The Collector

by Cameron

  He took a few more steps away. Best to let the crime scene guys finish up. He told himself he was just giving Roland a little space, ignoring the fact that Erika had no such qualms.

  He didn’t want to admit that it could be something else. That suddenly murder had become personal.

  With her sixth sense, Erika was instantly there beside him.

  “I’m fine,” he said, a bit more gruffly than he’d meant to. “Really,” he added, softening his tone.

  She was just worried about him. But that was the problem. He didn’t want her concern, didn’t want anyone to connect the dots and figure out that a homicide detective didn’t have the stomach for the job anymore, couldn’t come in close and stare at those bloody holes where her eyes should have been, dissecting the situation like a professional.

  So he kept to the markings on the wall, focusing there.

  The killer had been in a hurry. Maybe even caught in the act by the relatives who found the body. At first, Seven had thought it was some sort of calligraphy, the kind you see on storefronts or painted on shop windows. But up close, it didn’t look so much like writing. Despite his question to the tech, he was pretty familiar with the different calligraphy in the area.

  He put in a call to the security system guys. He had some passing knowledge about the system in the victim’s house, his brother having installed something similar. Ricky liked to brag about all the bells and whistles.

  From what Seven could see, Tran’s system was heavy-duty, just like Ricky’s. Nothing you would expect in this neighborhood.

  “It was disabled,” Erika said, coming up from behind. “Maybe by the perp.”

  “Or the victim,” he said.

  “Whoever did it,” she answered, “they knew the code.”

  “Which probably means the victim let them inside. Someone she knew?”

  “A client maybe?” Erika asked.

  “A client? So whoever she’d let in would be here for a reading?” He looked at his partner. “Guess she didn’t see it coming?”

  “Funny,” Erika said. “Really, Seven, you should take it on the road.”

  Just then, his cell phone went off. It was a special ring, one he had set up just recently. He could feel his guts twist at the familiar tone, a neutral arpeggio.

  Erika looked up. She recognized the ring and knew what it meant. “I can take care of things here,” she said.

  He wanted to ignore the call. He didn’t want his life to interfere with his work. He wanted to escape, run away from his own drama and disappear into the facts of the Tran murder.

  He didn’t want to see that other dead body in his head.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Erika said, reading him. “Go.”

  He fumbled with the cell phone, but didn’t take the call. Erika shook her head, walking away, making it clear she was washing her hands of him.

  The ringing stopped. But he knew she would call again.

  Turning for the door, homicide detective Seven Bushard went to deal with his own ghosts.

  3

  Seven sat in his car, staring at the LCD screen on his cell phone. Three missed calls, all from the same number.

  Beth was nothing if not persistent.

  He slid back against the headrest of the Jeep Cherokee, the unkind thought ringing with guilt. After eight months of this crap, he knew the drill: Beth couldn’t handle the giant slice of reality being shoved down her throat. Not alone.

  And he was Ricky’s brother. Nick, his nephew, depended on him. Beth was family. End of story.

  This time, when the phone rang, Seven picked up.

  “I’m fifteen minutes away, Beth,” he said, starting the Jeep.

  He drove past the crowd gathered around the Tran place and headed out of the housing track. Beth had recently been diagnosed with panic disorder. Seven shouldn’t have let it go to the forth call.

  Only, he couldn’t help wondering if maybe Erika was right about his relationship with his sister-in-law.

  If you just let Beth get through the damn panic attacks by herself—without stepping in and making it all better…

  Erika thought Beth needed to learn to stand up for herself. What the hell had she called it? Some psychobabble about him being an enabler?

  “It’s just guilt, Seven. Pure and simple,” he could almost hear Erika saying in his head.

  Getting off the freeway ten minutes later, he was still wondering how much longer he could keep dropping the ball into Erika’s lap. The chief had told Seven to take more time. As long as you need… But Seven needed to get back to normal, and that meant work.

  He was lucky to have Erika covering for him, that was for damn sure. There’d been a lot of carping about how fast she’d come up the ranks to detective. Some finger-pointing about the fact that she was a Hispanic woman, as if somehow she’d hit the job lottery being a double minority. But all that mattered to Seven was that she was a good cop—the best damn partner he was likely to have.

  Unfortunately, he’d messed up there, too. After a night of tequila shooters, he’d gotten a little too familiar with that gorgeous body. It was a testament to their partnership that they’d made it through the morning—and months—after.

  Going south on Bolsa Chica, he headed toward Huntington Harbor. His brother lived in a posh neighborhood where half the homes were on the water. He’d heard about this list on one of the news shows. Huntington Beach was number eight in the country when it came to homes selling over a million dollars.

  Ricky had made a killing on the place, buying it when the market had taken a dip. A million-dollar teardown. Now the place was worth well over five million. Not that it mattered. Ricky had it all leveraged. Beth would probably lose everything.

  Seven tried not to imagine her reaction when she discovered that the one thing she’d relied on from Ricky—money—was gone.

  Well, they’d manage. Seven had some money put away. By summer, Beth and Nick could move into the rental property Seven had bought with his dad some years back. He did the mental math, moving the pieces of their lives around like chessmen. Imagine, the family fuck-up in charge, while Ricky, the “good son,” the plastic surgeon, did time. It was freaking biblical.

  The whole thing sounded too damn much like a soap opera. Ricky having an affair with his male nurse at his plastic surgery practice. The affair going sour—Scott wanting Ricky to leave Beth.

  Ricky offered money, undying love. It wasn’t enough. Scott wanted it all. The fights grew more abusive. Scott started making threats, tailing Beth. He knew where Nick went to school, that sort of thing.

  It was made to look like a car accident. Only Ricky had done a pretty lousy job of covering his tracks. It was clear from the blood evidence that Scott had been dead before the crash. There had been a curious L-shaped blood spatter on the window. Apparently, Scott’s blood had splashed against it long before the car came to an abrupt stop. Momentum kept the blood slipping across the glass.

  When faced with the evidence, Ricky confessed. He’d put a full two hours on tape with homicide in Laguna, where the “accident” took place, before asking for counsel.

  Seven remembered it almost as if the whole thing happened yesterday. Erika had called bright and early.

  Sit down, honey. This is going to be bad….

  You knew it was something when tough-as-nails Erika tossed around words like honey.

  The cherry on top? Laurin, Seven’s ex-wife, also got in touch…right after Ricky hit the six o’clock news. Here he was in the middle of hell, and his ex-wife calls to tell him, Jesus, Seven, I’m so sorry…. Is there anything I can do? And by the way, she’s expecting twins with her new husband. Twins, for God’s sake. Seven took the news like two shots straight to the head.

  He was happy for Laurin, sure. But he couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for himself. Like he’d been left behind because Laurin, bless her heart, had moved on. She was leading this totally normal life with a real family…while he fought to keep the pieces of his from
slipping through his fingers like sand.

  Seven punched up the music, The Beatles belting out the end of “Hey Jude.” He reminded himself this wasn’t about him. It was about the people he loved. Nick and Beth.

  When he turned up Ricky’s street, he saw Beth was waiting for him out on the driveway. She was wearing a baby-blue sweater set and ankle-length pants. She had on ballet slippers and her shoulder-length blond mane was held back by a black hair band. She hugged her arms across her chest as if trying to hold everything inside.

  They’d made a pair, she and Ricky. Both blond and blue-eyed, they looked like god and goddess. If the brothers stood next to each other, no one could imagine they were related. Just under six feet, with brown hair and hazel eyes, Seven was everyman to his brother’s golden boy.

  Out on the cul-de-sac, Nick played basketball. Looking just like his father, the kid put everything into his hook shot.

  Seven slowed down, just watching what, for all intents and purposes, was the perfect picture of domestic bliss. Ricky had installed the hoop on the curb last year. Just eight months ago, Seven had been working up a sweat with his brother on the drive, giving as good as he got.

  As soon as he pulled up and stepped out of the Jeep, Beth came up to him, throwing herself into his arms.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know I shouldn’t call when you’re at work. But I just couldn’t deal anymore.”

  He could smell the alcohol on her breath—not that he blamed her. Beth had been self-medicating with alcohol for a while now. Seven watched his nephew over her shoulder. Nick just kept bouncing the ball, pretending Seven wasn’t standing just a few feet away, trying to hold his mom together as she fell apart.

  That’s how Nick was getting through the crisis. Pretending.

  Abracadabra. Nothing’s wrong. I don’t feel a thing.

  Seven felt a rare surge of anger. He wished Beth could be stronger for Nick’s sake. The kid was hurting, too.

  But it didn’t help to start throwing around blame. That’s why he wanted to get back to work. Investigations like the Tran case took a dispassionate observer. He could crawl inside this cool place he’d carved out in his head, where nothing but the evidence mattered.

  He wouldn’t have to think about Ricky and the shit he’d dumped on the family. Wouldn’t feel his guts getting ripped out every time he saw his ten-year-old nephew and thought about what the future held.

  “I was making this pact with God,” Beth said, still clutching him. “If everything turned out okay, I promised I’d be stronger.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Seven said, putting his arm around her and steering her back toward the house. “You got some coffee?”

  She nodded, wiping her tears. Inside, Ricky had one of those espresso bars. The man loved his coffee.

  “Hey, Nick,” Seven called out to his nephew. “You okay?”

  “I’m okay,” he answered, sending up a three-point attempt that went wide.

  Seven followed Beth inside, knowing it was a lie. The fact was none of them were okay. On the television crime shows, it was all about the victim’s family—their loss, their quest for justice. But Seven, the homicide detective, had seen the other side, how one unforgivable act could affect a family.

  His brother had killed a man. And it wasn’t just Ricky who was paying for it.

  Erika stared at the woman’s mouth. Mimi Tran had thin lips and a bad overbite, as well as a penchant for dark lipstick. Erika would have suggested a lighter shade.

  She walked slowly around the body, getting to that place in her head where all other considerations melted away and she focused right here, right now.

  There were three basic methods of determining time of death. Rigor mortis usually set in three hours afterward, beginning in the facial muscles, then slowly spreading to the extremities. Approximately thirty-six hours later, the process reversed itself and the body became supple again. To Erika’s trained eye, Mimi Tran appeared stiff as a board.

  As well as assessing rigor, the medical examiner would take a temperature reading. A number of factors, including Tran’s size and the hot room, would determine a possible time of death, but the process was far from exact.

  Then there was lividity, during which red blood cells eventually leak into the body from the capillaries, making a permanent color change on the skin where the blood settles like sediment in a muddy pond. With her pen, Erika pulled back the collar of Tran’s St. John suit to expose the skin where one shoulder blade pressed against the carpet. The skin was a deep wine-red, showing the body hadn’t been moved since the heart stopped.

  With her latex-gloved hand, Erika pulled out a magnifying glass from inside her jacket pocket. She knelt down. The bird’s head stuffed inside the victim’s mouth…it was elemental, almost primitive. Definitely something religious or sacred.

  Erika was all too familiar with these sorts of rituals. She’d grown up in Santa Ana, the daughter of a Cuban immigrant married to an American of Mexican descent. Her mother was an educated woman, but still, Santeria had been part and parcel of her upbringing.

  Even for a seasoned homicide detective, the sight of those bloody, empty eye sockets might prove too much. But Erika didn’t pull away from the grotesque image. That wasn’t her style. She fell into it, trying to see where it could lead her.

  Like any good investigator, Erika had a healthy dose of intuition. With time, she’d come to realize hers was sharper than most. Seven called her ability “uncanny.” Her mother had a different name for it. El don de la doble vista. Only, Erika wasn’t buying that sixth sense crap. Her job required a sharp eye and tedious hours gathering evidence. That’s what got convictions in the courtroom. If good instincts and a little imagination helped, well, hell. Why not?

  She cocked her head in thought. The victim was a psychic. A successful one, judging from the posh surroundings and the high-end jewelry.

  So, this was about power. But what kind? Money? Prestige? Warring factions in the occult world here in Little Saigon?

  Or was this about something more sinister? Had Mimi Tran been searching for a darker power?

  Erika frowned. She had experience with the damage that sort of struggle could cause. The need for miracles. The lies behind the desire to control.

  She turned her focus to the victim’s hands. Defensive marks. Mimi Tran had put up a fight. But the missing eyes…it seemed almost a cliché. The idea that, as a psychic, Mimi Tran had “the sight.”

  “So what’s the connection to the bird’s head?” Erika asked herself.

  Taking out a penlight, she pointed the beam into the victim’s mouth. With the magnifying glass in her other latex-gloved hand, she peered closer.

  Something there? Inside the bird’s beak?

  “Hey, Roland?” She motioned over the tech.

  She had him take a couple of close-up shots. She pulled out an evidence bag and a pair of tweezers from her jacket pocket. With the penlight held between her teeth, she knelt carefully over the body.

  She remembered a game she used to play with her brother as a kid. Operation. The goal was to use tweezers to remove tiny plastic game pieces from a body without touching the sides. Her brother and mother always messed up, but not Erika.

  Slowly, she pried loose the object from inside the tiny bird’s beak. In the beam of the flashlight, the thing glowed a rich sapphire-blue.

  It looked like a glass bead. Or maybe more like a crude gem?

  “Holy shit,” the tech said, snapping more pictures. “What is that?”

  Erika carefully placed the bead in the plastic evidence bag. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  She put away the penlight and held the plastic bag up to the ceiling light. Suddenly, the glass bead turned a bloodred color.

  Erika glanced upward. The lights in this room were fluorescent…

  Shielding the bead with her body, she again reached for the penlight. As soon as the incandescent light struck the bead, the color of the gem changed back to a
dark blue.

  And something else. Something inside the bead flashed white. The gem appeared to catch the light, like one of those star sapphires. Only, in this case, a single white stripe appeared, making the thing look like a cat’s eye.

  “Weird,” the tech said, snapping a few more pictures for good measure.

  Erika glanced back at the blinded body of Mimi Tran.

  She told Roland, “Looks like it’s an eye for an eye.”

  4

  David Owen Gospel II felt the woman stir beside him on the bed. The fact that she was still asleep irritated him just a little bit. But he held back any reprimand. It was still early.

  He reached and stroked the black sleek hair, admiring her lovely naked back. He considered himself a collector, and this woman was one of his finest pieces.

  Her name was Velvet. He was certain that wasn’t her real name. Most likely, it was the translation of her Vietnamese name. In Vietnam, many first names had special meanings, like Kim for gold, or Tam for heart.

  David thought the name suited her. Her skin, her dark, liquid eyes and waist-length hair, all of it felt rich and smooth.

  He always gave her jewelry. He liked that best about Velvet. She was high-class, never grasping for his money. Jewelry seemed so much more civilized an exchange. And he knew she found him attractive; many women did, liking that air of power that could only come with age and experience. And David kept himself fit. Velvet had often complimented him about his gray eyes and silver hair. She didn’t have a problem with the age gap—almost forty years—between them.

  As soon as she felt his touch, she turned and kissed him, gracing him with that lovely perfect smile as she caressed his face. But Velvet knew her business. Quickly, she slipped out from beneath the silk sheets. Donning a robe he’d bought her, an artistry of lace from a particularly fabulous lingerie shop in Paris, she hurried off to the kitchen.

  Over a breakfast of jackfruit Danish and Vietnamese drip coffee, he read the paper. His beautiful Velvet sat across from him in the condo’s jasmine-scented courtyard, reading some tome on corporate taxes. Velvet was finishing her law degree at Whittier. He looked forward to hiring her on as in-house counsel for Gospel Enterprises, a privately owned development company that made more than the gross national product of most small countries.