Don’t tell me this. I’m not a rookie. Just tell me what I need.
“-- bounce around inside the skull, causing massive--”
“Dr. Katsios, please tell me what you found out about Bin Chea.”
“That’s what I’m doing. When those pellets can’t exit the skull--”
“I’m in a hurry --”
“All right. Nothing unusual on the external. The subject was five-six, 140 pounds. Had dentures, only three teeth of his own . Nicotine on his fingers, dirt under the nails. The internal showed a malignancy on both lungs. This fellow was already terminal. If the killer had waited six months, he might have saved a couple of shells.”
“Blood type?”
“I’m waiting for lab results. It’ll be on the report.”
Maybe Bin Chea was the devil from his past, and his crimes caught up with him before natural causes did. Good!
Sam chastised himself. For all he knew there was no connection with the man at Little Mountain. And whoever sent Bin Chea to his next life, Sam’s job was to arrest him for murder.
Instead of taking the elevator to the hospital’s fifth floor, Sam bolted up the stairway, two steps at a time, reaching the top floor without breaking a sweat. Three trips a week to Cochran’s Gym had been good for him. The sun reflected down the corridor and off the waxed floor. A whiff of industrial strength cleaner reminded him of Chea’s place, which had seemed so antiseptic.
Near the main desk a woman sat strapped in a wheelchair, and Sam greeted her with a smile and a hello. Her mouth opened as though she were about to speak, but it just stayed open. In her hands she gripped a shawl that looked as gray as her deeply furrowed face. No expression, and only the barest hint of life. Would his grandmother have looked that way if she hadn’t been killed? If she’d been allowed to live out her life?
Finding room 5115 was easy. At the intersection of the main corridors, he looked to his left and saw the red hair and blue uniform of Patrolman McGinnis. She was talking to a nurse. “My friends call me Colleen,” she had said when they first met.
“Morning, Colleen,” Sam said.
“ Afternoon , Detective.”
The nurse nodded toward the patient’s room. “She’s all yours. Just a few minutes, please.”
“Has she had any visitors today?”
“No. No one.”
Mrs. Chea, propped up against a pair of pillows, looked as small as a sack of rice. In the middle of the bed her feet made two peaks underneath the sheet. His own grandmother had been Mrs. Chea’s size, no taller than Sam was at age ten. She’d pulled weeds without mercy, grown disciplined ranks of bok choi and orderly files of scallions. Everyone in the neighborhood had called her “Aunt” to her face and “General” behind her back. She hadn’t begun to resemble Mrs. Chea until Grandfather’s funeral, the week before she died.
Mrs. Chea didn’t seem to recognize him from the night before, but he couldn’t fault her for that.
Sam spoke respectfully in Khmer. “Who came to your door last night?”
She closed her eyes and shook her head, and tears flowed down the creases between her cheeks and her nose.
“Does your husband have any enemies that you know of?”
She hesitated for the briefest moment, then said no. A plausible answer if she didn’t know of the letter in the trash. The one that said We know.
“We evicted a family in the spring,” she said. “Filthy people, and they didn’t pay their rent.”
“What is their name?”
She mentioned a name that Sam had heard before. They were a widow and her Battboy son
“-- bounce around inside the skull, causing massive--”
“Dr. Katsios, please tell me what you found out about Bin Chea.”
“That’s what I’m doing. When those pellets can’t exit the skull--”
“I’m in a hurry --”
“All right. Nothing unusual on the external. The subject was five-six, 140 pounds. Had dentures, only three teeth of his own . Nicotine on his fingers, dirt under the nails. The internal showed a malignancy on both lungs. This fellow was already terminal. If the killer had waited six months, he might have saved a couple of shells.”
“Blood type?”
“I’m waiting for lab results. It’ll be on the report.”
Maybe Bin Chea was the devil from his past, and his crimes caught up with him before natural causes did. Good!
Sam chastised himself. For all he knew there was no connection with the man at Little Mountain. And whoever sent Bin Chea to his next life, Sam’s job was to arrest him for murder.
Instead of taking the elevator to the hospital’s fifth floor, Sam bolted up the stairway, two steps at a time, reaching the top floor without breaking a sweat. Three trips a week to Cochran’s Gym had been good for him. The sun reflected down the corridor and off the waxed floor. A whiff of industrial strength cleaner reminded him of Chea’s place, which had seemed so antiseptic.
Near the main desk a woman sat strapped in a wheelchair, and Sam greeted her with a smile and a hello. Her mouth opened as though she were about to speak, but it just stayed open. In her hands she gripped a shawl that looked as gray as her deeply furrowed face. No expression, and only the barest hint of life. Would his grandmother have looked that way if she hadn’t been killed? If she’d been allowed to live out her life?
Finding room 5115 was easy. At the intersection of the main corridors, he looked to his left and saw the red hair and blue uniform of Patrolman McGinnis. She was talking to a nurse. “My friends call me Colleen,” she had said when they first met.
“Morning, Colleen,” Sam said.
“ Afternoon , Detective.”
The nurse nodded toward the patient’s room. “She’s all yours. Just a few minutes, please.”
“Has she had any visitors today?”
“No. No one.”
Mrs. Chea, propped up against a pair of pillows, looked as small as a sack of rice. In the middle of the bed her feet made two peaks underneath the sheet. His own grandmother had been Mrs. Chea’s size, no taller than Sam was at age ten. She’d pulled weeds without mercy, grown disciplined ranks of bok choi and orderly files of scallions. Everyone in the neighborhood had called her “Aunt” to her face and “General” behind her back. She hadn’t begun to resemble Mrs. Chea until Grandfather’s funeral, the week before she died.
Mrs. Chea didn’t seem to recognize him from the night before, but he couldn’t fault her for that.
Sam spoke respectfully in Khmer. “Who came to your door last night?”
She closed her eyes and shook her head, and tears flowed down the creases between her cheeks and her nose.
“Does your husband have any enemies that you know of?”
She hesitated for the briefest moment, then said no. A plausible answer if she didn’t know of the letter in the trash. The one that said We know.
“We evicted a family in the spring,” she said. “Filthy people, and they didn’t pay their rent.”
“What is their name?”
She mentioned a name that Sam had heard before. They were a widow and her Battboy son
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