Ashida said, “And that’s all the news that’s unfit to print?”
“Well, you got your costar in this Mimms drama. He’s this Navy flyboy named Link Rockwell. He’s the white Abbott to Mimms’ Costello. He passes through L.A. when he’s on leave, and he’s a bagman for these rich white guys who back the Rev’s deport-the-spooks agenda.”
Ashida sifted it. His brain gears clicked and meshed. Mimms was sacrosanct. That scotched an approach.
Jack said, “Mimms has got darktown hot-wired. He could help the PD out with this job, but you’d have to bypass Chief Jack. He don’t like to be reminded that he’s asshole tight with the Rev.”
Reckless Girl went to lunch. He hid upstairs and watched her walk to Central Avenue. He deployed Man Camera. He close-up shot photo trails.
He began downstairs and worked upstairs. He detail-shot the stairway to the landing and the bedroom door. He was a camera lens and shutter. He went objective and subjective. He posited this:
He’s a left-handed killer. He walks Rice, Kapek, and Archuleta downstairs. He walks them individually. His victims are terped to the gills. He’s got his ice pick pressed to their necks.
His victims flail and bounce off the walls. Note the wall pictures knocked to the floor.
Man Camera. Let’s shoot reverse-angle snapshots downstairs.
Ashida walked back down. He’s the killer. His victims have ingested carbolic acid. All three are near death. He positions them on the couch. He’s got his ice pick to their necks. He steadies them with it. He one-hand strangles them. Or — he has help.
Ashida went back upstairs. He reversed field and walked from the bedroom door to the stairway. He Man Camera’d the right-side hallway wall and the floor-juncture points. He snapped the downed pictures. Palm trees and seascapes. Pix that came with the crib.
Let’s shoot close-ups now. Let’s shoot those floor-juncture points.
He did it. He snapped scuff-mark indentations. They were low on the wall. They were sharp-point indentations. They’re in with the dumped pictures. Dent, dent, dent — here to there:
Straight across from the bedroom doorway. Dent, dent, dent — all along the right-side wall. Dent, dent, dent — terminating at the steps leading downstairs.
Man Camera. Let’s hypothesize. Let’s hazard a guess.
They’re scuff-mark indentations. They’re sharply pointed. They connote a woman wearing high-heeled shoes.
It’s all theoretical. It’s inconclusive and unprovable at this point.
Ashida walked into the bedroom. He dumped his Man Camera and opened his evidence kit. He studied photos of the semen-stained sheets.
Four semen stains. Four differentiated blood types. Two O-positives. One O-negative. One rare RH-positive. Dr. Nort blood-tested the dead men. Archuleta was AB-neg/not applicable. Rice and Kapek were O-positive secretors. It was odds-on NA. O-positive was the most common white-European blood type.
Whorehouse. Fuck flop. Acey-ducey antics. Differentiated jizz stains. Perverted acts performed. Performed with men, performed with women. There’s no way to tell.
Did sex acts precede the murders? Did the victims or their killer or killers watch/abstain/perform? There’s no way to determine that.
Ashida donned his headband light. He bent over the bed and went in close. He quadrant-scanned and saw five small hairs. He’d run two prior scans and missed them.
Dark hairs, curled hairs. Surely pubic hairs. The three victims were dark-haired men.
He tweezed the hairs and prepped his kit microscope. He dialed tight and scoped the hairs, one-off and collectively. He determined this:
Three hairs are male. Two hairs are female. The maxilla circumference indicates gender. He’s not a physician. It’s Dr. Nort’s final call.
Ashida walked downstairs. He grabbed the PD’s callout phone and buzzed Dr. Nort. He described the hair samples and said he’d bring them in. Dr. Nort said he’d compare them to the stiffs’ pubic hair.
Reckless Girl was due back. Ashida walked upstairs and went back to work.
He stifled shrieks. He quashed effete exhalations. It came on belatedly. He knew what it meant.
The stains. The shit traces. Inverted sex acts. He ran from Reckless Girl. She understood inversion and called him an invert. He should have fought back.
Ashida wiped his face and caught his breath. He redusted. He redid touch-and-grab planes. He hit one dresser, two nightstands, the closet door and shelves. He got smudges, smears, distressed latents. He pulled a stack of phonograph records. The grooved plastic would thwart lifts. The covers would sustain.
Jazz records. Duke Ellington and Count Basie. Obscure Negro ensembles. The klubhaus rolls heterodox.
Ashida dusted. He powdered twenty-one album covers. He got smudges, smears, badly distressed latents. He dusted cover #22. Erskine Hawkins and his ’Bama State Collegians. The White Dog Blues.
He got more smudges and smears, more badly distressed latents. He got one partial latent — a top-half fingertip.
Ashida tape-lifted it and rolled it on blank cardboard. The partial looked near-familiar. He checked it against his elimination prints. No loops, whorls, and ridges matched. He saw the two Statie print cards that Dudley supplied. Hector Obregon-Hodaka and Kyoho Hanamaka.
He instantly nixed Hanamaka. All his fingertips bore burn scars. He ran eye clicks. He clicked the partial to the Obregon-Hodaka card. He matched three comparison points. He fell short of a conclusive ID.
He dusted four more album covers. He got smudges and glossy-surface smears.
He got out Tommy Glennon’s address book. Ray Pinker pulled two Glennon latents off the front cover. He didn’t dust the pages. They were semigloss paper. They might sustain prints.
Ashida flipped through the book. He got hackle bumps. Something seemed wrong. He noted four names. All four played wrong.
Dr. Lin Chung.
Dr. Saul Lesnick.
Orson Welles.
Wallace N. Jamie.
Tommy Glennon’s a rape-o. Lesnick and Chung are dubious physicians. He knows their reputations himself. Jamie and Welles. A private eye and a film wunderkind. Those names, this address book. It does not logically track.
The address book was pocket-sized. Page dusts were difficult work.
Ashida adjusted his headband light. He placed the book atop the dresser and opened it flat. His car keys held it steady. He arrayed his powder and brushes and jumped—
He got thumb-ruffle smears on page one. He got straight smears on page two. He got zero on pages three, four, and five. He got something on page six.
It looked familiar. I’ve seen you before. You look like a smooth-glove print, but—
You lie flat below the top-digit line. Glove prints don’t do that. I’ve got a hunch that I know what you are.
Man Camera now. Strike an all-objective pose. Observe yourself as you do this.
It’s auspicious. You’re trembling. Open your evidence kit. Pull that print card Dudley sent you. There it is. You willed it. Yes — it’s a perfect match.
Kyoho Hanamaka. His burn-scarred right forefinger. The ghoul touched Tommy Glennon’s address book.