Despite all I had done in my life, being a father was the greatest thing I was and ever could be. As I gave Cassie her omelette, things were well in the world again. There wasn’t going to be any phone call to interrupt, and we would have time to talk and heal from the events that had just occurred. I couldn’t think of anyone else I’d like to share that moment with.
Book 2: Trauma
Chapter 1
The City of Philadelphia is known as the city of brotherly love which comes from the Quaker families who founded it in the seventeenth century. It grew to be a large town of manufacture and industry due to its unique juncture between two rivers: The Schuylkill and the Delaware. As it was across from Camden and other towns which rose and fell with the hard industry in the United States, Philadelphia experienced many of the pains felt by other north eastern cities and dealt with them better than some, not quite as good as others. It dominated the lowlands that began at the river and swept up to the Pocono Mountains. Pittsburgh, the other major city in Pennsylvania, situated far away on the other side of the mountains, seldom interacted with Philly.
Lee Su Yuan rose early on Monday morning. He needed to get to work in his new position over in the ninth district. He’d transferred in from his previous position up north in Chinatown. The city wanted him to stay near the Chinese districts since he spoke Mandarin, Cantonese and several other Chinese languages. Language acquisition came quick to Yuan. He grew up in a household where everyone spoke a different language. His father was from a small town outside the city of Peking, his mother from Taiwan, one set of grandparents from Fujian and another from the border near Manchuria. He remembered the day he asked his mother when he would get his own language. She’d glared at him and told him not to be late for the school bus.
He took out his suit and studied it. Not bad, but the cleaner could have done better. He needed to talk to Mrs. Kim about it. Yuan scanned his bedroom to make certain everything was in order as he despised dirt and filth. His world was one of neatness and order. Yuan’s family was the same way; his mother would inspect his and his brothers’ room every morning. It was the only way a house with twelve people living in it could function. His parents saved and worked hard to bring their extended family to the New World and they did not intend to lose what little they had.
He looked into the dog crate and found it empty. Not good, she’d left without permission. He would need to work with her on obedience. Molly was a good pet, but Yuan had only owned her for the past three months. She really should have let him know she needed to leave the crate first. He sighed while knotting his tie, so much to teach this one and he lacked the time he needed to do it.
“I had to use the bathroom, Master,” the tall blond said as she walked naked out of the bathroom. “I’m sorry but I didn’t want to wake you.”
“I’ll overlook it this time,” he told her while strapping on his gun holster and making sure the badge was on its holder, “but you will need to improve in the future. Now, let me go over the list of what I need you to do today before you leave.”
**********************
Mike Williams fumbled through the pockets of his overcoat trying to find the medallion with his badge on it. It was in his pocket, he was sure. At least he thought it was in the pocket, oh, there it was! He took it out and slung the badge around his neck as he walked into the police district office. It was the start of a new day and he was supposed to meet his new partner. He couldn’t remember the man’s name, but it sounded Asian. That’s right, they were transferring him from the Chinatown district because his record was spotless. Good, he could use some help down in this part of town.
At 42, Williams had lived in Philly all of his life. He couldn’t imagine any better place to live. He had the same row house in Grey’s Ferry where he’d lived since he graduated the police academy. He loved his neighborhood. Where else could you hear a bunch of Italian kids walking down the street during Easter week discussing transubstantiation while their gold chains swung back and forth? He loved the little pizza shops and the sense of knowing your neighbor who lived six inches on the other side of your wall.
A confirmed bachelor, he still had a good interest in the opposite sex, although they returned the favor less and less. The coffee cup he carried in his right hand sloshed again and spilt over his sleeve. Damn, it would leave a stain. Oh, well, it matched the one on the other sleeve. He waved at the duty sergeant as he went through security and into the station house. Time to get to work. Time to keep the city safe from all the miscreants. At least they were making progress according to the police commissioner. Although, some days he wondered if they were accomplishing anything.
“New guy here yet?” he asked the man behind the counter as he walked past Sergeant Young, an older black man who had served longer than anyone else had at the station house.
“He’s been in the office for the past fifteen minutes,” Young snapped at him. “I wish you could be so punctual. I see we’re two minutes till check-in time as usual.”
“What would you do without me?” he laughed while heading down the hall. Time to see what this new man looked like.
At first, he was a bit surprised. His new partner wore a suit that had to have cost a thousand dollars. He stopped and made sure he’d entered the right office. Was this a new detective on the force or a fashion model? Deciding he had the right door, Williams walked in, put his coffee down on his desk and regarded the new man.
“Your cup,” the new detective said. “It will leave a ring on the desk. Don’t you have a coaster?
“Uh, yeah, somewhere around here,” Williams said while sliding the pad under it. “I need to find it.” He opened the drawer beneath him and acted as if he had one there. In truth, Williams hadn’t seen a coaster in the past five years and then it was one he brought home from the bar.
“So you are the new guy?” he said to the man sitting at the other desk. It was at that point he noticed the desk of his new partner.
It was immaculate. No, that wasn’t descriptive enough. The new detective’s desk had a piece of plate glass on the top with important papers beneath it. The official computer they were issued was on top of that and booted up. Behind him were the various awards and commendations he’d received from the department. At least one picture was of Yuan shaking hands with the police commissioner in a patrolman’s uniform. He’d come up from the ground, which surprised Williams. What the heck was he doing in Philly? Couldn’t he find a nice position with some main line department where all he had to do was investigate the occasional purse snatch at the train station? Williams looked at the wall and noted several advanced degrees from a number of local colleges.
The new man stood up and extended his hand to Williams. Williams stood up and took it, the coffee stains apparent on his overcoat.
“Mike Williams.”
“Lee Yuan.”
They shook and sat back down. Yuan regarded his new partner, the first one assigned to him since making the rank of detective. This man was a walking garbage pile, but all his friends down at the FOP hall claimed he was brilliant. It didn’t matter to Yuan so long as he could do the job.
“Let’s head on out,” Williams told his new partner. “We’ve got a stiff down at the Kimmel Center. Time to go check it out.”
Williams noticed Yuan frown at the word “stiff”. Guess he’d have to clean up his language. His last partner, Quoit, was an old style police detective who’d taught him everything he knew. Quoit was retired and sent him post cards from the South every few months which featured big fish next to bigger lakes. He was living down there having earned the pension the city of Philadelphia sent him. Quoit was the color of Indian ink, in a well at midnight, and the size of a mountain. Williams missed him. He was a legend on the force. Other cops swore he pulled a robbery suspect out of a burning car with just one of his massive hands.
As they pulled up in Williams’ old Volvo, Yuan spotted the crime scene technicians finishing
off their work. The coroner’s van was there, waiting for permission to move the deceased. A small crowd of sightseers already lined the street, even at that early hour. Doc Stanford, one of the medical examiners stood there talking to one of the technicians and making notes on his tablet computer. Williams slapped the blue flashing light on top of his unmarked car and walked over with Yuan to the scene of the crime.
“So what do we have here, Doc?” he asked the older white man with a goatee. Stanford wore his usual tweed jacket and latex gloves. He turned to Williams and pointed to the body covered by a cloth.
“Blunt force trauma to the head,” he told him. “Pretty nasty head blow. She died instantly. We have the pictures and information on the network; you’ll be able to access it within the hour. We’re finishing up our work now.”
The two detectives went over to the body and put on a pair of latex gloves each as William picked up the edge of the cloth and looked at the body under it. The woman was dressed in a long gown with a wrap around her shoulders. Perfect for the opera and it was the last thing she would ever wear in life. He could not tell much by her face, but she appeared to be Hispanic. He offered the cloth’s edge to his new partner who held it and looked intently for a few seconds before letting it drop.
“Any I.D. on her?” Williams asked the ME. “Oh, by the way this is my new partner, Lee Yuan. He transferred in today from the North.”
“Glad to meet you, Lee,” Stanford said to him. “I’d shake your hand, but it’s not a good idea to do that right now.” Lee nodded as they all had the latex gloves still on their hands.
“Alvarez,” Stanford continued. “Sandra Alvarez. Either of you guys watch soap operas?”
The look on their faces told him the answer.
“I don’t either, but my wife does,” he explained. “She’s been on The Edge of the World for the past five years. My wife’s not going to like hearing this. I don’t know what she was doing outside of the Kimmel Center last night, but I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.” He walked back to the van and talked to the driver for the coroner’s office.
“Well, that is a shame,” Williams said. “I hate to hear these things.”
“It bothers me as well,” Yuan agreed. “All these women wasting their time in front of a television screen when they could be doing more useful activities. I never could understand why they find the lives of fictional characters more real than their own.”
Williams glanced at him. This guy had a lack of empathy, or so it would seem. He never understood soaps either, but most women didn’t “get” his obsession with old crime movies, in spite of his chosen career. Likewise, they didn’t understand his desire to follow the local wrestling matches. However, he saw no reason to make an issue of it.
“Everyone needs an interest outside of who they are,” Williams said to his new partner. “It’s the one true thing I’ve discovered over the years.”
Stanford returned and let them know that the deceased was in Philadelphia to do radio interviews. She was on some kind of promotional tour, but they didn’t know any more about it. He would try to find out more information for the two and pass it on to the district office. They thanked him and went back to Williams battered Volvo. He reached to remove the flasher from the top of the car, but Yuan already had it off for him. They got in his car and drove back to the office.
“They found a piece of pipe,” the new detective said to Williams. “The forensic people will look at it and make sure it has samples of the deceased on it, but I’m betting it matches her DNA.”
“Quite possibly,” William commented as he stopped for a red light. “How long you been with the PPD?”
“Five years. I became a detective last month.”
“Took me seven, but I never went to college. In the old days, you didn’t have to. So are you Chinese or what?”
“Are you white or pale?”
Williams cracked a smile and laughed. “Son, you’ve got a sense of humor, I like that in a copper. I’m Irish on my mother’s side. Welsh on dad’s.”
“Yes, I am Chinese because my parents were born there. I was born here which makes me an American Born Chinese or ABC as some people call it.”
Williams turned to him and spoke in flawless Mandarin: “Which province did your parents live in before they came to this country?”
Yuan turned and stared at him for thirty seconds, not able to believe his ears. This big logei was the last person in the world he would expect to speak Mandarin. “Where did you learn to speak Mandarin?” he asked him in English.
“The army when I enlisted. I grew up speaking Welsh and Gaelic besides the English I heard on the street so I never had any problems picking up a new language. I can handle Russian, Spanish, Portuguese and German too, just never had any interest in learning more. I’m guessing you speak other languages besides Mandarin Chinese and English?” Yuan told him the other languages he spoke.
“So I guess we have more in common than either of us thought,” Yuan laughed. “And here was I thinking you were going to ask me about Chinese food.”
“That was my next question. What’s your favorite place to go eat? I like the Viet noodle place off Spring Garden.”
They parked the Volvo in the municipal garage and went back to the station house, waving at the desk sergeant as they went into the building. Both detectives had their medallions with the badges mounted to them as they went in, but Yuan had his mounted to a gold chain with a leather casing on it. Inside the office, they typed the basics of the crime scene investigation and checked the PPD network to see if any of the forensic department’s results were available. Williams phoned the office. They told him it would be another two hours.
By the time they were finished, it was lunchtime. Yuan suggested he should drive, so they took his black SUV. As it pulled out of the garage Williams looked it over from the passenger side and commented on its clean condition. Yuan told him he despised filth. As a kid, growing up in cramped quarters, his mother had made it clear that there would be no dirt in her house.
“The last thing you wanted to do when I was growing up,” he told Williams, “was to be caught dropping any trash on the floor. My mother cleaned those floors twice a day and would make you do it a third time if she caught you dropping anything on them.”
“Did she grow up in some place dirty?” Williams asked him. “I’ve heard about guys who’d wipe off a chair before sitting down on it because they grew up in a crappy house.”
“No I think she was always obsessive-compulsive,” he told him. “My grandparents lived with us and they told me even in China she was washing the walls daily.”
They found a parking spot outside the Pho noodle house, as the locals called the Viet places in the area. The Viet noodle house was a new feature in the Philly area. It appeared among the assortment of Asian restaurants ten years earlier, but became popular very quickly. Soon they were popping up everywhere and the new cuisine was a part of the gastronomic scenery.
The hostess found a place for them up near the front of the restaurant and brought them both a pot of tea. Williams checked his watch and watched the street traffic spin along. Spring Garden was an older part of Philadelphia and had endured many changes over the years. It was close to the art museum and Philadelphia Community College, which made it a desirable place to live for the urban professionals who couldn’t afford South Street.
After they placed their orders, each detective pulled out a smart phone to check for any emails from the district or forensic lab. Nothing yet. Yuan stared at Williams coat for a few seconds and finally spoke-up.
“How long have you had that coat?” He asked.
“Five years,” Williams spoke. “You like it? I spent a long time trying find out which one Peter Falk wore in the Columbo series. This was the closest one I could find.”
Yuan laughed. “Seriously, you’ve spent all these years inspired by a TV detective?”
“Why not? I used
to watch him on TV with my parents. I liked Columbo. Everyone thought he was a dolt, but he got his man every time.”
Yuan was about to make another comment when his phone buzzed, he looked at it, texted a message then returned the smart phone to his suit pocket.
“Something from the department?” Williams asked.
“No just a friend who needed to bring me something,” he replied. “She’ll be here in a few minutes.”
The waitress brought them their drinks and Yuan drank his slow. Mike noticed he placed his glass on a particular side of the table when finished. He’d seen other Chinese do the same thing and wanted to ask his new partner about it, but decided not to right now. He’d ask Mrs. Sung down the street about it sometime. He’d managed to learn a lot from her over the years. She had a small grocery store that catered for many of the Asians in his neighborhood. She found it amusing when he talked to her in Mandarin.
Mike’s smart phone buzzed and he picked it up. “The report from forensics is on line,” he announced to Yuan who picked up his phone and accessed the report. They both studied it while the waitress delivered the food.
According to the investigators, the murder appeared to be a random act as Sandra Alvarez left the Kimmel Center. Why she was in the alley behind it was not yet known and they would need to talk to everyone they could find to determine her movements prior to leaving the building.
“Did they find a purse?” Yuan asked Williams.
“A purse?” Williams asked him. “Like the ones women carry?”
“Smaller,” he clarified. “A little purse. Most women who attend opera carry one of those with them when they go to the opera. It’s a special kind of purse.”
“I didn’t see one. Did the report mention finding a purse?” They returned to their phones and read it through. There was no mention of a purse.
The Untimely Death Box Set Page 17