What Happened Back Then
1236 Words
Kate Beckett set the can of iced coffee down on the desk and looked at Celestian seriously.
“Can you be more specific?” she asked in a low voice.
Celestian frowned slightly and looked back at her, puzzled.
“Normally, when it comes to gang shootouts like this, doesn’t the LAPD just turn a blind eye as long as civilians aren’t hurt? Why are you so concerned about this one?”
As Celestian well knew, the LAPD wouldn’t mind at all if every gang in Los Angeles wiped each other out—so long as innocent people weren’t caught in the crossfire.
Beckett glanced at him, then leaned back in her chair as if letting out some of the tension she’d been holding. Her right hand rested over her left, fingers rubbing lightly as she spoke quietly.
“I’ve recently come across a lead. According to it, the people who killed my mother back then were members of the Japanese gang—the Nisshin-kai.”
“What?”
Celestian straightened instantly, genuinely startled. If that was true, then this might be an opportunity—not just to dismantle the Nisshin-kai, one of the Yakuza’s key branches in Los Angeles, but perhaps even to let the fire spread back to the Yamaguchi-gumi itself.
Of course, all of that hinged on whether Beckett’s lead was real.
After a moment of thought, Celestian asked carefully, “Catherine, didn’t you once say the last case your mother worked on was the death of an escort? How does that tie back to the Nisshin-kai?”
“That escort was killed by one of her clients,” Beckett said bitterly. “Later, the pimp managing her turned up dead as well. Every lead snapped. On top of that, someone deliberately interfered with the investigation. The case was quietly buried.”
Back then, Beckett’s mother had been stabbed to death in an alley. Her cash, purse, and jewelry were untouched. There were no signs of s****l assault. She was simply killed and left there.
The officers handling the case classified it as random gang violence—collateral damage—and no suspect was ever found.
That night, Beckett had been supposed to meet her parents for dinner. She never showed up at the restaurant. When her parents returned home, a uniformed officer was already waiting at the door.
Only then did they realize something terrible had happened.
In Beckett’s eyes, the detectives back then had simply fabricated a convenient story. They never caught the killer.
After growing up and becoming a police officer herself, Beckett reopened the case. Her supervisor happened to be one of her mother’s former colleagues and tacitly allowed her to investigate in private.
She reviewed every case her mother had worked on and eventually narrowed it down to that escort murder. At the time, the investigation was still active: a high-end escort had been brutally killed by a client, her pimp was later found dead, and—most critically—the client’s identity vanished completely.
Then, the detective assigned to the case—Beckett’s mother—was murdered.
With that, the entire case collapsed into silence.
Clenching her jaw, Beckett continued, “Not long ago, I found a very skilled forensic pathologist and asked him to reexamine my mother’s autopsy evidence. He found something.”
Celestian knew how much this cost her. She only ever spoke like this with him—never with anyone else. He reached out and gently took her left hand, offering silent comfort.
“The original autopsy ruled it a random attack,” Beckett said tightly. “But the pathologist I consulted found inconsistencies. My mother had over ten stab wounds. Most of them weren’t fatal.”
She paused, voice hardening.
“Only one wound mattered—a low-angle stab aimed at the kidney. The blade went in at a deliberate angle. She would’ve gone into shock immediately. The rest of the wounds were inflicted after she was already on the ground, motionless. They were just for show.”
“That does make it a clear, targeted murder,” Celestian said quietly.
Previously, Beckett’s investigation had been driven by intuition and grief. Now, with evidence in hand, the case could finally be brought into the open.
“Following that hunch,” Beckett went on, gripping the coffee can until her knuckles whitened, “I looked into other cases handled by that same medical examiner. Turns out, there were three other stabbing murders he ruled as random incidents.”
She looked up, fury burning in her eyes.
“And every single suspect in those cases was connected to the Nisshin-kai.”
“You think the examiner was bought off?” Celestian asked, frowning.
“Yes,” Beckett said softly. Then she exhaled and looked at him, her expression dimming. “But when I started digging into him… I found out he died in a car accident three months after my mother was killed.”
“A car accident?”
Celestian raised an eyebrow. On its own, that wouldn’t mean much—but now, it reeked of foul play.
“He’s dead, and most of the records are gone,” Beckett said, slamming her fist lightly on the desk. “I wanted to examine his finances, see if there were ties to the Nisshin-kai. But everything passed cleanly to his kids. What little data remains leads nowhere.”
“They may have paid him in cash,” Celestian said with a sigh, handing her another cold coffee. “Gangs don’t usually bother with sophisticated money laundering. Cash is simpler.”
“So that lead’s a dead end,” Beckett said, her frustration evident. “And after my mother’s case, there were no more so-called ‘random’ robbery stabbings like that.”
She shook her head, then looked at Celestian with a hint of pleading.
“That’s why I came to you today. I’m hoping you can use your channels to find out who in the Nisshin-kai specializes in that kind of work—and where they are now. No one understands someone better than their enemies. If I want intel on the Nisshin-kai, the Chinese underworld is the best place to look.”
“I’m not part of the Chinese gangs,” Celestian said, frowning. The way she phrased it made him uncomfortable. If not for Qin Ming and those friends from childhood, he would’ve severed ties with the Four Seas Gang long ago.
“I’m sorry—my mistake,” Beckett said immediately, sincere. Then she asked carefully, “But… will you help?”
Celestian studied her for a long moment, then nodded slowly.
“I’ll ask around,” he said. “No promises on results.”
“That’s enough,” Beckett said, letting out a long breath. With Celestian involved, she knew something would turn up eventually.
With that settled, she crossed one leg over the other and looked at him again.
“Alright. Now tell me what really happened last night. You have to give me something I can take back and close my report.”
Celestian shook his head helplessly.
“Fine. If you insist, I’ll tell you. But whatever I say stays between you and me. The moment we walk out that door, I deny everything.”
“Deal.”
Beckett smiled—satisfied, sharp, and unmistakably pleased.
And it was precisely that smile that made Celestian willing to help her.
- Writer
