Little Mountain (32 page)

         “Bottom line is Bin Chea’s still alive?”

         “Yes, and
Angka
is still alive.”

        
“
Angka
being the organization.”

        
“Exactly.
They’re trying to control the Asians in Lowell. When they left money in my car, they were trying to gain a friend in the police department.”

         “You tell anybody this?”

         “Who’d listen?” Sam asked.

         “You didn’t,
good
. I think it’s time we did us a little more research. Why do I get the feeling the boss isn’t on our side?”

         Fitchie looked as though he hadn’t slept in a week. With two energetic boys in school and Ellie losing her fight with leukemia, how could he take the strain? “You have too much to worry about already,” Sam said.

         “If you think Bin Chea faked his death, then I want to help you prove it. We have Wilkins’ word on the fingerprint results. Anybody takes Wilkins’ word on anything’s a damn fool.”

         “If you’re up to it, help me look in the pit.”

         “I looked once for the fingerprint results, but that place is a freaking mess.”

         “So did
I
,” Sam said. “Tonight I’m looking again when the swing shift’s on duty. Can you give me a couple of hours?”

         Fitchie could.

A search of the canal by a police diver turned up no murder weapon, and Katsios turned the bullets over to the police department. Sitting at his desk the next morning, Sam held a plastic bag containing the pair of slugs that Katsios had carved out of Viseth’s leg with minimum delicacy.

         Sam would just as soon never watch an M.E. practice his craft. How could anyone stand to take a saw to a corpse? For all the bodies he’d seen, he never got used to them.

         He held the telephone receiver to his ear. Gonzalez caught his attention and flashed him a thumbs-up sign. Sam nodded but listened to Katsios.

         “He wasn’t killed with bullets or a knife,” Katsios said. “The neck wound is too ragged, and there were two or three pieces of plant matter still stuck to the trachea.”

         “I’m betting
it’s
palm.”

         “Botany’s not my specialty, and the samples are less than a centimeter each. My guess is you’re right. Kelley in the lab will let you know for sure.”

         Sam thanked the M.E. and hung up.
The ragged edge of a palm leaf.
He tried hard not to admire this new killer for the mess he’d made of Viseth.
A lot of trouble.
Especially if you also had a gun.

         When was the last time--?
1978 at Little Mountain.
Some poor fellow was dragged off the bulldozer and
lay
on the ground screaming inside a circle of flies as a twelve-year-old boy cut slowly across his neck with a palm leaf. Sambath and his fellow workers witnessed what would happen to anyone who displeased
Angka
.

         Sam drummed his fingers on the desk. An American wouldn’t murder someone this way.
In too much of a hurry.
Or a Cambodian either, when there were so many easier ways to put someone in the ground. Maybe the killer wanted to make Viseth’s death especially painful. This looked like the Khmer Rouge at work: Don’t just kill your victim, but savor his agony.

         He tried to stay objective. Why would this person kill Viseth? Sam knew why
he
would, of course. Wilkins wasn’t wrong about that. But the logic of the timing seemed off. What could this murder have to do with the attack on Julie and Trish?
Maybe nothing.
The whole Mersey Street neighborhood was his friend, Viseth had said. Maybe one of them turned him into hamburger, what are friends for? No, too much coincidence. Why turn on him now?

         And something else made no sense. He rolled his chair over to Fitchie’s desk.

         “Fitchie, the FBI gets fingerprints for everyone who comes into this country. Why couldn’t they find a set of prints for Bin Chea?”

         Fitchie shrugged. “They don’t keep them forever if the subject isn’t involved in a criminal case. And they misfile them, just like we do here.”

         “Do
we
ever.”

         “They possibly mislabel stuff. They have over ten million records, and they still aren’t computerized yet. So what are you getting at?”

         “I want to be absolutely sure about what happened.”

         “His old lady ID’d him. That’s usually enough.”

         “Where are the FBI results?”

        
“In one of the file cabinets in the snake pit, where all that crap is kept.”

        
The snake pit.
Eight hours in the records room had been one of Sam’s first assignments as a rookie. Nothing was in its right place. He’d shuffled folders, filed them, felt the mind-numbing boredom, and thought for a moment of quitting before he remembered that this was the easiest work he’d ever had. It was better than his first job in America, where he hauled heavy boxes in a factory; it was certainly better than spending fourteen hours a day up to his ankles in mud while leeches drank blood between his toes.

         But filing wasn’t what cops were supposed to do, either. They were supposed to keep law and order in the streets, not in the file cabinets.

         On that first day, he’d picked up a garter snake as it tried to slither between the back wall and the last cabinet. Wilkins Junior, someone called it. How it got there Sam didn’t know, but he carried the wriggling creature out to a safe spot behind a foundation shrub and out of range of Wilkins’ boot.

         For a moment he’d felt like the old Sambath Long, the great hunter who once took on a python with a club. Head on, the way you deal with pythons. His trophy had hung around his neck as he strode into Little Mountain. For once, everyone ate.

         The garter snake incident gave the filing room its nickname. Whenever Sam thought of the snake, he thought of Wilkins. Some things didn’t change: many of the real snakes still wore uniforms.

         These days the pit was worse than ever. File folders were stacked in sliding piles on top of the cabinets, and papers lay everywhere: on top, between, behind, and sometimes even in the cabinets where they belonged. This room was the flat tire on the wheel of Sam’s progress.

         “I already looked for it in there,” Sam said. “The pit’s a mess again since they
laid
off the file clerk. Who filed it?”

        
“The lieutenant.”

         Wait a minute. Since when was Wilkins subbing as a file clerk? Why
wouldn’t
the prints be Chea’s? And if they weren’t, then whose were they? Whose wake had Sam really gone to?
Courtney’s not dead,
Trish had said.
I switched.
“Real estate prices are going up again, aren’t they?” Sam finally said.

        
“Around here, anyway.”

         “I wonder if Mrs. Chea’s going to sell her property. Collect her insurance money. Move to a warmer climate.”

        
“Warmer than this?”
Fitch’s face was red from the heat. “It’s eleventy-nine degrees out there.”

         “I meant year round.
California, maybe.”

         “Thinking about moving out there yourself?”

         “No, I’m not. California weather doesn’t change enough for me. They have a wet season and a dry season, just like where I came from.” Sam drummed his fingers on his chin and stared at Fitchie. “California would be a good place to start over, though.”

        
“For Chea’s old lady?”

        
“Maybe for both of them.”

         Fitchie stared at Sam. “You suggesting Bin
Chea’s
alive?”

         Wilkins stepped out of his office and headed out the door that led to the parking lot.

         “When was the last time you saw Wilkins file anything?” Sam asked.

         “I never have, but he said he’d do it this time. Where the hell did he stuff those records?”

         “Maybe it doesn’t matter. Can we get the FBI to re-send them to you?”

         “I don’t know. We may have to resubmit the request. Want to take bets on whether you can find a copy in the pit?”

         Sam shook his head.

         “We could try the direct approach,” Fitch said. “I’ll just ask him.” Fitch left to catch up with Wilkins and was back in a minute. “Told me the files are there in the pit and we should find ’em and stick ’em up our ass.”

         The pit had twenty-eight file cabinets that were olive green, like swamp scum. They were aligned in three banks, with two narrow rows in between; in the middle were two rows back to back. File folders poked out of drawers that wouldn’t close. A’s were mixed with C’s, C’s with M’s, M’s with W’s--if anything was in its right place, that was just by lucky chance. The pit was where records went to die.

         “No sense being logical about this,” Fitchie said. “Let’s forget the alphabet. You take that aisle and I’ll take this one. Never mind what a folder says, we’ll look inside every one.”

         Fingerprint records and arrest records were arranged every way but logically. Filing according to best fit seemed like the approach to Sam; shove a folder into the first file drawer not already jam-packed. No one took responsibility for this mess. The two worked silently for hours, working their way through drawers. They worked methodically, lifting out hanging folders and checking for files that might have slid underneath the rest, checking every one. There was no time to arrange files in order as he went along, or he would never get home to sleep. Sam’s share of the search was fourteen cabinets, which included forty-two file drawers and who the hell knew how many folders inside?

         “And let’s not forget--” Sam sneezed “--the stacks on top.”

         Sam explored drawer after drawer, lifting out every folder, inspecting every slip of paper inside and unleashing dust motes that made his eyes water. The clock on the wall said ten forty-five. Maybe the FBI could send the results again. The file ought to have been there, so where was it? Maybe that idiot Wilkins really did throw it away.

         They’d found nothing in the drawers. Sam reached for a stack of folders on top, maybe another fifteen minutes’ work. Papers slid out of the folders, and he carefully replaced them. There was only one stack left, and then they’d be through for the night. How would the people of Lowell feel, knowing that the public safety might depend on actually
finding
something in this place? What good was an army of officers writing reports if everything went under M for Miscellaneous?

         The last stack slid out of Sam’s hands and up against the wall, the top folder sliding down the dark crevasse where it might never be seen again. His hand darted out and caught the corner of the file with his fingertips, thank God for quick hands. But loose papers slid out of the folder and disappeared behind the cabinet.

         “Fitchie, would you give me a hand over here?” Sam said. “I need to move these cabinets.”

         “I’ve got to leave you,” Fitchie said. “Sit with Ellie, then
take
the baby sitter home. I’ll help you finish tomorrow.”

         Sam began setting folders on the floor.

         With any luck, he wouldn’t have to pull out--and put back--the cabinets on the other wall, too. If he did, he’d be here till midnight.