Bound: Chinatown Demons, Book One

by Rhys Ford

  “Whoever it is better be important,” he said, answering the call. “Because I just let one person live after he wanted to change my plans. Can’t say I’ll be as generous the second time.”

  §

  “There’s another piece over here, Inspector Ricci,” the round-faced uniform called out to him from another corner of the storeroom. “I might have stepped on a finger. I don’t know.”

  “Tag it, and… check your shoe. If there’s evidence on it, take off the bootie and leave it there,” Spencer growled, the kid’s name escaping his already busy brain. “Just… don’t step on anything else and get back near the stairs. Forensics already blocked off an area there to stand.”

  “I’ll try, sir,” the young man’s meek mumble whispered through the grumbles from the techs standing around the largest piece of the corpse. “Sorry, sir.”

  “What the hell was he doing over there?” Johnson, his partner for the day, sniped. Her nostrils flared aggressively as the young kid hopped on one foot past the people gathered near the first discover site. “Seriously, if he’s fucked this case up—”

  “If our case is fucked up because a kiddie cop stepped on a piece of evidence with a bootie on then we’re shitty cops,” Spencer rumbled, not taking his eyes off the scene. “Where the fuck is the dead doctor? Dispatch said they called him an hour ago.”

  “Maybe the forensics guys can tell you something, Ricci. They’re sitting there muttering about calling one of the university professors.” Johnson smoothed her short gray hair back from her face, her pale blue eyes rimmed pink from lack of sleep. “If you ask me, I think we’re looking for someone with a movie fetish.”

  She was an older cop, stout and blustery, but from what Spencer Ricci knew of her, a good, solid inspector if she stayed away from tequila. The captain assured him she was working through a program, but Spencer wasn’t so sure it was sticking. The woman’s attitude grew more surly with each sip of her water bottle, and now she was eyeing the uniform who’d messed up their scene with a curl to her lip.

  “That’s one angle.” He had to give Johnson that. “As valid as the Egyptian reenactment one of those guys came up with.”

  The case was as crazy as anything he’d ever seen before, and up until the moment it landed in his lap, he’d been unsure if his new captain even liked him. One look at the desiccated, linen-wrapped torso sitting in the mostly unused storage locker in the back of a Greek restaurant and he’d known for certain he’d somehow gotten on Captain Greer’s bad side. Possibly even his worst side. Partnered with Johnson on the case solidified his argument, but Spencer was going to work the scene as best he could, even if his victim was scattered all over the dirty storeroom floor looking like spare parts from a Bela Lugosi film.

  Or one of those old-time black-and-white movies.

  Johnson lumbered off to give the uniform a hard time, and Spencer turned his attention back to the withered remains of someone lying in the middle of the open space. One of the forensics guys separated from the pack and ambled over, jotting down notes in his tablet as he walked. Shooting Spencer a wry grin, he shook his head, the paper hairnet fixed over his skull bobbing around the weight of the Afro he’d shoved in there. His ID tag said Manfred, but he’d introduced himself to Spencer as Frankie, making an off-color joke about being named after Frankenstein’s monster while being called on the scene to put Humpty Dumpty’s mummy back together again.

  The storage room held odds and ends of practically every single restaurant and business that had existed in the main building for the past fifty years. Placards in Chinese fought for space next to what looked like a statue of Kali holding plates of plastic food. Tall metal industrial shelves were set haphazardly around the tight space, creating a dizzying labyrinth with no discernible sense. Lacking any windows, the storage room was lit by a few flickering overhead fluorescent lights and a single incandescent bulb dangling down from a twisted cord by the doorway. A few shallow steps led down into the space, and the sounds of the kitchen staff being questioned by another inspector filtered down through the open door.

  The space smelled of dust and stagnant water, with a hint of rat droppings lingering at the edge of every breath Spencer took. When he’d been called in, the information on the scene was sparse, but the incredulous tone of the dispatch operator was clear. He was going to be walking into something crazy, and she’d warned him to brace himself for the unusual.

  The unusual turned out to be a dried-out husk of a maybe-human inexpertly wrapped in long strips of linen and the gibbering frantic screaming of a sous chef who’d come into the storeroom to hide her cigarette habit from her boss.

  “Bet you this is nothing compared to what you saw down in Los Angeles,” Frankie said with a grin. “Most of the time, I am scraping out old people from rockers and recliners. This is the first mummy I’ve ever been on.”

  “I’m just wondering if the wrapping was the killer’s way of trying to hide the body as some kind of theater prop,” Spencer mulled. “There was a skeleton being used by a traveling drama troop that they thought was fake until somebody spotted something odd about it. It turned out to be a murder victim some guy sold the manager to use in plays.”

  “Maybe.” The tech nodded, chewing on his lower lip. “Maybe he thought by doing this, he could bring the guy back to life? The Egyptians thought shit like that could happen. I mean, we haven’t even verified that this is human yet. It could be an orangutan for all we know. None of us want to touch the body until the doc gets here. All we can do is throw things around and speculate. And take a lot of pictures.”

  “Well, if he thought this would bring the guy back to life, he’s shit out of luck,” Spencer snorted. “Once something is dead, they stay dead. Only the superstitious believe in things like monsters and anything else that goes bump in the night. No matter what this guy was thinking, he’s cracked in the head for doing this, and I’m going to work to get him off the street. Now, where the fuck is that doctor of yours?”

  “Hey, I tagged Dispatch a long time ago, and… Well, fuck. Some asshole went and called Carter,” Frankie muttered, his attention on the man standing at the top of the short, narrow flight of stairs connecting the storage room to the restaurant’s back hallway. “I better look like I’m doing something, or he’s going to chop my head off. Good luck, man. It’s never a good thing when Carter shows up on the scene.”

  Light from the hallway framed the slender man standing in the doorway, creating an aura around his lean body. The fluorescents leeched away most of the color from his face, turning his skin to a porcelain sheen. Spencer sucked in his breath when he spied the outline of taut muscles under the man’s red Henley when he lifted his arms to pull back a waterfall of pale silvery hair from his sharp-featured face, securing it with an elastic band into a folded-over ponytail. His eyes were dark and cunning, his attention skipping about the room, and Spencer was sure he missed nothing, including the sudden hustle of the forensics team marking off the scene. He was too feral to be considered beautiful but too evocatively graceful to be classically masculine. His gaze flicked over Johnson and quickly dismissed her. Then those sharp, dark eyes found Spencer, and a thin-lipped smile—almost feline and predatory—formed on his expressive mouth.

  Oddly enough, Spencer’s first instinct was to step toward the man, challenging the primal hunter who’d stepped into his crime scene, and make Carter acknowledge him in some way other than that mocking, sexy smile.

  “Guess you’re the doctor I was waiting for,” Spencer threw out, not sure if he liked the edge in his own voice, but there was something about the man that demanded aggression. “Glad you could find the place.”

  Carter looked too young to be a holy terror, but the techs in the room scurried and ducked to avoid him, their eyes cast down or to the side, anywhere but at the lean man studying the room. Something strong-willed beat in Xian’s presence. Not arrogance, Spencer decided, yet something resolute and firm. Curiosity marked Carter’s expression, spi
cing his self-assuredness, a bit of guilelessness woven into the hard cunning of his sharp features.

  This wasn’t a man to be messed with. No one would banter lightly with Carter, or share a bawdy joke, not unless they knew him very well, and Spencer wasn’t entirely certain anyone would ever know the doctor that well.

  “And you must be the inspector in charge. Ricci, isn’t it? Dispatch said you were waiting for me,” the man purred, a velvety rasp Spencer felt run down his spine and squeeze at his balls. They were nearly the same height, or at least close enough for Spencer to not have to strain his neck if ever he was stupid enough to bite at the man’s lower lip. Everything about the blond screamed danger, and Spencer decided he hated the man just for tickling up an arousal he’d thought long dead. “I’m Doctor Xian Carter, and I’m here to take a look at your mummy.”

  Two

  XIAN DIDN’T KNOW what fascinated him more—someone’s aborted attempt at mummification or the brooding, stormy-faced inspector pacing off the storage room behind him.

  The police officer was a new one. Not new to law enforcement, that much was clearly evident from the cynical glower on his face and the short snipes he made in answer to any of the forensics techs’ questions, but definitely to San Francisco. Or at least its police department. The other cop, Johnson, was one Xian had seen before. A hint of alcohol followed her around like a cloud, and judging by the redness of her eyes, she’d come onto the scene with a severe lack of sleep. She’d never been in charge of a scene for as long as Xian had been a coroner, and he didn’t think that had changed now.

  Especially since the other cop seemed to be barking orders in a low, raspy voice with enough of an edge to make everyone jump.

  Xian stood at the edge of the crime scene, itching to cross the perimeter, but he wouldn’t be able to get to the corpse until the technicians released the site. It was obvious by the waves of tension rolling off of the tall cop’s shoulders he wanted to get up close and personal with the deceased as well. Another circuit of their apportioned half-moon floor and Xian caught a hint of the man's aftershave, a spicy citrus following a hint of what smelled like plain old-fashioned soap.

  Since he wasn’t able to get to the unraveled body, Xian turned his attention to the cop, studying him carefully. He was large in a way that came from a strong genetic line used to hard labor and backbreaking tasks. Probably in his mid to late 30s, a bit of silver had snuck into the dark scruff along his firm jaw, and his nose seemed like it had met a fist or two in its time. It was a strong nose, a whisper or three below large, but it definitely descended from Romans. His mostly straight brown hair was long for a cop, falling past the collar of his muted red T-shirt. There were hints of merlot and mahogany among the strands, as well as glints of more silver at his temples.

  There were crow’s feet at the corner of his startling bright blue eyes, their color probably a gift from some invading Celtic army, and his mouth, a firm, delectable slash above his strong chin, appeared as if it once knew laughter but had since forgotten how. His thighs and ass were firm beneath his black jeans, but the straps on his shoulder holster had just been moved, made larger, judging by the wear on the hole beneath the fitted tang. There was a little meat around the inspector’s sides and belly, still solid enough with bulging muscles but softened by age and probably overwork.

  He was the type of man Xian usually adored, immersed deep in every dark grittiness humanity had to offer while panning through its filth to look for minute specks of gold. There was nothing sexier than a battered rogue knight, his sword pitted from never-ending battles and his soul weary from numerous fights. They were often the best and worst of mankind, picking up the banner of an uncaring society, not necessarily hoping to make a difference so much as to hold back the inevitable decay of the world around them.

  The cop also smelled really good, and Xian was once again reminded how little he had eaten, including the hasty sip of blood he’d taken before heading out the door that morning.

  “What took you so long to get here?” The inspector growled under his breath at Xian, looming over his shoulder. “Dispatch called your office hours ago.”

  Human beings were funny things, even the brutishly beautiful ones. It had been a long time since Xian counted himself as one of them, and back then, he’d been much more concerned about where he was going to get his next meal and how to stay dry than the state of the world around him. With a little over a century and a half under his belt, Xian was still amazed at the ferocity of the human spirit, as well as the depths of its depravity.

  Still, there was nothing like poking at an enraged man’s bluster, especially since it bubbled up solely from frustration and lack of anything to do.

  “You’ll have to excuse them,” Xian replied, careful to keep his voice pitched low so the cop was forced to listen carefully. Up close, he realized they were similar in height, although the cop was probably twice his size, and his aftershave mingled with the heady scent of a man who’d climbed out of bed to stand in front of a dead man. “I’d finished up a four-body fatality of a woman who’d driven her minivan and kids into the Bay at midnight, so I thought I would go home or get something to eat and decompress. Had I known that everyone else on call was going to tap out because they didn’t want to deal with a surly inspector and the failed burrito of human jerky he’d found, I would’ve come straight over after I finished up my last report.”

  To Ricci’s credit, he barely blinked. Then he looked away, hooding those marvelously beautiful blue eyes. Xian didn’t know him well enough to guess if he was struggling to come up with something apologetic or nasty to say, so he was pleasantly surprised when the cop nodded once and then cleared his throat.

  “They shouldn’t have called you in, then,” Ricci rumbled in that delicious slow molasses voice. Xian could have sipped on it all night, drinking in its rich, dark sweetness. “A man needs some time to get that kind of shit out of his head. If you weren’t on rotation, they should’ve sent somebody else. Even if you are the best they have.”

  He was human enough to preen under the unexpected flattery, but Xian kept his head about him. Jerking his chin toward the corpse, he said, “No one else would come. They usually leave the weird to me, and you’ve got to admit, this is plenty weird. Who found him? And why is the restaurant open right now?”

  “The chef apparently has an agreement with the owner. He is allowed to do some catering out of the kitchen, and the owner gets a cut. The chef is five days older than God and kind of an asshole to work with. Pissed off one of his sous chefs, so she came down here for a break. That’s when she found the body,” Ricci responded, his expression shifting from grumpy to predatory. The inspector was definitely a hunter, someone who would run his prey to the ground and probably didn’t care who got in the way while he did it. “There is a window in the back that opens up onto a side street behind the building. The way the hill cuts into the back wall, it puts it at about a foot over ground level. It’s barely big enough for somebody thin to squeeze through, but that’s the only way in and out without going through the restaurant.”

  “I take it the techs have already tested it for fingerprints?” Xian peered toward the far wall, but there were too many shelves and boxes in the way. “And I’m also guessing no one heard anything.”

  “They don’t usually come down here. One of the uniforms found a discarded limb near the back wall, and when forensics went over there to retrieve it, they spotted the window. Somebody covered up the pane with newspaper a long time ago, so it’s about as dirty as the wall.” Ricci patted at his jeans, retrieving a pack of gum from his front pocket. After offering Xian a piece, he shrugged at his refusal, then popped a cube into his mouth. The strong wintergreen aroma washed over the inspector’s subtle masculine scent, tickling Xian’s nose. “They’ve swept the area. Judging from the drag marks, somebody pulled a corpse through the window, then dumped most of it here. He definitely wore gloves because the finger marks on the glass are smeared. I’m hop
ing once they clear us to get in there you can find something to help me ID who this guy is. Because right now, I’ve got jack shit to go on.”

  “I really won’t know anything until I get him back on the table,” Xian confessed. “But I can tell you one thing. I really hope that man over there was dead before whoever wrapped him up like this got a hold of him. Because if he wasn’t, then you’ve got a very methodical killer out there someplace who’s probably working very hard at perfecting his mummification techniques. So if I were you, I wouldn’t hold my breath that this will be the only one, and maybe not even his first.”

  §

  The morning was as bitter cold as the coffee in Spencer’s cup. A long-ago dawn had gripped the sky tightly, shaking the night from the banks of clouds rolling off of the Bay, but only left a smear of light in its wake. From the slit of a window near his desk in the inspectors’ bullpen, he tried to judge the chance of rain, but San Francisco was nothing like Los Angeles, and the sky simply looked dark and foreboding, tainted with an iciness he could even feel through the glass.

  An oily film coated the inside of his mug, and fatigue made his eyes cross. He should’ve made a new pot, but he’d learned from years of experience that by the time he got one started and remembered to fill his cup, it would be empty, and he’d be left with the dregs. The coffee he’d scraped together from the break room had been sitting on the burner for probably twenty years. Or at least, it tasted like it.

  And still, as old as the coffee could have been, it was still a lot younger than most of the furniture in the bullpen.

  The narrow window was a concession to his rank as a senior inspector, but the ancient metal desk he’d inherited from a retired sergeant was probably only a few months younger than the Great Earthquake that razed San Francisco. Or possibly had served as a tank in World War II. God knew it was the same ugly drab olive color and seemed generally pissed off at its own existence. Made up of mostly sharp edges and reluctant drawers, someone had wrestled its short end up against the wall, and there it sat ever since. Rather than move it, the facility guys simply painted around it. If Spencer looked closely enough, he could see the various colors painted over the wall over the decades. For the hundredth time or so since he stared at the wall, he vowed to take a Sharpie to the thin bright pink line peeking out from under the latest swab of gray paint.