by Adira August
Hunt flicked a go ahead look to Merisi who stepped in front of Ikeda.
“This way, sir.”
“WHAT’S IKEDA’S STORY?”
Hunter watched Twee process the kitchen where a white platter of artfully arranged raw fish slices rotted on the countertop.
Mike Merisi stayed just outside the open entry door, consulting his notes. Usually eager to be part of a scene investigation, he was content in the hall, away from the smell.
“Said he was here on a ‘legal matter’ that would fall under client confidentiality. I asked who his client was, he said that also fell under confidentiality. I asked what kind of law he practiced and he said”—he flipped a page in his notebook—“‘whatever law is required’.”
“He found the body?” Hunter asked, making notes in his own notebook.
“He said he did. He touched nothing, he said, and left. When I asked how he got inside, he refused to answer.”
“What did he say, exactly?”
“Nothing. Exactly. Just looked at me.” Merisi’s smile was tight. “He went into a big spiel about what was ‘most essential for police to understand’ and then he left.”
Hunt made a note. “You talk to the manager?”
“No manager on site. The building has six luxury condominiums. Owner of record is Sunrise International Holdings. Contact is Robert Ikeda, Esquire.” He snapped the notebook shut. “Neat, huh?”
“Like trying to find the other side of a Möbius strip,” Hunter said.
“Lieutenant—I couldn’t think of a way to stop him.”
Hunter shrugged. “You didn’t have one. If you let him just walk away, you did exactly what I would have done. Did you?”
“Yeah. I thought no reaction was my best strategy.”
“It was. You sent his vehicle info to the office?” Merisi nodded. “Okay. So what was his special insight into Ms. Maki’s death?”
Mike flipped back in his notes. “He said the fish on the counter is fugu. Puffer fish. The dead girl was studying with a local chef to be licensed to prepare the fish for public consumption. Ikeda’s deal is: it’s accidental. And not that uncommon for people who eat this kind of fish to die from it. Culturally-deprived policemen are not to harass or embarass Mr. Maki with ‘baseless assumptions to the contrary’.”
“Our culturally-deprived crime scene analyst already identified the fish,” Hunter told him. “There’re a couple fish tanks inside. A big salt water job off the kitchen has a fish in it. Looks like the one on the counter.”
Merisi frowned, “She left it out on the counter? She was mid-fillet?” He kicked off his loafers. “I need to see it.”
True to Merisi form, he didn’t ask permission but walked past Hunt, orienting himself with a quick look around.
Twee was labeling a swab tube. “Almost done, Lieutenant.”
Hunter wasn’t surprised that Twee’s lisp was hidden. It was her practice while on a case.
Mike focused intently on the tableau before him. The platter on the counter, round, white ceramic. The decaying fish, the slight overlap of each identical slice, the curling of the edges of the paper-thin pieces the obvious result of meticulous human manipulation.
“You sent images of this to, um, the office for identification?” Hunter asked her.
“Nothing back, yet,” she answered and Hunt’s lips pressed. Cam would have had it by now.
“Chrysanthemums,” Merisi said, turning his attention to the low, square dining table. The simple cherrywood surface was only broken by a small white plate, chopsticks on a ceramic rest, a handless teacup and matching teapot. The plate had an irregular circle of residue in the center.
“Twee? You swabbed the plate?” Merisi bent close to the table but didn’t touch anything.
“Right. And the chopsticks and cup and pot and took a sample of the contents from both.”
“You’re using poison protocols?”
“In place.” Twee threw Hunter a questioning look. He gave her slight head shake.
Merisi had been a smart, ambitious cop with limited experience when Hunter took him out of uniform and stuck him in a suit and tie last year. Ten months on the team had earned him the right to run with the ball.
Merisi left the table for the counter and studied the large fish carcass. It looked as if it was completely intact, except for the skin clinging to the lines of ribs.
“I need to see the inside,” he told Twee. She hesitated. “Let me put it this way. The skin isn’t attached to anything and you need to photodocument the insides.”
“Tell me what you’re thinking.” Hunt moved next to him so he could see what Merisi saw.
“It looks like all of the skin is intact. I’d have to see it all. It also looks like she used all the flesh to complete the Edo chrysanthemum pattern. Sometimes the poison is in the flesh. More often in the skin. But it’s always in the organs, the sex organs and the intestines.
“If they’re cut into, the poison can get into the flesh. It would show us how she was accidentally poisoned. He shook his head. “She sat down to eat with the dead, butchered carcass out on the counter. That seems so wrong to me. And the pattern of the flowers looks complete. What was she eating?”
“Wrap it up for me, Twee.” While they listened to Merisi, pathologist Heather Zee, M.D., had come up behind them. “You are?” she demanded of Merisi. Hunter stepped in.
“Detective Merisi, this is Doctor Zee, she’ll be doing the autopsy.” He looked to Zee while she and Merisi nodded at each other. “You’re done?” She’d been in the bedroom working on the body.
Hunter once told her that her “patients” had more cheerful depositions than she did. The senior pathologist replied that was because they didn’t have to deal with ignorant, whiny-ass detectives that screwed up evidence.
She was a tall, bony, forty-something dishwater blond going gray who someone should have named Mildred. Hunter respected the hell out of her. As she did him. Respect did not equate to “like.”
“No, Dane, I’m not done. Just wondered if you were ever going to show up.”
“You usually don’t want me hanging around.”
“Don’t now. Would like you doing your job, though.” To Twee. “Get it in an evidence bag and keep it refrigerated until I leave. Meet me at the morgue and we’ll examine and photograph it.” She disappeared back into the bedroom.
Twee clapped. “Yay! I get to do a fish autopsy with Heather Zee! She’s my hero, you know.”
“That’s five heroes so far, Twee,” Hunter said. “Merisi, follow me, but stay in the doorway. Zee hates anybody near the body.”
“Hers?” Merisi asked, eyebrow cocked.
Twee giggled.
PENELOPE MAKI LAY ON a narrow tatami bed that rose only nine inches from the floor. Two night tables—twenty-four inch cubes—bracketed the tatami. She was twenty-seven, according to her driver’s license conveniently lying on one nightstand next to a lamp. Nothing else was on the nightstands. No purse was in evidence. The photo showed a plain woman sans make-up, with straight, unstyled hair pulled back.
The deceased wore a cream silk nightgown. She lay on her side, mouth half-open, vomit dried down the side of the futon and on the floor. One arm extended over the side, elbow bent, the fingers just grazing the edge of the vomit pool. Rigor had long-passed. The other was underneath her, only the point of her elbow showed between her body and the mat she died on. A light comforter patterned with cranes in flight covered her to the waist.
The large, stark room held only one other object: a fifty-gallon freshwater aquarium full of fish. A brightly-striped yellow and black Kuhli loach exploded from underneath the gravel, wriggling maniacally and burrowed back under the gravel in seconds. A school of neon tetras with glowing blue bands darted about in unison. A dark gray plecostomus, suctioned onto the glass by its mouth, chewed along the side. A silvery Lace Gourami peeked out from a cave feature nestled amongst seaweed.
Hunter quickly realized that the fish were all co
mmon, all types that peacefully coexist. The plants and water features were carefully chosen and maintained. In contrast, the large tank off the kitchen looked like something grocery stores kept lobsters in.
“What do you see, so far?” Hunter asked Merisi.
“Control at a terrifying level.”
The two men, supervisor and rookie, exchanged a cop look. Everything about this case so far indicated outside interference and interior wretchedness.
Zee finished arranging the unzipped body bag next to the victim on the futon. “I’ll remove the comforter. Examine, photograph. Then we’ll roll her. She’s soft, so it might take three of us. But she’s also small. Maybe not. Then you can get Twee in here for pictures.”
He donned protective gloves. Merisi did the same.
Zee carefully folded the cover in on itself and Hunter helper her slip it into a large evidence bag. She photographed the newly-uncovered portion of the body. Twee waited behind Merisi in the doorway.
Hunter and Zee—he on the hips, she on the shoulders and head—rolled Penelope Maki onto her back on the waterproof bag. The corpse sighed out a stench of gas.
“Hang on.” It was Merisi from the doorway. “In her hand.”
A corner of white paper. Hunter got an evidence bag and Zee opened the fingers. It was a sticky note with four neatly printed words:
Please feed my fish.
“Merisi?”
“Yeah, Lieutenant?”
“This is your case, now. Find out why this girl killed herself.”
Hunter Dane stripped off his gloves and left the apartment.
“MERISI’S GONNA NEED everything you can find on Ikeda,” Hunt told Cam on his way through the bullpen to his office. “And Maki.”
“Already on it,” a husky contralto answered.
He paused. Avia Rivers was on the other side of Cam with her fingers on his keyboard. The keyboard, he corrected himself. Hunter gave himself a mental shake.
“So I see. I think there’s a formal welcome planned for tomorrow.”
She smiled but kept her eyes on her monitor. “I like to hit the ground running. Keeps me in shape.”
Avienne Grace Rivers had a quite nice shape, as the bisexual switch had noted in the past. She had shortish honey-blond hair she wore in loose, natural waves, a generous mouth and a fantastic heart-shaped ass. Smart, feisty and twenty-five, the natural sub triggered all his dominant impulses. Usually.
Today, he resented her. Hunter Dane had enough insight to understand why and that he had to get over himself. But he didn’t have to right that minute.
Hunt walked straight into his office where he slumped back on the edge of his desk. Cam followed. He shut the door before he kicked Hunt’s feet apart and moved in between his legs. Strong arms went around Hunt’s shoulders.
“We're at work,” Hunter said, but he didn’t pull away.
“You’re at work. I’m visiting.” Cam rubbed his cheek against Hunter’s ear.
Hunt’s arms went around Cam’s waist. “I’m still at work.”
“You’re on a break.” Cam’s arms tightened and Hunter’s head dropped to Cam’s shoulder with a deep sigh.
After a minute, Hunt stood, hugged Cam tightly and pushed him firmly away. “You suck at being a good influence.”
Cam grinned. “You’re welcome.”
Hunt went behind the desk and sat down, waving Cam at a visitor chair. “You have to babysit her all morning?”
“Not at all. And she got called out with no door code or employee number or any training on my system. So she needed some help. You should have called Natani in, too.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t thinking.” His gaze drifted to the big windows that gave him a view of the gold Capitol dome a couple blocks away. He got up and stuck his head out the door.
“Rivers. You need some food?”
“I always need food.”
“I’ll order some stuff from Kenny’s.”
She nodded.
“I’m going to make coffee,” he told Cam. “Call Natani for me? She likes you.” He left the office, but Cam was right behind him.
“No way. She also likes you,” he said. “She just doesn’t want you to know it. She’s part of the team; she’ll want to be here. Besides, I haven’t even been in my own offices. Avia waylaid me in the hall.”
“Okay, go,” Hunt filled the reservoir from the water cooler. “Rivers can call if she gets stuck.”
“No problem. … Hey, there’s a gorgeous brass door plate with the Foundation’s name on it. And mine. It’s… you know. Good.”
Hunter nodded, watching a stream of coffee fill the pot. “So your place is all good to go, now?”
“Gonna go check.” Cam pressed a shoulder into Hunt’s, briefly. “Drop by after Natani gets here. Bring me food. I have something to tell you.”
“You bet.”
AFTER HE LEFT, Hunter let himself enjoy Cam’s pleasure in the door plate. He hadn’t wanted him to go, but he’d always known being on the team was stop-gap after Cam’s skiing career ended abruptly a year ago.
“What’s the smile?” Avia asked when he came over to the conference table to use the phone.
“Cam says you’re doing okay,” Hunter told her. He ordered from the diner/deli. Then he called Diane Natani, the assistant district attorney who was informal second-in-command to Hunter Dane. She told him she’d be there in twenty.
“Twee’s on the way back,” Avia told him when he hung up. “But she sent video if you want to look at it. Merisi’s heading to Taberu in Cherry Hills.”
“Which is?”
“A Japanese restaurant. Taberu means ‘eat’ according to the online translator. One second … okay … it’s one of about twenty in the U.S. that’s allowed to serve fugu. Looks like your victim is apprenticed to the chef there.”
“She’s ‘the deceased’ until a cause of death is officially determined. And she isn’t ’my’ anything.”
She looked over at his serious tone.
“I don’t care if you’re only here for a week instead of a month,” he told her. “You’re part of the team. If you don’t feel that way, pretend you do.”
She smiled. “Thanks.”
“Get that info about the restaurant to Merisi. What do you have on the chef?”
“Nothing, yet.”
“Get on it. Want coffee?” He held up a mug.
“You have hot chocolate packets?”
“When you get done with the chef, come look. Might be some around here. If not, put it on this pad. It’s the shopping list.”
“I will. By the way, there were messages in the queue for you, specifically. Cam showed me how to forward them.”
Hunter used his cell to check office email while he waited for the coffee to brew. The first was Penelope Maki’s address. He wondered briefly why it was sent by email, as dispatch always called him directly. It was the second message that caught his attention. “Captain wants to see me.”
“VanDevere?” She swiveled to face him. “Word is he’s the poster boy for the fundie right.”
He poured himself coffee. She was right. Her years as an investigative reporter gave her political insights he’d expected would come in handy. But his position precluded gossiping with her about his boss.
“Chef?” he asked pointedly.
She glanced at her monitor. “Not much. Immigrated from Japan at eighteen. Worked in his uncle’s restaurant through college. Opened his own restaurant. Certified to prepare pufferfish at age forty. His brother is Hideyoshi Maki, the deceased’s father.”
He took a seat at the conference table. “Name?”
“Ken Ikeda. Sixty-one. Am I supposed to be sending you everything, too?”
“No. I’m just …”
“Nosy?” She cocked at eyebrow at him. “He’s the lawyer’s father. The lawyer apparently made the ghastly error of being born of the union, however brief, of a Caucasian woman and a Japanese college student.”
“Did Cam find all th
at?”
“I did.” She took a little bow from her chair. “Remember, I was an award-winning professional nosy pants for several years.”
He laughed. “Yeah, you still are. Except now you don’t get awards.”
“I’ll take an Italian sub with extra provolone, instead.”
The food and Diane Natani arrived together. The Navajo prosecutor took one look at Avia and turned on Hunt. “How the hell is she on our system? She doesn’t even have an access code, yet.”
Hunter stood up and paid the delivery guy. “I imagine you’ll be taking care of that shortly. Merisi has the case. Avia will brief you. I’m taking Cam some food and going to headquarters.”
“LOOKS LIKE A PADDED CELL,” Hunter said looking around the windowless chamber inside the Foundation’s new offices. It had a simple oval table and four chairs.
“Shielded, actually,” Cam said. “Against electromagnetic waves. A fiber optic system brings sunlight in from a gadget on the roof. Also, these sections of walls, floor and ceiling have no wires or pipes running through them. That was hard to arrange; it’s why the research room is in such a weird spot.”
Outside the room, it was obvious what he meant. The room intruded on the open floor plan of the office. One side left a twenty-three inch space between its wall and the exterior back wall of the building. On the opposite side, it created a ten-foot space where no wiring or electricity was allowed. It also had natural overhead lighting.
“This’ll be the file room,” Cam said. “There are twenty years of experiments to be catalogued.”
“No file cabinets?”
“I haven’t decided what system makes the most sense, yet. And, we’re running on volunteer time, right now. I need to hire a fundraiser.”
“Yeah, you definitely need a non-profit professional. How’re you for money?”
“Almost out.”
Cam led Hunter to his office in the far corner. One wall adjoined Natani’s in the team’s offices nextdoor. There was little in Cam’s space but an impressive desk with a polished golden oak surface incised with a geometric design.