“Okay. I’m going in. Appeal to their sense of public duty. You follow in five in case they have no sense.”
“Got it,” Nat replied.
“Or in case they try to massage me to death.”
“Good way to go.” I saw a miniature Nat smile flicker into existence for a heartbeat.
I opened the front door and stepped into an Asian paradise going to seed. There was an elevated koi pond in the corner with a pair of orange-and-white fish barely swimming. The pump was moving water like a terminal emphysema patient moving air. There was a Buddha on the reception desk along with a Japanese lucky cat, and on the other side was a statue of Ganesh, the Hindu elephant god, sitting next to a Chinese dragon. Behind the counter was an oil painting of Mount Fuji but the frame was decorated with Korean characters. The decor was either an attempt to accommodate every flavor of Eastern culture imaginable or the interior design had been turned over to a small tribe of clueless white people who lived in a flea market and were substantially blind.
Across the countertop and underneath in a display case were about a hundred different oils, salts, candles, lotions and other small containers with big price tags.
A bubble gum girl sat behind the counter. Her gum and her hair were the same shade of cotton candy pink.
“Hey there,” I said. “May I talk to your manager?”
I pasted a pleasant smile on my face.
Bubble gum girl gave me a seen-it-and-heard-it-all-before look. Then her eyes latched on to the gun in its shoulder holster and she froze.
“Manager?” I reminded her.
She stood up and scuttled through a beaded curtain. The curtain gradually settled, and I watched the scattered pattern of different colored beads reassemble themselves into a representation of a pagoda.
Female voices hissed intently at each other behind the beads and the girl returned, preceded by an older woman with a well-coiffed mane of black hair. She had a billboard of green eye shadow on each lid and thin lips run over in a bright red. She used her thin lips to say, “Hello. Welcome to the Starlight Spa. Do you have an appointment, please?”
I showed her my license and said, “I don’t have an appointment, darn it. But I just need to speak to the manager.”
“He’s not in,” Geisha Granny said. She didn’t even look at my license. “Sorry. You make an appointment and come back later.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’m working on a murder investigation, and I know what I’m looking for. How about I just go back to the office and find it?”
I moved toward the beaded curtain. Geisha Granny jumped in front of me. Pretty spry.
“No murder,” she said. “We too busy. You make an appointment and come back later.”
I stepped in and took her hand in mine and slipped my arm around her waist. “I’ll bet you were quite the little dancer in your day,” I said. We swayed together and I turned her around. She didn’t exactly follow my lead, but she weighed maybe ninety pounds so there wasn’t much resistance. “What was your favorite? The Lindy? No. No. You strike me as a tango kind of girl.”
I’d made a full circle and then another half when I let her go. Now I was next to the beaded curtain and she was nearer to the reception counter. I walked through the curtain.
There was a central hallway with a number of rooms along its length. I startled a woman getting a mani-pedi from a girl who looked up at me with surprised almond-shaped eyes as I passed. “Ladies,” I said.
I checked each room going down the hall. There was a space for hairstyling, but most of the rooms had massage tables, except for the one on the end, which had a hot tub and sauna jammed together in the same room. Across from the sauna was the manager’s office, the door standing open.
“We call the police,” Geisha Granny said from behind.
“They’ll be here in about an hour anyway,” I replied over my shoulder. “They’re talking to a judge right now to get a warrant. I just need to see your files before they come down and confiscate all your computers.”
I don’t know where the baseball bat came from, but Granny had a pretty decent swing. There was a sharp “Crack!” as an honest-to-Betsy Louisville Slugger collided with the back of my head. It wasn’t a home run kind of swing as Granny didn’t really have the strength. But she had good bat speed and I was willing to give her a ground-rule double out of courtesy.
I’d hardly felt the hit. There was a little nudge and it felt like someone was bumping into the entire back half of my body all at once. That was it. The shield was working. It spread the impact over a wide area so the overall effect was minimal. Almost non-existent.
Cool.
I was probably less surprised than Geisha Granny, if that’s possible after being sucker-whacked. I managed to turn around and keep a straight face. More-or-less. Geisha Granny’s eyebrows shot up and almost disappeared underneath her hair. I snatched the bat out of her hands and she unleashed a string of Mandarin at me. She was either swearing or trying to exorcise a demon. Maybe both. Her gestures told me volumes about what she thought of me and, most likely, the legitimacy of my birth.
I went into the empty office. The computer was up and running and ripe for the picking. I tapped on the keyboard and the system prompted me for a password. Fortunately, I had a master key. As Luck would have it.
Before Nat had fired that college kid, the one who was the poster boy for harassment, I’d hired him to do a job for me. His work now resided on a thumb drive that I, with malice and forethought, plugged into the Starlight Spa’s computer.
A prompt came up on the screen: “Continue?”
I clicked “Yes.” Then I kicked back and watched the fireworks on the screen as the software chewed up the computer’s password request and spit out the bones. Then it began copying files. It plowed through the directories like the Miami Dolphins’ offensive line in Super Bowl VIII, which was impressive.
The task was well underway when an eclipse happened.
The light in the room dimmed by half and I looked up to see a moon-sized man standing in the doorway. More like filling the doorway.
He was wearing an enormous Hello Kitty shirt, large enough for an entire three-generation Japanese family to picnic under.
In the face, he was Polynesian. Odds were even money he was Tongan. In the body, he was a mountain ape. Heavy on the mountain. I guessed he was about six-four and three-hundred fifty pounds. He was Stained too and the pattern was familiar enough that it made me gulp.
I sat back in the chair feeling a first rush of panic. This was Not Good.
“Are you the manager?” I said. “Boy, I’m glad to meet you. I was just going to leave a message for you on this computer but it’s not letting me in. Guess I don’t need to leave a note now. What’s your name?”
The Tongan stood there, blocking my only avenue of escape. He gave me the “come on, let’s go” sign with a hand the size of a pot roast. I got up off the chair.
“Okay. I know. I make an appointment and come back later.”
I saw the punch coming. The guy was too big to move fast but he had momentum on his side. He was probably used to knocking guys out with one of his eight-pound fists and then chucking them out. Once the fist started moving, it was hard to stop. I leaned away from it and squinted, anticipating the blow instinctively. The meat of his knuckles mashed up against my shield. I simultaneously felt the impact across the whole left side of my body and heard the pop of several bones in his hand breaking.
He grunted and that was the whole of his reaction. I’d fought big men before. Not this big, but the Marines were a breeding ground for Neanderthals with something to prove. While they had size and strength, it usually came at the cost of stamina and speed. Not this guy.
I tried to edge around the Tongan’s side, but there was no way to get through the door as long as he was standing upright. He still had one goo
d hand, which he used to grab me by the arm and toss me across the room like Jaws tossing James Bond. I caught myself on the edge of the desk and went at him, punching him on his weak side. It was problematic at best to reach his head with any force. He was just so darn tall and wide. My fist barely snapped his head back. I took a shot at his midsection, but it didn’t connect with any solidity. It was like fighting the marshmallow man from Ghostbusters with fists instead of proton packs.
He let me take a few more ineffectual swings at him. I knew he was just letting me find out how much he could take opposed to how much I could dish out. That equation was definitely in his favor. I got too close to his good hand and I found myself flying into the nearby wall. I was either landing harder or my shield was wearing down.
I tried to figure what his endgame might be. He clearly didn’t want to move from that doorway. When I feinted and dodged he wasn’t tempted to come after me. He swung at me if I got too close but otherwise he was rooted to the spot between the jambs. I could pull my gun on him but we both knew I wasn’t going to shoot him.
Finally, he stumbled forward into the room.
Nat had bulled his way in from the hall and had enough mass to displace the Tongan a couple feet, at least when the big guy wasn’t expecting it.
The Tongan turned to face the new threat.
Outside the Marines, everything I needed to know to fight giants I’d learned from watching movies. I jumped on the Tongan’s back and locked up his head with one arm around his neck and used the other to add leverage. Following suit, the Tongan backed up hard and we slammed into the other wall.
Oof. I felt that one.
“Got him?” Nat asked.
“This is going to take a while,” I replied. “He’s still getting air.”
I could hear the Tongan’s inhalations growing breathier, but his neck was so thick I was having a hard time choking him out.
“Heavy bag,” I said.
Nat picked up on my cue. The heavy bag is the big hanging sack of sawdust that boxers use to build their stamina and practice body work. It took a lot of energy to punch the heavy bag again and again. It raised your heart rate pretty quickly when you worked it. I was hoping the same would be true for the heavy bag getting worked.
Nat was an expert. It would have been a pleasure to watch him go at it if I weren’t hanging on for dear life. Nat danced in and landed a few blows and hopped back out, changing positions and staying away from the Tongan’s wide swings. I couldn’t cut off his air completely, but we could make his body work harder so he’d need more oxygen. Plus he was bearing my weight, which stressed his system even more. His breathing grew more labored as Nat kept up the strike-and-retreat. The Tongan wasn’t getting enough air to keep up. It took a couple of minutes but the big man finally sank to his knees. I held on to make sure he wasn’t faking it. After another long minute he grew woozy. His brain was starved and at last he slumped to the floor.
I rolled off and checked his pulse and it was strong. I was glad.
“I know your head will be . . . wait.” I looked at Nat. “What is the line? Your head will ache when you wake but dream of big girls? What’s that line from the Princess Bride?”
Nat was no help.
I looked down at the sleeping giant. I wasn’t eloquent, but I meant it when I said, “Sorry about the headache. Have happy dreams of fat chicks.”
I grabbed my thumb drive and we moved into the hallway.
“Get what you need?” Nat asked.
“Think so. What took you so long to get in here?”
Nat didn’t answer directly. When we reached the reception area he pointed at the corner with his chin. On the floor were three Asian guys, all of them unconscious but still breathing.
Then I understood the Tongan’s plan. He was just keeping me busy until these guys could get here. Didn’t turn out to be a good plan though—my cavalry beat his cavalry when Nat came in and cleaned up.
“Oh,” I said. “Okay. So you got these three guys while I was taking care of the Tongan. Pound for pound, that makes us even.”
Nat showed no reaction at all.
Geisha Granny and the Bubble Gum Girl had pressed themselves against the wall. Granny cut loose with another string of Mandarin as we walked out the door. I didn’t understand anything she said, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t “Thanks for coming.”
Chapter Fifteen
Psycho Stuff
“Got some results from your bullet and casing,” Erin said.
She was alone in the lab now. Sean “Mt. Graverest” Graver having been called out to examine a crime scene at the beach.
Erin gave me the casing first, back in its baggie. It had been dusted for “friction ridges” and was covered in pink swirls. “Ah, you’ve given it a woman’s touch,” I said.
“All about the contrast,” she replied. “If you don’t mind my saying so, your handling was pretty sloppy.”
This was the police professional in her coming out. I didn’t take offense. “Why do you say that?”
“The only fingerprints I could identify on there are yours.”
“What?” I looked at the prints though the plastic. My new eyesight made it easy for me to see the whorls and lines of pink on the brass. I compared my thumb with one of the prints. There was a little scar that I’d had since before I could remember. That, along with the pattern of ridges, confirmed she was right.
“I found this at my office. Right before the King’s liondog had me going home to open the silver gate. Actually, the Korean guy downstairs said a little kid had gone into my office. If anyone’s prints should be on here, they should be his. I remember picking up the casing with a napkin—the same napkin we burned last night. I don’t remember ever touching it with my bare hands.”
Erin patted my shoulder. “Those prints are yours. 99.9% certain.”
“No, I’m sure you’re right. How about the bullet?”
“I read a copy of the report. No prints, but the bullet and casing are the same round and they were used in the sniper rifle collected from Mr. Mayer. Mr. Mayer has already admitted to the attempted shooting. We can corroborate with physical evidence now, if we need to.”
“It’s up to the district attorney,” I said. “I’m not pressing charges. Especially since I know he was being manipulated.”
“Do you know where he got the rifle and ammunition?” Erin asked.
“He doesn’t remember.”
Erin smiled. It was electric.
“Mr. Mayer may not remember, but the bullet does.”
I recalled Erin talking about this before. “This is that psychotic thing you were talking about,” I said.
“Psychometry,” she corrected me. “I can see the history of an object. Who has touched it, where it has been. I just got a hold of the bullet, so I haven’t taken a magical look yet. Would you like to see?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then come along, underling,” she said.
“Underling? Is that what you call the mate of a helpmeet?”
“No. That would be ‘helpless,’” she said.
“Ouch.” Man, she made me smile.
I followed her into the back of the lab where there were several small rooms. There were offices for each of the medical examiners, some storage spaces, and some rooms for processing evidence.
Erin entered the last room and I followed, the helpless underling.
There were stacks of supplies for analyzing different things, including boxes and bottles labeled things like “cyanoacrylate” and “glacial acetic acid” alongside a small refrigerator with a glass door holding more bottles. All Erin was looking for was a silver bowl. It was at the bottom of a stack of plastic bowls. She took it down off the shelf.
“Better lock the door,” she said.
I closed the door and locked it. “Could be sca
ndalous,” I said.
She didn’t respond to that. I wondered if I shouldn’t have said it or if she was just preparing to focus on the job at hand.
The bullet went into the bowl along with enough water to fill it halfway.
“I can get a clearer impression if I’m touching the object directly. But this way . . . well, you’ll see,” she said.
Erin put her fingers on the silver rim. I deduced that the rim of the bowl was the circle she would use in creating the spell. She spoke softly and the words were melodious and strange. That pale blue glow emanated from her fingertips and she drew a neon line around the rim of the bowl. The circle snapped shut with the sound of a bell. She continued half-chanting, half-singing. As she moved her fingers around the rim of the bowl, images surfaced on the top of the water. The first image was Erin. It looked like her face had been projected onto the water’s surface.
“Cool,” I said.
The next image was me. She continued moving her hands. I realized that when she moved her hands counter-clockwise, the images shown receded backward in time. She spun the images backwards, going faster. Sometimes she stopped and moved clockwise, going forward in time, to catch a glimpse of something or someone that she had passed.
Most of the images were of Charles Mayer. Some of the images included his surroundings, like the interior of his truck. Sometimes there were stretches of darkness with no discernible details. Sometimes there were sounds, ragged voices. Ranting. Crying. The voices were loud in the closed room.
With a deft touch, Erin spun the images until she found the day Charles Mayer shot at me. It wasn’t like watching a movie, the images sometimes moved, stuttering, repeating or jumping. Or not doing anything at all. But one image was clear, sharply detailed, and as heart-wrenching as it was frightening. The image of Charles Mayer, rifle at his shoulder, finger on the trigger, and pure hatred shining in his eyes.
I forgot to breathe for a minute until Erin started spinning the images again. Through the scenes, we met Mrs. Mayer as well. A middle-aged housewife, confused, trying to calm an unreasoning and angry husband. Back further. Mr. Mayer, looking at blank photos, weeping. I was glad she didn’t dwell there. Finally, there were new people. Possibly in the massage parlor, but the details were blurry and non-descript. Then a face, warped by the speed of the image.
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