by Lisa See
They agreed to meet her downstairs at 7:30 and take her with them in Ma’s Jeep. Lily gave a slight wave, and her cheeks had that heightened color that made her appear younger than her age. As she slowly closed her door, David thought that Brian McCarthy must have been an interesting young man to have attracted two women as different as Lily Sinclair and Catherine Miller.
THE PACIFIED DOMAIN
(Sui Fu)
Beyond. Within the first 300 li, the people cultivate lessons of learning and moral duty. In the second 200, they are exhorted to devote themselves to war and defense.
MORNING SLITHERED IN DARK AND WET. THE OVERHEAD FAN swirled thick air, and a smell of mildew permeated the room. David took a shower and dressed but felt little refreshed. Hulan, who didn’t own a pair of shorts, let alone a T-shirt, dressed for the humid weather as a peasant might, in loose cotton pants that came to just above her ankles and a short-sleeved blouse with hand-tied frog buttons, all soft and faded from washings and age.
They were the first to arrive in the dining room. A radio blared news about the storm. Some evacuations had been ordered in the middle reaches of the Yangzi, and the People’s Liberation Army had been sent downstream to Hubei and Anhui Provinces to shore up levees, dikes, and embankments. As they listened, David and Hulan helped themselves to a breakfast buffet that included watery scrambled eggs, canned ham, fresh deep-fried crullers, and congee with pickled turnip, salted fish, and ginkgo seeds for garnishes.
Once they sat down, David stirred a little soy sauce into his congee and said, “Dr. Ma’s done a good job convincing the people out here that Brian’s death was accidental, but I don’t get Angela going along with it so easily.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to understand the emotions and actions of survivors.” Hulan blew into her tea, sipped, then said, “She’s suffering….”
David set his spoon down. “See, that’s what bothers me. She didn’t ask us for information and she didn’t share much either, except for making sure we knew who Brian slept with. I would have expected her to ask more questions. Wouldn’t you be curious if an investigator showed up? Wouldn’t you want to walk the site with someone from the police?”
A few of the scholars straggled in, but there was no sign of Angela or Lily.
“Maybe she already has with the locals,” Hulan said.
They ate quietly for a few minutes, then Hulan said she was far more concerned with Ma. “He hasn’t been forthright. He doesn’t want you here, and he wants me here even less. The innocent explanation is that running this dig is a big opportunity for him and he doesn’t want you to make him look bad to his superiors back in Beijing.”
“A not-so-innocent explanation,” David added, “is that he’s somehow involved with the thefts. But to me this all seems like a lot of trouble for some miscellaneous objects that have so little importance Ma didn’t bother to catalog them properly.”
Hulan disagreed. “If these artifacts have no value, then why are you here?”
“Director Ho may have arbitrarily picked this site as a lesson to others.”
“‘Beat one monkey to frighten the whole pack,’” Hulan recited. “That could be, but I doubt it.”
David signed the check, and they left the restaurant just as Stuart and Catherine entered. David and Hulan stopped back at their room so he could pick up a notebook and water bottle, which he put in his satchel, then they met Ma at the Jeep a little after 7:30.
“Lily’s coming with us,” David said, holding the front seat forward so Hulan could climb in the back. Then they waited. After fifteen minutes, Hulan volunteered to go in and call Lily’s room, but David jumped out because he was in the front seat. The desk clerk—an older man in a gold-braided uniform—called the room but reported no answer. David followed the main corridor back to Room 5 and knocked on the door. Lily didn’t respond. He looked around the courtyard, then walked quickly to the dining room. The others were grouped together. Lily wasn’t with them or even sitting alone, as she’d been the night before. He retraced his steps to the lobby, said a few words to the clerk, and went outside to get Hulan. Once they were back inside, he said, “I think something’s happened.”
“Lily?”
He nodded and watched Hulan’s features harden. They hurried back through the corridors to Lily’s room. David waited there while Hulan went to get her weapon. She kept it aimed down at her side as she returned to Room 5, where the elderly desk clerk now stood with David. At first the clerk tried to allay their fears, explaining that foreigners didn’t always spend the night in their own rooms. But when Hulan showed him her credentials, he turned the key in the lock. Hulan lifted her weapon. The clerk’s eyes widened, and he moved aside.
Hulan slowly pushed the door open with her foot. The shutters were closed and the lights off, making it hard to see anything in the dimness other than the shape of the bed illuminated by the hint of light that emanated from around the edges of the window. The smell of death oozed from the room.
David reached out and held Hulan’s arm to prevent her from entering.
“There’s no danger now,” she blurted staccato. “No one’s alive in there. Send the clerk to call the police.”
Hearing the cold detachment in Hulan’s voice, David felt a sense of dread that extended far beyond what awaited them in the room.
“Try the light,” Hulan ordered as the desk clerk scurried away.
David reached around the doorjamb and flipped the switch. He wasn’t sure if the whoosh of breath he heard came from himself or his wife.
Lily lay atop the bedcovers. Her naked body was in calm repose, her hands folded delicately over her heart, her eyes and mouth closed. This peaceful tableau was covered in what looked like a layer of rust-colored paint, but the dried blood was only on the body and nowhere else—not on the bed linens or the floor.
Hulan stepped into the room, and David followed in her tracks to a couple of feet inside the door. From where they were standing, they could see that Lily’s feet were gone. Her stumps rested in two small puddles of coagulated blood. She had to have been killed and drained elsewhere. Even the smearing—the careful coating of blood over Lily’s body—had to have been done somewhere else, then her body posed in its peaceful aspect.
Otherwise the room appeared tidy. Lily’s clothes were put away and the drawers shut. A pile of papers sat in a neat stack on the left side of the desk. The phone was on the hook. The room had the same furnishings as David and Hulan’s, right down to the thermos for hot water that stood on the nightstand. Nothing was askew; nothing seemed out of order. Again, at least to the unassisted eye, there were no pools or even spatters of blood.
“Are you okay?” Hulan asked at last.
“Yes. And you?”
She nodded.
“Have you seen anything like this before?”
“Other mutilations, yes. But this coating? Never.” She stood still in deep concentration. Finally she shook her head and said, “Let’s work quickly before the others arrive.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want to take a closer look. Go around to the other side of the bed….”
“What about my footprints?”
“It’s a wood floor. There’s no blood. We may pick up microscopics later, but there’s nothing obvious that we’ll be corrupting. I think it’s fine. Don’t touch the bed.”
As though he’d want to….
He went right as Hulan went left.
“Start at her head,” Hulan directed. She leaned forward, putting her hands on her knees for balance. He did the same. “Tell me everything you see, no matter how insignificant.”
What could possibly be classified as insignificant here? he wondered.
He forced himself to focus on Lily’s head. Seeing how her blood-coated hair lay in a thick, rusty helmet against her skull, David felt a wave of nausea sweep through him. He tried to use the same clinical tone that Hulan had adopted and found it helpful.
“Her hair looks
like it’s been combed,” he said.
“I think so too. It’s like the blood was poured over her hair and combed through to get every hair exactly in place.” She added, “I’m assuming it’s blood. It smells like it.”
David’s nausea worsened. Then, as his eyes traveled down, his stomach rolled again. “Her nose—”
“Cut off. What would do that so cleanly?” Hulan leaned in even closer until she was just inches from Lily’s face. “No jagged edges, no ripping. Whatever was used was very sharp. And, David, what do you make of this on her forehead?”
At first he saw only blood, and the truth was he didn’t want to look much closer. But as he made himself focus on that few square inches, he did begin to see something.
“Is it a clot?”
“I don’t think so. The blood is spread so evenly everywhere else. Why make a mistake here on her face? No, it’s something under the blood. It looks like a pattern of some sort. The pathologist will need to be careful with that.”
Hulan fanned out her hand a few inches above the body and used it as a guide as she traveled down from the neck.
“She’s naked,” David observed.
“Is that because the killer wanted to paint blood over the entire corpse? Painted in some way, don’t you think, not dunked?”
“She wasn’t dunked. You can see the smearing. A cloth, a brush, maybe even hands.”
“Let’s hope it was hands. We might be able to pick up prints.”
They’d almost reached Lily’s ankles when they heard the footsteps of several people running down the hallway. The sound was a tremendous relief to David. Lily’s sawed off stumps were well out of his league.
Hulan swiftly moved to the door and let David out ahead of her. Then she pulled the door shut, stood with her back against it, and waited for the clerk and three other men—presumably from the local Public Security Bureau—to come to her. She introduced herself, speaking more slowly than usual and clipping her Beijing accent to account for any misinterpretations that might be caused by differences in dialect.
“I’m here on special assignment for Vice Minister Zai of the Ministry of Public Security. This is my husband, Attorney Stark. He is a foreigner, but he’s here on official business from the State Cultural Relics Bureau. You must pay him the highest respect, as though he were a black-haired person.” Her tone was authoritative and offered no room for argument. “I will be handling this case.”
She extended her hand. The eldest of the men shook it and responded in heavily accented English. “I am Captain Hom,” he said, a Magnificent Sound cigarette dangling from his lips. “These are my officers, Su Zhangqing and Ge Fei. We handle our own cases in Bashan, even those dealing with foreigners.”
Now Hulan switched to English. “Not this time. However, I welcome your advice.”
This was the alleged corrupt police captain they’d heard about. David had expected a typical “fat rat,” someone who would be heavier from living the good life. Perhaps Hom had been fat at one time, but his jaundiced skin now hung on his bones like a deflated balloon. In a pathetically obvious gesture, Hom swelled his chest in an attempt to gain the upper hand. “A foreigner and an inspector from Beijing may not know what constitutes a crime in our town,” he coughed out.
“I can assure you, Captain, that a crime has taken place in that room. If you’ve had others of this sort, I’d be most interested in hearing about them.”
“Let us see then.”
Hom’s tone managed to be both confrontational and dismissive. Hulan’s eyes narrowed, and David almost felt sorry for the man.
“Have you agreed to my conditions?”
Hom grunted noncommittally.
“I need to hear the words,” Hulan pushed.
“Inspector Liu, you are in charge,” Hom conceded at last. He threw his cigarette on the ground and stubbed it out with his boot. “For now.”
Hulan’s eyes moved to the other two officers—young men dressed in rain-spotted uniforms. “No one touches anything. Understand?”
“Yes, Inspector,” one of the young men mumbled, while the other stared mutely at the floor.
“One last thing,” Hulan said. “I can see you two are inexperienced. No one will think less of you if you decide not to see this.”
“My men,” Hom declared indignantly, “are professionals! They are also men. Perhaps a woman such as yourself—”
Hulan didn’t wait for the rest but opened the door and gave it a solid push. Hom marched past her, with his two minions right behind him. The one who hadn’t had the nerve to address Hulan before came reeling back out the door and vomited. A moment later the other young man came running out of the room with his hand over his mouth. He looked frantically from left to right, then ran down the hall and around the corner. The sound of heaving cut through the air. David’s stomach churned, the added smells doing nothing to help his own unsteady state. Hulan let out a deep breath and met his gaze. Her wordlessness was eloquent, filled as it was with a combination of sadness, resolve, and duty. Then she stepped back into the room with David and the desk clerk right behind her.
Hom stood by the side of the bed. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. The desk clerk mewled but held his ground.
“I think we can agree that something unique has happened here,” Hulan said gently. “I’d like to have our pathologist come to Bashan. I hope this won’t complicate your procedures.”
“We have no procedures to deal with something like this. Is she a foreigner?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Hom groaned.
“Do you have a lab?” Hulan asked.
“There’s a morgue in the town. Not an official morgue, do you understand? Our quarter of town has electricity for only a few hours a day. If someone dies, the body is turned over to the family very quickly.”
“Even for murder?”
“We’ve had murders, of course, but we know very soon who the killer is. A husband, a jealous boyfriend. We get a lot of help from the Neighborhood Committee.”
“And for foreigners?”
“They are new to Bashan Village. We are not a stop for cruises, and the people who are here for Site 518 are few and quiet.”
David listened carefully. Hom, despite his incongruous wasted appearance, may indeed have been corrupt in letting his brother-in-law get away with the fatalities caused by the collapse of the bridge, assuming those accusations were true, but he was also either stupid or inept, because he wasn’t seeing the overall situation very clearly.
“This is not the first time a foreigner has died in Bashan,” Hulan pointed out.
“If a foreigner is stupid and falls in the river,” Hom retorted, “this is not grounds for investigation, but it does cause me a lot of paperwork.”
“I’d like to see your file on that case,” Hulan said, “as well as the files for the other accidents that have occurred in Bashan recently. But first, let’s deal with immediate problems. Miss Sinclair’s body will decompose very quickly in this heat. I suggest we find someplace cool, and soon.” She paused, considering. “No, on second thought, leave her here. Maybe the pathologist will be able to tell us something—”
“This room will be a stinky mess….”
Hulan ignored Hom’s observation. “I’m hoping you can call in a couple of other men to secure the building.”
“You think the killer’s still here?” Hom asked.
She didn’t answer his question directly. “Several guests in the hotel should be finishing their breakfasts right about now. They all knew Miss Sinclair. I want them held in the dining room. I want everyone else in the hotel brought there too. No one leaves without my approval.” She held up her palm in caution. “No one is to mention what he’s seen in this room. Is that understood?”
The men nodded. Hulan turned to the desk clerk.
“How many exits do you have?”
“Four, one at each of the four compass points in our exterior wall,” he answered. �
��We use only two of them. The east and west gates on the sides are always locked. The back gate is for employees and deliveries. Guests always have to pass by the front desk to come or go.”
This was typical procedure for keeping track of people in China. Even Charlie Freer at the American Embassy relied on watchers like this desk clerk to find Americans on occasion.
“Then, Captain Hom, I suggest you post officers at the front and back gates,” Hulan said. “Again, no one may leave, and everyone must be brought to the dining hall. Also, send some men to search the hotel. I want to know if she was killed here or if her body was brought in. Make sure they check the perimeter, including all windows and doors, for traces of blood. Do you have enough men to cover all of that?”
“Not in the bureau, but there are some others I can call.”
“Let me make this very clear, Captain. You will be held one hundred percent responsible for those men.”
Hom fumed but said nothing.
Hulan went on. “I also need to make some phone calls. Do you have a secure line down here?”
Hom shook his head.
“Maybe with the headman?”
Hom again shook his head. He looked increasingly glum.
“We can’t worry about what we don’t have,” Hulan said. “David, can you guard the door until we find someone to relieve you? Captain, let me say that this can be your most aggressive man. Do you understand what I’m saying? I don’t want anyone entering this room. Are we set then?”
“What about Dr. Ma?” David asked.
Hulan frowned. “Yes, where is he?” Then, “I’ll stop downstairs and bring him in. David, I have to call Lo and Zai. I need Lo to get me some additional files, and I want to see if we can get Pathologist Fong down here. As soon as Hom sends someone to guard the door, join us in the dining room.”