Two of the men in the room were city supervisors, one representing district one, while the other represented district eleven. At first, Ryker couldn’t determine why they were present, then it came to him that Danny Lin lived in Sea Cliff, which was part of district one, and had died in the Mandarin Oriental, which was in district eleven. Both men appeared to be a bit on the nervous side, and Ryker figured that the supervisor from district one-a man named Harrison Newsom, who still looked every bit the hippy even though he must have been in his sixties-wasn’t at all that comfortable with police stations in general and police officers in particular after spending the latter half of the 1960s as something of a counter-culture magnet. Ryker found his presence to be not only incongruous, given his blue jeans, denim jacket over a tie-dyed shirt, and long gray hair tied in a ponytail, but almost laughable as well.
The only woman in the room was well-known to Ryker as she was one of the primary assistant district attorneys he dealt with on occasion. Selma Kaplan was as much a thoroughbred as they came, with her no- nonsense business suits and perfectly-coiffed blonde hair that likely had so much hairspray in it that even a typhoon couldn’t ruffle a single hair on her head out of place. She was also something of a heartbreaker, with those perfect good looks that only California seemed to be able to generate. She was also rumored to be so frigid that she couldn’t even get an Eskimo to date her. All Ryker cared about was that she was a hell of a prosecutor, tough, shrewd, and dedicated.
That left James Lin and what Ryker could only surmise to be his bodyguard. The hulking man was introduced as Lin’s corporate chief of security, Alexsey Baluyevsky. Ryker met the man’s eyes, and the big man nodded toward him curtly, his blue eyes as cold as the Arctic Circle. His mammoth hands were clasped before him on the table. Ryker looked at them. They were broad and hard, just like the rest of him, and Ryker had no doubt that he had no trouble using them in the most lethal of ways when the situation required it.
“And you of course know Mister James Lin,” Jericho finished.
“Indeed I do. Good morning, sir.” Ryker nodded to Lin, and felt that wasn’t enough by means of acknowledgement. He lamely added, “Good to see you again.” It sounded false even to him.
“Detective Ryker,” Lin responded simply.
Ryker looked at Spider, but the Lieutenant only continued to stare at the tabletop before him. Ryker cleared his throat and leaned back in his chair.
“So what can I do for you folks?” he asked, turning his gaze toward Jericho.
It was Hallis who spoke instead.
“Detective sergeant, how are things coming with the Lin investigation?” he asked.
The chief was seated almost directly across from him, so Ryker had no problem meeting his gaze. Hallis kept his demeanor pleasant and non-assuming…well, as much as the chief of police of a major metropolitan city could when dealing with a minion.
“It’s just started, chief. We’ve only made one pass at the mur-ah, at the book, and we’re still going through the inventory of physical evidence. We’re also waiting for both the crime lab and the medical examiner to finish up, and as you might suspect, there could be a lot of potential leads in those areas.”
“I’ve asked both departments to expedite their procedures,” Jericho added, which made Ryker smile slightly. A captain didn’t have the horsepower to change jack-diddly when it came to either department.
“I’ve already had a heart-to-heart with Morry,” Hallis said, and Ryker knew that Morry could only be Deputy Chief Maurice Trabak, currently the head of the S.F.P.D. Investigations Bureau. As a matter of fact, he was also Ryker’s top boss, but the two men had had little contact over the years.
“I expect things will start moving along much more quickly,” Hallis continued. He looked at the far end of the table. “Mr. Lin, we’ll have your son returned to you by tomorrow afternoon at the very latest. The medical examiner will conduct the autopsy today.”
Lin nodded his head and tried to look gracious. It only looked fake.
“Thank you, Chief Hallis.”
“You’re very welcome.”
The mutual admiration society thing was beginning to get a little thick, so Ryker cut to the chase. After all, it looked like they were about to kick him off the case, so he had nothing to lose.
“Excuse me, please. I don’t mean any degree of disrespect, but I have a murder investigation to get back to.” Ryker looked at Jericho. “Unless this meeting has been called to bigfoot me, that is.”
“Not at all,” Hallis said immediately. “As a matter of fact, Mr. Lin has requested that you be kept on it full time.”
Ryker looked down the table at Lin. The Chinese man was as expressive as a department store mannequin. He met Ryker’s gaze evenly.
“This is true, detective sergeant,” Lin said. “I can see you are a dedicated man, and I would like to express my hopes that you can dedicate all your skills toward finding the person who killed my son.”
“I see,” Ryker said. He shifted in his chair and glanced over at Spider. Spider fidgeted a bit himself, then spoke for the first time since entering the room.
“Detective Sergeant Ryker is a supervisor, Mr. Lin. He runs four other detectives, who have two other murders assigned to them.”
Chief Hallis cleared his throat and stirred in his seat. He glanced down the table at Jericho.
“Ah, Lieutenant Furino, we were hoping maybe you could make some additional assignments. Offload the cases Ryker’s team is handling to the rest of the homicide squad at Metro.” As he spoke, Jericho rubbed his hands together, almost wringing them, in fact. It was a fitting gesture from Ryker’s perspective.
“I see.” Spider kept his voice steady and neutral as he spoke. “So you’re asking me to put two other deaths on the company back-burner, so to speak. Excuse me sirs, but isn’t that proscribed by at least one or two departmental policies? I really can’t imagine that there’s any regulation that would allow for that.”
“As I said. We were hoping you could find a way to make the reassignments.” It was obvious that Jericho didn’t intend to follow Spider’s line of reasoning.
“We can backfill with detectives from one of the other districts, if you think that’s necessary.” Hallis Said. Apparently, the chief wasn’t buying into Spider’s nearly-voiced argument, either. Ryker looked across the desk at Selma Kaplan. She met his eyes for an instant, then shook her head minutely.
“So you want me to work on the Lin case full time,” Ryker mused aloud. “Shuffle the other cases my team is handling off onto the rest of the squad. Tell me, captain, do you think the Hermanos family would feel good and secure knowing that their son’s death is now being handled by, say, Cueball?”
“Detective sergeant, I don’t think you’ve discovered the proper tone to take with me. Try again,” Jericho said.
“Take it easy, Hal,” Spider cautioned, glancing over at the chief. “Let’s listen to what the captain has to say.”
“The Hermanos case is a drug-related homicide, is it not?” Jericho asked. “He was shot dead in a transaction involving ice at a gay dance club, was he not?”
Ryker nodded slowly.
“Those are some of the facts, yes,” he answered. “But-”
“So answer me honestly, detective sergeant,” Jericho pressed on, overriding him, “would you
“That’s Morales’s case, sir. He’s close to closing it out, and we expect an arrest to be made very, very soon. Snatching it away from him and Kowalenko will bust the momentum. And the Dyer case-”
“Another drug-related murder most probably,” Jericho said. “Dyer was indigent and clearly not in the best of health, and the medical examiner found substantial amounts of heroin in his system. Hardly a model citizen,” Jericho finished, looking down the table at Lin.
