Purgatory in the Eleventh Hour - Chapter 5
Chapter Five: Dead Ends
I bolted out of my seat and started heading towards the door as Captain Yamashita gave me the location of the crime scene. Breezing past the confused bouncer by the front door, I got in my car and sped towards this new murder. By discreetly ignoring the speed limit and other small points of traffic law I managed to arrive in record time. A full forensics team was at work, scrutinizing every last inch of the scene for potential evidence. Three men in ordinary suits stood in a huddle, conversing amongst themselves. By their bearing they were obviously homicide detectives. I headed over to them to get an overview of what had happened.
I was five steps from my car when saw her: a middle-aged woman, may forty years old, laying sprawled on the pavement. With her dark nun’s habit it was almost impossible to make out the dark bloodstains that crept down to the ground to join with a small pool of blood. I twisted my gaze away as feeling of nausea and empty horror washed over me. Steeling myself with a slow breath, I continued the walk to the detectives.
As I approached one of them looked up from the quiet conversation. He was a man of average height, with dark brown hair that was certainly longer than regulation. Some sort of recognition passes across his face as he saw me and he moved away from the other two to meet me.
“You must Agent Calavera,” he said in a no-nonsense voice. “Captain Yamashita told me you were coming. I’m Chief Inspector Yagami, head of the homicide division. I’ve been ordered to assist you any way I can.”
I listened carefully for any trace of bitterness or resentment in his voice as having to work on a case under a DSI agent but didn’t find any. It seemed the Captain could pick good people to work for him. Not all of them, though, I reminded myself darkly.
“That’s right,” I said, “I’m investigating the murder of Father Molina. I’m assuming the Seattle PD has reason to believe that these crimes are connected.”
Yagami nodded, “We have every reason to think so. Let’s start with the victim.”
With a small gesture for me to follow he headed over to the deceased’s body. We stood a respectful distance away, looking at the body of another faithful servant of God now dead.
“Sister Anna Lucia, a native of the Pacific Northwest and attached to the local diocese. She spent time working at one of the shelters in the south side of the city. A well liked member of the community, known for her compassion and devotion.”
“Just like Father Molina,” I murmured.
“She was heading back from a shift there,” Inspector Yagami continued, “when she ran into the killer. Scuff marks on the sidewalk indicate a short pursuit; we’re checking to try and recover sole samples. The victim only made about twenty feet before being shot twice from behind. At that time local residents reported hearing gunshots and a police team was dispatched. She was dead by the time we arrived.”
“Any witnesses?” I asked, though the answer seemed obvious.d
Yagami shook his head. “No, no one saw the murder or anything suspicious prior to gunshots. And so far we haven’t turned up any forensic evidence. My team’s been over this place with a fine-toothed comb but they haven’t found any shell casings, fingerprints, stray fibers, nothing. Whoever’s doing this, agent Calavera, knows what they’re doing.”
I nodded, it certainly looked like these killings were being done by a professional. The absence of eye-witnesses or evidence strongly suggested that the killer knew what to do and what to avoid. And that meant that I was still no closer to finding out who he was.
“Damn,” I muttered quietly. All my time in law enforcement and I wasn’t sure how to move forward with no appreciable leads. There had to be some angle I could attack, something I could follow back to its source.
The gun, I thought to myself, that’s gotta be it. The gun type was the only thing I had right now to go on. There wasn’t anything else to be done here at the crime scene so I told Inspector Yagami to keep me posted and then headed back to the station.
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The first thing I’d done when I’d gotten back was to tell the Seattle PD to pick up Johnny French’s gun-man. For whatever reason, though - maybe he’d heard about my stunt in the Red Room - he seemed to have gone to ground and the police were having trouble finding him. It was anyone’s guess how long it would take to dig him up so, in the mean time, I decided to attack the problem from the other end. I got the bright idea of starting with the manufacturers and tracking the guns as they went out; after all, how many .44 calibre pistols could there be out there?
As it turned out, a lot. For a highly restricted handgun certain companies seemed to make an excessively high number of them. After beating my head against stacks of shipping orders and warehouse inventories for an hour, I made a desperation call to Brother Alfred asking him to come down and lend me a hand. He’d always been better at wading through these masses of numbers and I hoped that the two of us could maybe make some progress.
As we worked, we soon discovered two interesting facts. The first was that several major firearms manufacturers in the American West were all subsidiaries of some larger company. Corporate front led to corporate front; NorPac Industries, Nueva España Enterprises, Abstergo International, the list went on. Not only did they own the gun makers but these dummy corps also owned each other, which turned trying to follow the money trail to its end an extremely convoluted effort. Finally, though, we came across one company that seemed to be holding all the strings: Lux Research Group, a subsidiary of American United. But that’s where the trail ended, it was impossible to figure out who actually owned the company or what exactly it did. I made copies of all the information and made a note to pass it along to Eva to look into further.
The second interesting piece of information was that many of the weapons being produced, close to fifteen percent, seemed to serve no purpose but to go and collect dust in various warehouses. The set-up obviously seemed geared for sales to the black market. Inventory would sit in poorly guarded locations until it was “stolen.” The company would then claim a loss, write it off on their taxes and make a handy two way profit. It was pretty obvious, really obvious to the point where I wondered if there wasn’t something else going on. But right now that wasn’t my concern; besides, there’s no rule saying criminals have to be smart.
This meant, of course, that it would be virtually impossible to track the guns from that end. Once they “disappeared” all records would go with them so to track one down I’d have to tear up a whole layer of criminal underground. And while the Department could do it, we didn’t have the time it would take twist that many arms. It seemed that once again I was at a dead end.
