Sinner's Gin (8 page)

“You got gloves on you?” Kane asked and smiled when Sanchez handed him a pair of black latex gloves, then fitted a pair on his own hands. “Not exactly department issue.”

“So I dated a tattoo artist. They’re sexier than those blue ones they give us, and they fit.” Kel broke the seal one of the uniforms had put on the door. The knob looked grimy from being printed, and it slid a bit in Sanchez’s hand when he turned it. “Okay, let’s see what fresh hell we’ve got waiting for us behind door number one.”

Sanchez took a slim camera out of his inside jacket pocket and stepped in first. Kane stopped at the door, working the air in the gloves out from between his fingers. He reached up and tapped the dead bolt set into the door above the knob. “Grab a pic of this too. Locks from the outside. The inside’s flat.”

“So, locking people out of the place?” Kel cocked his head.

“Or locking them in,” Kane responded flatly.

The room was narrow and airless, running only twelve feet in against the cinder block wall. A full-sized bed was wedged into the far end of the room, its simple rail frame set low to the ground. Bare shelves took up most of one wall. A layer of dust ran along the front edges, marking where boxes once sat. Those boxes were now empty and lying on the floor, tossed haphazardly into the corner near the door. A few were still full, and Kane nudged one with his foot, surprised at its lack of heft.

Bending over, Kane carefully lifted the open flaps of the box and inspected its contents. Kel walked over with the camera to record what Kane found.

“It’s ties.” Kel frowned. “Who the hell has a box of ties? And ugly ties at that.”

“They’re knotted together tight,” Kane said, glancing at the bed. “Look at the bed frame. There’s one looped over the end, and you can see another one on the other side.”

“Some kind of BDSM thing going on up here?” Kel snapped a few pictures of the metal shelves, pacing off the room. “Far cry from some place to crash when you’re not getting along with your foster father.”

Kane didn’t need the reminder, not when he walked over to the bed and caught a whiff of the rank, musky sheets. Reminding himself he was on the job, he crouched next to the mattress and examined the frame. “Paint’s worn off near the ties, and this one’s abraded. So either the players are really hardcore, or the person being tied down really didn’t want to be here.”

He didn’t like thinking of a young, teenaged Miki spending nights up in the room, especially not on the worn-out, sagging mattress in front of him. Kane had to shove away the images crawling up from his darkest thoughts, and he shook his head, focusing on the job. Behind him, Kel’s camera continued to pop off flashes as the other inspector went about the room.

Kane stood up and stretched his legs. The long day was beginning to wear on him, and it’d been hours since he had his last cup of burnt cop coffee. Rubbing at the fatigue lingering on his eyes, Kane stifled a yawn when Kel turned the camera on him.

Kel gave Kane an exaggerated pout. “Smile for me, pretty boy.”

“I’ll kick your scrawny ass if you take that picture, Sanchez.” Kane flipped his partner off and stepped forward. “Did you take a peek at the rest of the boxes?”

“Not yet,” Sanchez admitted. “I was making sure I got pictures of all the empty boxes. Most of them are marked ‘clothes’, but it makes me wonder what’s in those trash bags downstairs. Think Bradley boy was just grabbing things and tossing them away before anyone came to find out what Daddy was doing up here?”

“Kind of makes him an accessory if there was anything illegal going on,” Kane pointed out. “Let’s have Lau wrap him up into one of the cars and take him down. Let him sweat it out there. If he lawyers up, then we know we’ve got something to go on.”

Sanchez nodded and shifted one of the smaller boxes with his foot. “Wanna pop this one open? I’ll grab some shots, and we’ll have the lab guys up here to print stuff for us. I want to see if Bradley’s fingers were all over the contents too. It’ll be easier to talk him down from his holier-than-the-cops attitude if we’ve got something on him.”

Kane flipped open the cardboard flaps, then pulled back when the camera’s flash went bright and he saw what the box held. From the looks of things, Shing had emptied a sex shop of its toys during a half-off sale. His stomach rolled, and Kane inhaled sharply through his mouth, not wanting to pull the room’s scents into his nose. In some part of his brain, he suspected what Shing did in his closed up little hidey hole, and Kane didn’t want to think about it, not when Bradley Shing was still downstairs and within choking distance.

When Kel leaned forward to get a better angle, Kane spotted the camera’s white burst reflecting on something shiny wedged far beneath the bed frame. Leaving his partner to document the contents of the box, Kane kneeled down and reached under the bed. A squat metal box was long and buried deep behind an ocean of dust bunnies. Hooking his shoulder under the frame, Kane stretched his arm and snagged the box’s corner with his fingers, dragging it forward an inch. After working the box loose from the shadows, Kane pulled it free with a triumphant smile, only to see Kel standing there with a disapproving look on his face.

“Why the hell didn’t you just lift the mattress?” Sanchez sniped. “Aren’t you the brains of the outfit?”

“I’m tired.” Kane shrugged bashfully. “Okay, and I didn’t think about it. Sue me. I got it out.”

The case was heavy, resembling a vintage safety deposit box more than anything else. More than half of its long, flat side was lid, and a worn, battered hinge bisected the case’s top. Bright yellow and scored from years of use, the latch was broken, rattling loudly when Kane lifted it up onto the bed. A scrawl of Chinese characters was lettered across the top of the box, the bold black characters chipped in places from being shoved under the metal frame. Kane adjusted the case so it was straight on the mattress, then stood back, letting Kel document the outside of the box.

“Okay, let’s open it up,” Kel said softly, and Kane braced himself for what he’d find as he flipped the case’s lid up.

It was a scene out of Kane’s worst nightmare.

Most of the photos were turning spotty from being in the damp, suffocating room, but the scenes they captured were enough to turn Kane’s stomach. He counted at least three young teenaged boys in the photos, their faces wet with tears and contorted into masks of pain and fear. They were shot posed on the same dirty linens on the bed, or against the surrounding putty colored cinder block walls. All were naked or in various stages of undress. None of them looked like they wanted to be there.

At the bottom of the pile were stacks of glossy photos wrapped with wax paper and tied up with red ribbon bows. His fingers trembled as Kane reached for them, the black latex of his gloves slick on the shiny paper.

These photos weren’t throwaways for Shing. No, he’d packaged these carefully, almost lovingly, documenting a sickness he clearly enjoyed exploring. Kane didn’t need to unwrap the wax paper from the first stack to know the face he’d find in Shing’s treasure pile, but he did it anyway, needing to confirm the crawling suspicions vomiting up ill thoughts in his brain.

It was still a shock to see those haunting hazel eyes staring up at him from the first photo. Miki’s face was rounder and blushed with youth, but there was not a hint of innocence in the boy’s wide-eyed stare. Caught on film at an age when his world should have revolved around sports and dodging homework, Miki’s face was contorted with anguish, and his lashes were spiked with his tears. Even wrapped in Shing’s perversion and beaten down with bruises marking most of his pale body, Miki stared up at Shing’s camera and defied the man with a snarl on his young mouth.

“Fuck,” Kel whispered as he peered around Kane’s arm. “Looks like we’ve got a motive for St. John murdering Shing.”

“Looks like,” Kane agreed reluctantly. “Good thing he’s already dead or I’d kill the fucking bastard myself. Let’s go see what his son has to say about this shit. Suddenly, I’m not so tired anymore.”

Chapter 5

Hey, Damie, this song sucks.

You wrote it, Sinjun.

Yeah, I know. It still sucks.

Tell you what? How about if we finish it up? Then take the master tape and the sheet music and set them on fire in the alley. That way, no one’ll ever know this shit ever existed.

—Unknown song, never released. Burnt in a dumpster.

M
IKI
was back in the khaki colored room again, staring at the one-way mirror and wondering if there was anyone behind it. He’d been separated pretty quickly from Kane once they got to the station. The cop went one way, past a pair of swinging doors, while a woman in uniform dragged Miki down a hallway and into an interview room before he could object.

Sitting in the cold and staring at the walls was growing old, but short of throwing a chair through the glass, Miki didn’t think he had much of a choice.

Then Sanchez walked in, and Miki’s evening went to shit.

“Hey. How are you doing?” The casual manner Sanchez showed him the other day was gone, replaced by a patented used-car-salesman charm designed to squeeze something out of a conversation. Sanchez set a thick folder down on the table and placed a paper cup of milky coffee in front of Miki. “Here, I brought you something hot to drink while we talk.”

The coffee was bitter under the sweet, but Miki took another sip, focusing on the bright yellow pattern on the paper cup. Sanchez pulled out the chair across the table from him and sat down. He flicked one last look up at the mirror, resigned to seeing his own bruised expression in the reflection and not the faces of the maybe-people behind the glass.

“The only one there is Morgan. Is that okay?” Sanchez glanced behind him, following Miki’s gaze. Miki nodded once and watched Sanchez take out a small recorder, put it down on the table, then turn it on.

“We’re going to record this. I’m going to ask some sensitive questions, and I understand if you need to stop at some point in this to get yourself together, but unless you ask for a lawyer, I’m going to try to get through this as quick as possible, okay?”

“Okay,” Miki said, nodding. He picked at the cup’s cover, lifting the edge with his thumbnail. “
Do
I need a lawyer?”

“I can’t tell you that,” the cop admitted. “I’m only asking questions. You’re not being charged with anything, but I need to talk to you. If you refuse, then we can bring lawyers into this, but I don’t want to. Do you?”

“No, I’m good.” He leaned back in the chair, his shoulders rolled in. A burning feeling began in Miki’s gut, overriding the ache in his knee. “Is Kane in trouble or something? Is that why he’s not in here?”

“No, Morgan and I thought it would be better if I were the one to talk to you,” Sanchez replied softly. “He’ll be waiting for you after we’re done.”

“Okay.” Miki nodded. “Go ahead then.”

Sanchez started. “I really need to talk to you about Shing and how you’re connected to him. Do you understand?”

“I don’t know anything about how Shing ended up in the car,” Miki replied. “I was in the house washing the dog—”

“I know.” The cop opened the folder and took out a large envelope, folding open the clasp so he could pull out the contents. “I’ve got to ask you some questions… and understand you don’t have to answer them without having a lawyer present, but they have to be asked. It’s your choice how you do this.”

“I’ve got nothing to hide.” Miki’s chin tilted up, his mouth set into a hard, straight line.

“We found some evidence at Shing’s restaurant that shows he hurt you when you were younger. Now, we have to ask you, did you have Shing killed? Because of what he did to you? Or do you know someone who would kill him because of what he did?”

Miki hissed in disgust. “No, I swear to God, I haven’t seen Shing in years. Not since….”

“Not since when, Miki?” Sanchez pressed.

“Not since I was a kid,” he replied. The talk of Shing and the bad coffee was doing a number on Miki’s stomach, and his belly gurgled, threatening to return Kane’s dinner up onto the table. “I… fucking hell, what do you want from me?”

“I know Shing hurt you,” the cop said, softening his voice to a whisper. “Did you tell anyone about that? Anyone at all?”

“Shing…. Look, I just crashed in the storeroom at the restaurant….” Miki bit the inside of his cheek, forcing the bile back down his throat. “I don’t know…. I didn’t kill Shing. I don’t know anything. God, just let me go home.”

Miki turned his head, willing himself back to adulthood. Sanchez’s gentle tones and soft voice were too much like the coaxing whispers he’d heard when he was a kid. Miki shook out his arms, then shook his head, needing to feel his body respond. Kneading his fingers into his thighs, Miki fought the agitation rising inside of him, and he searched for something to bring him back to the now of the room.

Grabbing his knee, he pressed into the damaged tissue, riding the sharp rip of pain as it tore up his leg and into the base of his spine. Panting slightly, he rocked forward, digging in again until he couldn’t see through the red haze. A scream lingered on the back of his tongue, driven more by the memories of the nights he spent waiting for footsteps in the darkness than his self-inflicted torture.