“Still, it was a fast ID,” Kane murmured. “Thanks. We owe you one.”
“We were processing the other fingers from the St. John crime scene. Since the remains are missing quite a few digits, it made sense they were connected.” The tech nodded. “We’ve been here a couple of hours already. Once we got positive identification, the call was made to you guys. Until then, Browne over there caught the case. He can tell you about the call.”
“Thanks.” Kane took a few steps over to where Browne, a grizzled salt-and-pepper haired inspector, stood near the hostess podium. He’d come in after Kane, obviously returning from a hunt for a hot cup of coffee, and lifted his hand to wave Kane over.
Mark Browne was a stereotype of a cop. He wore ill-fitting polyester pants and cotton button-up white shirts that invariably had a coffee or food stain down the front. Often, he wore ties that were obviously gifts from his children, silkscreened cartoon characters or oddly colored plaids bright enough to hurt the eyes, but hidden behind the stomach paunch, thinning ginger hair, and walrus mustache lay a bloodhound of a cop most of the district admired.
“How are you doing, Morgan?” Browne slurped at his lidless cup, dunking most of his mustache into the creamy liquid. He licked at the coffee, careful not to drip on the floor. “Just sent your baby brother outside. Might as well make him good for something.”
“Riley?” Kane snorted. “He’s doing walkarounds in the neighborhood?”
“Yeah, I figured a pretty face will get people talking if they know anything.” The inspector grunted. “Might as well put that Morgan charm of his to use. Don’t know if he’ll get anything. Spoke to one Charlene Martes. She’s the one with the cat. Nice lady, used to be a schoolteacher, so she wasn’t all that panicky when Frisky dropped a piece of Vega down in front of her. She thought it was a lizard but then got a small shock when she grabbed it with a paper towel. Dialed us up right after that.”
“How long did it take you guys to find him?” Kane rocked back on his heels, watching the forensics techs scrape and gather up what they needed. A body bag lay on a gurney, waiting to transport the remains, but there was some discussion going on about the whereabouts of Carl’s facial bits.
“Not long. Let’s go outside for a bit. The air in here’s thick, if you know what I mean,” Browne nodded toward the expanding sacks of organs on the floor. “He couldn’t have been here too long. The heat in here’s going to make those bits pop, and I don’t want to be in here when they go.”
The check-cashing storefront gave up on its evening business and was closed up tight when Kane and Browne emerged from the restaurant, but the Laundromat looked like it was doing a bang-up business, even though it appeared no one was actually washing or drying clothes. Outside, the chilled air was steeped with the smell of car exhaust and a whiff of garbage from a pair of dumpsters set up against a wall the stores shared with an apartment building next door.
Even as sour as the air was, it was still a cleaner smell than what lay stagnant inside the restaurant. Browne fumbled at the inside of his jacket, then sighed heavily, giving Kane a remorseful look. “Gave up smoking a few years ago when my wife got pregnant. I love my daughter to death, but, fuck it, I miss having a cigarette sometimes. I’d been smoking since I was sixteen. What the hell do I do with my hands?”
“Never smoked,” Kane admitted. “Have you met my mother? She’d have skinned us alive if she found one of us smoking.”
“You think that’s what happened to Vega?” Browne jerked his chin toward the restaurant. “Your mom caught him smoking?”
“Nah, but who ever did that to him really was pissed off.” He shuffled his feet and glanced around at the faces of people gathered around the corner strip.
Someone, a person probably still in the crowd, had taken a few sharp knives to Vega’s still-quivering body and carved the life out of him. It was a brutal act and a selfish one. Someone wanted to take credit for it, even if it was merely watching the cops taking Vega’s body out in a bag. Kane scanned the crowd, looking for someone alone trying to look nonchalant, but everyone clustered about seemed to be in packs and talking, more curious than disinterested.
Until he spotted a tall young man smoking a cigarette directly across the one-way, single-lane street where Kane and Browne stood. From a distance, he looked like he was waiting for someone, leaning against a bus-stop post and glancing down the street, but Kane saw the catch in his gaze when he let his eyes roam over the police cars and the soft tug of something smug on his thin lips before he brought his cigarette up for another drag.