opposing that authority.
‘Call me Ricky. This is my partner, Detective Cathy Ellison.’
Ellison stepped forward and shook Hunter and Garcia’s hand with almost the same firmness as Corbi. She was about five feet six in height, trim but slightly stoop-shouldered, with short dark hair, cut in a textured, graduated style. Her eyes carried the intensity of someone who took her job very seriously. ‘Call me Cathy,’ she said, quickly studying both detectives.
‘As I told you over the phone, the reason why I called you is that we found this in the victim’s living room,’ Corbi said, making a slight head movement towards the apartment, and handing Hunter a business card. ‘It’s one of yours, right?’
Hunter nodded.
Corbi reached inside his breast pocket for his notebook. ‘Thomas Lynch, better known as Tito. He was out on parole from Lancaster. Been out for eleven months. According to his record,’ Corbi faced Garcia, ‘you were the arresting officer seven years ago, and the one who got a confession out of him.’ He paused and reassessed his words. ‘Or should I say, you convinced him to cut a deal. If I had to venture a guess, I’d say that since he was released he became some sort of informer for you guys.’
‘Not really,’ Garcia said.
Corbi looked at him with a penetrating stare. ‘Friend?’
‘Not really.’
Corbi nodded, taking off his glasses, breathing on both lenses and using the tip of his blue tie to polish them. ‘Care to shed some light on how he came by one of your business cards? A very-crisp-and-new business card.’
The last sentence was delivered with a slight lilt in his tone.
Garcia held Corbi’s gaze. ‘We contacted him recently, looking for some information – but he wasn’t an informer,’ he added, before Corbi had a chance to retort. ‘He was just someone who showed up in a list of names.’
Ricky Corbi was experienced enough to know that Garcia wasn’t being stubborn. He was simply giving him all the information he was prepared to give at that time. Pursuing it further was pointless. He gave Garcia a barely noticeable nod.
‘Could you tell us when you saw him last?’ Ellison asked.
‘Yesterday afternoon,’ Hunter said.
Corbi and Ellison exchanged a quick look.
‘According to the ME, your boy was murdered sometime last night,’ Corbi took over again, returning his glasses to his face. ‘Or most probably in the very early hours of the morning. They are just getting ready to take the body away, if you guys would like to have a look first . . .’
Hunter and Garcia nodded.
‘I have no idea who he pissed off last night,’ Corbi added, handing the detectives a pair of latex gloves each, together with shoe covers. ‘But whoever it was, he did a job on this Tito character. We have a real work of art in there.’
Sixty-Nine
Corbi and Ellison stepped into apartment 311, followed by Hunter and Garcia. Together with the four forensic agents, the already-crowded living room became a sardine can.
‘What’s in the box?’ Hunter asked, nodding at the silver box on the dining table.
‘Now, nothing,’ Corbi said. ‘But it did contain drugs – cocaine, to be more precise. A very fine cut. Probably very high-quality stuff. The lab will confirm it. Initial signs indicate that whoever whacked him took the drugs.’
‘You think this was a drugs hit?’ Garcia asked.
‘Who knows at this stage?’ Ellison replied.
‘Who called it in?’
‘Some terrified girl. Didn’t leave a name. She sounded very young.’
‘When was this? When was the call made?’
‘This morning. We checked the recording. The girl said that she came to visit a friend. Most probably she came here to score some drugs. From the door-to-door so far, no one knows who this young
Hunter’s eyes swept the room in a matter of seconds; no blood anywhere. The living room looked a mess, but no different than it had the day before, when they’d paid Tito a visit. No visible disturbance. The chain lock and the inside doorframe were also intact. Nothing indicated a forced entry.
‘Are you guys through in there?’ Corbi asked the lead forensic agent, indicating the tiny corridor that led to the bathroom and bedroom.
‘Yeah, we’ve got everything. You’re clear.’
They crossed the living room.
‘There’s no way all of us will fit in there,’ Corbi said as they got to the bathroom door. ‘I thought there couldn’t be a smaller bathroom than the one in my house. I was wrong. You guys go ahead. We’ve seen it.’ Corbi and Ellison stepped back, allowing Hunter and Garcia to take lead.
Hunter slowly pushed the door open.
‘Oh crap.’ The words dribbled out of Garcia’s lips.
Hunter said nothing, his gaze taking everything in.
The floor, the walls and the sink in the tiny bathroom were splattered with blood. Arterial spray from a knife being swung across someone’s throat or body. Tito was naked, sitting on the floor inside the blood-soaked shower cubicle. His back was against the tiled wall, his legs stretched out in front of him, his arms loosely slumped by his side. His head was tilted back, as if he was looking at something on the ceiling. The problem was, he had no eyes. They both had been pressed back into his skull until they sunk in. One of them seemed to have busted in its socket. What looked like blood tears had run down the corners of the sockets, past his ears, and down the side of his shaved head. His mouth was opened, and half filled with thick, clotted blood. His tongue had been ripped from his mouth.
‘We found the tongue at the bottom of the toilet,’ Corbi offered from the door.
Tito’s throat had been slit the whole length of his neck, and blood had cascaded down his torso and onto his lap and legs.
‘According to the forensics guys,’ Ellison said. ‘There are no visible traumas to the body, which means he wasn’t beat up. He was simply brought to the bathroom and slaughtered like cattle. No blood was found anywhere else in the house.’
‘Drugged?’ Garcia asked.
‘We’ll need to wait for the autopsy for confirmation. But it wouldn’t surprise me if he was as high as my captain’s ego when this happened. There’s coke residue on the small square mirror on the table in the living room.’
‘The bedroom is a damn mess,’ Corbi took over. ‘And it stinks of dirty clothes, unwashed body parts and pot. But judging by the rest of the apartment, I don’t think that was a disturbance. I think he lived like a pig out of choice. We also found marijuana in the bedroom, a kilo of it, together with a few crack-cocaine pipes. If whoever did this was after something, that something was probably inside that silver box in the living room, drug or not.’ He waited for Hunter and Garcia to exit the bathroom. ‘I’m not gonna ask you what kind of information you requested out of this Tito character. That’s your business, and I know better than to butt in into another cop’s investigation, but is there anything you can tell us about the victim that might facilitate
