Chapter Three
5 June 2019
Monrovia Police Headquarters
Monrovia, California, United States of America
The good news was that Halls was approved to take overtime on this case. This was not entirely a guarantee, since there had been an overtime freeze since the end of the first quarter and rumor had it that it would continue through the rest of the year, if not longer.
But this had become a press case, so Halls was granted overtime, as were some of the people in the lab. While this would do wonders for her wallet, if not her ability to sleep, it also meant that every other detective in the house was giving her the hairy eyeball.
Halls had spent most of the last two days interviewing all the people who worked at MCD and the friends and families of Fredi Rodriguez and Alexander Lesnick, coordinating the shutdown of the slaughterhouse so the crime scene techs could go over it, talking further with Agent Franklin about what the FDA found in Sacramento, and giving incredibly bland comments to a press corps that would not leave her alone.
At 8:00 pm on the fifth, she returned to the office to be greeted by Amenguale.
“How’d it go at the slaughterhouse?” the sergeant asked.
Rolling her eyes, Halls said, “Oh, awesome. I got Bronson Quinn bitching for half an hour about the lost business, and then had to listen to him backtracking when I asked him why he didn’t notice the extra ground beef that was magically made after hours on Tuesday the twenty-eighth. Then I had to let Stankiewicz and the rest of the crime scene nerds loose on the slaughterhouse. It was great, Sarge, they spent hours scraping and photographing and swabbing and in the end they’re not gonna find a goddamn thing because the crime happened over a week ago, and the place has been at full bore since.”
“So it went well, then,” Amenguale deadpanned.
“Well, there was one bit of good news. Our guy hung the white coat he wore up in one of the lockers, and nobody’s touched it. Stankiewicz bagged it and sent it to the lab, so maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Good to hear,” the sergeant said.
“So anyhow, I smell like dead cow, I feel like hammered shit, and I’m going to clock out, take the longest shower in the whole history of the whole history, and then try to have a good night’s sleep that isn’t filled with nightmares about being hung upside down with my tongue being cut out.”
Amenguale winced. “That bad?”
Halls nodded. “It’ll pass. I hope. So, if you’ll excuse me, Sarge—”
“Afraid not,” Amenguale said. “You have a visitor from Interpol.”
For several seconds, Halls stared at Amenguale, as if he’d suddenly started speaking Sanskrit. “Okay, I must be tired, because for a minute there I thought you said someone from Interpol was here to see me.”
“You are tired, and that is what I said.” He pointed at the squad room that contained her desk. “He just got in from Beijing. The chief already okayed his being here, so go talk to him.”
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
Amenguale lowered his glasses on his hook nose so that he was peering over the top of them. “Michelle, when have you known me to be funny?”
“Never on duty. At least not on purpose.” She rubbed her eyes, which only irritated them more. “I have to go to the bathroom and at least try to wash the meat residue off my face and hands. Then I’ll talk to Interpol.”
She went to the women’s room and tried to scour her hands with the shitty pink liquid soap that looked like Pepto Bismol, and was about as effective as a cleaning agent. Every time she used the stuff, it felt like it had ripped the skin off her hands, but somehow left half the dirt behind. Still, at least now her hands smelled like the awful soap, which was an improvement over the slaughterhouse smell that permeated her clothes and hair.
After splashing cold water on her face—which, if nothing else, made her a touch more alert—she went back out to her desk to see an Asian man sitting in her guest chair flipping through a copy of the Los Angeles Times. A duffel bag sat at his feet.
At her approach, the man rose. He wore a rumpled button-down brown shirt and beige khakis. “You are Detective Halls,” he said in slightly accented English. His struggle with the second consonant sound in her last name indicated that his native tongue was Chinese or Japanese or another language from that region that didn’t have an L sound.
“Pretty sure I am, yes. I certainly was when I woke up this morning. Which feels like days ago. You are?”
Reaching into the back pocket of his khakis, the man pulled out his identification and credentials. “Inspector An Chang of the International Police. I have some information that may be of use in your case.”
Halls blinked. “Seriously? My sergeant said you flew in from Beijing. So you sat on a plane for, what, ten hours?”
“Twelve.”
“Twelve hours because you ‘may’ have information? Try again, Interpol.”
Chang bowed his head. “As you say, Detective. I have information about your killer. Or, at the very least, your killer—and the one in San Diego—match the modus operandi of a serial killer I am familiar with. I would very much like to see the evidence you have gathered.”
“Uh huh. Well, I don’t know about the SeaLand thing. I’ve left about a thousand messages for the primary on that case, and he hasn’t called me back yet. All I’ve got here is some really disgusting video footage and a coat. The coat’s in the lab, but if you want to put yourself through it, you’re welcome to look at the footage.”
“Perhaps later, for now—may we step outside?” He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his front pants pocket.
Halls stared at the pack for a moment. “Okay, fine, but only if you’ve got one for me.”
“You smoke?”
“This week, I do.”
Chang nodded. “I assume I may leave my bag safely here?”
“It is a police station,” Halls said wryly. She headed toward the rear of the building. “Let’s go to the parking lot—the press isn’t allowed there.”
“Yes, I saw them on the way in,” Chang said.
Halls briefly panicked. “Please tell me you didn’t talk to them.”
“One attempted to query me, but I responded in Cantonese.”
“Good.” That actually got Halls to smile, a facial expression that the last forty-eight hours had done a decent job of beating out of her. She was grateful that she still remembered how.
When they reached the parking lot, Chang undid the foil on the pack and tapped two cigarettes out against his palm. He handed one to Halls then pulled out a lighter.
“Thanks, Interpol,” Halls said after he lit her cigarette. She inhaled the lovely nicotine, and for a brief moment almost felt decent. “God, what a shitty couple of days.”
Chang stared at her as he lit his own cigarette. “How many months has it been since last you smoked?”
Halls shot him a glance. “That obvious, huh?”
“To a trained observer, yes.”
“I started smoking in high school because everyone was doing it. I quit when I graduated because I got tired of coughing my lungs out. I’ve taken it back up four times: after my first murder, and after each of my last three breakups, the most recent of which was two months ago, and I went through a pack in one day and then quit again. And now this.” She held up the cigarette Chang had given her. “So yeah, two months.”
“I came here directly from the airport, and have not had a cigarette since arriving at Beijing Capital.” He sighed. “I do miss the days when one could smoke on an airplane.”
Halls blinked. “You could smoke on airplanes?”
Chang nodded and took a drag. “Yes. The regulations changed in the late 1990s. And my own government outlawed indoor smoking in public places five years ago. It is to weep.”
“Huh.” Halls took another drag. Her own smoking habits had only occurred in the twenty-first century. “So what’s this information you have, Interpol?”
“Your killer wore a mask. I assume it was in the form of a bull or a cow?”
Halls’s eyes went wide. Without a word, she pulled out her smartphone and called up the still of the security footage that she’d saved. It was the best view of the killer’s “face.”
Staring at it, she nodded. “Okay, now that you’ve said it out loud, I can definitely see a bull there.” She held the phone display-out toward Chang.
He glanced at it. “He always transforms himself into the victim for whom he is seeking retribution.”
“Okay, for the record? Everything you just said makes me want about fifty more cigarettes. I’m not sure which is worse, ‘always,’ ‘victim,’ or ‘retribution.’” She took another drag on the cigarette. “Let’s start with ‘victim.’ Only victims I see here are Rodriguez and Lesnick.”
“To him,” Chang said quietly, “they are the perpetrators. The victims are the animals they slaughter.”
“And who is ‘him’?”
Chang shook his head. “I cannot say. Because of the mask, his identity has remained a secret.”
“There you are,” came a voice from behind them.
Turning, Halls saw Amenguale coming out to join them in the parking lot.
“Inspector Chang,” the sergeant said as he approached, “I see you and Detective Halls are doing your bit to up the city’s smog count.”
“I see you’ve met Sergeant Passive Aggressive,” Halls said to Chang. “What’s up, Sarge?”
“The chief called SDPD’s chief—they’re old buddies—and you now have permission to consult on their case.”
Halls blinked. “Excuse me? Why would I consult on their case? I want to talk to them so they can help with my case.”
“Right, and our friend the inspector here thinks they’re linked. So do both chiefs. At this point, you’ve talked to everyone you can and you need to wait and see what the lab gives us. So let the techs do their work. Meanwhile, you and Inspector Chang take a nice drive down the 5 to see what the SeaLand murder can tell you about this case under the guise of consulting on theirs.”
“I believe this is an excellent course of action,” Chang said.
“Yeah, I’m sure you do, Interpol.” Halls dragged on the last of her cigarette, dropped it to the asphalt, and stepped on it. “Mind telling me why you came to us first instead of them? We’re just a rinky-dink suburban police force with our first double murder in my lifetime. Why come here instead of the big-city cops?”
Chang shrugged. “We learned of this murder first, and by the time we learned of the one in San Diego, my arrangements had already been made.”
“Bullshit.” Halls shook her head. “You figured we’d be wowed and cowed by your credentials. Lucky for you, you were right. If you’re real nice, I’ll stop resenting you for that by the time we start driving tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow morning?” Chang and Amenguale both asked that question in unison, prompting them to glance suspiciously at each other.
“If you think I’m driving to San Diego right now, you’re insane. Besides, by the time we get there, it’ll be after ten. I need sleep, and Interpol’s probably jet-lagged. We’ll go first thing in the am when I don’t smell like a butcher shop and I actually trust myself to operate a motor vehicle.”
“The autopsy’s scheduled for 9:00 am tomorrow,” Amenguale said, “and I told them you’d be there. I assumed that meant you’d drive down tonight.”
“Well, you know what happens when you assume,” Halls said. “Can you clock me out, Sarge? I’m gonna go do all those things I intended to do before this became an international case. Interpol, meet me here at 6:00 am.”
“Why meet here?” Chang asked.
“I don’t trust the tattered remains of my Corolla to make it all the way to San Diego without falling to pieces. Besides, it’s official business, I’m taking an official vehicle.”
Amenguale pointed an accusatory finger at her. “You can’t have the Mercedes.”
Halls snapped her fingers. “Damn, thought I’d be able to sneak that one out.”
“Oh, I’d be happy to sign it out to you if it was here, but Westphalen already has it for his fugitive pickup in San Jose. Won’t be back until day after tomorrow.”
“Bastard,” Halls muttered good-naturedly. “All right, I’m turning into a pumpkin. Good night.”
“Good night, Detective,” Chang said. “I will proceed to my hotel and endeavor to sleep.”
“You’re not jet-lagged?”
“Yes, but my body feels that it is morning.” He waved an arm. “It is of no consequence. The nature of working for the International Police is that I travel a great deal. Adjusting to new time zones generally occurs within a day.”
“Good for you. Where you staying?”
“The Doubletree on West Huntington Drive.”
Halls thought for a moment. “Tell you what, I’ll save Interpol some cab fare and give you a lift. Let’s go back inside and get your bag, and I’ll give you a flash drive with the security footage.”
“Thank you, Detective.”
After Halls dropped him off at his hotel, Chang checked in, showered, and attempted to sleep. He managed to restrain his reaction to the news from the front desk that the hotel was completely non-smoking, and so if he wished to have a cigarette, he would need to exit the premises.
Most of the night was spent staring at the stucco ceiling over the bed, but he did manage to doze for an hour or two. Finally, at 4:00 am, he got up, put on a beige shirt and brown khakis, and went outside to smoke. Returning to his room, he opened his laptop and inserted the flash drive Halls had given him.
The killer did exactly as Chang expected. He hung his targets upside down in the same manner as the cows and removed their tongues before quartering them and tossing them in with the rest of the bovine grounds.
Whatever doubts Chang may have had were erased by this footage. It was definitely him.
After closing his laptop, Chang went back downstairs and had the front desk call him a taxicab.
By the time the cab arrived, he’d managed to smoke a cigarette, and then another while he waited in the Monrovia Police Department parking lot for Detective Halls.
When she did finally arrive in her poorly maintained vehicle—Chang had feared for his life more than once on the two-mile drive the previous evening, though how much of that was the car and how much was the fatigued state of its driver was an open question—she said, “Sorry I’m late.”
To Chang’s relief, the detective was practically a different person this morning. There were no bags under her eyes as there had been the previous night, her brown hair was washed, combed, and tied neatly in a ponytail—the previous night it had been badly secured in a poor bun—and she wore a button-down blouse, dress pants, and heeled shoes, which was far more professional-looking than the plain T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers she’d favored yesterday.
Chang figured that at least one of them should look professional, and it was not likely to be him, a thought he had as he rubbed the three-day-old stubble on his chin.
What pleased Chang the most, however, was that Halls no longer carried the odor of fresh meat about her. Given that he was facing at least two hours in the same automobile, this was a legitimate concern.
“Be right back,” she said after parking, and one cigarette later, she returned with a set of keys and led him to a high-end sedan that was in far better condition than Halls’s.
Chang got into the passenger seat and secured his seatbelt. Halls started up the car, put down both his window and hers— “I assume you’re gonna wanna smoke?” she asked as she did so, and Chang nodded in reply—and headed out onto East Lime Avenue.
Halls merged into traffic on Interstate 210. According to the map application Chang had checked on his smartphone earlier, that was the first of several steps that would take them to Interstate 5, which ran down the west coast of the United States from the Canadian border north of Seattle all the way to the Mexican border south of San Diego. As Halls moved into the next lane over, she glanced at Chang.
“So talk to me. What makes you think my meat-packing murderer involves Interpol?”
Chang puffed thoughtfully on a cigarette and stared out at the buildings along the highway. Unlike Hong Kong, Los Angeles had very few skyscrapers. The city’s presence on a fault line meant not many structures were more than a few stories tall. It gave the city an openness that Chang found oddly unnerving, especially in the brutal sunshine.
“A year ago,” he said, “some elephant poachers received a certain amount of press …”