Tuesday, October 12th
The night sky opened a crack and it started to drizzle, adding to the misery of the evening.
Aislinn Byrne ducked under the crime scene tape and strode across the wet pavement toward a three-story house, lit by flashing lights from four Boston Police Department cruisers parked on the street. She slowed about halfway up the sidewalk, intent on the pattern of bullet holes in the windows and siding, then kept moving to where a veteran uniformed officer stood in front of a low hedge.
“Who’s here aside from them?” Aislinn asked, flashing her badge and tilting her head toward the cruisers.
“The coroner, a photographer, CSI crew, and a detective,” the officer answered, standing aside. “Young guy, didn’t recognize him.” She checked her notebook. “Bryan Cheung.”
“Thanks.” Aislinn tightened her coat to her neck but it provided little protection against the cold autumn air.
She reached the stairs leading to the front porch and looked back to where two officers had set up a grid search and were moving back and forth across the asphalt with flashlights. The street was lined with boarding houses similar to the one the drive-by shooting had targeted, the sort of high-density neighborhood that was good for dredging up potential witnesses. And gunshots, Aislinn knew from experience, were a magnet that drew people to their windows to have a look. She took the stairs two at a time and once she was under the portico she ran her hands through her short red hair, then wiped them on her jeans, slipped on latex gloves and entered the house.
Bryan Cheung was in the living room of the main floor suite, standing close to the body of a woman splayed out on the hardwood floor. The coroner was hovering over the body, taking notes, but most of his work would be performed at the morgue after the corpse was removed. CSI was working the scene, calculating bullet trajectories and digging slugs out of the walls, while a department photographer captured the victim from different angles. Bryan glanced up as Aislinn came in from the common hallway that led to the unit on the upper floor.
“Hey,” he said, slightly taken aback to see her. “What’s up?”
Aislinn shrugged. “Curtis called and asked if I could drop by and give you a hand, this being your first case as lead detective.”
Bryan wasn’t sure whether he was relieved or irritated. “Thanks.” He hesitated, the added, “Good of you to drop in.”
“Yup,” Aislinn said, thinking back to her first homicide as lead detective. A guy who had been drinking shot outside a bar by another guy who had been drinking. Not exactly a tough case, but even then she had been nervous and a bit unsure of herself. “What have you got so far?”
“Looks like a drive-by,” Bryan said. “Victim is a mid-thirties woman. She took a direct hit in the head, probably dead before she hit the floor.”
“Hmm.” Aislinn stared down at the corpse. The impact had torn the woman’s head apart, spattering blood across the floor and up one wall.
“The uniforms in the street – what are they up to?” she asked.
“Searching for casings,” Bryan said. “I have two more canvassing the neighbors for witnesses.”
She nodded her approval. “Does our victim have a name?”
Bryan held up a passport in a sealed evidence bag. The cover was deep blue with writing in two distinctly different languages, one of them English. Republic of India was clearly visible. “Ravima Gamage, Indian citizen on a visa. Passport was issued in Mumbai six months ago.”
“Entry stamp?” Aislinn asked, studying the writing. The second language was likely Hindi, but she wasn’t sure.
“Through JFK in New York on May 3rd.”
Aislinn did the math. “So the victim’s been in the US about five months.” She took a long look around the spartan room with its flowered couch and chair facing a twenty-year-old tube television on concrete blocks. “Depressing.”
“Yeah,” Bryan said. “Same in the kitchen and bedroom, nothing more than the basics. And no phone.”
Aislinn raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Unless I missed it, but there isn’t much here so it should be easy to spot.”
“No purse?” Aislinn asked.
Bryan picked up an evidence bag containing a medium size, black leather bag. “Her passport, keys, and a nail file were in there, along with a wallet that had a bank card. No Visa or Mastercard.”
Aislinn spun about slowly, taking in every detail of the room. She paused at a box of tissues on the arm of the sofa – was she sick with a runny nose, did she watch a lot of tear-jerkers, or was she upset? A small wooden Buddha occupied the adjacent side table, with incense and candles clustered nearby. Two vases of fresh flowers flanked the statue and Aislinn picked it up, looking for any sign it had been tampered with or hollowed out, then repeated the procedure with the candles. Nothing. She turned her attention to a dirty plate, stained yellow, on the floor in front of the couch. There was no knife or fork anywhere in sight and she glanced at the woman’s fingers. There were traces of the same yellow color.
“She must have just finished dinner,” Aislinn said. “No utensils, she ate with her fingers. I think it’s fairly common in India.” She pointed to the television. “Was it on when you got here?”
“Yes, the nightly news,” Bryan said.
“Who comes to America from the other side of the world and stays for five months without getting a phone?” Aislinn asked quietly.
“Yeah, no one,” Bryan agreed. He waited a moment, then added, “The bullets sprayed the second-floor apartment as well. I think we need to speak with the guy who lives there.”
She caught the inflection in his tone. “Is he a problem?”
“Oh, yeah. He’s a problem.”
“How so?” she asked.
“His name’s Colton Thompson. I pulled his history and he has some previous convictions. The guy’s a bad dude. He’s done time for trafficking, assault, and theft.”
“I see. So maybe Thompson was the intended victim.”
“It’s possible,” Bryan said. “I posted a uniform in his apartment to keep an eye on him.”
“Did anyone search the place for weapons?” Aislinn asked, worry creeping in.
“No, I didn’t have the manpower. Our guy has Thompson and his girlfriend waiting on the couch.”
“Okay, let’s get up there.” She spun on her heels and headed for the door. “Next time don’t leave an officer alone with two suspects sitting on a sofa that hasn’t been searched for weapons.” She turned back and looked him in the eye.
He was right behind her as she charged up the stairs. “Sorry.”
She barged in through the open door, ignoring his comment, and strode past the cop watching Thompson. An unshaven man in his late twenties and a woman a few years younger were sitting on the couch. He had dirty hair and was wearing boxer briefs – Aislinn smiled – hard to hide a gun in that sort of underwear. The girl was wide-eyed, almost feral looking, and Aislinn pegged her for an addict who was close to needing a fix.
“Get up,” Bryan said, pushing his way past Aislinn. “Hands on your heads.”
“You can’t come in here…” he started.
“I said get up,” Bryan cut him off. “Now.”
They both stood up, hands on their heads and Bryan nodded for the uniformed officer to check the couch. He pulled off the cushions and shone his flashlight in the cracks, avoiding touching the stained fabric in case there was a needle from a used syringe. He shook his head and threw the cushions back in place.
Aislinn remained off to the side, eyes narrowed and watching. Bryan was asserting himself and in control of the situation, but not handling things very well. The apartment, having been sprayed with bullets, should be treated as a crime scene, and at this point Colton and his girlfriend dealt with as witnesses, not suspects. It was time to step in and smooth things over without throwing Bryan under the bus.
“Sit down please,” Aislinn said to Colton and the girl, keeping a respectable distance from them. “Looks like whoever tried to kill you missed.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Thompson said. “Nobody’s trying to kill me.”
“Yeah, right,” Aislinn said. She glanced over at Bryan. “What’s this guy’s rap sheet look like?”
Bryan pulled out his phone, opened the file and read it off, which took the better part of a minute. Aislinn paced about the apartment, checking out the bullet holes in the windows, then in the walls, getting a feel for the trajectories. CSI would give them the details on that but at first glance it appeared that the shots had come from street level.
“So who wants you dead, Colton?” Aislinn asked after Bryan had finished.
“Nobody.”
Aislinn continued around the room, taking another look at the bullet holes, then stopped at the bookshelf. She picked up a small baggie filled with white powder partially tucked in behind some paperbacks. “Ahh, what’s this?”
“Hey, you got no right to search my place,” Colton said. “You need a warrant.”
Aislinn stood and shook her head. “If we find something while we’re here, at the scene…” She let the sentence tail off, then walked back over to the couch. “I think you two need to accompany us to the station.”
“Aww, shit.” Colton collapsed into the couch and the girl burst into tears.
Aislinn turned to Bryan. “Phone it in and get a search warrant. Tape the place off and put these two in separate cruisers. We’ll talk to them downtown.”
She spun and walked out, oblivious to the stream of obscenities coming from Colton Thompson. The one thing she did hear was the girl sobbing. More squad cars were parked about the street and she sent a couple of the new arrivals up to help with Thompson and the girl, then waited for Bryan to come downstairs. A few minutes later he hustled back to the main floor and joined Aislinn in the hall outside the suite where Ravima Gamage lay on the floor, growing colder as time passed.
“I know this is your case,” Aislinn said to Bryan. “But you were digging a hole for yourself. Until we found the drugs, Colton and the girl were simply witnesses to a drive-by.”
Bryan swallowed and nodded. “So you weren’t really looking at the bullet holes. You were searching for something to bust them.”
“A bit of both.”
He took a deep breath. “Thanks for that.” Aislinn had saved him from a dressing down – Colton’s lawyer would have been screaming bloody murder that his client had been treated as a suspect, and all eyes would have been on the rookie homicide detective.
Aislinn just smiled. “Notice the spray pattern on Colton’s wall?” Bryan shook his head. “Left to right, slight uptick on the shots on the right.”
“And that means…”
“The shooter wasn’t ready for the gun’s recoil and the barrel angled upward as they fired. He, or she, wasn’t familiar with the gun.”
“Makes sense,” Bryan said.
“So, what now?” Aislinn asked, handing control back to him.
“The uniforms should be almost finished canvasing the neighbors. We’ll sort out who are the most promising to interview and find out what they heard or saw. Maybe we’ll get a description of the vehicle.”
Aislinn nodded. “Right.”
They walked out the front door and down the stairs to the sidewalk. Aislinn counted the number of risers – seven. That put street level about four feet below Ravima Gamage’s suite, and from where Aislinn stood the flowered couch and tube television weren’t visible. Bad timing that, she thought, the woman standing up at exactly the wrong time.
Bryan glanced at the basement level of the target house. “The shooter only hit the main and second floors by the look of things. CSI can start working on the bullet trajectories while it’s still dark, then recalculate things in the morning.”
“Sounds good,” Aislinn said.
“Now we talk to the neighbors,” Bryan said as they made a beeline for the drenched officers who had knocked on the nearby doors.
“Yeah, let’s do that.”
