“Damn it, he could be chop suey by then,” muttered Pasquali. “I should have uniform walk through.”

Laura shook her head and said, “How often does that happen? If everything is okay, that could burn him.”

“If everything is okay, why hasn’t he called?” responded Pasquali.

Laura didn’t reply as she stared at her own watch. Oh, man ... I hate this!

Jack looked at Giang and pointed to the phone book and said, “Keep it. You never know when you might need to call someone.”

Giang stared at Jack incredulously for a moment and started laughing.

Pasquali’s words came back to haunt Jack. He’ll be laughing one second and go into a rage and slash your throat the next second.

“What you just did ... that is funny,” said Giang. “You are smart, using us like that.”

“Glad you have a sense of humour,” replied Jack. “I’ll buy you all another round on my way out.”

“No,” replied Giang. “You just used us. I don’t like being used.”

“My apologies.”

“Perhaps you can make that up to me.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“I will buy you a drink ... for your birthday. And then we will talk.” He gave a command in Vietnamese and the man with the knife returned to his own table.

Jack looked nervously at the men around him.

“It is okay,” said Giang. “We will talk in private ... up near the bar. Don’t forget your phone book.”

“You can have it,” said Jack.

“I don’t need it. If I need to reach out and touch someone, I use them,” he snickered, gesturing to the men with his thumb.

“Think I could use another martini,” replied Jack. “A double, if you don’t mind.”

“My men scare you?” said Giang. “A double ... yes,” he said, giving a shrill laugh.

“Also better phone my girl,” said Jack. “Let her know I’ll be late. Don’t want her to freak out and think Sammy came back.”

An hour later, Jack joined Laura and Pasquali back in the car.

“Went well,” said Jack. “Giang wants to sell me a key of coke. I told him I was too rattled after what happened tonight to do anything. We agreed to talk in a day or two. I told him I was starting a business in Edmonton. I said that one more dope deal would mean I wouldn’t need a mortgage.”

“Wasn’t he pissed off over the Sammy thing?” asked Pasquali.

“He was irked to start with, but ...”

“Irked?” said Pasquali. He had too much experience investigating gangs to know that irked was not a strong enough description for the likes of men like Giang.

“Okay, it was a little tense, like you said it would be,” admitted Jack. “But, like I said, he’s greedy ... and that won out. Actually, when he calmed down he decided it was funny.”

“Nothing about Giang is funny,” said Pasquali. He looked at Jack closer and added, “I don’t recall seeing that you cut yourself shaving this morning?”

Jack gently rubbed the abrasion on his throat and said, “Okay, he was really pissed off, but he’s okay now.”

“Damn it, I tried to warn you,” said Pasquali.

“You’re just upset that you’re going to have to fork out some money for a jar of olives,” said Jack. “Everything is okay.”

Laura eyed Jack’s neck and rolled her eyes. “With Act Three,” she said, “I will be with you.”

“You got it. First I’ll build up his greed and raise his expectations on the cocaine, then you come in and cancel the dope deal. He’ll feel let down and think he’s about to lose out.”

“I tell you that we can’t buy the coke because we need capital to try and entice some girls to start working for us in Edmonton,” said Laura.

Jack nodded and said, “Hopefully he’ll figure he can still salvage a deal and introduce us to Dúc or on up to the Russians.”

“You going to meet him tomorrow?” asked Pasquali.

Jack shook his head. “I don’t want to appear that eager. I’ll have him wait a few days—take away some of his confidence. Give him a bit of a roller-coaster ride on this. One minute he envisions the money in front of him and the next minute he thinks it’s gone.”

It was midnight when Connie Crane, from the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, ducked under the yellow crime-scene tape blocking the alley and made her way to the cluster of police officers. They were gathered around behind an apartment building.

Homicide Sections from the B.C. lower mainland, with the exception of Vancouver and Delta, had combined into what was now known as the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, but was commonly referred to as “I-HIT.”

Connie was approaching retirement and had spent much of her career investigating homicides. She was a walking encyclopedia when it came to murder and was considered a valued asset on the I-HIT unit.

When other homicide investigators were initially repelled by some of the more grisly murders they encountered, Connie would just shrug her shoulders and say, “Come on, guys. It’s just a body. It won’t bite. Let’s find out who did it.”

Her cool, calculating mind was in high demand and her presence was requested at many scenes. Some cases were easy. Like the time she listened to the sobs of a couple who told another investigator that their baby had rolled off the changing table and died when her head struck the floor.

“Arrest them both,” she whispered to the investigator. “Shaken Baby Syndrome. This kid wasn’t old enough to roll yet.”

Other investigations, like the pig farm, were much more complicated and drawn out, but her energy and determination never waned.

When she got closer, she saw a police officer trying to take a statement from a grubby, bearded man who was sitting on the ground while holding his head and rocking back and forth.

She recognized the chubby profile of a man peering inside the Dumpster with a flashlight as that of her partner. “Hey, Wellsy! What have we got?”

Wells turned around and said, “Hi, CC. You tell me. A lady from the apartment building heard a homeless guy screaming like he was being killed. She called it in. Turns out that Homeless Harry was Dumpster-diving when he found something other than empties.”

“Homeless Harry got a record?” asked Connie.

“Nothing serious. Uniform know him. They say poor Harry has a ton of psychiatric problems and is an alcoholic, but is also as gentle as a lamb and generally avoids the human race. Don’t think this will help him any.”

Connie used her own flashlight to look into the dumpster. A distorted face of a girl stared back at her from a ripped garbage bag. She appeared to be naked and was in a fetal position with her hands up near her mouth.

“Been dead for a while,” said Wells. “Most of her skin is abscessed and rotting.”

Connie used the end of her flashlight to nudge open the plastic bag a little further. “You’re wrong,” she said. “Check out the blood. This body is fresh.”

Something else about the body did not seem right to Connie—then she saw it.

“Take a look Wellsy,” she said, using the beam of light from her flashlight as a wand.

Wells stared for a moment and said, “I see it! What the hell?” he said, stepping back. “What kind of freak—Jesus! What do we have here?”

chapter eighteen

It was three o’clock in the afternoon when Isaac answered his secretary’s call.

“Doctor Henckel on the line for you, sir.”

“Put her through ... Aggi! How are you doing?”

“Good. One more autopsy and I’m done for the day. What can Leon and I bring for dinner tonight? How about I pick up a cake for dessert?”

“Don’t worry about it. Sarah already baked an apple pie.”

“Sounds fancy.”

“No, not at all. Don’t dress up. We’re having our first barbecue for the year. Sarah is going to cook a turkey on the rotisserie.”

“That’s why you invited me! You want me to carve!” laughed Aggi.