by R. J. Jagger
“This isn’t what I expected,” she said.
No.
It wasn’t.
“How do you kill someone like that?”
He grunted.
“Quickly.”
The passport went into his back pocket.
They didn’t find much else, other than his clothes and toiletries. The good stuff, namely his wallet and cell phone, weren’t here. In a kitchen drawer, they came across the only other thing of interest, four surveillance photos of a wiry man about fifty, smoking in every one. Wing recognized him from somewhere but couldn’t place it.
“I wonder what these are all about,” she said.
“I don’t know.”
“Should we take one of them?”
Wing considered it, then tossed them back in the drawer and said, “I don’t see a reason.”
He shut the drawer.
Jamaica pulled it back open, grabbed one of the photos and shoved it into her back pocket. “Maybe this is the guy who wants Teffinger dead.”
Wing nodded.
Impressed.
“Good point.”
They made sure no nosy neighbors were lurking around and snuck out.
WALKING BACK TO THE CAR, Jamaica got a call that etched a darker and darker stress onto her face. Wing heard enough to tell the caller was Moon from Hong Kong. After several minutes, Jamaica hung up and said, “Big trouble.”
Wing shook his head.
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“Po Sin killed a woman in Moon’s apartment.”
Wing kicked the dirt.
“I was afraid of something like this. Who?”
“You’re not even going to believe it.”
“Who”
“Rain.”
“Rain?”
“Right, Rain.”
“Rain the singer?”
“Yes.”
“Rain as in Don’t Trust Me and Darker Than That?”
She nodded.
“Hong Kong’s going nuts.”
“I produced both of those videos,” Wing said. “What the hell happened?”
Jamaica exhaled.
“Rain was staying with Moon.”
“Moon’s her agent,” Wing interjected.
“Okay, I didn’t know that,” Jamaica said. “Anyway, Moon went out to a club and Rain stayed in. When Moon got home, she found the woman in the bathtub with her throat slit.”
“Jesus.”
“She called the cops right away,” Jamaica said. “She didn’t even know at that point that the paintings were gone. The cops found Po Sin’s body on the ground. Now they’re looking for whoever it was that smashed his head in, thinking he was an accomplice who double-crossed the man as soon as he got down.”
Wing shook his head.
Unbelievable.
Freaking unbelievable.
“Moon didn’t tell the cops about the missing paintings,” Jamaica added.
Obviously.
How could she?’
Wing frowned.
“The cops are going to think that Po Sin and his accomplice met earlier in the evening to go over the details,” he said. “They’ll try to recreate Po Sin’s night. That could lead to us. That’s a big problem.”
“What do we do?”
Good question.
“I can’t even think,” Wing said. “My brain hurts.”
70
Day 4—August 16
Thursday Afternoon
KANJANA NEEDED TO MAKE PROGRESS on the Tookta case which she hadn’t done a thing on since the mystery retainer got slipped under her office door Tuesday evening. The victim lived in a first-floor apartment unit just a few blocks over from Soi Cowboy. With Prarie at her side, Kanjana knocked on the door and got no answer. The knob was locked. Kanjana looked down the hallway, saw no one, and stuck a bent paperclip inside the lock.
After thirty seconds of twisting, they were inside.
Prarie’s heart pounded.
The place felt like death.
“Don’t touch anything,” Kanjana said.
Right.
No problem.
The kitchen and main room were normal. The bedroom was a different story. The bedding and pillow were gone, bagged as evidence. The top of the mattress had been cut out, no doubt removed to document where the blood soaked through the sheets.
Neither the front door nor the windows showed evidence of forceful entry. That didn’t necessarily mean Tookta knew her killer. Most of Bangkok slept with the windows open.
The victim’s purse was on the kitchen table.
The money and credit cards were gone but the cosmetics were still inside.
Kanjana pulled out the lipstick and examined it.
“Lipstick,” Prarie said.
Kanjana unscrewed the bottom to find a small reservoir.
“It’s empty,” she said.
Prarie didn’t get it.
“What is it?”
“You put drugs in here,” she said. “You slip it into the guy’s drink. He passes out, you take his money.”
Kanjana sniffed it.
“Can you tell what it was?”
No.
She couldn’t.
She put it in her pocket, headed back into the bedroom and looked out the window. Across the street, down a ways, was a bar with a neon dragon sign and a blue door. It would be open late. Maybe someone saw something.
“Come on,” she said.
THE DRAGON’S BREATH BAR actually smelled like its name and was so dim that the women slowed after the door shut to keep from bumping into anything. The wall to the right had shelves of backlit liquor, throwing off enough light to show a long wooden counter that ran all the way down.
Three men sat on barstools near the back.
The tables and booths were all empty.
A crappy song dripped painfully out of crappy speakers somewhere near the ceiling.
The man behind the counter headed their way.
He was big and had one of those faces that made people stare, but not in a good way.
“A woman got killed across the street Monday night,” Kanjana said.
“I know.”
“Maybe someone from here saw something,” she said. “Has there been any talk?”
“Are you a cop?”
She shook her head.
“No, an investigator. Has there been any talk?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
He shrugged.
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Like what?”
The man put his elbows on the counter and leaned towards her.
“Right now, I can’t remember,” he said. “Why don’t you show me your tits and see if that refreshes my memory.”
Prarie tugged on Kanjana’s arm.
“Come on, let’s get out of this dump.”
KANJANA DIDN’T FOLLOW. Instead, she put her elbows on the counter and leaned into the man until their faces were just inches apart. “Now you wouldn’t be messing with me, would you?”
He chuckled.
“You never know, maybe I am.”
“Because I’ll do it,” Kanjana said. “If you really have something to say, I’ll show you my tits. But if I do it and you don’t have anything, you’ll run into an incredible string of bad luck.”
“Like what?”
Kanjana ran a finger down his chest.
“That would take all the fun out of it, if I told you in advance.”
The man grabbed her hand.
He brought it to his mouth.
Then licked it.
“Show me your tits.”
71
Day 4—August 16
Thursday Afternoon
BEHIND PETCHPON’S HOUSE was a railroad yard being worked by a red switcher. Teffinger and Jinka hugged the boxcars until they got adjacent to the backyard, then headed straight for the structure and entered through a half-opened window.
The main room was normal.
&n
bsp; The kitchen was normal.
The bedroom was anything but.
Newspaper clippings and photographs were tacked to the wall. Teffinger pointed to the photo at the right and said, “That’s you.”
Jinka studied it.
“This was taken last week,” she said. “See these newspaper clippings? These are the cases I was telling you about.”
Teffinger shook his head.
Unbelievable.
“Do you know why your picture is up here?”
No.
Not really.
“Because he figured out you’re investigating him,” Teffinger said. “You’re next.”
He studied the photo of the woman to the left of Jinka.
She looked familiar.
Then it came to him.
She was Kanjana, the private investigator that Teffinger saw briefly in hopes of arranging a safe harbor. He tapped his finger on it and said, “Who’s this?”
Jinka leaned in.
Her face was blank.
“She’s not a case, if that’s what you’re getting at,” she said. “If she’s dead, her body hasn’t show up. Maybe she’s another work in progress, like me.”
Teffinger headed for the closet.
“If he’s got a shrine, he’s got souvenirs too,” he said. “Let’s find them.”
THEY FOUND NOTHING in the closet or on the whole first floor level for that matter. The door to the basement was locked. They hunted around for a key and couldn’t find one. If they broke it down, the man would know someone had been in. Which was more important, seeing what was down there or keeping the intrusion a secret?
Teffinger stared at the door.
“I’m going to break it down.”
Jinka said nothing.
Weighing the pros and cons.
Then she grabbed his arm and said, “The hinges are on this side.”
She was right.
They could be popped out.
Two minutes later they had the door off.
There was a light switch on the wall, just inside, but it didn’t work. Not a speck of light came from below.
They found a flashlight in a kitchen drawer.
Then headed down creaky wooden stairs one step at a time.
72
Day 4—August 16
Thursday Afternoon
THE BUZZ ABOUT RAIN’S MURDER was more intense than Wing expected, even here in Bangkok. It dominated the Internet and the news. The radio waves were filled with Rain’s songs. Musicians were paying tribute. In Hong Kong, groups were gathered in the streets. As someone who produced Rain’s two most famous videos, Wing’s phone rang nonstop.
“Let me see that picture again,” he said, referring to the one Jamaica lifted from Jinka’s kitchen drawer.
Jamaica pulled it out of her back pocket.
“I remember where I know this guy from,” Wing said. “He’s a detective.”
“A detective?”
“Right. What the hell’s his name? It starts with a P.” He scrunched his face. “He gets on the news every now and then.” A pause, then he grinned. “Petchpon, that’s his name, Petchpon.”
“He can’t be the one we’re looking for,” Jamaica said. “Why would a detective want Teffinger dead? There’s no reason.”
True.
No obvious reason, anyway.
“Plus, isn’t he Thai?”
Yes.
He was.
“You said the blackmailer had an accent,” Jamaica said.
“He did.”
“So he’s not the one.”
“That’s weird the way you said that, the one,” Wing said. “Maybe we made a fatal flaw thinking there was just one person. Maybe there are two people working together.”
“You mean Petchpon and someone else?”
“It’s possible.”
They found out where the man lived.
And headed over.
THERE WAS A RAILROAD YARD behind Petchpon’s house. They approached from that direction and took a moment to study the house from behind a boxcar. Good thing, too, because something happened they didn’t expect. A man opened the back door, stuck his head out and looked around.
The man was tall.
He had long black hair.
“That’s Teffinger,” Jamaica said. “From the passport.”
Yes.
It was.
Wing grabbed her arm and pulled her even deeper behind the boxcar. They watched as Teffinger came out the back door, followed by a woman, no doubt the detective he was staying with—Jinka. They closed the door behind them, made sure it was locked and then looked around for nosy neighbors. They spotted no one, then headed at a brisk walk directly towards the railroad yard.
Directly towards Wing and Jamaica, to be exact.
“Come on!”
They ran over to the next row of cars, jumped a knuckle and hid behind the wheels of a gondola.
Teffinger and the woman walked past.
The man’s muscles and weight were palpable.
After they left, Jamaica said, “He’s a freaking Tarzan.”
Sweat rolled down Wing’s forehead into his eyes.
He wiped it out with the back of his hand.
“You don’t want to mess with that,” Jamaica said.
73
Day 4—August 16
Thursday Afternoon
KANJANA UNBUTTONED HER BLOUSE, pulled her bra up and wiggled her breasts back and forth, both to the amazement of the bartender, Prarie and the three guys at the end of the bar.
“Okay, talk.”
“Very nice,” the bartender said.
“Talk.”
“Okay, but leave them out.”
“Talk and talk quick.”
“I really do have something for you,” the bartender said. “You’ll be glad you did it.”
“You’re stalling.”
He smiled.
“Yes I am.”
She covered up.
He shook his head and said, “I only talk when they’re out. That’s the deal.”
She pulled her blouse back open.
“I’m losing my patience.”
The man looked up to her eyes, briefly, then cast his gaze back down. “There’s a guy who comes in here,” he said. “Monday night, it was storming out when he left. He saw a man crawling out a window of the apartment building across the street. They looked at each other as they passed.” A beat, then, “I want to touch them.”
No.
That wasn’t the deal.
She leaned in so he could see them better.
“So who was it that this guy saw?”
“One squeeze.”
KANJANA HESITATED.
“One. No more.”
The man cupped a breast in each hand, then ran his thumbs over her nipples.
She pulled away but stayed exposed.
“Answer the question.”
“Those are very nice,” the man said. “The guy he saw wasn’t Thai. He was white and had long, black hair halfway down his back. He was also tall, a full head taller than most.”
“How old?”
“I don’t know,” the man said. “He didn’t say.”
Kanjana exhaled.
“Did this guy tell the cops?”
The bartender chuckled.
“He’s not real fond of cops. Neither am I.”
Kanjana pulled her bra down, buttoned her blouse and said, “Thanks.”
“Any time.”
OUTSIDE, THE SUN BLINDED THEM.
“The guy sounds like the one who came to see you,” Prarie said. “The one I passed in the stairway.”
Kanjana nodded.
“Teffinger.”
Nick Teffinger.
Right.
Him.
“He told me he killed someone but wouldn’t say who,” Kanjana said. “Now we know. It was Tookta.”
Right.
Tookta.
“Case solved,” Prarie said.
“Not really.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s more like case over than case solved.”
“I don’t get it,” Prarie said.
Kanjana shook her head.
“I always knew something like this would happen some day,” she said. “Intersecting clients.”
Huh?
“Technically, Teffinger was a client of mine,” Kanjana said. “He came to see me in confidence. I have a duty of loyalty to him. That means I can’t use what he told me against him. I can’t tell the other client about him.”
“That’s weird.”
“It’s called a conflict of interest,” Kanjana said. “That happens when two independent clients come into conflict with each other. When that happens, there’s only one thing to do, namely to withdraw from representing the one who came latest in time, which in this case is the mystery client.”
“So what do you do? Give him his money back?”
Kanjana nodded.
Exactly.
“I give the money back—all of it—tell him a conflict has developed and that I can no longer represent him.”
Prarie considered it.
“The mystery client would probably pay for you to overlook the conflict.”
Kanjana agreed.
But said, “That’s not the way I operate.”
“You’re not even going to negotiate?”
No.
No.
No.
“There’s one thing in the world more important than any other,” she said. “And that’s being able to sleep at night.”
74
Day 4—August 16
Thursday Afternoon
WALKING BACK TO THE CAR through the railroad yard, Teffinger was 98 percent sure that Petchpon was the one who killed Aspen Leigh but wasn’t a hundred percent, primarily because he found no souvenirs in Petchpon’s house, either of Aspen Leigh or any of the other victims, and because there was nothing on the bedroom wall relating to Aspen.
“Why doesn’t he have any souvenirs?” Teffinger asked.
“Because he’s a detective,” Jinka said. “He knows what evidence is. He’s not going to keep any around. The opposite, if anything.”
“The wall’s pretty incriminating.”