The morgue doctor called out to a tall, willowy young woman in forensic scrubs digging carefully through an overturned trash can. The Italian woman picked her way carefully out of the area, avoiding the evidence lines the forensics team laid down.
“Alessia—Doctor De Gustibus—just joined our team. Alessia, this one’s Kane. There’s a few other Morgans you’ll run into. If you’re lucky, and it’s a long night, this one will bring you coffee.”
“My da would bring you coffee,” Kane muttered. “I think.”
“Morgan, if your father ever is called onto a scene I’m working, coffee’s going to be the last thing on my mind.” Horan snorted. “I heard about what happened over at your brother’s place. Apparently one of the tech guys told Donal he didn’t know when he’d get to working on the debris. Last I heard, the guy’s working the road-kill unit on the Bay bridge.”
“Good to meet you, sir.” Smiling broadly at Kane, she brought up her notes on the tablet she’d been using.
“Oh no, sir’s my da. Can’t miss him. He’s the one with captain bars. Kane’s fine. Or Morgan. What do you have so far?”
“Victim appears to have been killed off-site—”
“Still say there’s a lot of blood for an off-site kill here, Horan,” Kane rumbled.
“She’s getting to it. Patience, Morgan,” the doctor shushed him. “Go on, Alessia. He’s probably just grumpy because he hasn’t had coffee yet.”
“It’s five in the morning, and I left Miki curled up in bed more than an hour ago. Coffee’s been had. I’m about ready for my third cup,” Kane grunted. “Sorry, go on.”
“There’s a bloodied tarp tucked under the edge of the dumpster. I’m going to go out on a limb and say the victim was killed on top of it, then rolled up and transported here.” The technician tapped through her notes. “Splatter marks on the tarp are consistent with a blunt object hit, and when he stashed the tarp, he took it out of the elements, protecting the evidence. The kill was pretty recent. Some of the inside folds are still damp and sticky.”
“Question we’d be asking is, did he shove the tarp there on purpose? Or was it convenient?” Kane mulled, turning to look at the scene. “There’s bits and pieces of the victim strewn from that box there to the dumpster. Alleyway’s tight. Our killer would have had to pull, then drag the victim over there, then back out to the street. I wouldn’t trust getting anything wider than a speck of a car in here.”
“Unless he backed in,” the technician suggested.
“Either way, there’s no getting around the dumpster unless you’re on a motorcycle, and that wouldn’t happen here. Too hard to handle and balance. Had to be a car.” Kane took another look at the battered body. “It’s a good forty feet from the street to here. If our doer parked on the street, there’d be more bits and pieces from the sidewalk over to the dumpster, and he’d have run the risk of being seen by the restaurant crews.”
“Delivery truck wouldn’t have fit,” Horan agreed. “Those have wider wheelbases. Even some SUVs would be too wide to get in here. I can see where you’re going with this, Morgan. I’ll have my team check for fresh paint scrapes on the walls.”
“Needle in the haystack shit, but it might help. Kel’s going to see if there’s cameras on the street. It’ll be on this side. Hopefully we’ll catch a break here.” Kane tried to rub the tired out of his face. “What’s the ID say? Sanchez and I can at least go hunt that down. If we knock on the door and find the guy in his bathrobe, we’ll have to wait until the print run to verify ID.”
“Kappelhoff. Simon Paul Kappelhoff. His address is—”
Kane didn’t need to hear the rest of it. Instead he stepped in close and stared at the picture of the victim’s ID. It’d been a few years since he’d seen Kappelhoff, but the man probably hadn’t updated his license picture either. Kane’s memory of Kappelhoff hadn’t been a good one, especially since he’d been throwing books out onto the street as Kane drove up to the curb. It’d been an ugly breakup on Simon’s part, a lot of shouting and accusations of emotional immaturity.
“Well, fucking hell,” Kane muttered under his breath. “Professor Simon Kappelhoff.”
“You know him, Morgan?” Horan asked gently.
“Yeah, kind of.” Any chance of the day brightening was washed away by a flood of dread and gloom, and Kane sighed, “He’s Quinn’s ex-boyfriend.”
Chapter 7
Midnight, On the Phone
Rafe: It was great eating lunch with you today, Q.
Quinn: You listened to me on the phone as I ate a ham sandwich in my office and talk about why I thought it was a shitty thing people never developed the ability to see other spectrums.
R: To be fair, it sounded like a really kickass ham sandwich.