CLEANING HOUSE
Ray and I caught a double homicide in Makiki as soon as our shift began-two Asian women killed while they slept in a cheap one-bedroom-and we spent most of the morning at the crime scene. There was suspiciously little in the apartment to identify the women-no family pictures, no wallets or driver’s licenses, though each woman had a tiny purse with cosmetics and cigarettes.
The front door showed pry marks, indicating that whoever got in did so without the women’s knowledge. The crime scene techs, Larry and Ryan, dusted for fingerprints and found a couple of pieces of hair and fiber that might be evidence. But there wasn’t much else they could do beyond take digital pictures of the door and the pry marks.
It must have been a slow day at the morgue, because Doc Takayama, the medical examiner, was there himself. Or maybe it was the presence of Lidia Portuondo, who had responded to the 911 call. I had the feeling they were carrying on a sub-rosa relationship; something about the flirtatious way they talked over dead bodies, I guess.
Doc had turned thirty a few weeks before. Prior to that he’d never actually said how old he was. He was a prodigy in college and medical school, and he chose pathology because he got tired of patients calling him Doogie Howser and asking if he’d gone directly to medical school from kindergarten.
“What do you think, Doc?” I asked.
“Preliminary? Both women were killed by a single gunshot to the head. My guess is that the killer used a silencer, because the position of the bodies indicates that both appear to have been killed in their sleep.”
“Don’t forget the stippling,” Lidia said. She was looking fine that morning, her dark hair pulled into a French braid, her uniform crisp. There was a light blush on her cheeks, as if she’d been in the sun-or put on makeup just before Doc’s arrival.
“Of course,” Doc said, smiling at her. Stippling was a fancy word for a pattern of dots around the wound that indicated the gun was fired at close range.
“Time of death?” Ray asked.
“Four to six hours ago,” Doc said. “I’ll be more precise after the autopsy.”
The building looked like it had once been a motel-two stories with a staircase at one end. Eight small apartments on each floor. A tired middle-aged Japanese woman was taking care of a couple of keikis in an apartment down the hall from the murder scene, but the kids were making such a racket I could barely hear her tell me she didn’t know anything.
An elderly Hawaiian man in a wheelchair was in one of the first-floor units, but he was disoriented and the room smelled of urine. He thought we were from the water department about his leaky faucet, and nothing we said could convince him otherwise. The rest of the neighbors were gone.
There was no superintendent on the property; the building was one of many owned by a small-time operator, and when I called over there the manager, whose name was Ed Millner, said that the lease was in the name of a corporation. “You don’t know the names of the tenants?” I asked.
“Sorry,” Millner said. “They paid the rent on time, they didn’t tear the place up, and they didn’t bother the other tenants. That’s all we care about.”
Doc had the bodies taken away and Lidia followed him outside. I saw them conferring before they parted and wondered if they were comparing forensic notes, or making a date.
“Let’s recap what we have,” Ray said, looking at his notepad. “Two unidentified Asian females, killed in the middle of the night by an unknown assailant. Anonymous 911 call. This case has ‘solved immediately’ written all over it.”
“Now, now,” I said. “We have the name of the corporation that signed the lease. Why does it sound familiar, though?”
Ray paged through his notes. “The house in Black Point,” he said. “Lease in the name of the same corporation.”
He looked up at me. “Well, the clinic was a front for prostitution. You think somebody’s cleaning house?”
“I think we need to go back and see Norma Ching again.” On our way to Chinatown, we stopped and picked up chili at Zippy’s.
While we waited to order, I checked my phone and found a message from Terri with the time and place for our dinner on Saturday. “So you’re back with Mike?” she asked. “What’s going on? Can’t wait to see you.”
If I knew what was going on I’d be ahead of the game, I thought.
We got our food and sat down. I wasn’t about to get my new ride crapped up with fast food wrappers in my first twenty-four hours of ownership. “Who do you think made the 911 call?” Ray asked between mouthfuls.
“Why?”
“These women were killed in the middle of the night. With a silencer. And we know they were working girls, so it wouldn’t be unusual for somebody to see men coming and going at night. So who discovered the bodies?”
“You think maybe Norma?”
He shrugged. “It’s a question we can ask her.”
I got a bad feeling from the fresh pry marks on Norma’s door. It was locked, though, and there was no answer to our knock. I was examining the door jamb when the lady next door came out in the hall. She looked about a hundred years old, no more than four feet tall, her hair a wild white tangle. “You look for Norma?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “You seen her today?”
The old lady shook her head. “She always bring me coffee first thing. But not today. I worried.”
I looked at Ray, then back at the old lady. “You wouldn’t happen to have a key to this door, would you?”
She ducked back into her apartment and returned a moment later with a security key on a red ribbon. I took the key from her and opened the door, calling, “Norma? Norma? You here?”
Ray and I walked into the apartment, already dreading what we’d find. Sure enough, Norma Ching was dead in her bed, a single bullet wound to her head. At a glance, it looked like the same caliber that had killed the two women in Makiki.
The neighbor started to cry. She hadn’t heard anyone during the night, but she said she took her hearing aid out when she went to sleep. She went back into her apartment, and I called the medical examiner’s office and asked Doc to come out himself.
I called the Scientific Investigation Section and asked Larry to come out with Ryan, even though they should have stayed in the lab processing the evidence from Makiki. “If these crimes are related, I figure it’s best to have all the evidence in the same hands. And bring those pictures of the door you took, and we’ll see if we can match them here.”
We looked the place over while we waited. We found a bunch of gold rings, bracelets, and chains in a jewelry box on Norma’s dresser and a few thousand dollars in cash in her freezer, so it was unlikely that her killer had broken in with the intent to steal.
While Doc examined Norma’s body, and Ryan and Larry went over the apartment, Ray and I canvassed the neighbors. They were all elderly Chinese, and none of them had heard anything the night before.
It did look like the pry marks matched, but Larry wouldn’t be able to say for sure without a detailed analysis. “If you’re lucky, the crowbar they used left some trace evidence we can match to both doors,” he said.
Ray and I were both beat by the time we made it back to the station, as our shift was ending. I yawned and looked at the clock. I was thinking about heading home for a nice nap when I realized that I had to meet Dr. Phil for an early dinner.
“You want to go back and canvass that apartment building in Makiki?” Ray asked. “People might start to come home soon.”
“Can you do it? I’ve got a date.” I explained about Dr. Phil’s schedule. “It’s his only night off this week.”
“The things I do for my partner,” Ray said. “If you can drop me up there, I’ll get Julie to pick me up on her way home.”
“You’re a prince among men. This makes up for, oh, at least two times I’ve chauffeured you around.”
Before we left, I tried Karen at Social Security, to see if she’d found anything on Treasure, but she’d already
