“You know what bothers me about all of this,” I said in between mouthfuls of lamb stew. For lunch I treated my old friend Detective Eric Clapton in exchange for a conversation about the case. It seemed to be the simplest way to get him thinking about the same things I was thinking and possibly direct the case a bit.

“I’m sure you’ll tell me,” Eric replied before taking in a fork full of spicy curried chicken. The man has the constitution of a locomotive. Every few days an Indian food truck would pull up to the 12th precinct and just about everyone would grab something. We had done the same and retired back up to the squad room.

“Motive,” I replied. “Chalone kills all of these people and I don’t see the reason behind it.”

“Things happened so fast on this case that we really haven’t had a chance to dig into victimology,” Eric said. “We had only just begun to dig into the victims at the massage parlor when the second killings happened.”

“Anything stand out from the first killings?”

“Nothing so far. 5 clients, 6 working girls, the house mother and the child. The men were about as varied as they could be; a real estate broker, a 20-something hipster, a guy on vacation, an accountant, a garbage man. All of the girls were Korean immigrants – a couple of illegals in the mix too. This wasn’t going to be one of the finer establishments you like.” He laughed at that and so did I.

“Any idea who the primary target was?” I asked. “Or even if there was a primary?”

“No idea. The accountant was married but it looks like the wife was in the dark about this particular habit. The mother of the kid seems to have been a single parent – at least there’s no father we can find here in this country. The den mother may have been tied to the slave trade but so far all we’ve got are rumors.”

You don’t need motive to convict someone of a crime. Evidence does that – motive is usually just icing despite what you see in the crime dramas on TV. But to catch a serial killer you absolutely must know why he or she kills. It’s the only way you can predict who, how, and if he will kill again. We had caught the killer only to find out he was a hired gun and with him dead any direct link to motive was now gone. This is why you look at the victims.

The first thing you always look for is similarities in the victims. Given that the second set of killings took place in an affluent neighborhood and that all five victims were white, it would make sense to look at the customers to see if any of them had a link to the Pacific Heights killings. This was the most logical course and by now my former colleagues would be pursuing that.

Doing this means pulling apart the lives of the victims and it isn’t a pretty process. Bank statements, phone records, credit reports, receipts, trash, computers, tax returns, medical records, insurance policies – all of it gets looked at as a matter of routine. Then you start comparing notes on your victims and look for intersects, no matter how small.

I expected that it was being done to me as well. So far, the only intersect in this case was me, after all. I know that Freddy said my involvement was a curiosity at best and given the events of last night that was probably true, but you never believe your suspect. Always verify what they say. Same with the witnesses.

There was actually something greater bothering me, and I couldn’t share it with Eric or anyone else aside from Carol. Thing is, in order to get this itch satisfied I would need to understand Freddy’s motive and in order to find that I would need Eric focused on it and talking.

“So nothing so far?” I asked.

“No intersects to speak of that we’ve found, but we’re fairly early in the process.”

That’s another thing; this doesn’t happen quickly. It can take days to sort through it all and it turns a detective into a data analyst.

“You’re focusing just on the clients?”

“We’re trying to cover every angle,” Eric replied. “The new detective who sits at your old desk, Hayes, is pursuing the Koreans. She used to work vice before coming to the Kill Shop and has some research contacts into the slave trade. Seemed the best way to use her on this.

“And it only now occurs to me that you haven’t actually met Hayes yet.” He laughed. “That will be a fight to see.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Your vices don’t sit well with a person who spent some of her career trying to put the people who sell girls into prostitution behind bars.”

“That’s why I don’t go to brothels or get a girl off the street,” I said. “I do my best to avoid those situations but I’ve probably been under the gaze or care of a slave more times than I’d like to admit.”

“Being honest about it earns you nothing,” came a voice behind me. Husky. Deep. Sexy.

I tilted my head back until I was looking behind me, upside-down eyes to breast level. I re-oriented myself quickly and stood while Eric said, “Speak of the devil.”

“And you would be Veronica Hayes,” I said, extending a hand and staring a bit lower than I should have.

She took my hand. Strong grip. “And you would be Jughead,” she replied. “You are the infamous Gary Carter whose desk I had to sand down to remove the bloodstains.”

“That would be me.”

“Stop staring at the shelving and pay attention to what’s on the mantelpiece.” Fair enough, I brought my gaze up to eye level. Picture a young Kathleen Turner, but shorter. That’s all you need do.

“Oh, I think I like this one,” I said, grinning.

“Not reciprocated,” she shot back. “You should behind bars you misogynistic pig.”

I took my hand from her grip, which had solidified by this point. “Find a way that deadens the pain I wake up with every day and I’ll stop going to massage parlors. Probably.”

“No you won’t, but I appreciate the lie.” Yeah, I really liked her.

“So how goes the look into the Koreans?” Eric asked.

“Should we be talking in front of him?” Hayes asked.

“He’s still a consultant until the Captain says otherwise.”

Hayes gave me a rough stare but became all business immediately. “All identities confirmed save for the mother and the child. The Korean Embassy is saying they have no records of either of them. All of the ones we know about came from real poverty – the kind you see in PBS documentaries about people who make their shoes out of weeds and mud. Even the mama-san…”

“Careful,” I interjected. “Mama-san implies Japanese. Trust me on this; Koreans do not like to be confused with Japanese.”

“Thank you Mr. Sensitivity,” Hayes said. “Anyway, the den mother or whatever you want to call her was probably a retired sex worker who hadn’t paid off her debts yet, or couldn’t find real work once she got out from under her original deal. It’s a pretty common story. You go to this place a lot?”

I shook my head. “I had never been before that night,” I said. “They had baths, which is unusual enough that I wanted to try it out. The places that get my repeat business tend to be Chinese.”

“You can tell the difference?”

“Usually once I’m inside and I can hear the girls talking in the hallways. I can tell enough of the differences. Japanese is all vowels. Chinese has syllables I will never be able to pronounce. Korean is in between.”

“Nice to know you have a discriminating palate,” Hayes said. “So I imagine that you’re one of those that talk about these places with the whole ‘victimless crime’ attitude.”

“Nope,” I replied. “There are plenty of victims in this trade. More than you know. I do my best to stay away from those but sometimes it’s hard to avoid. I don’t go to hookers and I don’t go to strip clubs. To me it’s the massage that matters.”

“But you don’t mind the extras.”

“Not at all.”

“You’re not a nice man.”

I laughed. “It usually takes more than a few minutes for people to figure that one out,” I said. “I have never claimed to be nice, but I’ve been shot a lot so I think I’ve earned it.”

“Pig.”

“Piglet.”

“Bastard.”

I stuck my tongue out at her.

“Children,” Eric said, standing between the two of us. “Detective Hayes, you don’t have to like Gary. Most of the time I don’t. The Captain certainly doesn’t. That said, without him and his bad habits we would be nowhere on this case.” He turned to me. “And if you antagonize her again I’m going to let her throw you. She’s the reigning judo champion of the precinct.”

We both took a step back from each other in silence, which was only broken when the phone on Hayes’ desk rang. Apparently we had drawn an audience from the rest of the bullpen. Hayes answered her phone while normal activity resumed.

“Hayes,” she said, staring at her desk as if there was something important there. And then just as suddenly there was as she sat down and grabbed a pen to take notes. Eric and I both stared, curious now.

“How do we confirm that?” she asked. “I see. Get that information to me as soon as possible.” She hung up her phone.

“Hayes?” Eric asked, tilting his head to one side like pets do.

“It seems that our mystery girl and her child are from North Korea.”

Okay, I did not see that coming. “Say what?” I blurted.

“The Korean Embassy is working to confirm that, but it seems that she defected with her infant child about 6 years ago to the South. She might be the daughter of someone important in the North, a General or something.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I said.

“Not fucking kidding,” she shot back.

“How does someone like that wind up in a massage parlor in San Francisco?”

She ignored me and looked up at Eric. “How big a complication is this?”

“Potentially a huge one,” he said with a sigh. “Missing North Korean, a child of someone important, killed on American soil working in a sex shop? I honestly have no idea where the chips will fall on this, but I think this victim needs to move up the list of priorities. Dig into everything you can find about her stay in the U.S. How she got here, where she was living while in South Korea, anything and everything.”

“You’re thinking she might be the prime?” I asked.

“I think that until we have more on everyone else it would be stupid to assume otherwise. The Korean government is certainly going to insist that we look at it that way. Gary, I need to brief the Captain. Can you do me a solid?”

“Anything.”

“Head off to the hospital and talk with our FBI people. I know you were planning on going anyway but I have a sinking feeling that this is about to become a Homeland Security case.”

“Aw Jeeze,” I said. I had been involved in exactly one jurisdictional fight with Homeland Security in my career. It nearly got me shot a fourth time. “I’ll head out now.”

Eric nodded. “Hayes, come with me,” he said. “You’re officially up the grunt-work ladder but this is not going to be the most fun you’ll have today.”

They both got up and walked towards the Captain’s office, leaving me with the rest of the Indian food and an agenda that coincided with my own plans, so I cleaned up and headed for County General.