hammer presumably to be used for beating on the tire to build muscle. To Drelick it felt like the tire should be on fire and the cinderblocks riddled with bullet holes. That would have completed the urban blight. A plate bolted to the door read: JOHN MARSHALL'S KENPO KARATE.
Inside she climbed a staircase papered several times over with faded tournament posters and flyers for self-defense seminars. The sound of someone hitting a heavy bag punctuated the air, and as she ascended the smells of urine and garbage gradually gave way to the smell of sweat. She ruminated on the fact that the sledgehammer hadn't been stolen and decided that that was ample testament to the dojo's reputation in the hood. It was probably common knowledge that Marshall taught cops how to take down knife-wielding crack heads.
Afternoon sunlight flooded the wide-open room from a bank of opaque windows and formed wedges in the thick, dusty air. A skinny young man dressed in a sleeveless shirt and sweat pants was pounding on a heavy bag. He shot her a quick glance without losing rhythm. In the middle of the room, an older man with a receding hairline and a handlebar moustache knelt in front of a plastic bin from which he was removing pieces of a black combat suit. At Drelick’s approach, he tossed an arm guard at her face; she caught it, surprising herself with her own dexterity.
“Tell me if that’s too big for you,” he said.
She almost turned to see if there was someone else he might be addressing, but she knew there wasn’t. “Mr. Marshall? I’m Agent Drelick. I called about picking your brain on Japanese swords.”
&n
bsp; “I know. Pleased to meetcha. Will that fit?”
She glanced at the pad in her hand, slapped it idly into her left palm. “I’m not here for a lesson. Not a tactical one, anyway.”
“Sure you are. Your partner Pasco’s paying for it.”
“Oh, no. Thanks, but…I’m not exactly dressed for training.”
He looked her over, his eyes lingering on her curves, then looked at the gear in the box and picked out gloves, a vest, and a set of elbow guards. “Slacks are fine,” he said. “I’ll get you a t-shirt, and you can lose the shoes.”
“Really, I only have an hour.”
“Your partner seems genuinely concerned about you keeping your field skills sharp. We can talk in between drills and some more after. The lesson’s already paid for. Don’t worry, you’ll get what you need in under an hour.”
She hadn’t put on a combat suit since the academy. Part of her wanted the workout, the exhilaration of sparing. At the risk of sounding like a wimp, she said, “It’s a little cold in here, can I keep my socks on?”
“Sure,” Marshall said, and tossed a t-shirt emblazoned with his logo at her. “You can keep that; it’s good advertising for me. Locker room’s over there.”
* * *
When she returned, Marshall was already wearing a full suit. He nodded at the pads on the mat at his feet. “Those should fit you,” he said. “You can ask me about swords while you suit up.”
“I’m not so sure about these pants,” she said. “Limited range of motion. Maybe I should come back for the session on another day.”
“Right, because when a perp attacks you in the course of your duties, you’re gonna be wearing some nice roomy sweatpants or a karate gi.”
“Okay, point taken. But if they rip, I will not be happy with you.”
He nodded but didn’t make any promises.
Drelick remembered the basics of hand-to-hand training gear, and in a moment she was outfitted with pads and feeling like a clown. But she’d found it impossible to start interviewing Marshall while stepping into a groin protector and adjusting various lengths of Velcro strapping on her arms and legs. She rose from the crouching position in which she’d been adjusting the last shin guard and peered into the helmet, wondering how much fermented sweat glazed the interior. It was equipped with a face shield. Marshall’s was in the up position.
“We’ll use the face shields instead of mouth guards so we can talk,” he said. “What’s your first question?”
Drelick tucked the helmet under her arm and gathered her thoughts. He was driving everything, and she didn’t like that. She figured he was the type who not only preferred to have authority figures approach him on his own territory but who also needed to upend the hierarchy by throwing them off balance and establishing his own top-dog status as early as possible. Of course, she did have Pasco to thank for enrolling her in the lesson, and she resolved to inflict something equally uncomfortable on him in the near future.
“Do you know much about Japanese sword culture?”
“Of course. Edged weapons are my specialty, and the katana is the ultimate blade.”
“Do you teach it?”
He snorted. “No. I teach knife defense, but nobody uses swords in a street fight. I’ve consulted in a few movies where they wanted the sword fighting to look real, but in a real knife fight you’re dealing with a concealed weapon and a style derived from prison shanking.”
“Actually, some people do still use swords. Maybe you saw Geoff Lamprey on the news?”
“The guy they found with no head?”
“Yes. That’s my case.”
“What makes you think it was a katana? Put your helmet on, let’s get started.”
She put it on, adjusted the strap, and lowered the face shield. “Just a hunch, really, but maybe you can confirm it. Steel blades are oiled for preservation, right?”
“And for lubrication…quick draw. A blade that isn’t worn upside down for gravity release usually needs a little grease.”
“Can you tell me why a sword might have clove oil on it?”
“You could have learned that from the internet.”
“I like to do things the old‐fashioned way, with human experts.”
Marshall lowered his face shield. It darkened his tone of voice. “And that’s why they say the government is inefficient.”
Drelick brought her own shield down. She wasn’t even stretched. This—whatever it was—was going to suck.
“While we’re talking I’m going to spontaneously attack you,” Marshall said, “Like a suspect might do during an interview. I want you to just react the way you would. Defend yourself. Okay?”
“Got it.”
“Japanese sword oil is called choji. It’s just mineral oil with a few drops of clove oil added for fragrance. The samurai wanted to give his sword oil a smell that would set it apart from the cooking oil. Mineral oil is a laxative, so if his wife mixed them up and put the sword oil in the wok, the poor guy would end up with a raging case of the shits.”
Drelick laughed. Marshall seized the unguarded moment to throw a few punches at her midsection. They were controlled, but still carried enough force to throw her off balance. She regained it quickly by sidestepping, but he closed the distance fast, swinging a hammer fist at her from the side and connecting with the padded collar around her throat. That hurt. She jumped backward while launching a front kick to his chest, driving him back but failing to knock him down.
Drelick caught her breath and, keeping her fists up in a guarding position, asked, “Why would a modern martial artist still use clove oil on a sword? It’s not like they’re living in one-room huts anymore.”
Marshall grinned. She wasn’t sure if he was amused by her defense reaction or her question.
“You should meet some of my students,” he said. “One‐room huts are now studio apartments. But you're right; no real need with labels on everything. Still, Iaido practitioners are fussy about details. Hung up on ceremony and tradition.”
“So it's more like a ceremonial thing these days, the oil?”
“Still keeps the blade well lubricated, but the scent? Yeah, that's like incense. Reminds them of the tradition.”
“Sounds ritualistic.”
“Absolutely. Some of them practice in front of mirrors,” he said, gesturing at a wall of mirrors opposite the pale windows, “to make sure they're radiating enough of a fierce warrior gaze. Supposedly the whole practice is a meditation on death.”
Drelick looked at herself in the mirrored wall. There were white lines streaked across the black fabric covering her neck and abdomen. She turned her right arm over and examined the underside of the black forearm guard. More white lines. Chalk.
Marshall turned his palm out and revealed a silver-painted plastic training knife with a chalked edge. “Didn't even know I had it in my hand, did you?”
“How did I not see that?”
“In the real world you won't. Movies always show you the knife. Criminals don't. You'll think it's just another punch when they stab it into you. And with the adrenaline, you won’t feel it right away, either.”
Now he had her attention. Now she wanted the lesson.
“I use some oil for training, too: baby oil, but here it serves a different purpose. If someone attacks you with a knife, you will almost definitely get cut. That’s just something you have to accept and work with. Any self-defense move you can't do with oiled hands and forearms isn't going to work in a real knife fight when your blood will be lubricating everything.”
She still had other questions for him, academic questions, but now the most pressing was, “What's the best way to disarm an attacker with a blade?” The training she had received at Quantico suddenly felt woefully inadequate.
Chapter 9
Desmond parked on the street in front of Laurie’s house. He didn’t know when her husband would be getting home and didn’t want to be blocking the driveway, even though he planned on picking Lucas up as quickly a
s he could. It was getting close to bedtime.
When he called to let her know he was running late, she sounded perfectly happy to be entertaining Lucas, but that had been two hours ago. The wall patch had needed several thin coats of spackle with sanding in between to ensure that it wouldn’t be noticeable if anyone took the mirror off the wall. But he didn’t bore her with the details of his day hiding a murder weapon in his apartment. He had pressed the END button on his phone with an overwhelming sense of relief that Lucas hadn’t been snatched from her yard by a man in an indigo hoodie.
Before Desmond was out of the car, he could see Lucas in the front bay window, standing on a couch and staring out at him. By the time he was halfway up the brick walk, Lucas was framed in the storm door with Laurie standing behind him, smiling. She opened the door, and Lucas yelled, “Daddy! Me and Carl played space ship in the tree fort and I got bubbles, look!” Lucas held a bottle of bubble juice aloft as if it were the elixir of life.
“Space orbs,” Laurie said, setting a hand on Lucas’s shoulder, and for a moment, Desmond had to catch his breath against one of those emotional flash floods that sometimes washed through him without warning. The sight of Lucas all lit up with delight over a game that someone else had played with him, a gentle, generous woman…. Desmond bent down on one knee, took the blue plastic bottle and examined it closely until he was sure the moisture gathering in his eyes and sinuses wasn’t going to spill over. “Wow, real space orbs, huh? That’s awesome.”
He stood up and tousled Lucas’s hair. Laurie was still smiling. “Thanks,” Desmond said. “I owe you one. Did he behave himself for you?”
“He’s a perfect gentleman, just like his father.”
“And he ate?”
“Some. He says he likes the mac and cheese from the box better.”
“Yeah, we eat a lot of that.”
Lucas’s knapsack was sitting by the door. Desmond picked it up and slung it over his shoulder. “Okay, buddy, it’s getting late and we need to get home for story time. Did you say goodbye to Carl?”
Steel Breeze Page 9
