Black Karma (6 page)

“I'm a little pressed for time today. Perhaps later in the week we might get together to go over the details.”

“That would be fine.”

“I'd like to thank you again for the wonderful food,” Bai said as she stood.

“You're leaving so soon? You've barely touched your breakfast.”

Lee stood as well. “It's been a pleasure, Coleta. Thank you again for the lovely pancakes.”

“I do so hope you'll come again soon.”

He nodded and led Bai out of the kitchen through a side entrance. The sun nearly blinded her as she stumbled out the door. He took her elbow and walked her around the side of the house where the limousine had deposited her the night before. In its place sat Lee's 1965 Cadillac Coupe de Ville convertible, red with white upholstery.

“You drove the land boat?” she asked.

“The sun was out. It seemed like a nice day to get some air.”

She noticed her leather jacket lying on the backseat as she walked around the car to get in the passenger-side door. As usual, he'd thought of everything. She got in and turned to him as he put the keys in the ignition and started the car. “Did I thank you for coming to get me?”

“My pleasure. Like I said, it's a beautiful day for a drive.”

They backtracked to Highway 101 heading south until they reached San Rafael. The sun shone brightly on the crisp spring day as they crossed the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, which took them to Highway 80. From there, they had only a short hop to Berkeley. In less than an hour, they pulled off the freeway under leafy trees and into a visitor parking space adjacent to the University of California at Berkeley's administrative offices.

A light mist covered the campus. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees. Bai pulled her jacket off the backseat and put the garment on as she walked around the car to join Lee.

“What was it Boobs said Daniel Chen taught?”

“Asian Studies.”

“I wonder what a professor of Asian Studies was doing in a fight club.”

“When you think about it, many of history's greatest warriors were also scholars.”

“Like Genghis Khan?”

“Maybe not the best example,” Lee replied as they made their way across the parking lot.

UC Berkeley's administration offices were located in Sproul Hall, a white-columned building the size of a football field. They found an information kiosk that directed them to directory services on the second floor. A counter with a ticket dispenser dictated the order of service. Lee pulled a ticket with the number forty-two.

The room was crowded even though the university was on summer break. Students carrying paperwork and registration packets waited patiently for their number to be called. Bai and Lee took seats in a row of chairs along the back wall to wait.

“Number forty-two,” a short elderly woman finally called. She stood at the far end of the room behind the counter and wore a pastel-pink suit that matched her hair.

Handing the ticket across the counter, Bai asked, “We're looking for Daniel Chen. I understand he teaches here. Where might we find him?”

The clerk smiled and replied in a voice that reminded Bai of Mrs. Blight, her third-grade teacher. “The university is on break. Summer session doesn't start for another week.”

“Do you have a home address for him?” Lee asked.

“Certainly,” said the clerk in a matter-of-fact manner.

“May we have his address?” he asked.

“Certainly not,” she replied briskly.

“We need to speak with him about an important matter,” Bai explained.

“I'm sorry, but school policy prohibits me from giving out personal contact information on faculty members. There's nothing I can do.”

Bai turned to look at Lee. He shrugged to let her know he was also stymied. She decided to change tactics. “Does Professor Chen have an office on campus?”

The clerk smiled in encouragement. “He does.”

Bai returned the smile. She felt like they were making progress. “Does he have office hours?”

“Not during break.”

The smile melted from Bai's face. “Isn't there some way to get in touch with him?”

“You might try his office.”

“You just said he doesn't keep office hours during break.”

“That doesn't mean he isn't there,” the clerk replied sweetly. “It just means he doesn't keep regular hours. If he isn't there you can always leave a note on his door. Sometimes professors stop by to collect mail and pick up notes from their students. That's probably your best bet for getting in touch with him before classes start next week.”

The woman pulled a pink Post-it from a tablet sitting on the counter and scribbled on it. “This is his office number. He's in Barrows Hall, right next door. Have a nice day.”

Bai smiled back half-heartedly. The clerk's demeanor seemed a little too cheery. She couldn't be sure, but she suspected she'd just been schooled.

Chapter 7

Lee and Bai took an elevator up to the sixth floor of Barrows Hall. They stepped out into an empty corridor and walked down the hall to Room 623. A nameplate read, “Daniel Chen Ph.D.” She rapped on the hard metal of the door with bare knuckles. No one answered. She pounded a couple of times with the flat of her hand, but there was still no response.

Lee grabbed the door handle and twisted. Surprisingly, the knob turned. He queried Bai with raised eyebrows. She nodded, and he pushed the door open.

A desk rested on its side. Papers covered the floor. Upended chairs littered the room. Two bodies lay sprawled, face up, amid the jumbled mess. The smell of feces and urine choked the air.

“This couldn't be good,” she observed.

In a tentative manner, Lee asked, “Do we run, or do we report?”

She turned her head to gaze down the empty hallway then looked up at blinking red lights encased in black plastic domes. “There are closed-circuit cameras on the ceiling. Plus, there's no way that clerk in administration is going to conveniently forget us. Why don't you check these guys for a pulse while I call the police?”

“I make it a rule not to touch dead people,” he informed her. “Dead people fit into the same category as horses. But you needn't worry. See the way that guy's neck is bent the wrong way? He's definitely dead.”

She looked at him soberly and shook her head. “Fine. Be that way. You call it in, and I'll check for signs of life.”

Stepping into the office, she walked around the papers and books strewn across the floor, trying not to disturb anything. She dropped to one knee next to the first victim, the one with the crooked neck, and pressed two fingers against the hollow of his throat. “He's cold. This one's been dead for a while. No blood I can see. I'm not a medical examiner, but from the looks of him, I'd guess he died from a broken neck.” She leaned over to look at his hands. “His knuckles are scraped.”

“He's a big man,” Lee observed. “I don't suppose he went down without a fight.”

Lee's assessment matched hers. The stiff appeared to be Latino, over six feet tall, and probably weighing more than 250 pounds. Muscle wrapped his arms as if he'd been a weight lifter. His clothes didn't tell them anything. He wore jeans and a black sweatshirt with the sleeves torn off.

She stood to walk over and check the second body. Not as large as the first victim, he too looked to be Latino—skinny, wearing a wife-beater T-shirt and a red bandana wrapped around his head like a sweatband. His arms were also ropy with muscle. The stiff rested on his back with his hands around his neck where his nails had raked the flesh raw. She reached down and checked for a pulse. Cold skin met her fingertips. She could tell he'd died long before they'd arrived.

“This guy's blue underneath his tan,” she said. “His eyes are red. It looks like the little blood vessels burst from lack of oxygen. From the way he's scratched his throat, I'm guessing he suffered a crushed windpipe.”

“Both of them are tatted up pretty heavily,” Lee said, referring to the numerous tattoos on their exposed arms.

“I noticed the tattoos, but I can only guess what most of them mean. You can see they're both flying the number fourteen on their shoulders.”

“The fourteenth letter . . . ‘N,'” Lee stated, “for Norteño.”

She nodded and stood to carefully retrace her steps out of the room.

Lee spoke into his phone. “I'd like to report two bodies discovered in Barrows Hall on the UC Berkeley campus, Room 623. Yes, that's correct. They're definitely dead. Take your time. They're not going anywhere.”

After closing his phone, Lee turned to Bai as she expressed a theory. “I'm guessing they came here looking for Professor Chen, just the way we did. Do you think they found him? If so, do you think he killed them?”

Lee shrugged. “If that's the case, maybe we're lucky we didn't find him.”

“Something about this doesn't feel right. Whoever killed those two had to be a professional. A neck on a man that big doesn't snap easily. My gut's telling me something is all wrong about this.”

Lee shook his head. “You're making too many assumptions.”

“You're right. I'm getting ahead of myself.”

They didn't hear the approaching sirens. The concrete walls in the interior corridor acted as sound barriers. It wasn't until officers skulked down the hall with weapons drawn that Bai and Lee realized the police had responded to their call in record time.

“Put your hands up and face the wall,” the first officer ordered in a loud voice.

Startled, they both stared at the officers. They slowly raised their arms to put their hands against the wall, spreading their feet in anticipation of the requisite pat-down.

Lee spoke before the officers reached them. “I have a revolver in a holster under my left arm. The concealed carry permit is in my wallet inside my jacket pocket.”

As one officer roughly jammed a gun barrel into the back of Lee's neck, a second reached around to yank the gun from his holster. Bai could smell their fear as the officers hurriedly frisked Lee then more gently patted her down. They failed to find her knife in the sleeve of her jacket.

The first officer spoke into a communication device clipped to his shoulder as he peered into Daniel Chen's office. “The scene is secure. Send up the paramedics.” When he'd finished, he turned his attention back to them. “You can put your arms down and relax. I'm sorry if we scared you. We have to take precautions when we respond to a potential murder scene.”

Neither Bai nor Lee replied.

The officer looked at them expectantly then frowned. “Why don't we step down the hallway, someplace out of the way, where we can talk?”

They followed the officer down the hall to a cross corridor. The second officer held a gun at his side and followed them. As they turned into the side corridor, two paramedics carrying field kits and accompanied by more officers raced past in the direction of Chen's office.

The leading officer turned to face them. “My name is Sergeant Meadows, Berkeley Campus Police. May I see your identification, please?”

Lee handed the officer his wallet. Bai produced a driver's license from the breast pocket of her jacket. The sergeant looked at her information then at Lee's license and gun permit before handing Lee back his wallet. The officer held their identification up for them to see. “You'll get these back before you leave. What can you tell me about the bodies you found?”

“They're dead,” Bai offered.

“That's not very helpful,” the sergeant replied with a deepening frown.

“They're cold,” she added.

“So you entered the office and made contact with the victims?”

“How else could I determine they were dead?”

“You don't seem very upset. Most people would be visibly shaken at discovering a couple of cold stiffs,” Sergeant Meadows observed.

“I didn't know them,” she responded.

“Nor did I,” Lee added.

The sergeant crossed his arms and stared at them. “Why do I get the feeling you're not being completely forthright with me?”

Bai looked to Lee, who shrugged.

“Fine,” Meadows relented. “Can you tell me what you were doing here in Barrows Hall?”

“We're looking for Professor Chen,” Lee said.

Bai nodded her assent.

“Why were you looking for Professor Chen?”

“Because he teaches Asian Studies,” she replied.

Lee nodded.

“And you're looking for him because . . . ?” the sergeant urged.

“Isn't it obvious?” she asked.

The sergeant looked at her blankly.

“I'm Asian.”

Lee nodded enthusiastically. “Me, too.”

The sergeant looked at them as his lips drew into a thin line. “Officer Randle,” he said, addressing the policeman still holding a gun at his side. “Take these witnesses down to a squad car and make them comfortable in the backseat until we can make inquiries and get statements.”

Officer Randle motioned with his free hand for them to precede him. He didn't point his gun at them, but he didn't put it away, either.

The squad car proved to be reasonably hospitable, except for the locked doors and windows and the metal screen separating them from the front seat. They settled in to wait while remaining silent, aware the dash camera might have been left running to record their conversation.

More than an hour later, Sergeant Meadows approached the car and opened the rear door. He ushered them out with a sweep of his arm. “We've reviewed the digital evidence from the hall cameras and run your licenses. Your story checks out. We got a call from SFPD vouching for you.” The officer paused to nod at them in acknowledgment, his demeanor more deferential. “I don't have any reason to hold you, but if there's anything you want to tell me about the two stiffs in Professor Chen's office, now would be a good time.”