The Watchman

33

John Chen

SO HERE he was, after-hours yet again, working off the books and against the rules, flying low in a one-hundred-percent free-fire danger zone that would get his ass canned if Harriet found out, but John Chen loved it. He abso-fucking-lutely LOVED it! Maybe better than his Porsche. Maybe better than seeing his name in the paper. Maybe even better than the ’tang.

Okay, well, let’s not get carried away. Nothing was better than ’tang.

Chen giggled when he realized what he was thinking, a kind of snurfling yuck-yuck-yuck. Chen had always hated his laugh. The other kids had made fun of it (along with everything else about him), but Chen no longer gave a rolling rat-fuck because-as of twenty minutes ago-John Chen was THE MAN!

Chen had this epiphany when Joe Pike called, Pike asking him to drop everything and run a fingerprint check.

His personal friend, Joe Pike-

– who needed John Chen.

– who valued Chen’s knowledge and skill.

– who trusted him.

(And was not Joe Pike the baddest muhfuh kickin’ the streets of this city? Was he not the bravest, toughest, most feared ex-cop to stride the Earth? The most brilliant investigator [Pike had been carrying Cole for years]? Was he not a superhero in Levi’s [Chen thought they could make a mint selling Joe Pike action figures]? Did he not get the most ’tang [like that steaming hot babe waiting with Pike in the parking lot]?)

Joe Pike was THE MAN, and WHO did Pike call when he needed help?

John FUCKING Chen, that’s who!

Harriet said, “John! Why are you still here?”

Snuck up right behind him, that bitch.

Caught by surprise, John ducked his head and hunched his shoulders even as the skin along his back crawled, cringing in that instant of panic like he had cringed so many thousands of times before-but then John Chen thought, No-THE MAN does not cringe.

Chen straightened and gave her his most confident smile. And, you know, he actually felt confident.

“Finishing some work from yesterday. Don’t sweat it, Harriet. I punched out an hour ago.”

Chen had already reached his overtime limit for the week.

Harriet peered past him into the glue box. The glue box was an airtight Plexiglas chamber where superglue and other toxic chemicals were boiled to enhance fingerprints. Currently, John had a picture of Pike’s girlfriend soaking in poisonous fumes.

Harriet eyed the picture suspiciously.

“She looks familiar.”

“Yeah, she has one of those faces.”

“What case?”

“The Drano murder. The detectives think a third person might have been at the scene.”

John had never felt such confidence in his lies. As if they were coming from a core of absolute truth.

Harriet eyed the photograph a moment longer, then stepped back and appraised him.

“Thanks for not hitting me up for the overtime. These budget cuts are killing us.”

“I know, Harriet. Is there anything else?”

“No. No, thanks. Listen, how’s that tooth?”

“I don’t even feel it.”

“I’m sorry I gave you a hard time about that. I didn’t mean to be insensitive.”

“It’s not a problem, Harriet. Don’t sweat it.”

Harriet skulked away as if feeling ashamed of herself, and John smiled even wider. He had seen it in her eyes. She knew he was THE MAN.

Chen turned back to the box and examined the picture through the glass. White smudges were appearing on the front and back surfaces of the photograph, but he still had a long way to go. Fingerprints were nothing but sweat. After the water evaporated, an organic residue was left. The fumes from the superglue reacted with the amino acids, glucose, and peptides in the organics to form a white goo, but growing the goo took time. John figured he still had another ten or fifteen minutes before the prints would be usable.

A reflection moved in the glass, and Chen saw LaMolla at the other side of the lab. She had edged to the door, hiding from Harriet. LaMolla waved him over, gestured toward the gun room, then disappeared.

Chen made sure Harriet was gone, then hurried out of the lab. LaMolla was waiting at the gun room, holding the door.

She said, “Get in here. I don’t want anyone to see us together.”

She damn near pulled him off his feet, then locked the door behind him.

Chen said, “You get anything?”

LaMolla glared at him.

“If you’re setting me up, you fucker, I’ll kill you in your sleep.”

“Why would I set you up?”

“Trust no one, John. We work for the freakin’ government.”

LaMolla led him to her workbench as she told him what she found.

“The Browning was shit; it was stolen in 1982 from a Houston police officer named David Thompson. The BIN showed zip besides the Thompson hit, and nothing rang a bell.”

The ATF maintained the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network-the BIN-logging data on firearms, bullets, and cartridge casings that had been recovered at crime scenes or otherwise entered into the system. LaMolla would have run both guns through the BIN, but computer hits were rare. Chen was far more interested in LaMolla’s “bell.”

LaMolla said, “But the Taurus was different. Look at this-”

She brought him to her computer. On the screen was a magnified picture of the base of a cartridge casing. The brass casing was a ring surrounding a round silver primer. A shadowed indentation in the center of the primer showed where the firing pin had struck the primer.

“You see it? Kinda jumps out at you, doesn’t it?”

The casing looked like every other casing Chen had ever seen.

“What?”

“The pin strike. See here at the top where it’s kinda pointy? I saw that, I thought, Gee, I know that pin.”

The indentation looked perfectly round to John, but this was why firearms analysts were wizards.

LaMolla said, “Last couple of years, the Taurus was used in a couple of drive-bys and a robbery-homicide in Exposition Park. No arrests were made, but the suspects were all members of the same gang. MS-13. It’s a pass-around, John.”

A pass-around was a street gun, usually not owned by one person, but passed from user to user within the same gang.

LaMolla shook her head.

“Sorry, man-wish I could give you something more specific, but that’s it. Doesn’t seem like much.”

“It’s more than we had.”

Chen left her to it and hurried back to the glue chamber. The latent prints had developed nicely, but so many prints covered the picture John wondered if any would be useful. Prints overlaid prints, one atop the other, because that’s the way people handled things. No one ever grabbed a book or a cup or a magazine with a single firm grip; people picked something up, moved it around, passed it from hand to hand, put it down, then picked it up again, overlaying their prints until only a smudgy mess was left.

The girl’s picture was no different.

Chen vented the chamber to blow out the fumes, then removed the picture using a pair of forceps and examined it under a magnifying glass. Smudged circular patterns were heaviest on the sides of the picture where people had held it with their thumbs, but the bottom and top were heavily smudged, too, and still more smudges were randomly scattered over the picture’s glossy front. Chen saw several prints he thought would be usable, but the back of the picture was impossible to read. The white residue from the organics disappeared on the white paper.

Chen clipped the picture to a small metal frame, then gently brushed a fine blue powder over its back. When the back was covered, he used a can of pressurized air to blow off the excess powder, revealing clusters of dark blue smudges, some readable, but most not. He turned over the picture, repeated the process, then examined each of the singular prints.

Chen was pleased. He had twelve separate and singular prints, each showing defined typica. Typica were the characteristic points by which fingerprints could be identified-the loops and swirls and bifurcations that make up a fingerprint.

Chen lifted each print off the picture with a piece of clear tape, then pressed the tape onto a clear plastic backing. One by one, he set them onto a high-resolution digital scanner and photographed them. He fed the pictures into his computer, then used a special program to identify and chart the characteristic points. The FBI’s National Crime Information System didn’t compare pictures of fingerprints; it compared a numerical list of identifying characteristic points. It looked at numbers. After you had the numbers, everything else was easy.

Chen made the special request for an international database search.

John checked his watch again. Pike and the girl were sweating out in the parking lot, and he didn’t want them to sweat too long. He didn’t want Pike to lose faith in him. He wanted to come through.

Chen need not have worried.

The NCIC/Interpol logo flashed on his screen when the incoming files opened, and John Chen read the results.

John had positive matches on all twelve prints, identifying seven separate male individuals, two of whom Chen had earlier identified-Jorge Petrada and Luis Mendoza. Like Petrada and Mendoza, four of the remaining men were thugs from South America associated with Esteban Barone, but the seventh man was not.

Chen realized his mouth was dry when he had trouble swallowing.

He knew why the Department of Justice was involved.

He knew why Parker rolled.

John printed the seven files, carefully stapled them together, then cleared his computer so no one would see the downloads. He collected the fingerprint slides and the picture of the girl and sealed them in an envelope. He took the envelope and the files and walked out of the lab.

The sun was low in the western sky, searing the sky with fire. The Verdugo Mountains were purple turning to black. Chen went directly to Pike’s car, and he didn’t give a damn if Harriet saw him because he knew this was bigger than that; this was bigger than anything he had ever worked on, and maybe ever would.

Pike and the girl watched as he approached.

John Chen gave Pike the files.

“Read it.”

The girl saw the picture on the cover page and said, “That’s him! That’s the man in the pictures.”

The girl scooted close to Pike, and they read it together. Chen didn’t think about how hot she was, or how her hand rested on Pike’s thigh as she read, or fantasize about the taste of her skin. He thought only about what they were reading.

The fingerprints belonged to a man named Khali Vahnich. Vahnich was a forty-two-year-old former investment banker from the Czech Republic who had been convicted of drug trafficking before leaving that country. His activities since that time included additional drug trafficking, illegal arms sales, and known associations with terrorist organizations in Europe and the Middle East. A large black alert warning appeared in the center of the page. John remembered it clearly and knew he would never forget it. The surface roiled. A monster appeared.

It read:

ALERT: THIS MAN IS ON THE TERRORIST WATCH LIST. NOTIFY THE FBI IF YOU BELIEVE HIM TO BE IN YOUR AREA. APPREHEND BY ANY MEANS.

Pike looked up at John when he finished, and Chen would always remember his expression. Pike’s face showed nothing, absolutely nothing, but the gleaming black lenses smoldered with the fire in the sky. Chen felt so proud of Pike then, so terribly, awfully proud that this man had included him.

Pike said, “Thank you, John.”

“Whatever you need. Anything I can do, I’ll do it. I don’t care what. I’ll do it.”

“I know.”

Pike put out his hand, and Chen took it, and wanted never to let go, not ever, because John Chen felt he had something now, something that made him better than he had ever been or ever could have been; something Chen wanted to keep forever.

John Chen said, “Good luck, my brother.”