He passed the first body only a few feet onto the pier itself and paused by the knot of daytime CSI people attending it. "Gangbangers?" he asked Gretchen, tonight's photographer. After all, four bodies were lying in plain sight-there might be more inside any of these buildings- and Faro had up until now only seen this kind of slaughter in a drive-by or other organized retaliation environment.
But Gretchen looked shell-shocked herself, and in a woman to whom violence was literally a daily event, this was surprising. "Gerson," she said. And at first he thought she was asking him if the lieutenant had been notified to come to the scene.
"I assume," he began, then stopped. "What about him?"
She motioned with a toss of her head back down the pier another forty feet or so, where another group of men were standing around another body, propped under a thick streak of brown on a stucco wall. Was that Frank Batiste down there? The deputy chief did not come to homicide scenes unless something was radically unusual. Faro broke into a trot, was with them all in five seconds-Cuneo and Russell from homicide, John Strout the chief medical examiner, two daytime CSI people. Everybody with hands in their pockets against the biting wind. To get to them, Faro had to pass a third corpse on the pier on his way down, and a fourth buried in a hail of broken glass in one of the doorways. Other homicide inspectors, half the lot of them- Barrel Bracco, Sarah Evans, Marcel Lanier-appeared as recognizable suddenly in the glut of faces.
Still, getting up to this victim, Faro slowed before he'd quite reached it, took a last step or two, stopped dead in his tracks. Jesus Christ, he thought.
Barry Gerson's eyes were open. He hadn't yet been moved, and so sat with his legs almost straight out, tipped a little to his right side, at the bottom of the brown line, which disappeared into his back. Faro leaned down closer, made out two small holes in the front of his jacket. He straightened up and turned to the knot of men. "How did this happen?"
"We're in the process of trying to piece that together right now, Sergeant." Batiste had come up through homicide-he'd been lieutenant before Glitsky-and so he knew the drill. "I'm hearing from these inspectors"-he indicated Cuneo and Russell-"that there's been some history among these men."
Faro, out of the loop, glanced at his dead lieutenant, came back to Batiste. But Cuneo, pointing up the pier, was the one to speak. "The first stiff back there is John Holiday, Len. Beyond him is Roy Panos. That speak to you at all?"
"John Holiday, I know," Faro said. A nod. "The name only." He paused, knowing that his next words would be a bomb, decided he had to say them. "I was at his house a couple of nights ago. With Paul Thieu."
All heads snapped toward him. Russell and Cuneo exchanged a meaningful look. "What was he doing there?" Cuneo asked. "What were you doing there? "
"Holiday was our suspect." Russell, bitching about turf.
But Batiste cut them both off. "I don't give a damn about any of that. Sergeant, you're telling me Paul Thieu was in this, too?"
"It seems like he would have had to be somehow, sir. Doesn't it?"
"And killed himself over it?"
"That might not have been over this," Cuneo said. "It might have been something else."
"Or maybe he didn't even kill himself at all," Faro said. "Maybe somebody killed him."
"What for?" Russell snapped.
"I don't know. Shut him up?"
"About what?" Cuneo.
Faro shrugged. He didn't know. He motioned back toward the other bodies. "So who are the other two?"
Batiste provided the identifications. When he heard the names, Faro nodded. "Just yesterday, sir, Inspector Thieu had me check fingerprints we found at Holiday's house against these guys. They'd been there."
"Which means what?"
"I don't know, sir." He looked around. "Holiday and these men must have been into something together, though."
The deputy chief didn't like this turn of events at all, and it showed all over him. His eyes strafed the men knotted around him, went back to Gerson, over to Holiday's body, took in the whole scene. "What the hell's going on? Anybody got any idea?"
"Y'all hold the fort here," John Strout said. "I'm going to take a walk, see some other clients. Jimmy." The medical examiner moved back up the pier with one of the other crime scene inspectors.
After he'd gone, Cuneo and Russell shared another look, and Batiste caught it. "Let's hear it, boys. You even think you got anything at all, now'd be a good time to share."
Cuneo cleared his throat, took the lead. "Lincoln and I, we've been working a little with Roy Panos." He jerked a thumb. "The first body up there."
"What do you mean, working with him?" Batiste asked.
"He was an assistant patrol special…"
"Related to Wade?"
"Yes, sir. His brother. He became a source."
"For what?"
"First the Silverman murder. Then Matt Creed, the other Patrol Special…" The admission was costing Cuneo. He cleared his throat again. "… and the Tenderloin multiple."
Batiste crossed his arms. "You're telling me this man Panos was a source for what, four homicide investigations?"
Russell jumped to his partner's defense. "They were all related, sir."
"I would hope to smile. Okay, so where does Paul Thieu come in?"
Again, the glance between the homicide guys, but there was no hiding it, and Cuneo took it again. "He originally drew both Creed and the Tenderloin guys."
Batiste, trying to get it clear. "But you wound up with both of them."
"That's right." Cuneo nodded. "The lieutenant handed them off to us. There was a connection with both of them to Silverman, which was ours already. He thought it would be more efficient."
"But Thieu stuck with it anyway? Why would he do that?" Blank stares all around, and Batiste turned back to Faro. "Sergeant, I'd be interested in anything you'd like to contribute."
Faro tugged at his bug, the tuft of hair under his lower lip. "He had some questions, I guess."
"What kind of questions?"
"With the evidence at the Tenderloin scene."
"He told you that?"
"In vague terms only."
"But nothing specific?"
"Not really, sir, or if there was, he didn't share that information with me."
"So what did he tell you when you were going out to Holiday's? What was that about?"
"I told you. To lift prints." Faro turned to the inspectors. "He told me it was a favor for you guys."
"That's bullshit," Cuneo said. "We never sent anybody out there." He was angry and was making very little effort to hide it. If Batiste hadn't been there, he might have swung at Faro. "We would have made any request like that directly to CSI, Len, like we always do, and you know it. This really pisses me off," he added to no one in particular.
Batiste ignored him. "All right." He pointed at Cuneo and Russell. "Put that on your list, way up there, maybe first." Again, he surveyed the area all around. "So what the hell happened here? What got Barry out here? It had to be something with these Patrol Specials, wouldn't you think? How many of them are dead now? "
"Two," Russell said. "Roy Panos and Matt Creed."
But Cuneo couldn't let that go. "You might as well include Nick Sephia. He used to work for Panos, too. He's his nephew." He indicated the spot. "That's him in the doorway up there."
"Shit." Batiste blew out heavily. "Anybody call Wade yet? Where's Lanier?" He turned and called out. "Marcel!"
Lanier came trotting up from where Sephia had fallen. "Yes, sir?"
"You'd better get ahold of Wade Panos and get him over here ASAP. That's his brother Roy, and his nephew Nick. This has got to have something to do with him. We've got to find out what he knows."
"What are you thinking?" Lanier asked.
"I'm thinking somebody with Panos tried to broker some kind of a deal."