Chapter 13

Saturday, November 1, 1997 – Los Angeles, Cedars-Sinai

Inez had not been out of the room for more than fifteen minutes when another Detective showed up. Although they had only met twice, both times at the Bloody Bucket, Soonie recognized her as Angela Kim.

"Hello, Angela."

"Hello, Kay," Angie said, almost apologetically. Then she turned to Daisy. "I'm Detective Kim. I'll be assisting Detective De Pina and Detective Thompson on the initial investigation."

"Have you heard anything about Enos?" Daisy asked.

"No, Ms. Duke, and I don't expect to for a while."

Angie had brought the accoutrements of crime scene investigation with her, prompting Soonie to ask, "What do you need from us?"

"Initially, fingerprints as well as DNA and hair samples from each of you." Seeing what she recognized as a common reaction to being fingerprinted in Daisy, she added, "For elimination purposes. It's standard procedure. You each had," she hesitated only a second, "physical contact with him in the last twenty-four hours."

Daisy had not meant to appear resistant. It was an automatic response acquired over years of dealing with the law-according-to-Hazzard-County.

"If it helps find whoever did this to Enos, let's get started," she said.

After Angie completed her forensic and fingerprint collection from Daisy, it was Soonie's turn. While Daisy washed the ink off her fingertips at the sink in the corner of the waiting room, and while Detective Kim was labeling Mun Kyung-soon on several bags, she heard Angie say, "Soonie. Pretty name. According to my grandmother, it's special because it's rare these days and means "gentle or mild.'"

Soonie didn't remember Enos calling her by that name in front of anyone, other than Inez the one time at Parker Center. It showed in her expression.

"Oh, sorry," Angie said. "Enos asked me months ago if it would be okay if he called someone from Korea Soonie. He wanted to be sure it wouldn't be something insulting or mean something he didn't intend." She pointed to herself. "Third gen American. I don't speak Korean, so I had to ask my grandmother."

Despite how worried she was about him at the moment, Soonie smiled at the thought Enos knew all along what his pet name for her meant.

Until now, Daisy had been glad for the break in the silent tension between her and the other woman in Enos's life, a woman she knew absolutely nothing about until seven or eight hours ago. It seemed like every passing moment, some new snippet of information surfaced which she hadn't learned from Enos's letters, her two-plus hours with Mrs. Huang, or the hour she had spent with Enos in his apartment. Angie had said, 'months ago.'

'He didn't waste much time pinin' over me.'

It was a foolish, snappish thought, she knew...she couldn't help herself. Her brain demanded that she remember what she had done to Enos. What she had been doing to him all those years. Her heart, and her ego, had taken more than a few sharp blows since she arrived in LA.

Soonie broke through Daisy's dark thoughts with a question.

"Angela, Daisy is concerned, and I have to admit, I am becoming a little concerned myself about why we are here. I mean in this particular waiting room, with a police guard at the door." She suspected the answer and only wanted it confirmed.

"It's a controllable environment used for several scenarios: VIPs, celebrities, fire and law enforcement officers. Provides security when it's needed and keeps families away from the prying eyes of the paparazzi. We don't even want this to get out to the legitimate news media until we know more. Especially after Wednesday."

"You will not be able to keep it contained indefinitely," Soonie suggested.

"No," Angie sighed, "we won't. Dollars to dumplings, they're going to try to make a connection with the raid and the car crash. Perfect fodder for those on the iffy side of journalistic ethics. All we can do is try to get ahead of it."

"And is there a connection?" Soonie asked.

"Can't comment on that right now."

"And the guard?" asked Daisy.

"Maybe I should let Detective De Pina field that question. She should be back in a few minutes."

Down the hall from the waiting room, Inez was furiously trying to organize investigative notes in her head.

When Inez had checked his ankle holster, she'd had to unsnap the tab securing the pistol. Though forensics hadn't yet confirmed it, she knew it had not been fired. Likely he didn't have the chance to reach for it. His wallet was missing but not his weapon, his ID, or his badge. If he, she, or they incapacitated him before he could take any action, then why not take everything? The gun was worth more on the street than the wallet. And what about the truck? Also a high value on the street or to a chop shop. It was not stolen. From her initial inspection, it had not been forcibly entered or been searched for property to steal. They were still awaiting forensics to finish with the truck.

It was one thing to be injured in the performance of your duties. All police officers and their families have to deal with the risk daily. Neither she nor E had escaped their years on the force without injury. The unavoidable certainty that E had been ambushed raised the collective hackles of his brothers and sisters in blue.

This was either an assault on E because he was a police officer or something personal, a subject Inez intended to pursue when she went back in to talk to Ms. Mun and Ms. Duke. And then there was the question of how E had escaped without a greater degree of injury.

Interrupting her mental note-making, Thompson said, "I think Strate's neighbor knows more than she told me."

"Get her set up for an interview," Inez said, then turned to Greer, "Dylan. Is Torres en route with Ms. Mun's car?"

"I checked with him before we arrived. He was still working the scene but expected to be able to leave shortly. He should be on his way."

"When he gets here," she handed Greer the evidence bags, "You and Torres get these to the lab before you file any reports or go back out on patrol. Be sure Maria Flores gets the skin samples and photos of the facial damage right away. See if she can narrow down what the son of a bitch used to hit him. Ask her to send her preliminary to Thompson. And get the keys to Ms. Mun's car to the forensics techs working on E's truck. I want it processed as well."

After Greer took off down the hall, Thompson intended to add something else when Inez's phone rang. The caller ID displayed Ruby Baker's name.

"Yes, Ruby, what do you have for me?"

"I finished with the preliminary processing on Detective Strate's truck. We pulled several different prints, and among what we expected to find in the truck, there were a couple of items that don't appear to be his."

"Like what?"

Ruby read off the inventory of items found, including a violin in its case and a plastic baggie with peach colored freshwater pearls from a broken necklace.

"…Bring the violin, the pearls, and E's go-bag to me and take the rest back to the lab with you. I'll make sure the items don't get tainted before they can be dusted."

"Will do."

Inez had held up a finger to Thompson when he reacted quizzically to 'the pearls.' She said to Thompson, "I have no idea…What was it you wanted to say before Ruby called?"

"Likely Strate ended up at your house because he was attacked somewhere close by, or at least closer than the nearest police station."

Her house was definitely not on any route to San Francisco from LAX that E would have taken. Far from it. Inez was thankful that Thompson hadn't assumed something else regarding why E had shown up at her house at three in the morning.

"Start at the airport and work your way to Baldwin Hills," she said. As he was putting his notebook away, she added, "Then, swing by and pick up Mrs. Huang. Get her statement first, then bring her here. She seems to have played a part in whatever went down at E's apartment last night. Maybe we need to get the three of them in the same room together."

"On it."

Angela Kim had just finished documenting the chain of custody log on what she had collected from Soonie and Daisy when Inez re-entered the room. The two other women were busy writing what they could remember of the events since the previous afternoon. Inez let them finish while she asked Angela to get them all something to drink.

"Coffee, tea, something carbonated?" Angela asked.

Soonie asked for coffee, black. Daisy asked for iced tea if the vending machine had it.

"Dr. Pepper for me, Angie," Inez said. It didn't pack as much of a punch, but cold caffeine was preferable to hot at the moment.

When Angela left the room, Inez said, "When Detective Kim comes back, she's going to turn on a recorder. Just want to let you know before we begin. Standard procedure."

Daisy was getting more than a little tired of being reminded about 'standard procedure' and wondered why Kay, or Soonie, or whatever her name was, was being so conciliatory about it. Maybe people in LA think this is something routine. She felt like a fish out of water. No, that wasn't it. She felt like an alien visitor to another planet.5

Her education had not sufficiently prepared her for understanding the inner workings of megacity law enforcement. Ph.D. or no Ph.D., back home, she and Bo and Luke, not to mention Rosco, would be out hunting down the snake in the grass. Too furious at whoever had hurt Enos to cry, Daisy noticed Kay was wiping tears off her cheeks.

"I am afraid I have made the ink run," Soonie said, softly, as she handed the legal pad over to Inez.

About a third of the way through scanning what Soonie had written, Inez said, "Kay, I'm sorry."

Inez was collecting Daisy's pad when Angela came back with the drinks, accompanied by Doctor Reubens. Inez, Soonie, and Daisy stood at the same time.

"Detective De Pina," he said, "I wanted to let you know about the results of the C.A.T. scan." He looked over at the two other women he had not met earlier.

"It's all right, Doctor. This is Kay Mun and Daisy Duke. They both have an interest in Detective Strate's condition."

"As we suspected, his lateral nasal cartilage has several fractures. We found none to the maxilla or the ethmoid," he looked at Soonie and Daisy, "that's the cheekbone and the bone beneath the nasal cavity in the upper roof of the nose. They're bruised but not broken. The nasal fractures should heal on their own over two to three weeks."

Though the news was met with a collective sigh of relief, Inez asked, "And the head trauma?"

"We're doing the MRI next. He had to be sedated again. They're waiting for it to kick in. He needs to be completely still to get good imaging. The tube is a pretty tight space. Even someone who is not normally claustrophobic tends to get antsy."

"Add to that the fact he hates losing control, ever," Inez quipped, "I imagine he's been a handful."

Doctor Reubens smiled. "Well, it isn't the first time we've had him in here this week, is it? I'll let you know when the results come back on the MRI."

"Thanks."

After Doctor Ruebens left, Inez addressed Kay before Angela turned on the recorder.

"Your brother's plane. No hope of survivors?"

Soonie took in a deep breath to stay any more tears. According to the phone call she got from her uncle while she and Enos were at the Halloween Ball, the plane had nose-dived into a ravine. The search plane had spotted five bodies, accounting for all those aboard, including her brother.

"No," was all she said.

"Do you need to contact your uncle in San Francisco?"

"I would like to call him after we finish here. I can do nothing to help Jae-sung or his daughter at the moment. The important thing is what I can do for Enos."

Daisy, who would typically have tried to comfort anyone suffering the loss of a brother, was too overloaded to offer sympathy due to the growing frustration that she was out of the loop of whatever it was everyone else seemed to be privy to.

"Can either of you think of anyone in your lives who would want to do harm to Detective Strate? Ex-husband," Inez knew they each had one, "ex-boyfriend, stalker, anyone who has seemed a little off lately, co-workers, dissatisfied clients - possibly one of the Ukrainian clients unhappy with your delving into cases of the missing girls?" The last part was directed at Kay.

For the life of them, neither could come up with anyone in their lives who would have a reason to do harm to Enos.

Daisy hesitated in her response only because a few of her suitors had become jealous in the past. Not because she and Enos were a couple…they were pissed because of the amount of time she spent with him. Especially Darcy.

Along with admitting to herself that she had been punishing Enos for years for being able to leave her, she also had to admit it had taken the form of continually dangling the carrot in front of him. They had been apart so long, she discounted any notion someone from her past, anyone alive that is, or from Hazzard would have it in for Enos. And L.D.? He was neither jealous nor interested enough in her anymore to go to the trouble.

Soonie's ex-husband was still in South Korea. Neither of them was interested in rekindling a relationship that existed only on paper, and she'd had no long or short-term suitors in the past ten years lasting more than a couple of dates. As for the accounting firm clients, she drew a blank there as well, including the Ukrainians. They had seemed eager to help.

However, she described the male in his late thirties or early forties who stopped Enos outside his apartment building when he and Soonie arrived at 9:45 pm on October 31.

"Did Detective Strate know the man?" Inez asked.

"Yes, but he did not identify him. Enos said he needed to speak to the man and asked me to take his keys and let myself into his apartment."

"We'll need you to work with a sketch artist so we can get a BOLO out on him. Did anything else unusual happen this evening, either at the Halloween Ball or the airport – strangers who might seem suspicious or make you or Detective Strate uncomfortable?"

They both answered in the negative.

"Ms. Duke, you told Detective Thompson that Detective Strate put the receipt for the plane ticket in his wallet. Did you notice anything else unusual or out of the ordinary in the wallet when he did that? Any reason someone might want to take it?"

Daisy fell silent for a few seconds and began fidgeting with her hands. The nervous activity did not go unnoticed by Detective De Pina.

"My engagement ring. The one he gave me," she hesitated again, bent her head and closed her eyes, "when he proposed. I gave it back to him at the airport, and he put it in his billfold." Her hand went automatically to the now-empty chain around her neck.

"Do you have any idea of the value of the ring, Ms. Duke?" Inez asked, trying to keep any hard feelings toward Daisy out of her voice and the recorder.

"Other than to me," Daisy said, opening her eyes, "No."

Inez was as relieved to be done with the interview as Kay and Daisy. She had avoided asking them questions that would require a rehashing of the interpersonal relationships that had brought them all together at E's apartment, if for nothing else than respect for his privacy. Delving too deep would do little to further the investigation and fuel an already uncomfortable situation into a really messy one. She knew, at some point, she might have to ask.

About the time she decided her motives in bringing Mrs. Huang into the hospital may have been less than professional, Thompson walked in with the sweet old lady. Asking Mrs. Huang to sit in a chair in the corridor, Inez and Thompson moved to the end of the hallway.

"If you want to know everything that goes on in Echo Park," he said, "she's the woman to talk to. From what I could get out of her on the way in about what happened tonight at Strate's apartment," he rolled his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck with his uncast hand. "It would make a great script for a daytime soap but do little to point to what happened to him after he dropped Ms. Duke off at the airport. I only brought her in because you were expecting her and because she insisted."

Inez sighed. She had met Mrs. Huang many times over the past years and berated herself for letting her concern for E guide her professional judgment. "You're probably right. However, we did get a couple of things out of the interview with Kay and Ms. Duke. Follow up with Angela and keep me updated."

"I heard about the CAT results. Any news on the MRI?"

"You worried about him?" she asked with a smile.

"Not at all, just don't want to have to break in a new team member to replace him, that's all."

"It's okay, Thompson, we all fall a little bit in love with him. You'll live."

She didn't give him time to lodge a dispute to that little psych evaluation and ducked back into the waiting room.

References:

(5) Daisy would know – she met one in S7 E15 "Strange Visitor to Hazzard"