One roommate said Blunt took the job at the spa because it “paid like twenty bucks an hour, was light duty that allowed him time to study, and he got his rocks off, like, anytime he wanted.” The other roommate said Blunt had no enemies that he knew of. And neither roommate could come up with a scenario that would have a cold-blooded killer targeting their friend.
In the two hours I’d had before the scheduled autopsies, I’d tried to work on the chain of circumstances that had led the two dead Korean women to the United States, to Washington, and to the Superior Spa. I started by putting in a request with USCIS to see their temporary work visa applications but was told it would take several days to fulfill the request.
On the way to the morgue, I made a depressing inch of headway on Cam Nguyen, the missing third prostitute. Other detectives had been to her place that morning and found it empty. Once the forensics team finished at the Superior Spa, they would move to her place.
I kept that from Cam Nguyen’s parents in Garden Grove, California. I’d called them from my car. They said they had not spoken with their daughter in nearly a week. The mom went hysterical in Vietnamese and left the phone when I explained that Cam was missing and wanted for questioning in connection with murders at a massage parlor where she was reputed to work.
Cam’s father had turned furious, accused me of dragging Cam’s name through the mud, but then broke down when I told him I was only giving him the facts as I knew them.
“Cam such a smart girl,” her father had sobbed. “Cam supposed to follow American dream, make us proud.”
Standing there in the morgue, surrounded by the massage parlor dead, I couldn’t help thinking of my daughter, Jannie, and imagining the dimensions of Mr. Nguyen’s heartache.
“Alex?” Cynthia Wu called, breaking me out of my thoughts.
I turned. Francones’s chest had been sawed open. His heart lay in a pan. But the medical examiner was holding a piece of paper. “Preliminary tox screen is positive for cocaine. Lots of it.”
Then she pointed at the football great’s heart. “It’s enlarged, outsize even for him. And I found signs of a deviated septum from chronic use.”
“ ‘Say hello to my little friend,’” Sampson said, doing a pretty good imitation of Al Pacino in Scarface.
I nodded. “Cocaine smugglers and bloodbaths go hand in hand.”
My phone rang. Bree.
“Hey,” I said. “Don’t tell me there’s already a problem with the renovation.”
“I haven’t been home, so not that I know of,” she replied. “But I’m heading to Takoma and I think I’m going to be late.”
“What’s up?”
“Somebody posing as a city investigator walked into a day care and walked out with a baby who hasn’t been seen since.”
Chapter
15
“You gave our baby away to a fucking stranger!” a man yelled. “What did you expect me to do? Act happy? Sing ‘Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush’?”
Okay, Detective Bree Stone thought. She swallowed hard, climbed the steps of Child’s Play. Three satellite TV trucks were already parked down the street. A crowd had gathered at the police lines.
Cross’s wife went through the front door and entered chaos.
“We’re shutting you down!” screamed a sick-looking woman wearing a silk head scarf and stabbing her finger at Eliza and Marylyn Green. A young Metro patrol officer stood behind her.
“She said she was an investigator with Child Services,” Eliza moaned.
“She showed me a badge, an identification card, and a writ from Judge Banner in Family Court that commanded us to turn Joss over,” Marylyn Green said, crying. “She said you were like that guy in the show Breaking Bad.”
“You mean a meth maker?” the missing baby’s father said, first in disbelief and then anger. “That is complete bullshit!”
“I’m going to be sick,” Joss’s mother croaked.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Bree said firmly, taking charge. “I want everyone to take it down a notch. My name is Detective Bree Stone, and I’m here to help. Officer, please help the lady to a bathroom.”
The young patrolman nodded and helped the poor woman from the room.
Bree pointed at Branson. “I gather you’re the father?”