Please excuse the faulty Italian.

Chapter 4:

Aziza coaxed Khari back into the building and held his hand as they boarded the elevator. His knees went weak and he felt as though he was slipping. Aziza squeezed his hand and smiled up at him reassuringly. He stared into her brown eyes. He hadn't dated in a long time and wasn't sure of how to ask a woman out but decided that he would try with Aziza.

Khari had expected the morgue to smell of death and was pleasantly surprised and reassured at the strong odor of disinfectant. Stepping out of the elevator, he noted that the hallway was lined with windows and opted to stare at the floor. Just because he was getting better at this didn't make it easy.

"Do you need a few more minutes?" Aziza asked stopping at a door. She had noticed how increasingly nervous Khari was becoming. She'd noticed the way that his grip had tightened as the elevator had descended. She tried to appear casual resting her other hand lightly on the door handle.

"No, let's get this done," Khari took a few deep breathes. Aziza nodded and opened the door. Khari slowly looked up.

The first thing that he noticed was the bank of vaults on one wall. He shivered knowing that there was probably a dead body in each of them. He stepped into the room and started to look around when he suddenly stopped cold. An incredibly pale looking Ranger was lying on a table completely nude. His torso was sliced down the middle. A lab assistant was standing over the body doing something with what looked to be Ranger's heart. Khari's chest felt suddenly too tight and his head felt as though it would explode. He turned to run from the room but the door was closed so he threw up in the first thing he could reach – a basin filled with surgical instruments. The sight of the scalpel caused him to shake. He fell to the floor and curled up in a ball.

"I asked you to close him up, Maria," Aziza said in a perturbed voice to the assistant.

"I was just about to do it," The assistant said sounding equally irritated. "You didn't tell me that anyone was coming to see him."

"Your job is to do what I ask you to do when I ask you to do it. It's not to guess at when you think that it should be done. Get a cool cloth for Mr. Kaplan's forehead and then go get something to clean this mess up." She pointed to the vomit that hadn't made it to the basin and had landed on the floor. Aziza turned and kneeled next to Khari. Maria threw a mock salute at Aziza's back and left the room. She returned a few minutes later with the cloth and then left again. Aziza placed the cool cloth over Khari's face.

Khari immediately became more alert and sat up. He was embarrassed. It wasn't like there had been any blood. He hoped that Aziza would think that he'd been ill because Ranger was a good friend and it was hard to see him open like that. He wasn't sure that he could take it if she guessed the shameful truth. He was squeamish. He realized that Aziza was speaking to him.

"We can go out into the hallway. Maybe you could get one of his other friends to come to identify him?"

"No, I'm here and I'm too busy now that Ranger is gone to reschedule," he said lamely. Khari was still shaking but he forced himself to stand brushing off Aziza's arm with a forced smile. "I just need to look at one thing to be sure." He forced himself to walk toward the body all the time imagining that Ranger was sleeping. He had seen Ranger sleeping often enough. He even forced himself to walk quietly so that Ranger wouldn't wake. He lifted the sheet and stared almost disbelieving at the tattoos that decorated Ranger's left hip. He looked at Ranger's face and couldn't avoid looking at the gaping hole in Ranger's chest. Khari threw up again narrowly missing the body. He composed himself and then looked up at Aziza.

"It's him," he said as he rushed for the door.

Khari and Shiloh considered the visit with Lester as they drove through the streets of Trenton to the Rangeman offices. Kids who were playing street hockey in front of row houses cleared away for the car to pass. Khari thought, not for the first time, that Trenton was incredibly gray. There was something so dreary about the city. It was like stepping into a Dickens novel.

"Lester did it," Shiloh said breaking the silence. "He's the kind of arrogant asshole who thinks that it's his job to rid the world of people who irritate him." Khari chuckled.

"You're thinking that way because he irritated you. We can't let our feelings cloud our judgment. Do you really think that with a temper like Lester has he could plan a murder? Nah, with him it would be spur of the moment and violent." Khari paused thoughtfully. "Do you realize that we're not even thinking of this as an accident anymore?"

"There's no chance that it was. Ranger wouldn't do drugs and that's that," Shiloh said crossing her arms. Khari glanced at her speculatively.

"How well did you know Ranger?" he asked. Shiloh glanced at him and caught his suspicious glare.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm wondering why you're so interested in helping me," Khari explained. "I never got the impression that you liked Ranger all that much."

"I didn't dislike Ranger. When we were with the guys he treated me like one of them. When we were alone he treated me like a business associate. He was very respectful. Maybe he wasn't attracted to me or maybe he saw the folly in messing with a coworker? Who knows? I probably saw a lot more of the real Ranger than the guys. I can't say that I would have been receptive if he'd made any sort of move on me. He had the key Shiloh repellant. He was arrogant and most sane women aren't turned on by guys who think too much of themselves." Shiloh stopped talking abruptly. Khari waited for her to start talking again and when she didn't he attempted to mentally arrange the questions that he had. He asked the first one that came to his mind.

"Did he ever say anything to you that might lead you to believe that he was in some sort of danger?" Shiloh considered the question.

"He was always in danger. Come on, Khari, that's part of riding on the edge of the law, right? I can think of 20 people who would be after him and I didn't know him half as well as you did." Shiloh looked pensive and Khari knew that there had to be more to this story. His cell phone rang as they pulled into the Rangeman lot. He flipped it open and began to speak.

Stephanie was rapidly beginning to think of Joe's home as her own. They weren't ready for the big step of moving in together yet but Stephanie hadn't been home in over a week. Stephanie was sitting at Joe's kitchen table trying to figure out who would want to kill Ranger when the phone rang. She picked it up without thinking. Usually in Joe's home she let the machine pick it up. She knew that he didn't cheat on her but she couldn't shake the feeling that someday she would pick it up and it would be another woman.

"Yo," she said and then teared up. She would have to get out of the habit of answering the phone in that way. It only reminded her of Ranger.

"Hola, Joe Morelli, por favor."

"Joe's not here. Do you want to leave a message?" Stephanie asked.

"Perdono? Non parlo inglese. Parlate italiano?" Did she speak Italian? Not so well as she once did. She could handle this.

"Sì, un bit piccolo. Gradite lasciare una nota per Joe?" She grabbed a pen and paper and prepared to take the message.

"Sto chiamando dalla Cuba. Ciò è circa Ricardo Manoso. Dire prego al sig. Morelli che abbia fatto che cosa mi ha chiesto di fare. Una volta che lo paga l' equilibrio lo ha dovuto può metterselo in contatto con in qualunque momento per le informazioni che ha chiesto." The voice had spoken slowly and clearly but Stephanie could not believe what she was hearing.

"Potete dirmi ancora più lento?" She asked gulping hard. She had to hear it again and maybe if he said it more slowly she would not hear what she thought that she'd heard.

"Sto chiamando circa Ricard Manoso. Ho fatto che cosa il sig. Morelli ha desiderato. Può pagarlo che cosa deve ed allora gli dirò che cosa desidera sentirsi." She gasped. He HAD said what she thought that she'd heard. He was calling about Ranger. Joe had asked him to do something and owed him money for whatever it was.

"Gli darò il messaggio," she said absently.

"Grazie, cara signora, arrivederci."

"Nessun problema, arrivederci." She placed the phone back on the cradle. There was a logical explanation for this…there had to be. But what could it be? Stephanie remembered how nervous Joe had seemed when he stopped in to tell her about Ranger's tox report. She stared into space for a few minutes and then shuffled around in her purse until she found what she was looking for. She pulled the business card out and dialed the number.

"Tank?" she asked. "It's Stephanie. I have some information that I think proves that Ranger was murdered and now I think I might know who did it."