Connections in Death (In Death 48)

“For Christ’s sake,” Eve grumbled.

She pushed through the crowd and, since the thief was in the act of lifting a wallet from a back pocket, she managed to grab him by the collar before he spotted her.

He tried a spin—nimbly—managed a backfist she avoided, almost completely. Annoyed by the almost completely, she swept his legs from under him and pinned him to the ground with her knee.

He let out a spate of what she assumed was Chinese, and one of the onlookers—female, fruity Brit accent—shouted, “Police! This woman attacked this young man. Police!”

“I am the police.” Eve dragged out her badge and applied more pressure with her knee as her captive wiggled like a worm. “Sir,” she said to the man directly in front of her, “you should put that recorder down and secure your wallet.”

He frowned, reached back. His mouth dropped open. “Margo! He was picking my pocket! Holy cow this is exciting. Could you say your name, Officer, and say something, you know, official?”

A lot of somethings she couldn’t say leaped to mind. “Peabody, get a uniform to handle this.”

“Strong already moved on that.”

As Eve slapped on restraints, the thief continued to wiggle, squirm, and protest in Chinese at the top of his lungs.

Several more people crowded in to record the moment for their social media pages and/or friends at home.

A uniformed officer strode through, ordering people to move aside. Then he looked down, shook his head. “Knock off the Mandarin, Charlie, you were born in New York. I’ve got this, Lieutenant, appreciate it. Working a crime scene, Charlie, you moron. Right down the block, sir, and to the alley on the left.”

“Looked like he connected,” Peabody said as they cleared the barricade.

“Barely.” Still, Eve wiggled her jaw side to side. Barely, she thought, could still hurt like a bitch.

15

Strong stepped up to the alley entrance.

“Family-owned restaurant, residence in the apartment above. Suzan Ho, female head of household, came down with some recyclables, found the body behind the container, does the screaming thing. Neighbor in the apartment across the alley—Mae-Ling Jacobs—pokes her head out the window, sees the situation, calls in the nine-one-one. Responders checked the prints, ID’d the DOB, secured the scene.”

From the mouth of the alley, Eve took a quick scan. “Ho might be a fairly common name, but it’s not going to be a coincidence the body was dumped in this particular alley. Jones kept banging about Fan Ho—Dragon leader.”

“You’d be right. I haven’t dealt with him myself, but I know the name. I’m pretty sure this is his family’s restaurant.”

They walked as they talked until Eve stopped by the body, one somebody had attempted, poorly, to conceal behind the commercial recycle unit.

On a tangled sheet of blood-smeared plastic, Aimes lay faceup, mouth open as if expressing surprise to find himself dead in a Chinatown alley. Blood from the deep gash across his throat had soaked through and dried over the grinning skull on his T-shirt.

“No spatter, no blood pool on the plastic,” Eve noted. “They killed him somewhere else, half-assed wrapped him in the sheet, dumped him here.”

Beside her, Peabody nodded. “It looks like they more or less rolled him behind the recycler, so he rolled out of the plastic.”

In a hurry, Eve thought, and getting the body here was the main thing.

“Strong, you take Ho, Peabody take Jacobs. I’ve got the body. Peabody, get some uniforms to start a canvass. They had to have transpo to get a DB the size of this one from the kill site. And find out when the restaurant closed last night—the last time anyone used this recycle unit. Strong, notify the sweepers, the dead wagon.”

Recorder on, Eve sealed up, then crouched down to verify the identification. For the record, she read off his data, the location, the names of the witnesses.

She slipped on microgoggles to examine the wound. “A deep slice, no visible hesitation marks. The absence of spatter and blood at the scene indicates this isn’t where the victim died. Dump site. The victim has bruising on his knuckles, some swelling. It looks at least a day old to me. ME to confirm. My take is the bruising’s from beating on Dinnie Duff.”

Methodically, she searched his pockets, came up empty. He still had his shoes, she noted, but they were torn, worn, and worthless.

“Pierced left ear, but no ring in it. Big guy like this? Big, tough guy, he’d have put up a fight if he knew it was coming. Angle of the wound indicates the attack came from the front. If he was facing his attacker, he knew him, didn’t feel threatened. And where’s his sticker? He’d have had one.”

She took out her gauge, got a reading. “TOD one-fifteen. So you didn’t run, did you, Barry? I bet you hunkered down, got stoned. Maybe did some bragging on bagging a couple of kills. Maybe made some demands. So you had to go. Dump site’s deliberate, right on the Dragon leader’s doorstep. Because they’re idiots,” she said in disgust. “And they think we’ll look local for the killers.”

Easier places to make the dump, even if you wanted to point the finger at a rival gang. But somebody wanted to go for the top.