Dragon Bones

by Lisa See

  “We have been given instructions to move to Xinjiang. They have offered us extra money, but we will not leave.”

  “Your son felt this too?”

  “Huadong said we would not have to go. He would stop the dam.”

  “Your son was educated?”

  Wu cleared his throat and spit on the floor. “We are peasants for countless generations. Our blood has been part of this land since Da Yu’s dragons cleared the river.”

  “As we are speaking frankly,” Hulan said, though to David the whole conversation seemed to be spoken in riddles, “I must ask why you stay.”

  “It is our home.”

  “But your land is no good,” Hulan stated the obvious.

  “This has been so since before my grandfather’s time, but I have heard stories of great crops that once grew outside our door. This is what Da Yu created for us when he drained the flood. The land is the treasure. That does not change.”

  “You contradict yourself.”

  “The land is the treasure,” Wu repeated. “It is shi tu.”

  David thought about those words. Living earth? That was hardly what lay outside the door. Scorched, desolate, barren, were the words that came to mind when David thought about the land from here to the dig.

  “My grandfather’s grandfather told him this,” Wu went on. “My grandfather told me, and now I tell my grandson.”

  “Let’s go back to your son. If he was not educated, how did he plan to stop the dam?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know or you won’t say?” Hulan pressed.

  “He went away sometimes. When he returned he would say that outside corruption would be turned to justice.”

  “Did he go to the dam?”

  “Maybe to Shanghai—”

  “How could he afford that?”

  Wu didn’t answer the question. Instead he repeated, “From the fist of the past to my fist to the fist of the future.” Then, “My son is dead, and he was murdered by foreigners.” It was a brash but sadly empty accusation.

  Hulan gestured to the piece of paper on the wall even though the old man couldn’t see it. “You’re a disciple of the All-Patriotic Society.”

  “We aspire to be reverent,” Wu admitted.

  “You know this cult has been implicated in domestic terrorism,” she stated.

  “These are false accusations.”

  David admired the man’s bravery in acknowledging publicly that he was a follower of an illegal group. Or was it stupidity?

  “Do you have explosives here?” Hulan demanded.

  Wu looked shocked, then shook his head.

  “I think your son was a troublemaker.” Her voice was cruel in its accusation. Father and widow wordlessly accepted the denunciation as Hulan walked to the wooden crates and lifted the cloth to examine the contents. “Did your son have a special hiding place?”

  “No,” Wu answered without hesitation.

  Hulan gazed about for other potential hiding places, then suddenly addressed Huadong’s widow. “Ni! You! What do you know about your husband’s activities?”

  The poor woman visibly trembled in fear. Sensing this, the infant whimpered. The woman shook her head in vehement denial.

  “The two of you must have had a special place to meet. This is just one room….”

  David understood Hulan’s implication. There was no privacy here, but that word didn’t exist in the Chinese language, so Hulan finally had to spell it out.

  “You have a baby. Where did you and your husband go to be alone?”

  But before the woman could respond, her father-in-law said, “I am an old man, but I still remember the ways of a husband and wife. I sat outside.”

  “I’m going to say some names,” Hulan said. “I want you to tell me if you ever heard your son speak of them. Brian McCarthy….”

  “The foreigner who drowned,” Wu answered.

  “Like your son,” Hulan pointed out.

  “The river takes the careless. My son was not careless.” It seemed Wu wasn’t going to budge from this position, but David had seen this stubbornness before. No parent wants to accept a child’s faults.

  Hulan continued listing the names of the foreigners at the dig, but neither Old Wu nor the widow professed to having ever heard of them.

  “Ask if they ever spoke to Brian,” David said. “If Brian went to that spot down by the river often, then they must have seen him on their land.”

  Hulan asked the question. Huadong’s widow shifted her weight. Her father-in-law answered, “He crossed our land every day. We did not speak to him.”

  “Are you sure?” David asked in Mandarin. Wu’s eyes widened. He hadn’t expected the foreigner to speak the mother tongue, even if it was the northern dialect.

  “I don’t speak English,” Wu responded.

  “But Brian spoke Chinese,” David revealed.

  An awkward silence hung in the room. The widow stood motionless against the wall. David glanced at Hulan. Anything else? his expression asked. These inquiries are going nowhere.

  David kept his eyes steady on Hulan as he asked the old man one last question. “Were there any marks on your son’s body when he was pulled from the river?”

  “I felt him with my own hands,” Wu answered. “He was as perfect as the day he came into the world.”

  Prosecutors never asked a question unless they knew the answer, but David had been pretty sure what Wu would say. Hulan’s line of questioning had been fruitless. The Wus’ situation was unfortunate, but they were a dead end nevertheless.

  On their way out, Hulan stopped to examine the All-Patriotic Society flyer more closely. “Bashan Village is foolish to advertise nightly meetings so boldly.”

  “Xiao Da says we should not be afraid of our beliefs,” Wu said.

  “You have heard him say this?”

  “When he speaks, I listen.” The old man felt for the paper, pulled it off the nail, and handed it to Hulan. “Go to the meeting tonight. Open your heart.”

  Hulan took the flyer and stuffed it in her pocket, then she pulled the hood of her poncho over her hair and stepped out into the rain. Once outside, David turned to take one last look at the widow and her cradled baby. Underneath all that dirt and sorrow was a very pretty young woman.

  “Zai jian,” he said.

  “Be reverent,” the old man answered, then shut and barred the door.

  A HALF HOUR LATER THEY WERE BACK AT THE HOTEL. IT WAS close to six, still raining, still hot, and Hom’s guards still manned the front entrance. David and Hulan wandered back to their room in the fourth courtyard. They were wet and muddy. Hulan took the first shower, and by the time David was out of his she’d made tea from the hot water in the thermos. He sat down and took a sip. The closeness he’d felt to Hulan just yesterday seemed very distant now.

  “I have to ask you something, Hulan. Why were you so hard on that old man?”

  “Sometimes you have to be tough if you want a straight answer. You know that.”

  “He lost his son. That woman lost her husband—”

  “And they’re both cult members.”

  Suddenly her obsession with the group became clear to him. She used it as a barrier against her feelings—against facing her grief over Chaowen’s death, against connecting to him because she knew he was opposed to China’s religious policies, against dealing with Lily’s murder or even that old man’s anguish. That wall may have protected her emotions, but it was blinding her to the facts of the case.

  “I’m sorry we came out here,” he said.

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

  “Of course there is….”

  She sighed. “I don’t see that we have time for you to feel guilty or for us to have some heartfelt discussion about my weaknesses, okay?”

  He sat back stunned. This day had been a far bigger trigger for her than he’d realized. “Don’t shut me out, Hulan. We came here together—”

  “Things have chan
ged. You’re an American civilian. You can’t help me with a murder investigation.”

  “When has that ever stopped us? Besides, this is dangerous—”

  “Can we just forget I’m your wife? Let me do my job, then we can go home.”

  He scraped his chair away from the table and walked to the window. He knew she didn’t understand how her words hurt him. He knew as well that she had no idea of the depth of his frustration. But that had become their pattern since Chaowen’s death. He worried; she ignored him. He tried to protect her; she shut him out. He tried to engage her; she avoided him.

  He had a choice. He could come right back at her or he could control his feelings.

  He stared out the window as he spoke. “We’re on a train—”

  “A train?” He heard the apprehension in her voice. It seemed to ask, Am I to get some metaphor about my life now?

  “Things are moving quickly. That always happens in a case. Today….” His solar plexus ached and he realized he was bone-tired from the effort of always having to be up for her, yet here he was doing it again. “You feel it, don’t you, Hulan, the way we’re now just along for the ride and we have to go where that ride takes us. And the day’s not over.”

  “No, it’s not,” she agreed briskly. “While you were in the shower, I learned that Fong’s here. He’s with the body. I need to see him. And I’d also like to check in with the men who did the interviews with the staff.”

  “And then you’re going to go to that All-Patriotic Society meeting,” he finished for her.

  Hulan held up Wu’s flyer. “This cannot be a coincidence. I think it’s why Zai sent me. That, and the dam.”

  But that wasn’t at all why Zai sent her. He’d given David and Hulan the gift of a second chance. That Hulan was blowing it off wounded David more than he could absorb.

  “I’m suspicious of Stuart Miller’s presence here and his connection to the dam,” she continued, oblivious to his silence, “as well as Wu Huadong’s claim that he could stop it. And—”

  She stopped speaking. The silence that weighted the room was much louder than the one they’d experienced back at the Wus’ hovel.

  He picked up his satchel and went to the door. “Let’s find Fong.”

  It was a test to see just how much she wanted to exclude him from her activities. But maybe she wasn’t ready for a full confrontation, because she glided past him and through the door as though nothing had happened.

  He followed her down the hallway to Lily’s room. A couple of Hom’s men stood outside. Pathologist Fong stepped into the hall. He had quite a bit to say about the way he’d been brought to this backwater in a military helicopter that, according to him, should have been decommissioned forty years ago, the nature of the facilities, and the conditions under which he had to work. As per Hulan’s request, Lily’s body had not been moved or anything else in her room disturbed. This meant that, when Fong arrived, Lily had been dead for some time in hot weather. The first thing he’d done was open the window. All of this was beyond the pale as far as the pathologist was concerned.

  “Come inside, Inspector,” Fong said in English. “I’ll show you what little respect you have for my position.”

  “I have the greatest respect for you, Pathologist Fong. That’s why I requested you. Only you—”

  Fong snorted in mock disgust, then opened the door to Lily’s room. Two long tables had been brought in. Fong had set up his equipment on one and Lily on the other. Flies buzzed over the dark, bloody outline on the bed where her body had been. Vats of water occupied a corner, and extra lights exposed Lily’s body with clinical harshness. She lay naked on the table. With her veins emptied and her skin washed clean, she appeared desiccated, wrinkled, and tinged blue.

  “You moved her,” Hulan observed.

  “I saw what I needed to see on the bed, but I can tell you right now you should have just sent her to Beijing.”

  “You can take her tomorrow,” Hulan said. “I wanted you to see her here. Every crime scene is a message, and I wanted to know what you thought.”

  “Stop trying to flatter me. It doesn’t become you.”

  David watched in grim fascination as Hulan reached into her bag, then slid a pack of Marlboros across the table. She didn’t smoke but had thought ahead to have the bribe handy. Fong took a cigarette, lit it, and slipped the pack into his shirt pocket. Temporarily placated, he described what he’d discovered.

  “You can see I haven’t cut her open. What’s the point, unless you want to know what she had for dinner?”

  “She ate here in the guesthouse,” Hulan informed him.

  “See? Why do extra work when I can get the answers I need from you?”

  Fong peered up at Hulan, and it struck David that although the pathologist was speaking in English, they’d tuned him out completely.

  “What killed her?” Hulan asked.

  Fong rubbed his chin in feigned concentration. “My guess would be she bled to death.”

  “Pathologist….”

  “Ha! You’re so serious, Inspector!” Fong approached the body. “Her feet were cut off and she bled out. But think about that. I understand you said good night to her around nine. You found her at eight. So eleven hours passed.”

  “One of the foreigners saw her about midnight,” Hulan said.

  “So perhaps eight hours from the time that the last witness saw her to when you found her. During that time she was drained of her blood and positioned back in her room before rigor mortis could set in. That process begins immediately at death and usually becomes manifest within two to four hours, then advances until approximately twelve hours. In hot weather, such as you have here, it can disappear as soon as nine hours after death.”

  “Which means what?”

  “The questions I keep asking myself are: How long did it take for her blood to drain, and at what point did she die?” He squinted at Hulan. “I’m trying to establish a time of death.”

  “And?”

  “Hard to do, because I can’t use the usual methods. Livor mortis, the purple discoloration of the skin that we usually find, is determined by how the blood settles, but most of her blood is gone. Body temperature is usually reliable, but readings are difficult in this situation, because her temperature would have dropped very quickly as the blood drained. But then maybe I have to compensate for that because the air temperature in this room is so warm. When I get her back to Beijing, I’ll run a few tests.”

  David was appalled at the matter-of-factness of the conversation, but Fong wasn’t done.

  “But I know I’m not answering your question. How did she sit still for it is what you want to know. There are no signs of struggle—no skin under her fingernails, ligature marks on her wrists, or bruising to show she put up a fight.” His fingers rested lightly on Lily’s pale skin. “She was a beautiful woman for a foreigner.”

  “Beauty doesn’t matter when you’re dead, Pathologist.”

  Fong chuckled. “No one is colder than you.”

  David moved to Lily’s desk, which had already been dusted for fingerprints. He stood with his back against the wall in the same way Huadong’s widow had earlier.

  “Any evidence of sexual assault?”

  “None.”

  “What was the weapon?”

  Fong scratched his head. “Not a saw because there’s nothing on the bones or the surrounding tissue to suggest serration, and a knife wouldn’t have made it through the bones. I think the amputation was done in one motion.”

  “What else?”

  “As you know, she was killed somewhere else and brought here. The blood that coated her body looked like a smooth layer, but on closer inspection I discovered that more had been applied once she was placed on the bed. This suggests that someone came here with a container filled with her blood.”

  “You’re sure it was hers?”

  “Why go looking for other blood when hers was available?” Fong asked. “I wish it was applied by hand, but it was
n’t. The blood was blotted on. Maybe a sponge. Anyway, I picked up particulate matter on her skin—man-made, natural, I’m not sure yet. I also found slight abrasions and traces of what looks like the same material in her mouth. I’ll analyze it later.”

  Lily had kept her room very neat, David thought as he listened to Fong and Hulan. Lily had a Filofax, some loose papers, and a couple of notebooks in a neat stack. A Mont Blanc pen rested just so to the right.

  “Although the room looks clean, it isn’t,” Fong continued. “I found drops of blood from the door to here and traces in the bathroom, where someone washed his or her or their hands. I also picked up a few drops in the hallway going to the left. Nothing in the alleyways. A bit of blood in the drain, a couple of drops in the hall, and nothing else. The killers were clean.”

  “Killers?”

  “Although she was drained,” Fong explained, “she still would have leaked. How do you prevent her feet from leaking unless you keep them above her head? How does one person carry that much dead weight and keep those feet up? And who carries the bucket of extra blood? You are looking for three conspirators.”

  “What about fingerprints?”

  “We’ve picked up some in the room, but the body had the first priority. I’d like to move her somewhere. Do they have a walk-in refrigerator here?”

  “It’s a guesthouse, not the Sheraton Great Wall,” Hulan observed dryly.

  “Very well, some ice will do.”

  “Fingerprints?” Hulan repeated.

  “I did the desk. I thought you might want the papers.”

  “Can you gather those up for me?” Hulan asked, and David was momentarily surprised that she was addressing him.

  As David put the papers in the side pocket of his bag and zipped it closed, Fong went on. “You haven’t asked me about the most important clue. Attorney Stark,” he called out, “you will like this.” He motioned David to Lily’s side. “Look at the mark on her forehead.”

  “We noticed it earlier,” David admitted.

  “But it was covered in blood and not so clean as now.” Again Fong’s finger touched Lily, this time ever so softly against the mark on her forehead. “It’s a burn. What do you call it in English? It’s something your cowboys do.”