White Tiger (25 page)

He turned to Jericho just as the tall captain was beginning to make introductions.

“Captain, what’s Mr. Lin doing here?” he asked, cutting to the chase.

Jericho paused, and from his expression Ryker could tell he was taken aback that Ryker would even dare to speak before such an august assemblage. He recovered a moment later, and his voice was hard-edged.

“I was going to get to that, detective sergeant. Maybe you’d like to have a seat?” Jericho indicated a nearby chair.

Ryker sighed and pulled out the chair. He settled into it with all the aplomb of a truculent adolescent showing up for after-hours study.

“Thank you, Hal. I’ll make some introductions, and then we’ll get this show on the road.”

Ryker nodded absently. He noticed that Jericho wasn’t exactly up to snuff, performance-wise. As far as he could remember, Jericho never met an audience he didn’t like, and being the star performer was one of his more natural traits. This time, his manner was halting and perhaps even a bit obsequious. Ryker wondered if it was because of the chief, but a small part of him was convinced it was because of Lin and all the money he had behind him.

Two of the men in the room were city supervisors, one representing district one, while the other represented district eleven. At first, Ryker couldn’t determine why they were present, then it came to him that Danny Lin lived in Sea Cliff, which was part of district one, and had died in the Mandarin Oriental, which was in district eleven. Both men appeared to be a bit on the nervous side, and Ryker figured that the supervisor from district one
—
a man named Harrison Newsom, who still looked every bit the hippy even though he must have been in his sixties
—
wasn’t at all that comfortable with police stations in general and police officers in particular after spending the latter half of the 1960s as something of a counter-culture magnet. Ryker found his presence to be not only incongruous, given his blue jeans, denim jacket over a tie-dyed shirt, and long gray hair tied in a ponytail, but almost laughable as well.

The only woman in the room was well-known to Ryker as she was one of the primary assistant district attorneys he dealt with on occasion. Selma Kaplan was as much a thoroughbred as they came, with her no-nonsense business suits and perfectly-coiffed blonde hair that likely had so much hairspray in it that even a typhoon couldn’t ruffle a single hair on her head out of place. She was also something of a heartbreaker, with those perfect good looks that only California seemed to be able to generate. She was also rumored to be so frigid that she couldn’t even get an Eskimo to date her. All Ryker cared about was that she was a hell of a prosecutor, tough, shrewd, and dedicated.

That left James Lin and what Ryker could only surmise to be his bodyguard. The hulking man was introduced as Lin’s corporate chief of security, Alexsey Baluyevsky. Ryker met the man’s eyes, and the big man nodded toward him curtly, his blue eyes as cold as the Arctic Circle. His mammoth hands were clasped before him on the table. Ryker looked at them. They were broad and hard, just like the rest of him, and Ryker had no doubt that he had no trouble using them in the most lethal of ways when the situation required it.

“And you of course know Mister James Lin,” Jericho finished.

“Indeed I do. Good morning, sir.” Ryker nodded to Lin, and felt that wasn’t enough by means of acknowledgement. He lamely added, “Good to see you again.” It sounded false even to him.

“Detective Ryker,” Lin responded simply.

Ryker looked at Spider, but the Lieutenant only continued to stare at the tabletop before him. Ryker cleared his throat and leaned back in his chair.

“So what can I do for you folks?” he asked, turning his gaze toward Jericho.

It was Hallis who spoke instead.

“Detective sergeant, how are things coming with the Lin investigation?” he asked.

The chief was seated almost directly across from him, so Ryker had no problem meeting his gaze. Hallis kept his demeanor pleasant and non-assuming...well, as much as the chief of police of a major metropolitan city could when dealing with a minion.

“It’s just started, chief. We’ve only made one pass at the mur
—
ah, at the book, and we’re still going through the inventory of physical evidence. We’re also waiting for both the crime lab and the medical examiner to finish up, and as you might suspect, there could be a lot of potential leads in those areas.”

“I’ve asked both departments to expedite their procedures,” Jericho added, which made Ryker smile slightly. A captain didn’t have the horsepower to change jack-diddly when it came to either department.

“I’ve already had a heart-to-heart with Morry,” Hallis said, and Ryker knew that Morry could only be Deputy Chief Maurice Trabak, currently the head of the S.F.P.D. Investigations Bureau. As a matter of fact, he was also Ryker’s top boss, but the two men had had little contact over the years.

“I expect things will start moving along much more quickly,” Hallis continued. He looked at the far end of the table. “Mr. Lin, we’ll have your son returned to you by tomorrow afternoon at the very latest. The medical examiner will conduct the autopsy today.”

Lin nodded his head and tried to look gracious. It only looked fake.

“Thank you, Chief Hallis.”

“You’re very welcome.”

The mutual admiration society thing was beginning to get a little thick, so Ryker cut to the chase. After all, it looked like they were about to kick him off the case, so he had nothing to lose.

“Excuse me, please. I don’t mean any degree of disrespect, but I have a murder investigation to get back to.” Ryker looked at Jericho. “Unless this meeting has been called to bigfoot me, that is.”

“Not at all,” Hallis said immediately. “As a matter of fact, Mr. Lin has requested that you be kept on it full time.”

Ryker looked down the table at Lin. The Chinese man was as expressive as a department store mannequin. He met Ryker’s gaze evenly.

“This is true, detective sergeant,” Lin said. “I can see you are a dedicated man, and I would like to express my hopes that you can dedicate all your skills toward finding the person who killed my son.”

“I see,” Ryker said. He shifted in his chair and glanced over at Spider. Spider fidgeted a bit himself, then spoke for the first time since entering the room.

“Detective Sergeant Ryker is a supervisor, Mr. Lin. He runs four other detectives, who have two other murders assigned to them.”

Well, at least Spider still has a pair.
Ryker’s respect for the lieutenant increased a bit.

Chief Hallis cleared his throat and stirred in his seat. He glanced down the table at Jericho.

“Ah, Lieutenant Furino, we were hoping maybe you could make some additional assignments. Offload the cases Ryker’s team is handling to the rest of the homicide squad at Metro.” As he spoke, Jericho rubbed his hands together, almost wringing them, in fact. It was a fitting gesture from Ryker’s perspective.

“I see.” Spider kept his voice steady and neutral as he spoke. “So you’re asking me to put two other deaths on the company back-burner, so to speak. Excuse me sirs, but isn’t that proscribed by at least one or two departmental policies? I really can’t imagine that there’s any regulation that would allow for that.”

Whoa, Spider’s kicking ass and taking names.
Ryker glanced down the table at Lin. He was surprised to find the elderly Chinese man wasn’t looking at Furino at all. His gaze was fixed directly onto Ryker. Ryker stared back for a moment. If there was something in his eyes, some indication of what was going through his mind, Ryker couldn’t see it. Ryker shrugged to himself mentally and refocused his attention on Jericho.

“As I said. We were hoping you could find a way to make the reassignments.” It was obvious that Jericho didn’t intend to follow Spider’s line of reasoning.

“We can backfill with detectives from one of the other districts, if you think that’s necessary.” Hallis Said. Apparently, the chief wasn’t buying into Spider’s nearly-voiced argument, either. Ryker looked across the desk at Selma Kaplan. She met his eyes for an instant, then shook her head minutely.

This is way out of my league, pal,
she seemed to say.

“So you want me to work on the Lin case full time,” Ryker mused aloud. “Shuffle the other cases my team is handling off onto the rest of the squad. Tell me, captain, do you think the Hermanos family would feel good and secure knowing that their son’s death is now being handled by, say, Cueball?”

“Detective sergeant, I don’t think you’ve discovered the proper tone to take with me. Try again,” Jericho said.

“Take it easy, Hal,” Spider cautioned, glancing over at the chief. “Let’s listen to what the captain has to say.”

“The Hermanos case is a drug-related homicide, is it not?” Jericho asked. “He was shot dead in a transaction involving ice at a gay dance club, was he not?”

Ryker nodded slowly.
Wow. I never knew Jericho cared.

“Those are some of the facts, yes,” he answered. “But
—
”

“So answer me honestly, detective sergeant,” Jericho pressed on, overriding him, “would you
really
feel that badly if the case was taken off your team’s hands?”

“That’s Morales’s case, sir. He’s close to closing it out, and we expect an arrest to be made very, very soon. Snatching it away from him and Kowalenko will bust the momentum. And the Dyer case
—
”

“Another drug-related murder most probably,” Jericho said. “Dyer was indigent and clearly not in the best of health, and the medical examiner found substantial amounts of heroin in his system. Hardly a model citizen,” Jericho finished, looking down the table at Lin.

Ryker looked down at the Chinese man as well.
Yeah pal, a lot like your little Danny-boy.

If Lin saw anything mirroring the thought in Ryker’s face, it did not move him. Ryker sighed slightly and turned back to Jericho.

“We don’t judge them for how they lived, captain. We only figure out who killed them and bring the guilty parties in for justice.”

“And the other detectives will see to that. But we need you prosecuting the Lin murder with everything you’ve got.

“I have to ask
—
why?” Ryker blurted before he could stop himself. The question resulted in a long and uncomfortable silence; even Spider seemed to shrink in his chair. Jericho put his elbows on the table and looked at Ryker directly. There was no mistaking the hostility in his voice and body language.

“You don’t need to know why, Ryker. You just need to know this is how it is, and you’re going to give a hundred and fifty percent. Do you have any further questions?”

Ryker saw the lay of the land very clearly. He took one sidelong glance at Spider, and when his lieutenant didn’t meet his eye, he had his answer.

“I got you, sir.”

“Glad to hear it,” Jericho nodded toward Lin. “Mr. Lin, you had some special requests to make?”

Oddly enough, it was the big Russian who spoke.

“Mr. Lin insists on full access to your investigations into the murder of his son, Lin Dan,” he announced. His English was accented but perfectly understandable. “In this matter, a third party has been retained to act as Mr. Lin’s second. Mr. Lin has many important business affairs to attend to, and in the end, this third party would perhaps be more objective in this matter than he.”

You gotta be kidding me,
Ryker thought.

The Russian went on.

“We would like full access to the woman you are holding, Zhu Xiaohui. We would also like to review all evidence collected in relation to this case. We would also need to read all reports made, and be briefed on the facts as they now stand.”