The Killing Hands

by P. D. Martin

  “Good idea.”

  “We also have an Asian Crime Unit. I’ll give them a heads-up, too.”

  “Will the case be reassigned?” I ask.

  “Maybe. Depends how it pans out. DEA might want to take the lead.”

  Drugs and gangs are big business, especially in L.A., and there are multiple agencies and task forces involved, with local, state and federal law-enforcement personnel. At the federal level the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is a player because gangs are often involved in illegal firearms, and likewise with the DEA and drugs. Then you’ve got the United States Custom Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the US Attorney’s Office, the IRS…the list goes on. And unfortunately we don’t necessarily all play nice together. Lots of cops resent the FBI—see us as elitist egotists who take the credit for their hard work—and the DEA is referred to as “Don’t Expect Anything” in some cop circles. We’re just one big happy family.

  “What about task forces?” I ask.

  “Yeah, we’ve got a few of them to consider, especially in the wider county area.”

  “Let’s start with the Safe Streets task force here in L.A.” The Bureau runs the Safe Streets project, which has over one hundred and forty task forces around the country. Given it’s Bureau-run and I know at least a couple of the FBI agents on it, it makes sense for me to take that one. “I’ll contact Safe Streets here and you can follow up with LAPD.”

  “Okay. The ATF also runs Violent Crime Impact Teams. You wanna contact them?”

  “Sure.” I jot the task down. “Any other updates?”

  “Not really. We’ve run all the license plates from the parking lot and I’ve got officers doing the initial interviews with owners at the moment. Nothing looks out of the ordinary…yet.”

  “Okay.”

  “Well, catch ya later.” Ramos hangs up.

  I figure our victim’s name is the most important thing, so I get moving on the fingerprint search. My first point of contact, as always, is Brady’s assistant, Melissa. She’s got her finger on the pulse and seems to know a helluva lot of people in L.A. law enforcement. Maybe her knowledge extends to the State Department and, if not, I’m sure she’ll be able to point me in the right direction.

  Sure enough, a couple of phone calls later, I’m on the line with Lara Rodriguez from the US State Department.

  “Hi, Ms Rodriguez. I’m Special Agent Sophie Anderson with the FBI.”

  “Hey. What can I do for you, Sophie? And please, call me Lara.”

  “Thanks, Lara. We’ve got a John Doe who we think may be a foreign national. I’d like to e-mail you his prints for you to check your database.”

  “Sure.” She spells out her e-mail address.

  “I’ll send the prints to you now.”

  “I’ll give you a call the minute I get something.”

  “That’d be great. Thanks.” I’d missed a call when I was talking to Rodriguez, so I dial up my voice mail. Ramos.

  “Hi, Anderson. Joe De Luca from the DEA can’t meet us until late this afternoon, so I’ve set up a five-thirty with him. Catch ya later.”

  I delete the message and add the 5:30 p.m. appointment into my calendar. Time to do some walking. My first stop is Agent Pasha Petrov, who reports to George Rosen and heads up the FBI’s gang unit here in L.A. Petrov’s first-generation American, and speaks fluent Russian. It makes him a major asset for dealing with organized crime run by the Russians in L.A. He consults to at least a couple of the Safe Streets task forces in L.A. Petrov also happens to share a surname with a nasty serial killer I was lucky enough to apprehend—but Petrov is a very common name in Russia and Bulgaria.

  He looks up as I approach. “Agent Anderson. What brings you here?” His ice-blue eyes contrast his friendly tone, but I’m used to his eyes now and realize they’re alert rather than cold. This is the first time I’ve come directly to Petrov, although we see each other in the weekly division-head meetings. Over the past few months I’ve discovered he’s worked for the FBI in New York as well as L.A. and has particular experience with the Russian Mafia and to a lesser extent some of the Asian gangs and organized crime operations.

  “Hey. I’m looking into a John Doe, and it seems it might be gang related.”

  “What you got so far?”

  “Victim was found in Little Tokyo early Sunday morning. Detective Ramos from LAPD sent around an e-mail with his pic and we heard back from Agent Joe De Luca at DEA. Our John Doe was photographed coming out of a house in Long Beach.”

  “Yeah, I saw that e-mail from the LAPD. And I know Joe. We both consult to the Los Angeles Gang Impact Team.”

  “Safe Streets?” I ask, also noticing the use of Agent De Luca’s first name—they must know each other well.

  “That’s right. The Gang Impact Team is this area’s Safe Streets task force.”

  I nod. “Is there anyone else I should be talking to? Other task forces?”

  “The e-mail should be enough for the moment. It would have gone to all the relevant people. You meeting with Joe?”

  “Yeah, five-thirty this afternoon.”

  He nods. “De Luca is good. He knows what he’s doing.”

  “What about the ATF?”

  “I’ll give the L.A. head a quick call but he would have got the e-mail with the pics, too.”

  “Great. That’s it. See you at tomorrow’s meeting.”

  Petrov gives me a mock salute. “See you then. And keep me in the loop on this one.”

  With the fingerprints moving and my ass covered in terms of who should know about our vic’s possible connection with the Asian Boyz, I’ve got some time up my sleeve. I could continue working this case, or I could try to get a chunk done on the arcade victim, James Santorini. Realistically, things could change a lot after our 5:30 p.m. meeting, so it might be better to put this case on hold. I decide now is as good a time as any to dedicate to the fourteen-year-old boy that’s been on my case list for two weeks. This job is all about juggling cases and sometimes it’s hard to listen to your head and not your heart. But my head’s won out for too long on this one.

  To give myself the biggest chunk of time possible on Santorini’s murder, I work through lunch, shoveling down a quick sandwich at my desk. Not that eating at my desk is unusual for me. At 2:30 p.m. I give Ramos a call to let him know I’m not going to make the ballistics run-through. He’s busy, too, going over the initial reports on the cars at the parking lot, so we agree that Hart can call us with the findings once she’s done.

  It’s 4:00 p.m. when Hart calls. “Hey, Anderson. I’ve got Ramos on the line, too.”

  “Hi.” I get us straight down to business. “How’d you do, Hart?”

  “In terms of daylight, I tried quite a few different simulations of the sun’s position, and it was only in the early morning light, when the sun was shining directly in my eyes while I aimed at the light, that it was hard to see the bulbs.”

  “I still don’t see him taking the shot in daylight,” Ramos says. “It’s just too risky in terms of witnesses. Even with a silencer.”

  “Agree,” I say.

  “Yes, but I needed to try all the options.”

  “Fair enough,” Ramos says. “Go on.”

  “Dusk works, too. I could still see the bulbs quite clearly.”

  “And nighttime?” I ask.

  “It was a three-quarter moon that night and clear skies, so the shooter would have had a little extra light, but even so, during the simulation I couldn’t make out the bulbs. The brightness of the panels against the dark sky made it impossible. I couldn’t even make out the four distinct panels.”

  “But broad daylight?” Ramos voices his doubts again.

  “Well, I did have a thought on that. I couldn’t see them, but I still managed to shoot out the bulbs.” She takes a breath. “The shooter could have made the shot at night if he studied the lights during the day,” she says.

  “Either way, it confirms—” My train
of thought is interrupted by sudden and intense nausea.

  It’s dark, and a few parked cars surround me. I look around, somewhat cautiously, but my heartbeat has barely risen above its resting rate of sixty-seven. Convinced I’m alone, I line up my gun’s sights, breathe out and pull the trigger. The light shatters, and the edge of the parking lot is instantly darker. Flashlight in hand, I look for the bullet and pick it up. I never leave clues. Three more bullets later, my mission is accomplished.

  I’m sitting down, tied to a chair, when the deafening sound of a gun going off close range hits me. Searing pain follows.

  “You there, Anderson?”

  It’s Ramos’s voice I hear first.

  “Yeah, sorry.”

  “Are you okay?” Hart asks.

  I think on my feet. “Fine. The phone went dead this end. You?” I try to bring my heart rate down with a few deep, but quiet breaths. Unlike the shooter in my vision, my heart is pounding.

  “Um…I guess it did here, too,” Hart replies. “You cut out just as you were saying something about ‘it confirms.’”

  “Oh, yeah.” I bite my lip. “It confirms that the murder was planned. Premeditated.” It was always more likely that the light was taken out before the murder, but until now we couldn’t rule out the possibility that someone killed our vic in the heat of the moment and then shot out the light in an attempt to cover their tracks.

  “I’m still surprised there aren’t any witnesses,” Ramos says. “Even to the sound of the shot.”

  “Chances are he used a silencer,” says Hart, “but without a bullet it’s impossible to tell.”

  “He’s been careful, all right.” I try to focus on the conversation and not the vision.

  “It’s good to confirm the murder was planned,” Ramos says. “Thanks, Hart.”

  “No problem…but I still wish we had a bullet.”

  “Yeah, a bullet would be nice.”

  “So would an ID,” I add, knowing we’ll never find a bullet.

  “Well, I’ll leave the ID with you guys. I’ll send you my written report in a day or two.”

  “Great, thanks again, Hart. Anderson, you want to stay on the line?”

  “Sure.” I don’t really want to talk to Ramos—I want the time and space to think about the vision, but I can’t tell him that.

  Once Hart hangs up, Ramos says, “Just thought I’d check in. I’m still working on the cars, but nothing stands out so far. You?”

  “It’s a waiting game my end.” I bite my lip, eager to get off the phone. “I’ll call you if the State Department comes back with an ID, otherwise see you at the DEA at five-thirty?”

  “Okay. Ciao.”

  As soon as I hang up, I replay the vision. The first part was definitely related to our Little Tokyo victim. I recognize the parking lot and the light, although realistically those types of lights are fairly common, being used in smaller playing fields and most outdoor parking lots. But the detail of shooting out that type of light is too specific to be anything but our light, our case. And the killer picking the bullets up ties in with the crime-scene team’s assumption that the killer must have cleaned up after himself. Again, the darkness marries with our thoughts to date on the killer’s actions. Nothing new there. But the second part of the vision doesn’t make sense…not yet. I was in the role of a victim, shot. But our vic didn’t get shot. And he wasn’t sitting down or tied up.

  I spend another fifteen minutes trying to find something useful in the vision or induce another one before moving back to the arcade case. I make good progress and by the time my phone rings again at 4:45 p.m. I’ve got the bare bones of the profile ready for the LAPD.

  I fish my phone out of my bag and flip it open. “Agent Anderson speaking.”

  “Agent Anderson, it’s Lara from US State.”

  “I was hoping it was you.”

  “Sorry I couldn’t get back to you sooner, Sophie. One of those days.”

  “I hear you. Did you get a match?” I ask, flipping over my notebook to a new page.

  “Sure did. His name’s Jo Kume.”

  I scribble the name down as Rodriguez spells it out for me.

  “Entered on a Japanese passport. Does the name mean anything to you?”

  “No. You guys got anything on him?”

  “Not much. It’s his first time visiting the US. He listed a hotel in Monterey Park as a contact.”

  “Monterey Park…that’s not too far from where his body was found. Can I have those details?”

  “I’ll e-mail you all the info from his entry documentation.”

  “Great. Thanks, Lara.”

  “You’re welcome. Have a nice day.”

  “You, too,” I say before hanging up and immediately punching in Ramos’s number. “Ramos, it’s Anderson. We’ve got a name.”

  “Hallelujah.”

  “Jo Kume.”

  “You run him yet?”

  “Not yet. I’m just about to leave for our DEA meet. But State says it was the guy’s first visit to the US, so I doubt we’ll have anything on him.”

  “What time is it?” He pauses. “Darn it, I better get moving, too. I’ll get someone to plug his name in, just in case.”

  “My contact’s going to e-mail through the full details, including the hotel name he put on his form.”

  “It might be a false one, but can you ring those details through to me ASAP?”

  “Sure. It’ll come into my BlackBerry.”

  “See you soon.”

  While a bullet would have been nice, a name’s mighty damn fine, too.

  Six

  In the car on the way to L.A.’s DEA office, I replay my vision again, trying to make sense of the second part. I was sitting down, tied up, but that doesn’t gel with our vic. And why was it familiar?

  The connection hits me as I’m swinging into East Temple Street, only minutes away from the DEA office. It’s familiar because it’s not the first time I’ve seen it—I dreamed it the other night. Could our killer have struck before? Shot someone else, too?

  Inside the DEA office, a security guard signs me in and sends me to the sixth floor. When I step out of the elevator, a man in his early thirties greets me.

  “Agent Anderson? I’m Joe De Luca.”

  I shake his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  De Luca sports a shaved head with black stubble only on the back half of his skull. His sparkling dark brown eyes, plump lips and relatively unlined face give a better indication of his age than the receding hairline.

  “Is Detective Ramos here yet?” I ask.

  “He arrived a couple of minutes ago.” De Luca points to the corner of the building. “I’ve got us set up in a meeting room.”

  I follow De Luca through the open-plan office to a meeting room that looks out across East Temple Street.

  Ramos stands up. “Hey, Anderson. What’s up?”

  “Hi, Detective.” I take a seat next to him, and once I’m seated he sits back down. “How’d you do with the hotel?” Before I was even out of the FBI parking lot Rodriguez’s e-mail had come in, with full details on Kume, including his hotel in Monterey Park. I’d immediately called them through to Ramos.

  “He was staying there all right. I’ve got people poring over the place as we speak.”

  “This is the hotel your vic was staying in, I take it?” De Luca asks.

  “Yup. Lincoln Plaza.” Ramos wiggles his phone. “And I just got a call—there’s a laptop sitting on our vic’s desk, so we’re getting a computer forensics person out there, too. Now we’re cooking.”

  I smile. “Sounds like you’ve got it covered.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The FBI also has computer and forensic experts, but at this stage we’re just consulting, helping out with a profile. Ramos is the man in charge.

  Ramos flicks open his case file. I let him take De Luca through the bare bones of our case, including the autopsy. He finishes up with the result of his search on Jo Kume. Not surprisingly
, nothing popped up under his name here in the US—no driver’s license, no car registered in his name, no criminal record, no traffic offences.

  “The State Department e-mailed me through his full entry details.” I pull out my BlackBerry and navigate to the recent e-mail. “He’s a Japanese national, but he flew in from Singapore on November 24. Singapore wasn’t a connecting flight for him, it was his point of origin. We’ll need to contact Singapore to get more information on him. I’m going to give Interpol a call first thing tomorrow.”

  De Luca nods. “It’s hard to know if it’s gang related when we don’t know much about the vic.”

  Ramos leans back in his chair. “But it seems likely, given his association with the Asian Boyz, yes?”

  De Luca rubs the palm of his hand over the black stubble on his skull. “I’d say so. But I’d still like more on Kume before we jump to that conclusion. Like maybe he’s got a criminal record in Singapore or Japan.”

  “The Japanese are part of the Visa Waiver Program, so he wouldn’t have had to organize a visa in Singapore,” I say.

  “So no criminal check over there.”

  “Exactly.” I scroll down Rodriguez’s e-mail. “He claimed he was entering the States as a tourist, and listed his return date as January 1. He listed his occupation as ‘self-employed,’ he didn’t declare anything coming in…no money, no food, no drugs.” I manage a small laugh. “But he wasn’t searched.”

  “He looked and acted like a well-presented businessman from Japan,” Ramos says. “Probably nothing to trigger alarm bells with customs.”

  “Exactly.” I turn to him. “I was thinking of swinging by Lincoln Plaza on the way home. Kume’s hotel room might give me an insight into our victim.” Victimology is one of the most important elements when constructing an offender profile. Without extensive information on the victim, it’s hard to extrapolate details about the offender.

  “Where do you live?” he asks me.

  “Westwood.”

  “Way home?” He raises an eyebrow. Monterey Park is in the opposite direction to Westwood.