Fuck, this is driving me crazy. “Why was a lawyer after him?”
“B-because Jhuko couldn’t bay. Then Jhuko s-stobbed c-coming to see me.”
Maggie and I tracked along the river, in the direction of the wharf, Sanje Kapasi’s less-than-shack of a house falling out of sight.
I said to Maggie, “How come you helped me manipulate him? That wasn’t exactly police procedure in there. I thought you were the honest cop.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Don’t even try it, Maggie. You know we manipulated him. And don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy it. I saw you.”
“I just questioned him. You’re the one who assaulted him.” She played it innocent, but her foxy grin betrayed her. Was that a wink? My stomach flipped at the thought, in a good way.
We walked back onto the wharf. Arboreal robotic loading arms lined the water’s edge. The last one had died decades ago. Ivy had greened over the rusted metal, and lizards had nested on hydraulic pistons.
We found the same boat captain at the wharf playing cards on an upturned barrel. He must’ve waited around, hoping he’d catch us for the return trip. We climbed down into the boat and sat next to each other on the shady side, our knees bumping with the river flow. The electricity of each knee bump set my heart sparking.
A flyer launched from behind the wharf. It buzzed the wharf then headed upriver. It was probably filled with offworld tourists who had stopped in Loja for lunch. The sun hung low in the sky as we plowed our way out into the thick water. The temperature was just starting to drop. I tried to fan my shirt, but it was plastered to my body.
I tried to piece things together. My theory went like this: Jhuko Kapasi was running ’guana fights. He got greedy and rigged a fight. He gave good odds on Vishnu and took big bets. He gave his ’guana keeper brother some anticoagulants and told him to give them to Vishnu before the fight. Real simple-Vishnu gets cut, doesn’t clot, bleeds to death; Kapasi makes a killing. But his brother Sanje was attached to Vishnu and didn’t give him the pills. Vishnu won the fight, and Kapasi didn’t have the money to pay out.
Assuming I was right, I was surprised Kapasi was still alive. A guy who pulled a scam like that paid one way or another…and since he didn’t have the money…
He must’ve had enough dough to pay off Carlos Simba. The Loja crime lord totally controlled that city. No ’guana fights would have gone on without a fee going his way. If it was illegal, he’d get his piece. Simba would’ve whacked Kapasi by now if he hadn’t paid. Not even prison could have protected him.
The way I saw it, Kapasi must’ve used the purse to pay off Simba and any bookmakers he was afraid of-fuck everybody else. According to his brother, one of the fuckees was a lawyer, almost certainly Prosecutor Glazer. He wouldn’t have taken kindly to getting stiffed on his winnings. He had Kapasi arrested and sentenced to five years. I still found it hard to believe Kapasi made it through alive. He would’ve had to cough up some serious bucks.
Fast forward three years and Kapasi opted for a stint in the Army rather than serving the full nickel. According to Jimmy Bushong, Kapasi got back to his old tricks running games and supplying brown sugar to his lieutenant. Then he took six prisoners out in a truck for reasons unknown. Lieutenant Vlotsky was forced to cover for Kapasi and came up with a BS story about getting attacked rather than being made for a guy who was dosing on duty. Vlotsky resented being made the fool and armed the unit with bum guns and sent them into combat. The logical conclusion was that Kapasi killed Vlotsky out of revenge.
Where Mayor Samir fit in, I had no idea.
TWELVE
By the time we made it back to Koba, early afternoon darkness had already fallen. Seventeen hours of darkness before the sun would rise again.
We hit the station. The basement was naturally cool. Condensation seeped from the walls, and the ceiling had sprouted dense green growths. The stone floor was ridged for better footing. Even so, muckish puddles had to be avoided. We entered the morgue. “Seen Abdul?”
“He’s in room four.”
We pushed our way through the swinging doors into room four. My eyes burned from the smell of morgue- sterilizing acid. Frigid air gusted from the overhead cooling unit. Bright lights shone on a steel table that was topped by an open body. Abdul Salaam was ripping the rib cage apart.
He looked up and spotted us through his thick glasses. His magnified eyes lit. “Juno.”
“Hey, Abdul. This is Maggie Orzo. You remember her from yesterday.”
“Yes, yes-of course I remember.” He tore his gloves off, revealing bony hands creviced with age. Maggie and I followed Abdul to his office, grabbed up a couple mugs of coffee, and took seats on wooden chairs.
Abdul pulled a folder from a squeaky drawer. “Your vic bled to death.” He held the folder out for me to take, but I had coffee in my left! Put the coffee down first; take the folder with your left-that’ll look strange…quick snatch with my right? Take the folder.
Maggie took the folder. I’m off the hook.
I set my coffee down.
Maggie said, “What am I thinking? You should probably look at this first, Juno. I can look at it when you’re done.” She passed the file to me.
What just happened? She knew about my hand, and she was covering for me. That was what happened. She thought I was trying to hide my hand from Abdul, when it was her I was hiding it from; Abdul already knew. I wrenched my mind off the horror of Maggie knowing about my hand and forced my attention onto the horror of the crime.
Abdul said, “The throat wounds did the trick. He hardly lost any blood through the stab wounds. He was well on his way to dead by then. The recovered maggots were eighth generation since the wounds were opened. That puts the time of attack at twenty-two minutes after midnight. Time of death about two minutes after that.”
“How about the murder weapon?” I wanted to know.
“I won’t be able to help you much there. The perp used a regular butcher knife. We only have one company on Lagarto that makes them. The problem is they sell thousands of them every year. This one was definitely not new or recently sharpened. Even if you find the exact one the killer used, I won’t be able to give you a positive match with the wounds; the maggots did too much damage to the flesh around the openings. You better find prints on the handle and your lieutenant’s blood on the blade.”
“How about the perp?”
“Based on the incision angles on the throat, I can determine that your killer is right-handed. The killer was strong, almost certainly a male. He put the vic in a headlock and cut his throat. That means he’s tall. Now, Lieutenant Vlotsky was slightly shorter than average, so put the killer at above average height.”
“Do you think it could be the work of a first-time killer?”
“It’s possible, but I don’t think so. I can see a first-time killer sticking the body fourteen times…make sure he’s dead, maybe a fit of rage. What I can’t see is a first-time killer mutilating the face that way. He took his time cutting off the lips. He did some delicate cutting. That’s hard to do with a butcher knife. Even with a lase-blade, it would’ve taken a steady hand. I really don’t think a first-time killer is going to have that kind of patience. He’d be too worked up. I think this guy had practice.”
An image flashed in my head of six dead POWs, lying in the jungle with lipless smiles.
Maggie decided to push the point. “What if he used a butcher knife for the stabbings then used a scalpel for the face?”
“Nope. He used the butcher knife on the face. I found small pieces of the vic’s liver in the face wounds. He used the same knife for everything. Any ideas on why he took the lips?”
Maggie answered, “I’ve been thinking a lot about that, but everything I come up with sounds harebrained.”
“Like what?” asked Abdul.
“The killer is clearly fixated on the lips, and lips are for kissing, right? Maybe his mother never kissed him, and this is some twisted reaction to that. Or it could be that he was seriously verbally abused as a child, and he takes
