he’d been hit. I hadn’t seen that the night before-it was the side that had rested against the ground.
The guy looked paler than he had the last time I’d seen him. Then, it was probably only an hour or less after he’d been killed, and the skin on his face had been waxy and blue-gray. His lips and nails had seemed pale in the limited light available to me then. He was still pale, though where the blood had settled at the back of his neck I could see a lot of post-mortem lividity.
“The body is that of an Asian male approximately forty-five years of age,” Doc began narrating into his tape recorder. “Black hair and brown eyes. The body shows signs of good nourishment and care, is seventy inches long and weighs 165 pounds. Death was pronounced at 2:55 this morning by an emergency medical technician. Preliminary finding, based on initial examination of the body and x-rays of the skull, is that death occurred due to blunt trauma of the head.”
He clicked off the recorder. “Take a good look before we undress him, boys.”
Akoni and I looked. It wasn’t so bad yet, before they cut him open. He could have been sleeping, except for his pale color and that matted wound on his head.
“It’s clear he was killed up by the door to the office,” Doc said. “The techs found blood spattered around him for as much as a meter. Head wounds are real bleeders.”
Doc Takayama dictated a few more things about the general condition of the body and then Marilyn turned the lights off and began surveying the corpse with some kind of black light device. That went on for a while, as she and the doc took fibers off the guy with tweezers, rolling him over to do his back as well. They’d be examined, and then matched against the fibers found in the alley.
Finally, the doc was content. Marilyn turned the lights back on and started cutting off the guy’s clothes. “From the condition of the body and the head wound I’d say he was killed almost immediately before he was found,” Doc said.
Marilyn continued putting the pieces of the guy’s clothes into larger plastic bags, labeling everything carefully. He was wearing a heavy gold chain around his neck, expensive shoes and good quality clothing. He would be missed, eventually, and then we would know who he was. That was the first step in figuring out who killed him.
We stood and watched as the doc and Marilyn worked. The only identifying mark on the body was the spidery tattoo on his right hand, and we knew that meant he was somehow connected with a tong. They’d already taken dental x-rays, which we could use to confirm identity if we couldn’t find someone who knew him. “Any news from missing persons?” Doc asked as he worked.
I shook my head. “You know the drill. No one is really missing unless he’s been missing twenty-four hours.”
Doc fingerprinted the guy, rolling the tips carefully across the pad just as we’d been taught to do with live subjects, and put aside the prints. We’d run them through our computer, and with luck we’d find a match, because based on the tattoo he was likely involved in something illicit. There are also a few reasons why law-abiding citizens have their prints on file; for example, some states required fingerprinting for licensing, and once in a while you’ll find a match with a real estate broker or stock dealer.
Doc carefully examined the guy’s fingernails and hands, looking for any signs he might have grappled with his assailant. Often they can find microscopic elements under the fingernails which could lead to the killer, but in this case it was pretty obvious to all of us that the guy had been hit from behind and hadn’t had a chance to fight. Doc made a detailed record of the condition of the body, noting a small mole on the chin and a tiny scar on the left ring finger. It made me wonder if the guy had been married, because I’ve seen men who wear wedding rings cut themselves when their rings get caught on something
The room went dark again for a while as Marilyn shone a light all over the guy’s body. “Since he was dragged down the alley, we may get lucky and find some fingerprints on him,” Doc said. “This scope helps us find them.”
Akoni nudged me. “How you holding up, man?”
“Okay. You?”
“I’ve felt better.”
When we turned back, they were lifting prints from his skin. “Not much luck,” Doc said. “We might get a good one from his hand. And there’s a nice clean one up by his neck. Somebody taking his pulse, probably.”
Marilyn turned the lights back on. Something was bothering me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I chalked it up to my general discomfort level. While Doc and Marilyn made the Y-incision down the guy’s body, Akoni and I stepped back. I had seen this before and it wasn’t pretty. Since the guy had died of a head trauma, I didn’t think there was much his insides could tell us, and I didn’t really want to lose my saimin if I could help it. Akoni was already looking pretty pale.
Doc cut the poor guy open and removed his internal organs, weighing them and remarking on them. “Too much fatty foods,” he said at one point. “That can kill you.”
Akoni and I looked at each other. I waited until the sound of the saw had stopped before I turned back. That’s always the worst part to me, cutting the top of the head off and removing the brain. “You want to see the blood vessels?” Doc asked.
“We’ll take your word for it, Doc,” I said.
“Death definitely occurred as a result of blunt trauma to the head. Almost instantaneous. Probably no more than an hour before he was found. Maybe even less.”
Doc promised to fax over a final report within twenty-four hours. We collected our evidence and went down to the car.
“Well, I can’t say we know much more than we knew when we went in there,” I said. “He confirmed what we thought, though.”
“That still doesn’t give us much of a place to start,” Akoni said.
“Well, we’ve got a guy with tong connections, and he was killed outside a gay bar. Tongs own any of those bars, you know?”
Akoni shook his head. “No clue.” I handed the evidence bag to him so I could fish out my keys, and the zipper lock popped open, the guy’s gold neck chain spilling out. Akoni reached for it. “Hey, careful, we don’t want your fingerprints on it, too,” I said.
Then it hit me. Fingerprints. There was a clean print on the guy’s neck, where somebody had tried to take his pulse. Suddenly it felt like I hadn’t eaten in days, a big hollow place in my stomach. I knew whose fingerprint it was. Mine.
INCIDENT AT THE MAKAI MARKET
We parked Akoni’s car and walked back toward the station. On the way, we passed the Makai Market, the food court. The time I had been avoiding couldn’t be put off any more. I knew I needed to tell Akoni everything. He deserved it; after all, it was his investigation too. “You want a coffee?” I asked. “I could use one.”
I chose a table for us at the edge of the traffic, private enough so no one would overhear us. The food court was shaped like an L, with one end open to the covered parking lot. Little birds flew in, swooped around the rafters, and pecked for crumbs on the tile floor. Like in much of Hawai‘i, there was a strong contrast between light and shadow-it’s bright in the area under the skylight, but dark in the corners. I wanted to be in the dark.
We sat down with our coffees. Akoni put cream and sugar in his. I just stirred mine for a while until it cooled off. With Akoni, it had always been an us versus them thing, and we were the good guys, the mainstream, the keepers of the peace and the representatives of the population at large. I was about to cross over from us to them, and I wasn’t sure how he was going to take it.
“I did something bad, Akoni,” I said. “I need you to stand by me, all right? But if you can’t, then tell me. Just tell me straight out so I know what I have to do.”
Akoni looked at me. “You’re my partner, man, my friend. What did you do?”
“I checked the guy for a pulse. It’s my fingerprint they’re going to find on his neck. They’re going to run the prints through the computer, and that one is going to match mine, and everybody is going to wonder how the hell my fingerprint got on a corpse I didn’t see until the autopsy.”
