Jed arrived just as the big courthouse clock chimed the hour. “Why the cynical expression?” he asked, pulling out a chair.
“Just thinking about our affluent citizenry.”
Jed laughed. “This is one town where you don’t dare talk about anybody. I nearly blew my practice before I realized most of the people in Ursa Bay are interrelated.” He picked up the menu. “You think a bowl of clam chowder will warm the inner man?”
“It ought to help.” She ordered a bowl, too. When the server left, she took a brown envelope and her notebook from her purse. “My father checked out Cam’s male acquaintances. All but two have alibis.”
“He’ll keep on digging, won’t he?”
“You can count on it. He ran all the fingerprints we’ve found through Seattle’s automated I.D. system.” She blew out her breath. “Our suspect, or suspects, has never been arrested. And the license numbers of Fenwick’s employees didn’t give us any leads either. The Caucasians don’t have records and the two Asians apparently don’t own cars.”
“What did you find out about the woman Cam was with the night of Mai’s murdered?”
Amy explained about Chea Le’s sham address and the disconnected phones. “The apartment where Cam claims she took him is a demonstrator. The manager denies ever knowing Miss Le, or that anyone ever used the apartment.”
“So where’s that leave you?”
“I’ll go over the clothes Cam wore and try to match them with the fibers I took from the apartment. Maybe I’ll find something that will prove he was there.”
“That’s all the hope you can give me?”
“When Cam played handball at Fenwick’s Athletic Club, he put his house keys in his locker. Combination locks can be fixed so they won’t close properly.”
“So somebody could have made copies of Cam’s keys.”
“Next time I see Cam, I’ll find out where he keeps his gym bag.”
“I’ve arranged Cam’s bail. He needs to be out to make preparations for the Buddhist funeral.”
Amy felt a sharp stab of remorse. “I’ve been so engrossed in this darned investigation, I’d forgotten about Mai.”
Jed looked equally guilt-ridden. “I’m ashamed to say it, but that goes with the territory.”
Amy sighed, opened her notebook, and ran her finger down the list she’d made. “We found a half-eaten piece of caramel candy in the woods where our suspect conducted a stakeout. The forensic dentist I sent it to says the man has a chipped front tooth.”
“Oh, brother! Now we have a guy who smokes Djarum cigarettes, has flat feet, and a chipped tooth. So where the hell is he?”
Amy dumped the contents of a brown envelope on the table. “These are snapshots a friend of mine took of some of Wheeler’s residents.”
Jed put on his glasses, shuffled through the five-by-sevens, and handed them back. “Doesn’t mean much to me.”
She singled out a picture. “See this man, with the cap pulled down low?”
“Yes. What about him?”
She chose a photo from several she hadn’t shown him. “This is an enlargement of his face.”
“Good Lord, he’s got a chipped front tooth. Who is he?”
“I don’t know.” She laid another photo on the table. “This is a blowup of the hooded man I saw last time I was at Cam’s house.”
“Ugh. No wonder he scared you.”
“Notice his teeth?”
“I’ll be damned.” Jed’s face lit up. “Hey, all we have to do is take these pictures and show them around Wheeler. Somebody is bound to identify him.”
She shook her head. “Not if he’s one of the yavana they fear.”
Jed regarded her intently as a shaft of sunshine momentarily flooded through the window, crossing over her face. He leaned across the table. “Amy, what happened to you?”
She grimaced. “Are they still noticeable? My brakes failed a few days ago. I rapped my head on the windshield.”
“Jesus, Amy, are you okay? And the babies?”
“We’re all fine. A bit of a scare though. My car was tampered with.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
He regarded her with a grave expression. “I need solid evidence to get Cam off, but goddamn it, Amy, it’s not worth your life.”
14
Amy entered the prayer hall with Hue and found a secluded corner. She had never been to a Buddhist temple, and the unfamiliar setting made her nervous. She had expected to find a gathering of friends. Yet aside from the monks, she and Hue were the only mourners present.
“Look at all the gifts,” Hue said, pointing to an alcove where gleaming multiple images of the Buddha were enshrined. On a dais below the images sat wooden, china, and crockery bowls containing fruit and other articles of food. A pleased expression wreathed Hue’s face. “Many people have been here.”
The monk’s soft musical chanting filled the temple, and within minutes, Amy found herself becoming relaxed and peaceful.
Hue gestured to the monks. “They chant to help Mai release positive energies.”
Amy nodded in a rather dazed manner. A kaleidoscope of sights, smells, and sounds crowded her senses, incense, subdued lights, dozens of candle flames reflecting off the gleaming Buddha statues.
Hue went forward, laid the food she and Amy had prepared on the alter in front of the Buddha, knelt, and prayed, then rejoined Amy.
“The state of a person’s mind when he or she dies determines their rebirth,” Hue said in a low voice. “People who die violently run a great risk.”
Amy stared at her. “But that’s not right. The way Mai died wasn’t her fault.”
“These days the priests take that into account. However, there was a time when the body of a woman who had gone through any violence, even childbirth, was not allowed in the temple.”
Her statement rankled Amy but she kept her feelings about the sexist practice to herself. “When will Mai be cremated?”
“When the priests feel they’ve done as much as they can for her lingering spirit.”
Her chest tight with pity, Amy watched Cam shuffled into the temple flanked on either side by a priest in golden-colored robes. At sight of Cam’s ashen face, his dull, lusterless eyes, a lump gathered in her throat and she tasted salty tears.
Hue touched her arm and whispered, “He’ll want to be alone.”
Outside, Amy smacked her fist against her palm. “Justice! Dammit, Mai never harmed anyone in her whole life. But she’s dead and the man who killed her is out there and,” her voice broke, “and I still don’t have the faintest idea who the rotten bastard is.”
“You’ll find him, Amy.” Hue patted her arm. “I know you will.”
The next morning, Amy sat at the conference table drizzling honey over a toasted English muffin while B.J. watched her with an expression of disbelief. “This can’t be my daughter. She’s eating without me nagging her.”
Amy laughed. “I had cereal, juice, and toast an hour ago, but I’m still hungry.” She cocked her head and grinned at him. “And you’re just jealous because you can’t have honey on your muffin.”
“Damn right, I am.” The cordless phone at his elbow rang. He picked it up and answered, “Dr. B.J. Prescott here.” He cradled the receiver between cheek and shoulder, pulled a scratch pad toward him, and picked up a pencil. “What’s his name? He worked the evening shift? When did you find him?” He scribbled some notes. “How’d he die? The sheriff been notified? Good. Don’t let anyone touch anything. We’ll be there in about thirty minutes.”
B.J. lay down the phone. “That was Cam. He stayed with friends in Seattle last night. Today, he went to Wheeler to make sure everything was all right at Pran’s greenhouses. The day workers said when they arrived this morning, they found Gan Haing, the night man, dead.”
“Homicide?”
“Nothing to indicate that. Could have been a heart attack. He was sixty years old.”
“The sheriff coming?” Whe
n her father nodded, she stood up. “We’d better get going before he decides to take Cam into custody again.”
By a stroke of good fortune, they drove into the parking area of the Nguyen house at the same time that Sheriff Boyce and Dr. Homer Epps, the coroner, pulled up. While B.J. greeted the men, Amy looked around her. Five of the gabled greenhouses had cement floors, glass walls, and adjustable glass panels in the roof. The other four consisted of wooden frameworks covered with clear plastic sheeting.
Cam, his small-boned features drawn into tense, haggard lines, beckoned from the middle glassed-in structure. Amy and the three men joined him. “He’s down at the far end,” Cam said. He led the way between rows of benches holding green plastic pots filled with red, pink, and lavender geraniums.
A spice fragrance scented the warm humid air, reminding Amy of summer gardens, but the sight of the still, white-haired man lying on a layer of burlap bags shattered the illusion.
B.J. halted the group some distance away. “Cam, how many people have been in here this morning?”
“Three. Me and two of the workers.”
“Is that where they found him?”
Cam nodded. “He was lying on his face. They’d turned him on his back and laid him on the sacks just before I arrived.”
Sheriff Boyce grunted. “A man can’t die a natural death around here without everybody getting all excited.”
B.J. swung around. “I’d rather protect the scene than regret it later.” He squatted on his heels and studied the area of cement floor on which the man lay.
After noting an exit door beyond the body, Amy hurried back the way she’d come and circled around the outside. When she reached the rear of the building, she stopped. A fifteen-foot section of soil lay between the front greenhouse and the one behind it. The rain had let up around one that morning. Since then, it was evident that someone had crossed the area, someone wearing thongs.
She searched out the workmen and asked if any of them wore thongs. None did. She glanced from one man to the next and asked if any damage had been done to the greenhouse buildings.
“Many of the potted plants were uprooted,” one man said, and pointed to one of the buildings.
She persuaded them to work elsewhere until she could film the damage and rushed back to the group. “He was here, Dad. He came in through the rear door.”
The sheriff shot her an irritated glance. “Just how do you know that?”
“Our suspect wears thongs.”
“So you say. What’s to stop my suspect here,” he waved a hand at Cam, who eyed him with an angry expression, “from putting on a pair and tracking up the place to throw suspicion off of himself?”
B.J. rose to his feet. “Amy, go open the back door and take some pictures.”
“Now just wait a damn minute, Prescott.” Sheriff Boyce glowered at B.J. “I’m the one who’s running this show.”
B.J.‘s face darkened. “The death of Mai Nguyen, her father, and this man are all related.”
“You’re off your nut.” Boyce gave Cam a walleyed look. “Did you do in her old man too?”
Cam’s steady gaze met and held the bigger man’s. “I didn’t kill anyone, Mr. Boyce.”
“You don’t fool me, New-Yen, or Win, or whatever the hell your name is. You’re guilty as hell.”
“Now, Fred.” Dr. Homer Epps straightened thin, sloping shoulders garbed in a brown, double-breasted suit and clasped his hands together in front of his chest. “The judge and the prosecuting attorney might not approve of,”
“Who the hell cares? This thing is getting out of hand.”
“You’re right, Sheriff,” B.J. said in a controlled voice. “There’s something rotten going on in Wheeler. You’d be wise to let us gather the proper evidence, otherwise your prosecuting attorney could end up with a damned red face. Most places that’s a good way for a sheriff to get himself fired.”
Boyce ran a hand over his face and shifted his feet. “Well, if you’re gonna do something, do it. I ain’t got all day.”
Cam accompanied Amy to her father’s van and helped carry her gear around back. “Are you going to stay in the house?” she asked him as she recorded the film number in the log she kept.
“I can’t bring myself to even open the door,” he answered.
“Perhaps Hue Quoy and I could straighten up the place and,”
“No. I’ll call a housecleaning service.” He let out a long sigh. “I’ll never be able to live there. Maybe I can rent it.” He made a vague gesture. “Shit, I can’t think straight enough to make a decision right now.”
She put her arm around his shoulders. “Things can wait. And if you need someone to talk to, you know my number.”
He squeezed her hand. “Thanks, Amy, I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you and your father for what you’re doing.”
She patted his back and jerked her head toward the greenhouse. “I’d better get busy before the tension inside blows the roof off.”
Being careful where she placed her feet, she opened the rear door and took the necessary pictures. “Okay, Dad, you can move him now. There’s a footprint here I want to lift.”
While her father and Dr. Epps examined the body, Amy marked off the area with crime tape and asked Cam to bring in one of the kits.
“What’s this?” he asked, crouching down beside her.
“An electrostatic print lifter.”
“Which is…?”
“You ever notice how dusty your TV screen gets?”
“Sure,” Cam answered.
“Televisions produce a high-voltage current that attracts dust. This device uses the same principle to lift impressions. Works best if the impression has some type of dry residue adhering to it.”
She took a flat piece of metal from the case. “This is the ground plate, and this,” she held up a black sheet of material, “is polyester film coated on one side with a conductive metal laminate.” She carefully lowered the film over the footprint, picked up a metal probe, touched the metalized backing of the film with the probe’s tip, and turned on the voltage.
Cam watched with interest as the film flattened tightly against the concrete floor. “The electrical charge causes the impression to record on the film. Right?”
She turned off the voltage. “That’s the general idea.” After waiting a few seconds for the charge to dissipate, she transferred the film to a paper folder and anchored it in place. “I’ll examine the film in a darkroom, then photograph the impression.” She snapped the briefcase closed. “Now, let’s go outside and make some casts of the man’s thong prints.”
After she’d finished pouring the cast mixture into the deep impressions, she picked up her camcorder. “While that’s setting, we can check the other greenhouses.”
Cam pushed open the door of the adjacent building and gaped. Row after row of camellia, mimosa, magnolia, and jasmine had been jerked from their green plastic pots, and the soil dumped onto the floor. “My God!”
“That’s what he did to all of the plants in your house.” She started the camcorder. “Can any of these be saved?”
He shook his head sadly. “I don’t know, I’ll have to ask the men.”
The plants in the next building had also been vandalized. The greenhouses behind and the ones adjacent to where Gan Haing’s body lay had been spared.
Cam and Amy walked toward a long shed where the workers huddled together. “Why is he doing this, Amy? What’s he after?”
“I don’t know. I told you what Hue said about the men who are terrorizing the townspeople.”
“But why target Mai and Chantou?” Tears filmed his eyes. “Mai never harmed anyone and Chantou was a kind, peaceable man.”
“Our suspect thinks your father-in-law had something of value. He also thought Mai knew where it was. He screened most of the loose articles in your house and took off all the electrical outlet covers, so whatever it is can’t be too large.”
“It doesn’t make sense. Chantou worked eighteen h
ours a day to keep his business going. If he had anything of value, wouldn’t he have used it to make his life easier?” He ran a hand across his eyes. “And if Mai knew, why the hell didn’t she tell the man who attacked her? Why, Amy? Why? Maybe he wouldn’t have…”
He rested his forehead against the building and beat his fist on the splintery boards.
Amy put out her hand to comfort him, but before her fingers touched him, he wheeled around. His face held no expression, but a wild light burned in his dark eyes. “I’m going to find him, Amy. I’m going to find him and kill the son of a bitch the way he killed Mai!”
15
After B.J. and Dr. Epps removed Gan Haing’s body from the stainless steel autopsy table, Amy sluiced the table warm water and wiped it dry. When she finished cleaning, she joined the men in the conference room.
Dr. Epps glanced up, his hazel eyes gleaming with excitement. Since he’d watched her father perform Mai’s autopsy, he’d become a forensic convert. Today, he’d kept up a steady flow of questions throughout the procedure. “Amy, what do you make of the contusions on his stomach, the back of his neck, and his heels?”
She remembered Nathan taking on a man twice his size. A swift blow to the neck and sternum and the man had collapsed without a sound. “Because both his neck and back were broken, I thought at first that all of them might be from high impact blows. However,”
“Couldn’t have been, kitten.” B.J. shoved a pad toward her on which he’d drawn several sketches of a man. “His hand had to have been flat on Gan’s neck for us to have found the fingerprints. I figure, his assailant got him in a half nelson and rammed his feet onto the concrete. That’s about the only way his back could have gotten broken in three places.”
Amy shivered. “That would account for the severe contusions on his heels.”
Dr. Epps ran his hand over his thinning sandy hair and licked his lips. “The bastard’s heartless. He could have knocked Mr. Haing out and tied him up. He didn’t have to kill him.”
Amy pulled out a chair and sank onto it. While doing the autopsy, she’d thought about Mr. Haing and the life he’d led. Through the years, he’d burned up the fat on his body. The sinew and knobby muscles that remained resembled the roots of wind-ravaged scrub mahogany. Judging from the scars and metal fragments they’d found, he’d gone through great danger before finding his way to Wheeler; where he and his tiny wife had hoped to find peace.
Lethal Legacy Page 9