Jed had been shot in the face at point blank range. The bullet had exited and taken with it a considerable chunk of his skull. The blood spatter pattern showed he’d been standing a little to the left inside the entrance to the room. The spent bullet had buried itself in the door jamb. Other bullets were lodged in Jed’s back, fired into him when he was already belly down on the floor and dead. They had been fired in an act of overkilclass="underline" that or cold anger. To me it meant that the shooter had come here not only to murder Jed, but also to punish him. The similarities with Andrew’s murder didn’t escape either Rink or me, or the detectives who we called in shortly after.
Tyler and Jones had treated us with suspicion — and rightly so. When we related how we’d come directly from a funeral to check on the deceased’s missing best friend it relaxed them a tad, but not much. It didn’t take much deduction to figure that Jed had died some time the day before, so it didn’t put either of us out of the frame for his murder. For a second or two I thought Rink was going to go nuclear on them, but to my surprise he’d merely grunted and acquiesced to the detectives’ theory. Now he was simply going with the flow, but I knew why. If we started jumping around and shouting the odds, we’d most likely have the cops hounding our tails and no way would we be able to avenge Andrew, and now Jed. It was apparent that the murderer of both men was one and the same, but I didn’t think it had anything to do with Chaney. We had to play our cards close to our chests, otherwise we’d be hobbled by the SFPD and never find the one responsible.
A CSI tech had dug the bullet out of the jamb to bag it as evidence. He showed it briefly to Tyler.
‘Nine mil?’ Tyler asked.
The tech nodded.
I was thankful that we’d come directly from the cemetery, and therefore without our sidearms. My SIG was loaded with nine mm Parabellum ammunition and could have caused an awkward moment if the cops chose to search us for a possible murder weapon. Coming in earlier, Tyler and Jones had done a preliminary inspection of the body and they had concluded from the entry holes that the bullets had been nine mm: Tyler looked pleased that they’d guessed correctly. It didn’t mean an awful lot because many guns use the same ammunition, and didn’t help identify a possible suspect without a gun to compare it to.
The CSI team had concluded their examination and collected all the evidence they were going to. The men from the ME’s office moved in to bag and tag Jed. It was a cold description of their duties, but at the end of the day was what it was. As they went about their business I turned to look at Rink. It must have been hell for him to witness and I knew what must have been going through his mind, his father having died so recently in similar circumstances. I considered asking him to follow me out of the room but Rink wasn’t one to be mollycoddled. In the brief moment my attention was off the proceedings I missed something. When I looked back the two detectives were crouching down over Jed’s corpse, peering at something that had until now gone undetected. I shared a quizzical glance with Rink and we both stepped in for a look at what had caught their attention.
It was a photograph in a gilt-edged frame.
Tyler pulled on latex gloves, handed to him by one of the CSI men.
He teased the photo out from under Jed, and then paused to look at the carpet where it had lain. Because the shots into Jed’s body had been fired post-mortem there was little blood beneath him, but some dots were visible on the carpet underneath where the photo had been found. I don’t consider myself a detective, but even I could tell that the photo frame had been slipped beneath the body after Jed was already dead.
Tyler looked once at Jones, confirming that his partner had caught the significance too, before noticing us looming over them. ‘Do you mind keeping your distance? In fact, I’m not even sure that I want you in the room.’
Continuing our show of compliance we stepped back, watching as Tyler sealed the photo in an evidence bag, then signed it over to the CSI team. Unless the killer was supremely stupid he would have been wearing gloves when placing the photo, but there was always an off chance that fingerprints could be found on the frame. I doubted it; but the frame was a clue of sorts to me, and more for the photograph’s subject than the physical item.
On the way over here, Rink had told me a little about Jed Newmark, that he was a widower whose wife, Rose, had died a few years earlier. Rose had been a friend of Yukiko’s but I hadn’t realised until seeing the picture that she too was Japanese. A theory was beginning to rattle around in my head, gaining momentum, but it wasn’t something I wanted to mention to the detectives. Rink’s words came back to me. ‘Giri. My mom is a firm believer in the old ways.’ I had begun to wonder how far that ‘burden of obligation’ stretched.
Detective Jones left his partner to approach us. He was smiling faintly as he tucked his thumbs into his belt and shoved back his shoulders. ‘There’s stuff you guys know but aren’t telling us. Want to get down to business and save us the runaround?’
We shared a look, and I allowed Rink to reply for us. ‘All I know is that someone murdered my dad, and now his best friend, and the SFPD doesn’t seem to have a goddamn clue who’s responsible.’
Jones shook his head. With his strawberry-blond curls and a splash of freckles across his nose, he looked much younger, and less experienced, than his position as a homicide detective dictated. But his face took on harder edges, and he didn’t look as amiable as before. He looked into Rink’s eyes and didn’t flinch. ‘When your father was killed you were in Florida. We checked. We know that you —’ he gave me a cursory nod ‘— and your friend weren’t involved directly, but we also found out a thing or two that raised a red flag. As much as you’ve covered your asses, and it seems someone with influence has kept you both from being thrown in jail, our colleagues out East aren’t idiots. They know that you’re responsible for a number of violent crimes — fatally violent in some cases — and that you have made some dangerous and brutal enemies in the last couple years. There has been a certain laxness shown towards your actions, primarily because those that you’ve gone up against probably deserved what they got, but when those actions bring trouble to our city the SFPD isn’t the type to turn a blind eye. We don’t endorse vigilantism here.’
‘You haven’t just had someone close to you murdered,’ Rink said. ‘Maybe you’d think differently then.’
Jones ignored the retort.‘The way I was beginning to look at things, this was your entire fault: someone with a beef with you chose to attack you through your family.’ He gestured at the bagged corpse being loaded on to the gurney. ‘Now I’m not so sure. I can’t see any reason why they would then target Mr Newmark. Not unless there’s something I’m missing?’
Did Jones believe that Jed Newmark was Andrew’s murderer, and that we’d done the old guy in out of revenge? If so, he wasn’t saying, but it would add validity to why it had become necessary for us to consent to forensic examination. I didn’t think that was the case, though: if we were deemed suspects we’d have been arrested at the get-go.
‘Whatever you’re missing, we are too,’ Rink said.
Jones puffed his cheeks out, before exhaling noisily. ‘Forgive me, Mr Rington, but I think you’re feeding me a line of bullshit.’