Citizen

Untitled Part 4

Chapter 4

"I like slightly bossy women, slightly."

"My wife said, 'I'm beautiful. Why should I want to be rich?'"

Inspector Larry Leahy, 60, answered his closest colleague, Inspector Hieu Trang, 29 years his junior, "She is. Mine isn't."

"To which one, bossy or beautiful?"

Both started laughing.

"My wife needs a hair transplant," Larry said.

"So do you, Larry," Hieu replied, laughing.

"No." Larry rubbed a balding head ringed by snow-white hair. "I like it this way because I look like I have a tonsure."

"What's that?" Hieu asked.

Larry put on his gray suit jacket and headed for the door of his office. They were ready to leave for home. Hieu had a new brown leather valise in hand.

While thinking about how to explain tonsure, Larry asked, "You buy that at Coach?"

"Yep."

"At least, it isn't another road bike."

"I bought a fat-bike last week," Hieu said.

"Geez."

When the call for help from Green Street came in, Larry said, "I know that's gonna involve me."

They waited in Larry's office for another 15 minutes.

The 'officer down' code cinched it. Larry was lead inspector for Central.

Dempsey called.

"Let's go, Hieu."

"All right, skipper."

Green Street gave them a ghastly, unrepeatable scene, a view into man's depravity: eight dead bodies and three clamped cowards. Hieu looked as bad as a seasick god riding oceans of their blue ichor.

I should introduce him to St. Paul...the shipwrecked.

Dempsey directed them over to Rick to get the full story. Rick stood up and leaned against the wall, which backed up a 20-minute exposé. Larry noticed he slouched and was a little broad around the narrows.

Sadness and the vest.

Larry decided to take a look at Guy, who lay face up with eyes wide open. The medical examiner was bent over Guy's stained vest. The machete had worked its way out of his shoulder the way a sewing machine needle would inveigle an exit out of a finger if given time.

Larry looked around. Three framed pictures had fallen to the floor. With gloves on, he picked up one, particles of glass falling from the frame of an older Asian couple smiling. He squatted and placed the picture next to the heads on the floor. The faces matched.

Hieu appeared at the bedroom door and seemed hesitant to enter as Larry gingerly stepped around blood evidence.

The Situation Investigation Team arrived and began recovering trace evidence. One took the framed picture from Larry, and another began measuring the trajectory of every path of every bullet. A third walked up to Larry and showed him a key.

"I found it at the front door."

Larry looked at it and knew instantly it was a bump key. Attached was a blue string.

Larry looked at Hieu. "It's a 999 key. In a key-making machine, you use a master key and create a 999 key by cutting the ridges to a maximum depth. In our fair state, and you know it's fair, it is illegal to possess burglary tools, and that means any tool used to gain an unauthorized entry, like lock picks, car opening tools, and bump keys."