It was 6 a.m. The low-lying condensation that so often followed a cool and cloudless night sat peacefully above his beautiful responsibilities like a guardian—waiting for Sammy to come with the sun, and tend to them until darkness claimed them again.
He began as he always did—retrieving his pad and pencil from the shed, walking the garden, assessing its needs and making notes on his priorities for the day. He would start at the water basin, or
chozu
, which sat at the base of a running stream, filling and emptying simultaneously as the clack of its bamboo water chute marked the passage of time.
For the next half hour he would continue south, past a series of stones placed vertically, arched, reclining and horizontally in sets of threes, fives and sevens before moving east to assess the Japanese native plants (cherries, bamboo and maples). Finally, feeling the lift in his heart as he neared the greenhouse, or
onshitsu
, he thanked Buddha once again for the honorable gift before him.
People said they were a myth—a subject of fable that lurked undiscovered in some yet to be charted tropical jungle. But Sammy Ito knew differently as he entered the enclosure and surveyed the
Telipogon portillae
, or totally black orchid, which grew in full splendor before him.
He had seen many imposters—the
encyclia cochleatea
, the
dracula vampira
, the
polystachya transvaalensis
and various other hybrids that made a mockery of the original’s beauty. For none of these were the true color of the night, none had the pure darkness of bloom as the priceless specimen he now beheld.
And then he saw it. The stone of death.
It was one of the Three Bad Stones, along with the withered or misshapen Diseased Stone and misfit Pauper’s Stone, which brought hardship and misfortune to its master’s house. The Death Stone was a stone that was obviously a vertical used as a horizontal, or vice versa, like an epitaph propping up the dead.
And in this case, it was.
For as Sammy Ito, master
uekiya
, walked around his precious black orchid, he saw evidence of the greatest act of evil. There she lay, all pale-skinned and blue-lipped, her neck placed at a devilish angle on the upturned vertical that acted like a pillow to her colorless corpse.
Sammy said a prayer, trying not to focus on the haunting dark marks that circled her neck like a snake or the X-shaped indentation that crossed her forehead like a warning. Then he dropped his notepad and turned and ran, not realizing that his calls of “
Akuryo, akuryo
” (“Evil, evil”) were loud enough to shock the living from their sleep and cloud his so far fortunate life with a vision so dark it would be marked on his soul forever.
3
“Jesus, Frank,” said Lieutenant Joe Mannix as he nodded at the uniform who lifted the tape so that he could meet with fellow homicide detective Frank McKay at the top of John Nagoshi’s white pebble drive. “What in the hell are you wearing?”
“What?” said the fifty-something McKay.
“The sweater.”
“It’s not a sweater it’s a skivvy.”
“It’s also . . . yellow,” said Joe.
“It’s also warm.”
“You look like one of those guys from that kids’ group,” said Joe, following McKay’s lead as he pointed around the side of the house toward the back garden gate.
“The Wiggles,” said Frank.
“That’s them.”
“I still don’t see the problem, Chief,” McKay countered.
“No problem, Frank, except the Wiggles’ expertise is dancing for kids in diapers and yours is . . .”
“Dead people,” said Frank, looking down and shaking his head. “Don’t remind me.”
It was a ritual, maybe not a conscious one, but a routine nevertheless. Mannix and McKay often played this game of tit for tat just before they faced the horrifying realities of their chosen profession, and judging by the look on McKay’s face, this one was in the “splinter” category—meaning one that got under your skin and left a scar as a permanent reminder of the iniquity of mankind.
Normally McKay would have been teamed with his regular partner, Detective Susan Leigh, but the determined young Leigh, whose drive and enthusiasm were motivated just as much by a desire to “do good” as they were by ambition, had recently been accepted as a new recruit by the FBI.
“Geez,” said Mannix, who, truth be told, was actually enjoying playing grassroots detective while the department organized a replacement for Leigh. “This is some backyard.”
McKay shut the garden gate behind them, leaving Mannix to take in the huge horticultural expanse before them. The sun had risen to a crisp, clear day, cutting across the frost and removing at least some of the bite from the early fall chill.
“Like something off of a postcard, ain’t it?” McKay nodded. “According to the gardener,” he said, flipping open his notebook, “a Mr. Samuel Ito, who discovered the vic, Mr. Nagoshi is a stickler for detail.”
“So I hear,” said Joe, noting Nagoshi’s reputation as a successful and hard-nosed corporate chief. “And the girl?”
“Over there,” said Frank, pointing at the greenhouse and shaking his head again. “We’re looking at a real son-of-a-bitch for this one, boss.”
“Aren’t they all, Frank?” said Mannix.
“True,” replied his friend, taking out his handkerchief to cover his nose and indicating it might be best if his superior did the same. “But some more so than others.”
The two men entered the greenhouse and immediately noted the rise in temperature. The air was thick and moist and saturated with the smell of death. The crime scene was frenetic, but the conversation muted—perhaps out of concentration, or respect, or plain old-fashioned disgust. Joe nodded at the men from Boston PD’s Crime Scene Response Unit before approaching the tall, familiar, blond-haired man standing directly over the victim.
“Hey Gus,” said Joe to Swedish-born Gustav Svenson, Boston’s chief medical examiner.
“Lieutenant . . . Detective,” said Svenson, turning toward them, and in doing so providing Mannix with a full view of the twisted figure before him.
“Jesus,” said Joe.
“Jah,” said Svenson in his clipped Nordic English. “A tragedy, no?” All three looked down upon the body of Jessica Nagoshi, her long slender frame contorted in an unnatural curve that started at her pale slender feet, turned as it reached her thighs and arched at her elongated torso before taking a sudden impossible twist at her porcelain neck, which crooked inward and upward toward her head, which lay side up on the upturned stone.
She was fully clothed in a white shirt, blue sweater and pleated red-checked skirt that rested just above her knees. All that was missing were her shoes and stockings or socks, which were nowhere to be seen in the hothouse. Her long black hair flowed outward behind her face as if it had been pulled back and styled in a mermaidlike arrangement. Her bloodshot, dark brown eyes were wide, her once-red lips now drained of color.
“So what you got, Gus?” asked Joe, forcing himself to stay focused on the job. Disassociation was part of his trade, but every now and again you got one that forced you to “feel” it. And somehow this kid seemed to be . . .
“Jessica Nagoshi, nineteen,” said Svenson, interrupting his thoughts. “Early assessment suggests death by asphyxiation or more specifically in this case, death by manual strangulation.”
“He used his hands?” asked Frank, taking notes.
“I think yes,” said Gus. “There are no ligature marks.” He pointed to the girl’s bruised neck. “If ligature, you would most likely see horizontal mark across the neck in the region of the lower end of the thyroid cartilage—and even the smoothest of ligatures leave furrows. Now note the thickness of the bruising,” Gus went on. “And the irregular hollows most likely caused by uneven pressure from a palm or a thumb. My guess is autopsy will find fractures of the hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage, due to compression of these structures against the cervical vertebrae . . . which is unusual.”
“What do you mean ‘unusual’?” asked Mannix.
“Because of her age,” said Gus. “The hyoid is a little U-shaped bone just on top of the thyroid cartilage and it forms the big part of the larynx. As we get older, our cartilage and the hyoid bone get calcified and manual strangulation is more likely to cause a hyoid fracture. In our teens, both of these structures are very pliable . . . like . . . how you say—putty. If a young person is strangled, they most likely not suffer a fracture of any of the bones of the neck—unless the force was . . .
“Extreme,” finished McKay.
“Yes.”
They stood in silence for a moment, taking it all in.
“What about sexual assault?” asked Joe.
“No—at least no obvious indication. Rape kit will be done however, and I will do further examination in autopsy.”
“Any signs of struggle?” asked Frank. “Don’t they usually go hand in hand with manual strangulation?”
“Yes,” confirmed Gus. “You are right, Detective. Victims of manual strangulation almost always have associated injuries such as scratches to the face or neck, or bruising to the extremities. But not in this case.”
“The blow to the head,” said Mannix.
“Yes,” replied the ME. “Two blows actually, one on top of the other. Most likely she was unconscious before strangulation began—and even if she wasn’t, the bruising indicates she was strangled from behind so . . .”
Gus moved to the side to point to the abandoned garden hoe being photographed by the CSR team several feet from the body. Joe noted it appeared to have blood on both of its ends.
“Body matter and hair on both the top and bottom end of the garden tool suggest this was the instrument that leave two specific impressions on the forehead . . . here,” said Svenson, turning back to the body, “and here. One is long and narrow like the handle end, the other wide and thick like the . . .”
“Bottom of the hoe,” finished Frank.
“Yes. And bruising suggests the blows successive—from different angles.”
“Hold on a minute,” said Joe. “Why the hell would the perp swap ends—and change angle?”
“And hands,” said Svenson.
“Come again?” said Frank.
“Of course the autopsy will tell me more, but I believe that one blow was made with force from the right hand and the other from the left.”
“Two killers?” asked Joe.
“Or one who is ambidextrous. Whatever the case, the blows followed each other.
Bang, bang
,” said Gus, making them jump. “
Bang, bang
,” he said again. “Not
Bang
. . . pause . . .
bang
. You see?”
“Ah, yeah. We got it, Gus,” said McKay, scratching his head. “It just doesn’t seem to make any sense.”
“No,” said Gus. “Difficult to explain.”
“What about this rock?” asked Joe.
“Stone,” said Frank, correcting his boss. “According to the gardener this stone comes from outside, it is number two of a set of three. He says it is meant to be upright but someone laid it on its side making it a . . .” Frank hesitated.
“A what?” asked Joe.
“A Death Stone,” he managed.
“Geez,” said Mannix.
“The stone was an afterthought,” said Gus. “The blood flow pattern from the victim’s head suggest it was placed under her head after death.”
“Like a pillow,” said Joe.
“Exactly,” said Svenson.
“Sweet dreams,” said McKay.
4
Twenty minutes later, just as Joe Mannix was heading back toward the Nagoshi residence to speak to the dead girl’s father, David Cavanaugh was eight miles east, jogging across the Boston College rugby field, getting ready to pack down in a scrum just inside the opposition’s half.
It was the first game of the season, and judging by the fitness levels of the Boston College old boys and their Northeastern counterparts, most of these ex-law school peers had done very little training over the summer—if any.
“Jesus,” said David’s friend Jay Negley, a big, blond chunk of a man who now worked for the Public Defender’s Office. “What the hell are they thinking scheduling the first game for 8 a.m.?” This was the umpteenth time Negley had complained about their early morning call, and David and his teammate Tony Bishop were getting tired of it.
“They told us, Jay,” said David, looking back at his lumbering friend. “It’s a one-off. The freshmen have the field for the rest of the afternoon for some sort of orientation thing.”
“Since when do a pack of wet-eared freshies take precedent over alumni?” asked Negley.
“Seems to me you asked the same question in reverse about seventeen years ago,” said David.
“Yeah, well, at least I’m consistent.” Jay grinned.
“Anyway, Negley,” piped in Tony Bishop, who was definitely looking fitter than most of his maroon-and-yellow-jerseyed teammates, “no one asked you to pub crawl with your public defender buddies until three a.m.”
“It was the boss’s birthday. What are ya gonna do?”
“Work isn’t everything,” said Bishop as they reached the halfway line—a comment that sent David and Jay into fits of laughter considering Bishop, the blue-chip corporate attorney with a big harbor-view office and a paycheck to match, had built an entire lifestyle out of working as many $500-plus billable hours as possible.
“What?” said Bishop blank-faced before releasing one of his killer smiles. “All right, you got me there, boys.”
The scrum packed down hard with the usual grunt of testosterone, David and Tony taking their positions in the back row, with Jay—a front row prop—locking shoulders with the equally brawny boys from Northeastern.
The Northeastern halfback fed the ball into the scrum and watched and waited for his teammates to boot it back for the inside center to receive out the other end and put the ball into play. But Jay managed to hook the ball with his right foot and send it in the other direction, back toward Tony and the rest of the Boston College pack. It was a good move. In a game like rugby, possession was everything. Now if only they could . . .