In the meantime, video calls provided the best option. At least I could see my children. Ryan and Lucy didn’t seem too bothered by what had happened. They had been separated from me before. Castro and Lin were doing a great job at keeping them entertained with movie rentals and video games. A homeschool teacher, cleared by the bureau, had been hired to provide schooling since they weren’t allowed to attend.
Ryan’s only complaint had been that he missed his judo and kung fu classes. “Abby, I try to practice my moves in my room, but it’s not the same. I don’t have an opponent to spar with.”
“Have you tried asking Agent Castro or Lin if they can help you train?”
“Yeah, but they’re always too busy doing what they do, or Po Po is making them drive her someplace.”
“What about outside? Are there things to do?”
“There’s a small vineyard where I sometimes play hide-and-seek with Lucy, but we can’t go too far. Oh, Mr. Fulton is teaching me about wine.”
Ed and Betty Fulton were the owners of the B&B. They were high school sweethearts who had gotten married and stayed that way. They’d been running the B&B ever since Ed retired from the Navy.
“Well, that sounds interesting. No sampling!”
Ryan laughed. “Abby, I have to know if I made it right. Don’t worry; Mr. Fulton told me I’m supposed to spit it out. It tastes yucky anyway.”
Po Po appeared content with the temporary arrangement because of the fact that the B&B had a larger and better-equipped kitchen than I had been able to provide her with. Lin had the duty of driving her to Chinatown every other day. The payoff had been healthy weight gain for the two agents. I, on the other hand, had lost a few pounds.
I had left Knox and retreated to my cove on the third level of the house when Kang called.
“You know that teapot I took from the tong?”
“Yeah,” I said, easing myself down into my leather chair.
“Did I leave it at your house by chance?”
“Don’t tell me you lost it.”
“I might have. I had it with me that night you were attacked. I left it in my car.”
I crossed my legs and doodled on the notepad lying on my desk. “Did you search your car?”
“Yeah, it wasn’t there. Then I thought I had taken it into my place. I tore the house upside down but nothing.”
“What about—”
“I already grilled Suzi. She was my first go-to.”
“Aside from the fact that you lifted it from a place you shouldn’t have, is it a big deal if you don’t find it?”
“Yes and no. I won’t bother you with the details.”
“Bother me.” I recrossed my legs and added hooker heels and long hair to the stick figure I had drawn.
Kang told me about the meeting he’d had with Ethel regarding the teapot.
“So that thing could be worth a lot of money?” I drew a microphone in the hand of my stick figure reporter. “I’ll look around. Maybe you brought it inside.”
“That’s not the only reason; I still think that design on it has meaning. I showed it to my friend Ethel. She had seen something similar before—drawings her dad had—but she didn’t know what it meant. Luckily, I still have those pictures I snapped of the teapot while we were there. I can study those.”
I filled in the speech bubble above my little stick figure. This is Sushi Zhang reporting live from Nob Hill where word is a mysterious person is not picking up after their dog. “Okay, well, let me know if anything comes of it.”
“I will. By the way, how are you holding up?”
“Meh, I’m okay. I haven’t had any real reason to leave the house except wanting to see the kids and Po Po.”
“No-go there?”
“Nada.”
“Look, if you need anything at all or if there’s something I can do for you, let me know. I’m serious.”
“Be careful. You’re giving me a whole lot of leeway.”
Kang chuckled. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Isn’t that the saying?”
I hung up thinking about the investigation and how it had dropped Kang and me into a series of absurd situations. He had become someone I could depend on without fail, someone I could trust with my life, someone I still had a stupid little crush on. I blamed it all on that day when he first saved my life. Stupid hero-crush syndrome. That’s all it was.
I opened the window above my desk and gazed outside. It was two thirty in the afternoon. I knew because, across the street, I watched our postwoman make her way from house to house. She had that familiar navy blue bag slung over her shoulder, and as always, she wore a sky-blue, short-sleeved shirt and gray culottes. Rarely did I ever see her in trousers, even when it rained. The temperature outside hovered in the low seventies. Not too cold but not too warm. I guess all the walking she did helped.
Near her, a black squirrel scurried down a telephone pole and contemplated crossing over to my side. It retreated when a forest green Mustang approached; its throaty engine cut through the hum of my neighbor’s lawnmower.
Copeland caught my eye just as I pulled back from the window. I stopped and watched him walk down the driveway to the edge of the sidewalk, where he surveyed the street in both directions. On his way back to the porch, he gave me a two-finger salute.
I smiled at him and wondered how I might give him and Knox the slip so I could visit my family. Kang’s generosity had planted a seed in my head.
Chapter 21
That night after dinner—spaghetti, veal meatballs, antipasto salad, and garlic bread ordered from Fanelli’s Deli—I bade goodnight to Copeland and Knox and headed upstairs. I wanted to take another look at the information on the USB drive that Park had given me. While I had combed through it carefully the day after the sniper shooting, I hadn’t seen anything as being helpful with locating Sei or even telling me more about her.
The hard drive contained a few surveillance photos of the meeting Park had mentioned. There were a bunch taken of the Triad gang member sitting at a sidewalk table outside a small coffee shop and a few more of Sei standing at the table. The rest were of the two sitting and talking. Most of the photographs had her wearing large sunglasses, but Park managed to take one when she briefly removed them to scratch her cheek. I was thankful he had gotten that shot. Without it, I couldn’t have confirmed that the woman in the pictures was Sei. The odd thing about that one photo was that it looked as if she had been staring straight into the lens, as if she knew someone was photographing her.
Also included was a report Park had written about the death of an informant in a Shanghai short-time love hotel. On the night the hotel manager discovered the dead body in the room, security cameras attached to the hotel’s exterior captured a person dropping down from a fire escape in the alley next to it. It was only when the person passed under the camera that they became recognizable due to a bright, yellow glare from a nearby neon sign. It was a woman who looked a lot like Sei.
She had the same long, straight, black hair and slender but firm physique that I remembered from my encounters with her in Bangkok. Her outfit was a form-fitting jumpsuit. While Park might have thought she resembled the woman from his other pictures, I was on the fence; the video footage was grainy. I thought Kang might help confirm whether it was Sei since he had also interacted with her.
Park’s report went on to note that the informant was an aide to the judge. I guessed the judge found out about this guy’s loose lips and had somebody silence them. Both upper and lower appendages were removed from the victim’s face.
I replayed the video, pausing it at the instant the neon glow drenched the woman. It seemed as though her eyes were looking straight into the camera. I couldn’t be sure because of the video quality, but it looked that way. If this woman really were Sei, was she simply exhibiting narcissistic behavior, or had she been baiting whomever would investigate the informant’s death to catch her?
All cues pointed to Sei being the mystery woman, but Par
k had nothing concrete tying the woman in the video to his informant’s death except that she used the fire escape to exit the hotel. His report stated that they never found out who did it. I wasn’t sure how much time Park had spent developing that asset, but the depth of the investigation told me it hadn’t been a huge loss.
There were a few other reports involving dead people in which eyewitnesses described a similar woman being seen in the area: small, slender, and wearing a black jumpsuit.
Did she always wear that outfit when she executed someone? Could it be an extension of her personality? Was it associated with a gang or an organization she belonged to? I had never seen an outfit like that during any of my Triad investigations. It could be a Chinese thing, but I doubt it. I was probably overthinking the outfit, but I took a snapshot of the paused video anyway and emailed it to Kang. Maybe the professor has an opinion on this.
I had honestly begun to think all the hours spent investigating her were amounting to nothing more than a monumental time-suck. But I knew the only way to the mastermind was through others, and getting to them had proved difficult to say the least. For the first time in my law enforcement career, I feared I would lose.
Chapter 22
The channels on Kang’s flat-screen zoomed by at a speed that suggested he hadn’t been paying much attention to the programing. He shut off the TV and placed the remote on the rustic wood-plank coffee table in front of him. Suzi was at the station preparing for the nightly newscast and normally didn’t get home until after midnight. Kang always tried to catch the show so he could discuss it with her when she returned, but that night the case had his mind occupied.
Kang’s phone chimed, and he opened an email from Kane. He looked at the photo she had sent him, and his initial reaction, without reading the email, was that it was the assassin girl, Sei. But because of the grain in the picture and the lighting, he could see Kane’s hesitation. He took a few minutes to study Sei’s outfit, but nothing about it struck him as having a purpose other than practicality.
After responding to Kane with his thoughts, he studied the pictures of the teapot once more. He had looked at them a dozen times and spent upward of two hours researching the drawings online with not much to show for his effort. Why am I bothering with this? He continued to ask himself that question over and over. It had overshadowed the other pertinent question: Where was the teapot?
Kang had sat in front of the computer again, ready to conduct more searches, when the obvious struck him.
Why don’t I just ask the people at the tong?
Because you’ll have to explain why you have pictures of that teapot.
I entered the premises legally and took pictures of various items. I was well within the law.
But you also took the pot.
They don’t know that.
Kang looked at his watch. It was quarter to ten. It’s still early, he told himself.
Twenty minutes later, Kang parked his Crown Vic outside the Hop Sing Tong. The shops on the street were closed except for the restaurant on the corner. Only a couple of tourists strolled down the lane. He could see no interior lighting through the windows of the tong, but the other tongs were dark as well.
Kang exited his vehicle and walked over to the entrance. Through the double glass doors, he could see that it was dark inside. Still, he knocked anyway. After multiple tries, he resorted to what he always knew he would do.
Looking behind him—the tourists were gone—Kang removed his lock-picking tools from the inner pocket of his jacket and went to work. After fifteen seconds, he had gained entrance to the tong.
Once inside, Kang locked the door behind him, flicked on a small penlight, and cautiously made his way up the stairs. His destination was the top floor, as he was curious as to whether whoever had been previously sleeping there had been back. Had they noticed that the teapot was missing? Was that person there?
As he neared the top floor, Kang slowed his approach and softened his footsteps. The room was dark and quiet. But that didn’t mean it was empty. Someone could be sleeping.
Kang stopped three steps short of the landing. The lone window was open, as it had been the last time. A bit of the moonlight seeped through, giving some transparency to the darkness. He directed his penlight over to the corner of the room where he remembered the bed to be. It was empty. He made a few more passes over the room with the light before he convinced himself that he was alone. Up the final steps he went.
As he walked toward the bed, he moved the tiny beam around the area. The white comforter was still on the bed, and the empty food packages were on the floor. Even the teacup seemed to be exactly where he remembered last seeing it. However, one thing stood out, something Kang wasn’t expecting. Sitting next to the cup, as if it had never been removed, was the teapot he had taken.
Chapter 23
Kang took a sharp breath as he pulled his head back. A surge of prickles raced along his spine before shooting through both arms and tickling the tips of his fingers. He blinked in disbelief. Instinctively, he drew his gun and spun around, searching the room once more with his weapon and the penlight, the thumping in his chest unrelenting.
He looked. He listened. He moved quietly away from the bed, heading toward the bathroom on the far side of the room. The door was closed.
He and Kane had been watched that day when they entered the tong. He knew that much. How else could he explain the teapot making its way back home? More importantly, the question running through his head at the moment was whether someone was watching him then.
Kang worked to control his breathing, fearful it would disrupt the silence in the room. A heavy blanket of darkness still covered most of the room, and if it were an advantage, he intended to use it.
He proceeded as if he were not alone. Slow, purposeful steps brought him closer to the bathroom door. Once in arm’s reach of the doorknob, Kang stood with his back against the wall to the left of the hinges. He knew the door opened outward from his previous search. If someone were hiding and armed inside there, he wouldn’t be caught standing in the middle, in the fatal funnel.
Kang brought his weapon up to the middle of his torso. He reached across the door with his left hand and turned the knob softly. It was unlocked.
One. Two. Three.
He turned the handle quickly and pulled the door open. Kang stepped back away from the wall and peeked inside. The bathroom was empty.
Kang closed the door, moved over to the window, and looked outside. He checked his watch. It was a quarter to eleven. The street outside was quiet and empty. The restaurant on the corner had its lights on but appeared to be closed. He stuck his head out a bit farther. Below the window was the platform of the fire escape. Miss it, and that ten-foot drop turned into a fifty-foot splat on the sidewalk. Climbing down was doable, but there was no way back up from what he could see.
He holstered his weapon and walked over to the bed to inspect the teapot. He lifted the lid, and before he could peer inside, the aromatic scent of jasmine hit his nose. A finger check revealed a tiny bit of liquid at the bottom. It had been empty and dry when it was in his possession. Kang grabbed an empty paper bag near the bed and scooped up the teapot. Whoever had reclaimed it might have left some fingerprints. He then hurried back down the stairs.
Once outside and sitting in the driver’s seat of his car, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed Kane’s number. “Abby, why I came to the tong isn’t important right now… No, I’m not still inside; I’m sitting in my car. Listen… Listen, I found the teapot on the top floor, exactly where we first saw it… I’m not joking. But get this: Not only did someone take it from my car and return it to the tong, but that person drank tea from it. I’m having it dusted for prints… I know, I know. I completely agree. Whoever took the teapot from my car is probably the person you saw outside your window.”
Chapter 24
Kang returned to Waverly Place the following day a little after eight in the morning. He wanted a conversation
with the people in charge of the newly managed Hop Sing Tong, the ones who never seemed to be around, not even for their own grand reopening.
The tong still looked deserted, as it had the night before. No surprises there. The doors were locked the way he had left them, so Kang played along and knocked. He peered through the glass door but saw no one inside. Fine, I’ll wait.
Kang crossed the street and bought a large coffee from the restaurant at the corner before settling back down in his vehicle. I got all the time in the world. He blew through the tiny opening of the coffee lid before taking a sip.
The residents of Chinatown had already started their day. He watched as the elderly puttered by. They seemed to be the only ones who got up early aside from the schoolchildren.
The men were usually on their way to meet friends at their daily hangout. A popular location on Waverly was the Blossom Bakery. There they would chat all day while drinking cheap green tea and munching on Chinese pastries. The women were simply getting an early start on their daily shopping needs, usually hitting up the fresh food markets that lined Stockton Avenue.
Kang sat quietly pressing the paper cup to his lips for a few minutes before pulling out his phone and texting Kane.
Kang: You up?
Abby: Yeah. What’s up?
Kang: I’m camped outside the tong waiting for the owners to show up.
Abby: Sounds exciting. How long?
Kang: Couple of hours. I’ll come back in the afternoon if needed.
Abby: Can your cigar-smoking friend help?
Kang: I’ll call her later when the CCBA opens.
Coit Tower (Abby Kane FBI Thriller - Chasing Chinatown Trilogy Book 3) Page 9