The Next Best Thing

by Wiley Brooks

  The likely killer went by the name Joey. He might be a biracial Malaysian-American. He was a few inches taller than most Malaysians, about five feet ten inches tall. Maybe about one hundred eighty pounds. Was a good-looking guy. Muscles. He was left-handed and had a nasty long scar on his left forearm. He had arrived with Amanda and three others on a late afternoon bus from Melaka. Finally, the German fellow had returned to the Happy Song for one night a few days after Amanda’s murder. He clearly didn’t know about it.

  “Hey Fitz.”

  “Mason. Making any progress?”

  “Does a fish swim?”

  He shared what he had learned that day, then added that he was going to Tioman the next day to try to find the young women who were traveling with Amanda in Mersing.

  “Let me tell you what we know about the other murders,” Fitz said. “First, we’re still not telling the Malaysian government. The time will come when we’ll have to. But we want to give you as much time as we can before we do.”

  “Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.”

  “Except for the last one – that would be Mary Higgins in George Town – all the others happened at a place like Mersing,” Fitz said. “So, not at a destination, but at a gathering point to go to the destination. We kicked that around here and think we know why.”

  “Okay. Why?”

  “We think it’s easier to spot a young woman traveling alone. Mary Higgins, for example, was apparently exploring George Town on her own when she met this guy.”

  “Wait, George Town is a destination not a jumpin’ off point and Amanda was with three other friends,” Mason interjected.

  “Maybe, but was she really with friends? They all left without her.”

  “Good point,” Mason conceded.

  “I know George Town doesn’t fit the theory. It doesn’t jive with the usual timeline either. But hear me out.

  “We think the other reason he chose those locations is because they are easy to flee from. We think he’d stash a car some place nearby but out of sight. After the murder and robbery, he’d dash to his car and speed back to Penang.”

  “Penang? Why Penang,” Mason asked.

  “About the only thing all seven victims have in common is that their credit cards were used in Penang in the days following their deaths. Certainly sounds like he takes his goodies to Penang to fence them. Maybe you should share this info with Bo and see if he can identify possible fences.”

  “Yeah. Good idea. I plan to call him tomorrow mornin’. If I had my druthers, I wouldn’t share the other murders yet, but now that we know they’re all connected, I might have to. I just hope I can talk him out of passin’ the info on up the chain.”

  “Ask him not to and see what he says,” Fitz added. “Tell him that you need him to let you know if he decides to do it. We’d need to make sure we reach out through the embassy to the government, if it comes to that. Do you think you can convince him to sit on it for a bit?”

  “Yeah. Me and Bo go back a long way. We shared some shit in Laos, you know. He’ll try to give me what I need. At least a few more days. I trust him, Fitz.”

  Day 10

  Today was Joey’s third day practicing on older women. He was able to do two yesterday. One at lunch. Another at dinner. No problems making the connection. Both women were in their early to mid-thirties. Neither, though, struck Joey as having money back in the States. He told himself to be patient. It was early. He was just practicing. And, it was a numbers game. If he met with enough women, one with a good bank account would turn up.

  He was back at the Holiday Inn today, having gone to other places yesterday. An attractive redhead walked in after he had been sitting for just a few minutes. She took a nearby table. He gave her a slight nod and smile, then refocused on his menu. Not that he needed a menu. It was part of the act. He had eaten in this café scores of times.

  Joey glanced over at her again. She was pretty, but not in a Miss America kind of way. Her red hair intrigued him. He had never known anyone himself with red hair, though that girl – what was her name? – on the bus to Mersing had red hair. Suzy, that was it.

  Red hair is certainly not a Malaysian trait. Her hair fell to just below her shoulders in soft waves. It paired nicely with her pale skin.

  He found himself oddly hoping that she’d be the one. He was attracted to her in a basic, primal way. That was something he didn’t expect. Now, though, he understood that it made sense. If he were going to have to spend weeks winning her trust, he’d hope it would be with someone he was drawn to.

  If she had noticed him, she didn’t show it. She was sitting at her table, just two away from him, reading a yellow paperback guidebook. When the waiter handed her the menu, she had set the book on the table. It gave him something to say.

  “Great book,” he said to her.

  “Pardon me,” she responded.

  “Your Lonely Planet guide. It’s been my Bible.”

  “Oh. Yeah. I find it really helpful.” She looked back at her menu.

  “So, how did you end up in Batu Ferringhi? Lonely Planet doesn’t really recommend it.”

  The waiter came and took her order, then his.

  “Honestly?” she said. Joey nodded. “I wanted a hot shower.”

  Joey laughed. “Been there. Done that,” he said.

  “I’m Joey, by the way.”

  “Jessica.”

  “I picked up my Lonely Planet book right after I read a review in the Charlotte Observer.”

  “Seattle Times.”

  “What?”

  “I got mine after reading about it in a story in the Sunday travel section of the Seattle Times.”

  “Is that where you’re from?

  “Yes. You?”

  Her first question back to him. Not in the door yet, but he had successfully broken the ice.

  “Believe me, you’ve never heard of it. I’m from a tiny town in North Carolina called Bentonville.”

  “Explains Charlotte.”

  “I moved there after college for work.”

  This is where he would expect her to ask him what kind of work he did or if he liked Charlotte, but she didn’t. She seemed shy, nervous or something. He needed to get her talking.

  “I’ve never been to Seattle. Does it really rain there all the time?”

  “Not really. We have the most spectacular summers. Long, sunny days. Warm but not hot, at least most of the time. Certainly nothing like this heat. It rains in the winter, probably when you were dealing with snow in the mountains.”

  “Mountains! We don’t have no stinking mountains!” Joey said with like the bandit in the old Humphrey Bogart movie The Treasure of Sierra Madre. Jessica frowned. “I know people think of the Great Smoky Mountains when they think of North Carolina, but the mountains are at the far western part of the state. I’m from the other side. Has a few hills. Mainly farmland.”

  The waiter brought their lunches at the same time.

  “Mind if I join you? It’s okay if not. I just enjoy talking with someone from home, you know.”

  “No. It’s alright. Have you been on the road long?”

  He moved his plate and soda to her table and sat.

  “Well, that’s not a question with a simple one-sentence answer for me.”

  “Why’s that?” she said, taking her first bite of a spinach salad.

  “Okay. Let me give you the simple answer first. I’ve been here, in Malaysia, for about six months.”

  “Really? Isn’t that’s a long time to stay in one country? Why?”

  “And that, dear Jessica, is where the story gets complicated.”

  Joey had revised his backstory a little from the one he had used for the past two and a half years. In the new version, his mother, who worked in the laundry at the Port of Melaka, had a one-night stand with a British sailor. She knew him only as Reggie and didn’t even know which ship he arrived on. In any case, he was long gone back out to sea when she found out she was pregnant.

 
“She gave it her best shot,” Joey said, “but it was just too much for her. When I was three years old, she left me at an orphanage. She pinned a note saying she was an unwed mother and couldn’t take care of me anymore. She said my name was Yusof and added the stuff about my dad being a long-gone British sailor and all. She signed the note with just her first name, Zara. That was her name.”

  Joey then said that a childless American couple was vacationing in Malaysia and visited the orphanage. The woman, Helen, apparently fell in love with him right away.

  “They hadn’t planned on adopting me or anyone else,” Joey said. “The only reason they were there was for church work. My folks took their faith very seriously. Long story short, they took me back to Bentonville as their son. You could say I lucked out.”

  “That’s quite a story, Joey. So, let me guess. You came back to find your birth mother?”

  “That’s what got me here. I tried hard for two or three months to find her. But it had been too long. I did find a birth record at a hospital in Melaka for a Zara Zainya giving birth to an unnamed baby boy. I’d bet that was me. When I found it, I was sure I’d be able to find her. Didn’t work out that way.

  “I stayed in Melaka for a month,” Joey continued. “But nothing. And I mean nothing. I found someone who worked with her at the Port and remembered her from when I was a baby, but she had no idea where my mother was. She said my mom left twenty or so years ago. I figured she must have left town. So, I went looking elsewhere. Kuala Lumpur first, then Penang. Dead ends. It was when I fully realized that this isn’t America. I’m sure I would have been able to find her in America. Just wasn’t going to happen here. Maybe if she had been a man it would have been different.”

  She asked him why he had stayed in Malaysia once he knew he wouldn’t be able to find his mom.

  “That’s a good question, isn’t it,” Joey said. “To be honest, I’m still trying to figure that out. Mom and dad, the ones in North Carolina, died in a car crash last year. . .”

  “Oh, I so sorry,” she interrupted him.

  “It was awful. Still is,” he said. “But I don’t have a pressing need to go home, so it seems important and timely to explore this side of who I am right now. They left me a small insurance policy. That’s how I’m paying for being here.”

  Neither spoke while the waiter cleared their dishes.

  “Hey,” he said. “Enough of this sad stuff. You want to do something that I’ve wanted to do since I moved to the beach?”

  Jessica looked at him but didn’t say anything.

  “There is a butterfly sanctuary on the island. They have tens of thousands of butterflies there. It’s supposed to be awesome. Want to go?”

  Going off with someone she just met sounded impulsive and maybe even risky. It’s certainly something she wouldn’t have done when she first left Seattle a couple months before. But this trip was about getting out of her rut. That meant doing things she wouldn’t normally do. Besides, she liked Joey. He seemed nice. He was clearly younger than her, but not a lot. It didn’t matter. That was the old her thinking. She had waited long enough. Time for a fling?

  “Sure,” she said.

  They shared a taxi to the butterfly sanctuary. It was everything it had been said to be. Beautiful. Gentle. Colorful. There were few people there. Joey told her that it was probably because it was a weekday and it was quite a drive from George Town. They meandered the grounds for about ninety minutes.

  Joey even grabbed her camera and took a photo of her with butterflies all over her. Turns out butterflies are drawn to sweat. And on a hot day, pale, redheaded girls from Seattle do sweat. Two perched on her hair, a third on her nose. More on her bare shoulders. It’s hard to be stressed when butterflies are landing on you and their wings are slowly moving up and down literally drinking you in. When they were finally ready to leave, Jessica was surprised to see the same taxi waiting for them.

  “That was absolutely great!” she told him in the taxi on the way back to the Holiday Inn. “Thank you for suggesting it. And to think I hesitated. I hope that picture of me with the butterflies all over me comes out okay.”

  As they approached the hotel, Joey suggested they get together the next day. He said he had an engagement that evening and again in the morning, but if she were up to it, they could meet about noon.

  She tried not to show that she was a little disappointed that she wouldn’t see him for dinner. He was fun and she needed fun. But tomorrow sounded great. She asked what he wanted to do.

  “Your turn to choose,” he said. “I thought maybe we should head into George Town, but I’ll leave it up to you. Pick, like, three places.”

  “Want to meet in the café for lunch first?”

  “No. Let’s find a place in George Town. Got to mix things up.”

  They arrived at the Holiday Inn and both got out. She insisted on splitting the cost of the taxi.

  He walked her to the entrance to the hotel lobby.

  “Thank you for a great time today,” Joey told her. “I’ll meet you in the lobby at noon tomorrow.”

  He smiled and she returned it. He then turned and left. No kiss on the cheek. Not even a friendly hug.

  There was a bounce in his step, though, as he walked back to his apartment. It had been a good day. He still had no idea if she qualified, but her offering to pay half the taxi fare and the fact that she could afford to stay in the Holiday Inn were promising. Maybe tomorrow he’d learn more. He wasn’t going to rule her out too quickly.

  Mason was at the docks at 8 a.m. His plan was to catch the Merlin launch. It costs nearly twice as much as a fishing boat. Still, it would only total about ten dollars and would be well worth it. The Merlin boat could make the crossing in two and a half hours. The fishing boats took four to five. It would also be far more comfortable.

  The oft-told story was that Tioman Island was the setting for the famous Hollywood film, South Pacific. Mason had seen that movie countless times growing up. Whenever it would come on TV, his mom would insist the family watch it. His mom loved musicals; his dad not so much.

  Some great songs came out of South Pacific. Of course, that was to be expected since it was a runaway Rodgers and Hammerstein hit on Broadway. Probably the best-known song was Some Enchanted Evening. Mason was partial to Bali Ha’i.

  It was mid-morning when the Merlin boat pulled alongside the dock at Tioman. Mason disembarked. A ways down the beach to his right was the Merlin Hotel, the only actual resort on the island. On the way to the island he learned that it had a small grass airstrip and had a daily flight to and from Mersing and Kuala Lumpur. Once he heard that, he decided that he’d fly back.

  To the left, small clusters of accommodations designed for backpackers dotted the beach. Each place offered huts around an open-air restaurant. Some of the huts were like bungalows. Others were simple as A-frames built atop a small wooden platform. The platform was there to keep occupants and their gear off the ground during a heavy rain.

  He wandered north. Stopping at each gathering of huts to search for anyone who looked like the two travelers. At each place, he would ask about them. It would have been easier if he had photos.

  His fourth stop was a place called Happy Bungalow. Rock music blared from speakers. On the beach, he saw a redhead who fit the description of Suzanne.

  “Hey miss, are you by any chance, Suzanne Harper?”

  She looked at him suspiciously. “Yeah,” she said with obvious unease.

  “Sorry darlin’, I didn’t mean to alarm you. I’m tryin’ to find Amanda Anderson. There was a family emergency and her daddy needs to find her. I know that she was with y’all when you checked in at the Happy Song Hotel in Mersing. I was hopin’ she was here with you.”

  “No. She didn’t come,” Suzanne said. “We thought she was coming, but she didn’t show up for the boat. Listen, there was this guy who boarded the bus with us in Melaka. I think she’s with him. We all met up at the Portside Café that night for dinner and a few beers.
When the rest of us left, she stayed to watch L.A. Law on the TV with Joey. That was his name.”

  “Do you know where Joey was stayin’?”

  “No. He just said he was trying a different place that he had heard about.”

  “Do you think he might have told Martin or Crystal?”

  “Maybe. We were at the restaurant for more than two hours. Lots of side conversations.”

  Mason asked Suzanne if she knew where Martin and Crystal were staying, not letting on that he knew Martin had left. She told him they’d had a big fight. She moved in with a guy named Thomas over at the next set of bungalows. Martin left the island that day. Now he knew why Martin showed up at the hotel by himself. Suzanne said Crystal would be hard to miss. Big blonde hair on a petite body and a Southern accent so thick you could cut it with a knife.

  “Way more than yours,” Suzanne said with a smile.

  Mason asked her if she they had taken any photos of the group. She said they had, but she didn’t think Joey was in any of them.

  “He offered to take the pictures but said he didn’t like to be in them. Struck me as strange because Joey was, mmmm, how do I say this? Joey was a hunk. Those kind of people usually love being photographed.”

  Mason then asked her for a description of Joey.

  “At first, he said he was an American,” Suzanne said, “but Martin called him out, said he looked like he was Malaysian. Joey said something about being of Malaysian descent but that he was hundred percent American. He certainly talked and acted like he was American. But you know, I think I could see a little Malaysian in him once Martin mentioned it. Anyway, I’d bet that Amanda took off with Joey. She told me on the bus that she wanted to, mmm, date a local. He was probably close enough. I will say this” Suzanne added with a big grin, “Joey had immensely kissable lips.”

  Mason thanked her and continued down the beach to find Crystal. It was easy. He heard her first.

  “I’m plumb tired of sittin’ here in the sun, darlin’. I’m gonna meander back to the hut and have myself a cold drank. You comin’?”

  Mason caught up with her at the treeline.