Changes -- A Randall Lee Mystery Read online

  About Changes

  "Charles Colyott is a fresh and bold new voice on the mystery scene. Just when you think it has all been done before, here comes Randall Lee."

  --Scott Nicholson, author of Liquid Fear

  "Charles Colyott’s novel, CHANGES, is a stunner. A thrill-ride from start to finish that will stay with you long after you’ve finished the last page. The characters are unique in detective lore, the situations are mesmerizing and together they draw the reader into a world quite unlike anything previously encountered. Read this book to learn, laugh, and fall in love with a brilliant young writer’s work."

  --Lisa Mannetti, two-time Bram stoker nominee and winner, The Gentling Box.

  "With slick action reminiscent of Barry Eisler, and witty dialogue in the league of Jeff Strand, Charles Colyott creates a thriller all his own. The compulsively readable prose of CHANGES will keep you reading long into the night, and when you're through, you'll be hoping for another thriller starring the sometimes troubled acupuncturist/Tai Chi Chuan expert, Randall Lee."

  ----Glen Krisch, author of Brother's Keeper, Loss, Where Darkness Dwells, and The Nightmare Within

  Changes -- A Randall Lee Mystery

  by

  Charles Colyott

  Changes -- A Randall Lee Mystery

  Copyright © by Charles Colyott

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  *****

  Dedication

  For Ken Colyott (I think he would've liked this one) and for Cara, always.

  Special Thanks to:

  Sifu, Tom, Alex & Scott and the NOLA crew

  Changes -- A Randall Lee Mystery

  Table of Contents

  About Changes

  Changes - A Randall Lee Mystery

  About the author

  Changes

  Yu Bei: Preparation.

  I fell into the stance effortlessly and stood until my breath came slow, quiet, and easy. I focused on the feel of stale air on my skin, the flash of dust motes gleaming golden in the sunlight, and the stink of rotting fish from the dumpster down in the alley. Cardboard boxes still lined the walls of my apartment, stacked in random, leaning columns; I ignored them. Cobwebs caught the light and shone against the dingy ceiling; a wayward water beetle scrabbled along the floor, looking for a meal or, perhaps, a way back to its home. And through the open windows, guttural shouts in Cantonese, bits of conversation in lilting Mandarin, and heat: oppressive, humid, Midwestern heat. I pushed the distractions from my mind.

  Qi Shi: Begin.

  I start to move, searching for the stillness in motion, the motion in stillness. The postures shift from one to another without pausing, without breaking. ‘Grasp Sparrow’s Tail’ to ‘Single Whip,’ flowing into ‘Lift hands’. I moved through them, my mind quiet, almost peaceful. It was a refreshing change.

  If someone asked me why I still practiced Tai Chi, after everything, I’m not sure I could give them an answer. I would probably say that it was comforting or relaxing, or maybe I would quote some study about the health benefits of the practice, but none of that was it, not really. I just kept on doing it.

  The ringer was off on the phone, but I heard the answering machine whir to life in the kitchen. A voice, incoherent and low, muttered something gruff and clicked loudly as the caller hung up. I pushed it out of my head, something to handle later, after. By the time I began the first ‘Cloudy Hands’ set, my arms felt heavy, inflated and numb.Sometime during the third section of the form, the damned machine started muttering again - more incoherent male voice, a bit more urgent and pissy-sounding this time. Whoever it was, they would just have to wait.

  After closing the form, I glanced at the clock. Fifty-five minutes from start to finish, and my muscles knew it. My thighs and calves burned and glistened with a layer of sweat. I went to the fridge, grabbed a beer, and took a long pull from the glass bottle, relishing the wave of chills that started in my throat and stomach and spread outward through my body.

  I listened to my messages. Both were from some cop, a Detective Knox, and he said he wanted to ask me a few questions. About what, he didn’t say. I called the station, spoke to the detective, and told him he could meet me in twenty minutes.

  I showered but didn’t bother to shave. After running a towel through my hair, I bunched it into a ponytail, and got dressed - loose, black drawstring pants and a white tank top. I slipped on my battered black Converse All-Stars, grabbed a cardboard box from the kitchen table, took another beer from the fridge, and left.

  A flight of steep, narrow stairs lead down to street level, to my shop. As I emerged from the relatively cool, dim entryway, I shaded my eyes from the sun and once again cursed my particular migratory choice. I couldn't have picked someplace like San Francisco. No, it had to be St. Louis… The city with the shittiest excuse for a Chinatown I've ever seen. I like to call it China-street.

  I unlocked the front door of my shop and went in, greeted as ever by the familiar sour stink of herbs and the cloying, medicinal smell of antiseptics. A stack of bills littered the floor by the mail slot. I kicked them into the corner, halfway under a bookshelf, dropped the box on the counter, and went in the back room to start a pot of coffee. I don’t drink the stuff much myself, but I keep it around for clients. I’ve never known a cop to turn down a free cup of coffee.

  I was drinking my beer and checking my appointment book when the cop showed up. I knew him immediately from the bad suit; somebody needed to tell this kid Miami Vice was cancelled ages ago. He was a youngish guy, maybe mid-thirties, very yuppie. Very clean-shaven. Either that or his face hadn’t figured out how to grow hair yet. He walked in, looked around as I finished scribbling notes on the calendar, and finally said, "I’m looking for Mr. Lee?"

  "That’s me." I said.

  "You’re Randall Lee?"

  I nodded.

  "And this is your place." He said.

  It wasn’t really a question, but I answered it anyway.

  He frowned, probably thinking that there must’ve been some sort of mistake. I was used to the reaction.

  "I guess," he said, rubbing his bare chin, "I just figured you’d be more…"

  I raised an eyebrow.

  "…Oriental," he finished.

  I took the box from the counter, slid my fingers under the thick brown packing tape, and pulled.

  "Things are oriental, Detective. People are Asian. As you say, I am neither. just another Gwailo like yourself."

  He put his hands on his hips, probably in an attempt to look powerful or intimidating. He just ended up looking pouty.

  "How long you been a cop?" I asked.

  "Why?"

  "Curious, that’s all."

  "Almost seven years." he said.

  I glanced at his shiny badge, prominently displayed, as it was, on his belt, and said, "And a detective?"

  "Two months."

  "And you’ve been working this neighborhood for those two months?"

  "Mostly, yeah." He said.

  I nodded and said, "How’s that been working out for you?"

  He sneered a little. "Y’know what, pal? I don’t really need any shit from you, alright?"

  "What exactly do you need from me, Detective?" I said.

  His face clouded. I couldn’t tell if it was anger, embarrassment, or, most likely, a little of both. Conflicted as he was, I figured it might take a
while for him to spill it. So I carried my box over to the shelves of herbs and began unpacking.

  "Look, the department doesn’t typically enlist the help of civilians but we’re a bit short on resources at the moment…"

  I brushed Styrofoam peanuts from the packing list and gave it a quick once-over.

  "…and we’ve got a situation right now… are you even paying attention?"

  I looked up at him, hefting a bag of Siberian Ginseng, and said, "Absolutely, but you’ll excuse me if I work as we talk? I’m a little busy."

  "There was a murder last night. A Chinese prostitute." He said the word slowly, with emphasis. Smartass. I was starting to like him a little.

  "So?" I said.

  "So nobody’s talking to us ‘white devils’, and we got nobody on the force who speaks Chinese."

  I looked up. "How is that possible?"

  "We only ever had a few to begin with. A couple joined Homeland Security, and Joanie - she was the last one – she’s on maternity leave."

  "So… you need a translator." I said.

  "Well, yeah, but we were hoping to find somebody they’d talk to. Y’know, one of them."

  "I could show them my jade secret decoder ring." I said.

  He frowned and said, "You’re kind of an asshole, you know that?"

  "I get that a lot, yeah."

  He stared at me for a minute.

  He turned to leave.

  As he reached for the door, I said, "Alright, Detective, my first appointment’s not till two-thirty. That gives us a couple hours."

  2

  Knox drove a white, unmarked sedan. The big boxy thing may as well have had a giant speaker on the roof blasting the theme to Cops, though; nobody but a cop would be driving that thing around. The interior smelled. It reminded me of a time when I was a kid and somebody puked in the school bus.

  "Your car smells like baked-in vomit," I said conversationally.

  "Thanks," he replied. "Man, I could really use some coffee. You want some coffee?"

  "I made some, actually…forgot to offer you any, though."

  "Am I supposed to say that it’s the thought that counts?"

  I shrugged and said, "So, what happened to her?"

  "Who?"

  "The girl we’re asking around about. You got ADHD or something?"

  "We’re looking into it."

  "The girl or the ADHD?"

  "The hooker." he said. He wasn’t as amused as I was, apparently, with my wit. I was pretty used to that.

  "I know I’m not a cop," I said, "but isn’t it usually sort of obvious how somebody was killed?"

  "Yeah. Usually."

  "But not this time?"

  "No."

  He stared out the window, presumably at a couple of kids playing in the parking lot of an old, boarded up Church’s Fried Chicken.

  "Why not?" I said.

  He looked at me. "Why you wanna know so much? All you have to do is ask the questions and tell me the answers. Just translation, that’s all."

  I shrugged. "Hey, you came to me for help, detective. If I don’t know a bit about what’s going on I might not translate so good…"

  He made a snuffly-sighing sound and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. "Alright, but you don’t say shit to anybody about this, got it?" he said.

  "Sure."

  "…She was blue."

  "It’s my understanding that’s a time-honored tradition among corpses."

  Knox glared at me and sighed."I’m not talking about regular dead body blue. She was…really fucking blue."

  Okie dokie.

  "And naked, but no marks on her anywhere. No sign of struggle, no sign of sexual contact. Her hands were balled up real tight, fingers all bunched up like fucking claws."

  "O.D.?" I said.

  "No sign of a needle or anything else. Preliminaries say her blood was clean. Plus… and you tell this shit to the papers and I’ll kick your fucking ass… Her eyes were filled up with blood…from the inside, y’know? Same with her nose and mouth… it was like something inside her…popped. Coroner said he’d never seen anything like it."

  Interesting.

  "Still," I said, "you called it murder… if you can’t even tell how she died, how can you be sure?"

  "She was laid out."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You’ll see," he said.

  It was the last thing either of us said before we hit the east side. Knox had to swerve to avoid hitting a pair of feral dogs fighting over a scrap of garbage in the street. An eighty pound crack whore shambled along the sidewalk, weaving like a zombie. Paint peeled from an ancient billboard that proclaimed that Jesus was the answer. I felt like I must’ve missed the question.

  "You ever see that movie Escape from New York?" Knox said. "Kurt Russell, John Carpenter...y'know that one?"

  "I don't really see a lot of movies," I said.

  "It's one of those post-apocalyptic deals. New York’s a big prison. Anyway, parts of that movie were filmed right along here."

  I can't say I was surprised. Post-apocalyptic was right. We passed a block of abandoned buildings, collapsed structures, and burned wreckage. The ‘Taste of Asia’ spa sat wedged between a strip club and a porn shop. A pervert’s oasis. It was a squat, shoebox-shaped building, decked out with neon and amateurish paintings of half-nude geisha girls on the door. A painted sign on the side of the building proclaimed that, "This establishment is not responsible for damage to your property or person. Enter at own risk."

  We decided to risk it. We went inside.

  The place smelled like cheap cherry air freshener, but underneath was the stink of sweat, cigarette smoke, mildew and mothballs. I recognized the madam despite her caked-on face paint. She’d been in to see me a few times about her arthritis. She spotted me with Knox, looked at the floor, clasped her hands, and bowed.

  In Cantonese, she said, "Doctor Lee? What a surprise… what brings you?"

  I told her.

  She nodded, wiped an invisible tear from the corner of one pasty eye, and turned to walk away. She gestured for us to follow.

  A few cops milled in and out of the various rooms. I caught curious looks from some of them. I felt the irrational urge to smile and wave, but I refrained.

  The madam led us to one of the back rooms. The bitter tang of ammonia stung my nostrils. I covered my nose with my hand - for all that helped - and followed Knox inside.

  "They took the body early this morning, but we’ve kept the rest of the scene the same." He said.

  The massage table, the only furniture in the small room, was covered with white silk. The floor surrounding it was blanketed in single bills of Monopoly money. Yellow scraps of paper painted with red ink hung from the walls. I read the characters on several. They were mostly insults, gross descriptions of bodily functions, that sort of thing.

  Several small jars lay around the room. I knelt by one and realized that the smell came from them: they were filled with piss.

  Lovely.

  I wondered whose piss it was and whether there was a way to fingerprint waste products. Then I realized that I was wasting time. Sometimes I annoy even myself.

  I called to the madam and asked what she knew about the scene. Her observations weren’t much different from my own. Her theory on the girl’s death, however, tripped me up momentarily. I disagreed with her, but she kept on repeating herself. I turned to Knox.

  "Could I see the body?" I asked.

  "No. Why?"

  I stared at him and blinked.

  He shrugged uneasily and said, "Is it important?"

  I kept on staring.

  "You can stare at me all day, but that’s not going to get you in to see the body."

  "What if I told you that I might be able to give you the cause of death?"

  He shrugged again and said, "Alright, alright…Why the fuck not? It’s all a clusterfuck anyway. I’ll call ahead, make sure they know I’m bringing you."

  We went outside. I took a deep
breath of the (relatively) fresh air. We got in the car and headed for the morgue.

  Knox said, "What’d the madam say? The point of you being here, y’know, is to translate. So fucking translate."

  I took a deep breath and said, "She didn’t have much to say. Superstitious nonsense, mostly. But listen, detective, whoever killed this girl set everything up like a mock funeral. They did it as an insult. Taoists believe that if a person isn’t properly buried then their soul cannot rest. Whoever did this… they didn’t just want her dead. They wanted her damned."

  3

  Knox stopped me before we went inside. I figured I was in for a lecture on police procedures, but that wasn’t it at all. "Listen," he said. "The thing you need to know is that this isn’t a real great area."

  I looked across the street, to where somebody’d nailed a dead raccoon to a tree, and said, "Really?"

  "My point is that this isn’t exactly a high-profile investigation. And Childerson, well, he’s…" he searched for the right words for a minute, but ultimately decided to let me find out for myself.

  I’d only been to one other morgue, but apparently they’re all more or less the same. Sterile, yet somehow dingy. Always that one fluorescent light that flickers away, threatening to go out. The smell - not just the formaldehyde that gets in your skin and hair and clothes, but that other smell. The one reminiscent of meat.

  And the cold. You never forget that cold. It gets in your bones, and you can’t shake it.

  The M.E. was fat, jovial, yet a little sickly. A little too cheerful, too smiley. Yellowish teeth. This was the infamous Childerson. He clapped Knox and I on the shoulders and led us to a steel table in the center of the room. Lights perched overhead like metallic buzzards; trays surrounding the table held numerous, wicked-looking instruments which shone dully in the cold, artificial light.