by Sanchez, Bob
Sambath’s chest muscles burned as he pulled himself onto the tread. He sucked in a breath that tore at his lungs, then climbed into the steel seat. The stench of rotted flesh drifting from the pond was almost more than he could bear. In front of him lay a tangle of bodies, motionless except for the occasional spasm that a comrade silenced with a rock. Guards stood by with their automatic rifles. Comrade Bin waved impatiently, so Sambath dropped the blade and shifted into gear. He wanted to drive over Comrade Bin, flatten him with the treads. Maybe that would help him to feel better for an instant before the guards’ bullets ripped through his body. But this machine could never move fast enough, and he probably could not kill even one soldier before he died. A burning bile rose in his throat, and he forced it back down. I am such a squealing little pig, such a coward. But they say they know everything. What if they can read my mind? Then don’t think. He wiped away all thoughts, shut down his mind and accelerated. The bulldozer lurched forward, and as a comrade jumped out of the way, Sambath pushed the bodies into the shallows of the lake.
“Sam. Hey, Sam, snap to. Line one.” Sam looked at Fitchie, puzzled for a moment, until Fitchie nodded toward the blinking light on the telephone. “Your wake-up call, Hot Dog.”
“Sambath Long here.” He folded his lunch bag and put it in the desk drawer.
“Hell-o, Detective Long. Doctor Katsios here.” Demetrios Katsios. Cheerful man, loved his work.
“Dr. Katsios, you--”
“I called about the shooting victim.”
“In the Heights. Bin Chea.”
“Right. Let’s see, some of this you might know. Scalloped shot pattern, gunpowder stippling on the face. Bits of plastic wadding embedded in the skin. That’s consistent with a sawed-off shotgun at three, maybe four feet. Doesn’t blow your head off at that range, you know. To do that, you’ve got to--”
Sam held the phone away from his ear. Don’t tell me this. I’m not a rookie. Just tell me what I need.
“--bounce around inside the skull, causing massive--”
“Dr. Katsios, please tell me what you found out about Bin Chea.”
“That’s what I’m doing. When those pellets can’t exit the skull--”
“I’m in a hurry--”
“All right. Nothing unusual on the external. The subject was five-six, 140 pounds. Had dentures, only three teeth of his own. Nicotine on his fingers, dirt under the nails. The internal showed a malignancy on both lungs. This fellow was already terminal. If the killer had waited six months, he might have saved a couple of shells.”
“Blood type?”
“I’m waiting for lab results. It’ll be on the report.”
Maybe Bin Chea was the devil from his past, and his crimes caught up with him before natural causes did. Good!
Sam chastised himself. For all he knew there was no connection with the man at Little Mountain. And whoever sent Bin Chea to his next life, Sam’s job was to arrest him for murder.
Instead of taking the elevator to the hospital’s fifth floor, Sam bolted up the stairway, two steps at a time, reaching the top floor without breaking a sweat. Three trips a week to Cochran’s Gym had been good for him. The sun reflected down the corridor and off the waxed floor. A whiff of industrial strength cleaner reminded him of Chea’s place, which had seemed so antiseptic.
Near the main desk a woman sat strapped in a wheelchair, and Sam greeted her with a smile and a hello. Her mouth opened as though she were about to speak, but it just stayed open. In her hands she gripped a shawl that looked as gray as her deeply furrowed face. No expression, and only the barest hint of life. Would his grandmother have looked that way if she hadn’t been killed? If she’d been allowed to live out her life?
Finding room 5115 was easy. At the intersection of the main corridors, he looked to his left and saw the red hair and blue uniform of Patrolman McGinnis. She was talking to a nurse. “My friends call me Colleen,” she had said when they first met.
“Morning, Colleen,” Sam said.
“Afternoon, Detective.”
The nurse nodded toward the patient’s room. “She’s all yours. Just a few minutes, please.”
“Has she had any visitors today?”
“No. No one.”
Mrs. Chea, propped up against a pair of pillows, looked as small as a sack of rice. In the middle of the bed her feet made two peaks underneath the sheet. His own grandmother had been Mrs. Chea’s size, no taller than Sam was at age ten. She’d pulled weeds without mercy, grown disciplined ranks of bok choi and orderly files of scallions. Everyone in the neighborhood had called her “Aunt” to her face and “General” behind her back. She hadn’t begun to resemble Mrs. Chea until Grandfather’s funeral, the week before she died.
Mrs. Chea didn’t seem to recognize him from the night before, but he couldn’t fault her for that.
Sam spoke respectfully in Khmer. “Who came to your door last night?”
She closed her eyes and shook her head, and tears flowed down the creases between her cheeks and her nose.
“Does your husband have any enemies that you know of?”
She hesitated for the briefest moment, then said no. A plausible answer if she didn’t know of the letter in the trash. The one that said We know.
“We evicted a family in the spring,” she said. “Filthy people, and they didn’t pay their rent.”
“What is their name?”
She mentioned a name that Sam had heard before. They were a widow and her Battboy son named Chun, a punk who’d spent his share of time in court. Shoplifting, assault, that type of thing. Sympathetic judge, no time served. A damned shame.
“Did they threaten you or your husband?”
“Yes, we had phone calls in the middle of the night. Somebody said to be careful or we’d have an accident.”
Maybe one of the neighbors. Would Nawath Lac have a motive to harass his landlord? “Any troubles with tenants?”
She said no.
“Did your husband go out in the evening?”
“Yes, he had other houses to look after. He’d collect rent or fix things. Those people always complained about something.”
“Any phone calls last night?
“No, I don’t remember any.”
“How long have you lived in Lowell?
“Five years next month.”
“And before that?”
“Long Beach, California.”
“Do you have children?”
“Three, all dead.”
“I am sorry. Where did you and your husband live before the war?”
“In Kratie Province.”
In the east. Near Vietnam, not near Little Mountain at all. “What was his job there?”
“My husband was a teacher.”
“How many houses do you own?”
“We have ten buildings.” He jotted down the addresses; Mersey Street caught his attention. It was in a tough neighborhood.
“Did your husband have another job?”
“No. Taking care of our property kept him very busy.”
“Tell me about the cassette tapes in the other bedroom. What did he do with them?”
“He sold them.”
“Of course. Who were his customers?”
“I don’t know. He never told me who bought them.”
“What is Paradise?” That question earned him a blank look. “The note on one of the boxes--”
Mrs. Chea shook her head. Maybe Bin Chea went to Paradise and didn’t tell his wife. Or she just didn’t have a lie ready.
“Do you have a job?”
“I collect the rent.”
“Can you give me a list of your tenants and business associates?”
“Yes, I can give you a list when I get home.”
“I also need to see canceled checks, account books, diaries, anything you can think of.”
Mrs. Chea hesitated, then began to cry. Was Sam pushing a grieving widow too hard? He felt a twinge of sadness at her pain. “Must I do all this?�
�� she asked.
“We don’t know who killed your husband or why, Mrs. Chea. But the longer we wait, the harder he is to find. Your husband’s business records may give us some answers.”
“Then I will try to help.” Mrs. Chea seemed frail as she wiped away a tear with a bony finger, a dime-sized age spot on the back of her hand.
“The other night, you said ‘Not like this, husband.’ What do you mean?”
“I--I don’t remember saying that, but I expected to grow old with my husband. One day I become a widow, yes of course. Perhaps one morning ten or fifteen years from now he maybe just not wake up, and I prepare an altar to comfort his soul.”
“Who else was in your apartment last night?” Someone who might have lifted Bin Chea’s wallet, which he hadn’t found.
“No one.”
“Are you sure, ma’am?”
“We were alone!” Her voice sounded frantic, and the nurse stepped back into the room.
“I don’t understand. Why did you and your husband already have three bowls of soup on the table?”
She covered her eyes and cried. Maybe she was covering more than her eyes.
“I think you’d better come back later, Detective,” the nurse said.
“Just one more question, Mrs. Chea--” Had a connection existed between the shooting and the kids Bin Chea had chased?
The nurse tugged at Sam’s arm, but he stood firm. “I don’t know what you’re saying to her, but I won’t have you upsetting my patient,” she said. “You’ll have to ask her later.”
Sam kept his tone respectful. “Mrs. Chea, I need to speak to you again. Where do you plan to stay?”
Mrs. Chea stared into a distant corner of the room. “I don’t know where I will stay,” she said. “I suppose I must go back to my apartment.”
Sam allowed the nurse to show him out.
A spotless apartment and chicken soup. Hate mail and worn-out shoes. Who was the third person in the kitchen? Could he have pulled the trigger? No, that didn’t make any sense with the shooter at the door.
If that was the way it happened.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The next morning, Sam walked out to his car to go to work. How many people drifted off to sleep picturing footprints in cement, instead of what they had just done with their wives? The scent of marigolds hung like a fog over the curved driveway, held down by the muggy morning air. On the edge of the flower bed was a crushed begonia in the middle of a footprint. Some people ...
The manila envelope sitting on the front seat wasn’t Sam’s, and it hadn’t been there last night. The writing was in English, in the kind of script people learned in the refugee camps. “For my friend Sambath,” it said. Inside was a thin stack of $100 bills--at least a dozen, all crisp and new. There was no note, no indication of who had left it. Sam looked across the yard past the magnolias and the mowed lawns. No one was around, but someone wearing a man’s shoes had walked across the lawn and left three footprints in the bed’s dark loam.
Sam took a tape measure out of his glove compartment and walked over to the flower bed for a closer look; Sam wore size nines, and the prints looked like size eight running shoes with plenty of tread. Whoever it was had kicked up a little dirt, put his weight on the balls of his feet--a benefactor in a hurry, apparently. A teenager, maybe a small man. Morning traffic must have been picking up, and he didn’t want to dawdle or be seen with his car in the driveway, assuming he had a car.
Where had it come from? No one would likely give him money without a string firmly attached. Make that a rope. A noose. But God, combine this with what he and Julie had already saved, maybe there was enough for a down payment on a house. Well no, but they would be closer. Here it was, cash from heaven, like winning the lottery without even playing. This money could just disappear into his bank account--
No it couldn’t, because Sam would have to answer to his father’s ghost. To Julie, to his own conscience. It was just a fleeting thought, not worthy of him. Besides, this money might have had something to do with Bin Chea’s murder, but what? The guy who messed up the flower bed was probably just a courier.
Sam walked next door and asked a neighbor whether she had seen anyone crossing the lawn at say, five or six a.m. She hadn’t. The man watering his lawn across the street shrugged and said “I see nothing but my eyelids ’til six-thirty.” Mister Coppolino waved at Sam with his cane and said buon giorno. A car had parked in front of Sam’s apartment at about dawn; a man in a white shirt had gotten out and started running toward Sam’s apartment, but Mister Coppolino didn’t pay much attention. He had to care for his ailing wife.
Sam drove to the station without counting the money. He turned it in and obtained a receipt for the fifteen hundred dollars that would sit downstairs in the evidence room. There was a lot of footwork to do, and he had to get back to Bin Chea’s neighborhood. He stopped to speak to Fitchie, who was drinking black coffee and studying a list. A stack of phone books sat on his desk. “Seventeen places with the name Paradise,” he said. “And I’m still in New England.”
“What time did you get here this morning?”
“I don’t know, it was just dark. I was awake anyway, so I just came in. The boys are with Ellen’s mother. By the way--”
Wilkins walked past them, then snapped his fingers and pointed. “Sammy. Fitchie. My office. Now.”
Wilkins looked as though he’d been sucking on a lemon. One of those clear plastic cubes sat on his desk, with photos of his girlfriend and her kids. Of Wilkins and his own kids, standing in front of a 4x4 with a trailer hitch. What star was the lieutenant hitching to? Later, Fitchie would tell Sam that the lieutenant’s ex-wife was on the bottom of the cube.
“You more or less did the right thing,” Wilkins said. “Cash doesn’t just drop in your lap in the middle of a homicide investigation.”
“It was a teenager,” Sam said, “or a man with a slight build. Weighs one-fifty, maybe less. Fancy running shoes with more tread than a Michelin tire.”
Wilkins looked as though he were about to comment, but stopped himself. The rookie Garibaldi stood at the door, trying to get the lieutenant’s attention.
“My prints will be on some of the bills,” Sam continued. “Who else’s are there, I don’t know.”
“Lot of people’s prints will be on them,” Fitchie said. “So they may not tell you much.”
Wilkins had old sweat stains under his arms, and he was starting to sweat again. Saving money on laundry, the extra cash could go right to alimony. “Fitchie’s right,” he said, “half the country could have handled the cash. Needle in a goddamn haystack is what you’re looking for.”
“There will be fewer prints on the envelope,” Sam said. “Mine, maybe the delivery guy’s. He might not have touched the money at all; maybe he was just a runner. I have a bad feeling about this money. I gave Donegan a list of prints to check, Lowell’s ten least wanted.” Wilkins gave him a look. “The ten people we least want walking the streets,” Sam said. “It seems Bin Chea dealt mostly with Asians, so for now it’s mostly Asians on the list.”
Fitchie jotted in his notepad.
“Why do you want to lift prints off a gift?” Garibaldi asked.
Wilkins scraped a piece of tobacco from the tip of his tongue, and fixed his eyes on the rookie. “You know how I said there was no such thing as a stupid question? I was wrong.” Garibaldi winced; thirty years from now he would still be directing traffic, but Wilkins had taken a needless shot at him. “Anyway, we released Bin Chea’s body to his family.”
Released the body? “What was the hurry?” Sam asked.
Wilkins narrowed his eyes. “Hurry? You don’t approve?”
“It’s not that at all, lieutenant. I just didn’t know we had the final ID.”
“Got a match on the prints last night. You and Fitchie work as fast as the feds, we’ll clear this case up in no time.”
Obviously, Wilkins knew all about Fitchie’s situation with Ellen. That Fitchie wouldn
’t spend much time on the street until his crisis had passed. Meanwhile, Fitchie kept his emotions padlocked deep inside his soul.
“Think we have to take a close look at the widow,” Fitchie said. “Chea left a two hundred thousand dollar life insurance policy behind. Wife’s the sole beneficiary.”
Wilkins opened his palms in a there-you-have-it gesture. “Well, there’s your ‘who benefits,’” he said. “The ones ya love, nine times out of ten they’re the ones who get ya. What else, Fitchie?”
“Checked some old notebooks after you called last night. I’d spoken to a guy named Dith Chang once last year, we were watching a tenement burn. Smelled like arson, but we made no arrests. I just learned he did odd jobs for Bin Chea. But what’s interesting is who owned the house.”
Sam leaned forward. “So who was that?”
“I mentioned a trust, right? Who owned the house was Paradise Trust. Bunch of properties, some decent, some kind of shabby.” Fitchie handed Sam a list of addresses.
Comrade Bin. Maybe this was his way of evicting a problem tenant, or maybe it was his way of trying to kill one. But what would Chang have to do with it? “Was anyone hurt in the fire?”
“Couple of smoke inhalations, a firefighter with minor burns, could have been a lot worse.”
“We have to find Chang,” Sam said.
Wilkins slapped a folder on the table. “You gotta find a killer. If tracking down missing people will help that, fine. But the more time goes by, the more likely the killer’s hiding out in East Dog Crap and we’ll never find him. Why do you think he’s important?”
“He may not be. But what if he does more than odd jobs for Bin Chea? Let’s say Chea wants to recoup an investment on a house. He can’t sell it for what he wants, or he can’t sell it at all. And let’s say Chang has a talent with matches.”
“So Chang burns people out and Chea collects the insurance. Torches ‘R’ Us, huh? Tell me how it connects with the murder.”
“An angry tenant,” Fitchie said. “Present or former.”
Of course it could be true. The simplest, least exotic solution was often the best bet. The idea that someone would bring a grudge across the ocean, nurse that grudge for more than fifteen years, perhaps waiting patiently--what had he been waiting for all this time? Opportunity? Courage? Had someone like Khem Chhap been searching all these years for the son of a bitch Chea? No, Lowell was such an obvious place to look that he couldn’t have been looking this long. Still, how often was eviction a motive for murder?