DISPATCH gave Kane an address that led to a worn-out strip mall straddling the line between decrepit and seedy. Several police cars blocked off the two driveways leading into the cracked asphalt parking lot. A small group of Hispanic women clustered at the doorway of a small Laundromat at one end of the strip mall’s L, watching the steady stream of people going in and out of a boarded-up Mexican taco shop thinly disguised as an Italian ristorante. From the plywood sheets and cut chains dangling from the steel mesh doors, the neighborhood didn’t care much for spaghetti and antipasto.
From the looks of the people gathering near the sidewalk, the area needed more in the line of entertainment. A Mexican fruit salad vendor dealt a swift business on the corner, loading up plastic cups of tropical fruit before sprinkling the mixture with lime juice, salt, and chili peppers. Kane’s mouth watered at the sight, and his stomach grumbled, reminding him it was empty.
“Trust me, belly, you don’t want anything in you when we walk into this shit.” Kane flashed his badge to get past the uniforms and parked his SUV next to Sanchez’s Porsche. Climbing out of his car, he nodded to the pair of older women gossiping at the front of the check-cashing place kitty-corner of the restaurant.
Passing them, he gave them a winning smile and a nod. “Ladies.”
He jostled the chains as he edged past the steel door, and the foul smell of rotten meat hit him hard. Enormous spotlight tripods were set up to illuminate the scene, chasing away any shadow that might hide a sliver of evidence. Standing in the middle of the room, Sanchez looked like death warmed over, lack of sleep hanging creases beneath his dark eyes. Still, he was a damned sight prettier than the man strewn all over the cement floor of the abandoned restaurant. Handing his partner one of the coffees he’d grabbed from a drive-thru, Kane stepped around the circle of carnage in the middle of what was once a dining room.
“This guy is a butcher,” Kel muttered. Sipping the hot coffee, he sighed in gratitude. “Thanks for the hit. This case is killing me.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.” He looked around the place. “Who called this in?”
“Lady across the street. Her cat brought home a nose. She figured she should tell someone about it.” Sanchez handed Kane a pair of plastic booties and gloves. “Suit up and I’ll show you what’s left of our pedophile.”
The restaurant wore its history on its walls. Dust and cobwebs covered nearly every flat surface, and the industrial gray rug was mostly ripped up off the floor. Only wide swaths of the gummy patterned carpet remained near a broken podium that had probably served as a hostess station. Plastic grapes and fabric ivy vines looped over nails to frame the Spanish-style arches at the entrance. More baskets of grapes and straw were fastened to the walls, a few sagging from the molly bolts giving way under their weight.
A faded mural of a salsa dancer took up most of a long wall, its background altered by a less-skilled artist to depict what Kane guessed was supposed to be an Italian vineyard. Even in the gloom, the splotches of bright purple and yellow squiggles looked more like disease cells than something he’d want a wine squeezed out of.
In the middle of the grime and filth lay a man Kane would say was the dirtiest thing in the room.
Lack of circulation hung the stink of Carl Vega’s body in the air, covering everything in a greasy feel from the gaseous expulsions of his intestines giving way. It was hard to tell what was left of Carl. Too much of him was scattered about the area, and Kane thought he spotted an ear beneath one of the banquette tables sitting askew against the wall. A circle of black dried blood pooled around the remains, its edges marred by a series of boot prints leading in and out of the mess.
One of the technicians stood near the blood mass, snapping pictures of the clearest prints. He lifted up his foot to reposition himself into a different angle and to avoid the flap of scalp and hair that had been tossed away from the body. From what Kane could see, most of the skeleton was present, although broken apart as if a wild animal had ravaged the corpse. Long shreds of skin were spread out from Carl’s kinked spine, giving the remains curling, dried fragments of wings.
“Jesus, what a fucking mess,” Kel muttered, snapping on his gloves. He snagged a tech standing nearby with a clipboard. “Did we get positive ID that it’s Vega?”
“Yes.” The man began to rattle off particulars of fingerprints and blood type, but Kel wandered off to inspect the evidence the techs had already gathered, leaving Kane to take down the details. “I’ve got ID on Vega but nothing on the perp other than boot prints. He smeared the hell out of anything he touched, so we’re assuming he was wearing gloves.”