Another detective, a junior who’d pulled the midnight shift, said a quick hello when they peeked into a cramped office near the back of the kitchen. The woman gave them a harried look as she packed up the contents of the elder Shing’s desk. From the piles of loose papers and ledgers scattered about everywhere, it looked like someone had beat them to the office and tossed the place. Sanchez gave the woman a quick nod and pushed his partner past a bank of metal shelves stacked high with dry noodles and bags of rice. There, tucked into a corner of the kitchen, a narrow flight led upstairs.
“How’s Martinez’s Cantonese?” Kane asked Sanchez as they climbed the tight stairs.
“Passable. Better than Lau’s, but Kelly’s is nonexistent. Lau’s got better Spanish, so she’s going to take a crack at the two dishwashers. They’re from El Salvador. I talked them up a bit. Seems like no one shares our boy Bradley’s opinion of dad. They hated the man’s guts, but hey,” Sanchez said, shrugging as he reached a door at the top of the stairs, “you gotta work where you find it.”
“You got gloves on you?” Kane asked and smiled when Sanchez handed him a pair of black latex gloves, then fitted a pair on his own hands. “Not exactly department issue.”
“So I dated a tattoo artist. They’re sexier than those blue ones they give us, and they fit.” Kel broke the seal one of the uniforms had put on the door. The knob looked grimy from being printed, and it slid a bit in Sanchez’s hand when he turned it. “Okay, let’s see what fresh hell we’ve got waiting for us behind door number one.”
Sanchez took a slim camera out of his inside jacket pocket and stepped in first. Kane stopped at the door, working the air in the gloves out from between his fingers. He reached up and tapped the dead bolt set into the door above the knob. “Grab a pic of this too. Locks from the outside. The inside’s flat.”
“So, locking people out of the place?” Kel cocked his head.
“Or locking them in,” Kane responded flatly.
The room was narrow and airless, running only twelve feet in against the cinder block wall. A full-sized bed was wedged into the far end of the room, its simple rail frame set low to the ground. Bare shelves took up most of one wall. A layer of dust ran along the front edges, marking where boxes once sat. Those boxes were now empty and lying on the floor, tossed haphazardly into the corner near the door. A few were still full, and Kane nudged one with his foot, surprised at its lack of heft.
Bending over, Kane carefully lifted the open flaps of the box and inspected its contents. Kel walked over with the camera to record what Kane found.
“It’s ties.” Kel frowned. “Who the hell has a box of ties? And ugly ties at that.”
“They’re knotted together tight,” Kane said, glancing at the bed. “Look at the bed frame. There’s one looped over the end, and you can see another one on the other side.”
“Some kind of BDSM thing going on up here?” Kel snapped a few pictures of the metal shelves, pacing off the room. “Far cry from some place to crash when you’re not getting along with your foster father.”
Kane didn’t need the reminder, not when he walked over to the bed and caught a whiff of the rank, musky sheets. Reminding himself he was on the job, he crouched next to the mattress and examined the frame. “Paint’s worn off near the ties, and this one’s abraded. So either the players are really hardcore, or the person being tied down really didn’t want to be here.”
He didn’t like thinking of a young, teenaged Miki spending nights up in the room, especially not on the worn-out, sagging mattress in front of him. Kane had to shove away the images crawling up from his darkest thoughts, and he shook his head, focusing on the job. Behind him, Kel’s camera continued to pop off flashes as the other inspector went about the room.
Kane stood up and stretched his legs. The long day was beginning to wear on him, and it’d been hours since he had his last cup of burnt cop coffee. Rubbing at the fatigue lingering on his eyes, Kane stifled a yawn when Kel turned the camera on him.
Kel gave Kane an exaggerated pout. “Smile for me, pretty boy.”
“I’ll kick your scrawny ass if you take that picture, Sanchez.” Kane flipped his partner off and stepped forward. “Did you take a peek at the rest of the boxes?”
“Not yet,” Sanchez admitted. “I was making sure I got pictures of all the empty boxes. Most of them are marked ‘clothes’, but it makes me wonder what’s in those trash bags downstairs. Think Bradley boy was just grabbing things and tossing them away before anyone came to find out what Daddy was doing up here?”
“Kind of makes him an accessory if there was anything illegal going on,” Kane pointed out. “Let’s have Lau wrap him up into one of the cars and take him down. Let him sweat it out there. If he lawyers up, then we know we’ve got something to go on.”