And if they had made a decision to help, why try to kill Katharine? Madison had no doubt that was what had happened, that they had got to her friend before she did, determined to prevent her decoding those files. Why give Madison the files with one hand, only to attempt to take them away, or at least render them useless, with the other?
Unless …
Her head was banging, images of a left and a right hand flashing up unbidden. She went to the LA Times database and raced through the last profile that had been written on Chen Jun, ‘the secretive colonel who is the most powerful Chinese official in Los Angeles.’ It was an embarrassingly moist piece, one of those ‘at home with …’ articles that reeked of controlled access and copy approval. It had appeared in the weekend magazine a while ago, back, Maddy noted, when Howard was its editor: the man had the spine of a jellyfish.
Having gleaned nothing of value there, Madison read the coverage on the day Chen’s appointment as garrison commander had been announced four years earlier. It told how he was a favourite of the then-president, tipped for great things within the PLA. There was some general background on the enduring rivalry between the Army and the Party, how the two remained distinct, with their own bases of power. The president who had promoted Chen was unusual among Party men, the article said, because he maintained good relations with the men in uniform.
An idea was forming. Madison opened a fresh tab and searched for similar pieces about the new man, Yang Zheng, due to replace the current president in that autumn’s transition. Lots of detail on his record of economic management but it was this paragraph that leapt out:
… he made his name as a reforming governor of Guangdong province, building a reputation as a scourge of corruption. In one clash, he faced steep resistance from the People’s Liberation Army over a dispute relating to taxation. Party insiders say that wound has never completely healed and that relations remain strained between Yang and the military …
So that was her mistake. Just because China was a one-party state did not make it a one-faction state. There were rivalries and turf wars there, the same as anywhere else: every place in the world had politics. Including, it seemed, Terminal Island.
No wonder Chen had been only too happy to feed her the damning evidence on Yang Zhitong: he saw an opportunity to derail the rise of an antagonist, the anti-Army, Party apparatchik set to be anointed president. And what more effective way than by exposing his son as a murderer?
He had done it alone too, she was sure of that. It must have been a subordinate, still believing his orders were to thwart Madison’s investigations by whatever means necessary, who’d sent a car to take out Katharine Hu last night. If Chen had known about it, he’d certainly not stopped it. He needed to keep his own plan hidden.
The Reuters snap was still zipping across the top of her screen. Chinese state news agency reporting an important announcement concerning the future of Yang Zheng to be made shortly.
He would soon be gone, his presidency aborted. All thanks to Chen Jun – and thanks to her. That was why the Colonel had pressed her so hard during the interrogation: he needed to know exactly what she knew and what she did not know. She had revealed that she suspected a Princeling, but she did not know which one. Which had given him his opening, the chance to direct her to the man he wanted to expose.
Madison sat back in her chair and stared at the ceiling. How long had the Colonel known, she wondered. Had he let Yang carry on killing, the more completely to destroy his father? Had he deliberately let one of his young officers kill woman after woman, just to defeat a political rival? To think that was why Abigail had died: collateral damage in a battle of Beijing factions played out on the streets of Los Angeles. Madison drew no satisfaction in exposing it. Because, she understood now, her big scoop had simply enabled one side to move against another. In the power game that had claimed her sister’s life she had been an unwitting accomplice.
She looked at Chen’s face on the screen. How pleased he must be with how his scheme had worked out. It had operated flawlessly, everyone, including Madison, playing their assigned part.
Or rather, almost flawlessly. There was one defect in his plan – and it was her.
Chapter 54
‘I think it’s time I bought you some dinner.’
Madison looked up, with the blinking eyes of someone emerging from the movie theatre on a sunny afternoon. It was Jane, freshly made-up, standing over her desk with her coat on. At her side, as bright-eyed and eager as a paid escort, was Howard. She half-expected to see him carrying the boss’s bag.
‘Actually, there are a few things I kind of need to—’
‘Oh, come on, Maddy. No more work now. You worked harder than anyone in this building even before this week. Let me treat you.’
She had to think. ‘Tell you what. Why don’t I just make these calls – you know, to my sister and my mom – and catch you right up?’
‘Well, I don’t really think that’s good enough,’ Goldstein said, pursing her lips slightly in a feigned expression of hurt. ‘But we’ll be at Vidalia. I think we should have a conversation about you.’ She gave Madison a friendly poke in the shoulder with a newly varnished nail, signalling that she had good news and was in a hurry to impart it. She thought of Jane Goldstein’s own career: big story followed by big promotion.
‘Be right there,’ Maddy said, flashing her best, if most confected, smile.
Once they were gone, the rest of the newsroom began to empty out.
The mention of Quincy and her mother, offered up as an excuse, left Madison with a pang of guilt. She reached into her bag, found a phone and did the old Katharine trick, setting up a divert on her old number so that unopened messages left there now came here. After a few seconds, the machine went berserk, with texts and voicemails. She didn’t bother with the latter – too time-consuming – but waded through the others. Plaudits mostly, including a sheepish text from Charlie Hughes: ‘I’m glad it all worked out. Well done.’ Countless congratulations, including one from Leo that she read twice and then once more: I already knew you were the best reporter in America. But I underestimated you. L x
There was a string from Quincy, the older messages pleading with her to get in touch, then one from earlier that afternoon, around the time her story had been posted, saying, Is this really true? Do you really think you’ve found the man who killed Abigail? And finally, Please call. Am with Mom. She’s doing her Sudoku right now, but she’d love to see you. We both would. Q x
Madison smiled and knocked out a quick holding reply, stood up, paced a while and sat back down. She didn’t like this feeling, of being used. It offended her to think she had been so easily manipulated, Chen sitting there inside his well-protected base, pulling her strings. It annoyed her that she had not been more sceptical.
She needed to return to first principles, to retrace each one of her steps of the last week. In the rubble of her desk she found a fresh sheet of paper and a pen and set out, in the baldest note form, what she knew.
Each one of the victims had had some kind of association with the garrison. Eveline had worked there, Rosie had just visited there on the day she was killed, Abigail performed for men from there. The drug that killed them was associated with the base. That was not manipulation. Those were just the facts and they pointed inescapably at Garrison 41.
Now she looked at it again. What did she know of the way the women had been killed? For one thing, though the LAPD had sought to keep it hidden, the killer had left a calling card, the single silk poppy in the underwear. He had wanted to leave no doubt that the women had been murdered and that they’d been murdered by the same killer. In the most recent case, that of Mary Doherty, he had also left crucial evidence behind: the drugs paraphernalia, including the telltale bag of heroin #3 that had led ineluctably to the base. Did that mean Yang had become less careful as time had gone on – or did it mean something else?
Maddy had half-contemplated the question before but not made too much of it
. Based on her experience covering homicide cases, she knew that some serial killers became more skilled as they went on while others became over-confident and started making mistakes. But this felt different.
She sprang up out of her chair and began to pace; the synapses were firing now. Something else she knew: serial killers were often attention-seekers who could grow irritated if denied credit for their work. How infuriating it must have been for Yang that his poppy signature was kept secret, that publicly at least Rosario and Eveline were not even regarded as murder victims at all, but as suicides. Is that why he had left behind the heroin bag after killing Mary, so that there could be no doubt? It pointedly directed the police and Madison to the base – and to him.
Now she thought of the four victims, not only sharing a link to the garrison but all attractive young women whose deaths had sparked the outrage of the American media and public. Whose deaths were, in fact, bound to spark outrage. And all of it leading back not just to any Chinese recruit or official, but the elite of the elite, a culprit at the very top – one with a proven record of alarming aggression towards women.
The smarter homicide cops downtown used to talk about an ‘orgy of evidence’. Jeff Howe had used that phrase once, about a case where the crime scene included so much that was incriminating, he suspected some of it had been planted. The words popped into Madison’s head, and then out again. This was not quite an orgy; each element of it had a quite plausible explanation.
No, what Maddy was thinking about was her mother, hunched over her Sudoku puzzle, excitedly coming up with what looked like a solution, hurriedly writing in the numbers, which added up this way and that, fitting perfectly – only to discover that they came unstuck. It had happened a hundred times, her mother finally sighing the same, resigned sentence: ‘It’s too good to be true.’
Still standing, Madison clicked back to the LA Times website and then on a whole lot of others. Her story was on the front page or leading news bulletins all around the world: the BBC, New York Times, Al-Jazeera, the Guardian, even, after a fashion, the China Daily and Xinhua.
Her head was pounding. The son of the Chinese future president exposed as a serial killer of American women, his method of murder freighted with historic and symbolic significance for the two countries? She knew what her mother would say. And, Maddy feared with a rising sensation of nausea, her mother would be right.
But if the story she had sent around the world was wrong, what was the truth? The inkling she had was so faint, she hardly knew how to pursue it.
Chapter 55
She spent the cab journey working over the same facts, again and again. Try as she might, she could not find a new configuration. She was stuck in the same groove.
As she stared out of the window, Madison sought to imagine an alternative to what would remain the working hypothesis till something better came along: that Yang was a killer with an ego, who had left a trail of evidence pointing to him because he somehow craved the credit. If it was not Yang, there had been a deliberate attempt to frame him. But who was behind that? And, much more importantly, if Yang was not the killer, who was?
Logic suggested the answer to one question would be the answer to both. Yang had been at the scene of every death; the GPS tracker established that. It was absurd to think that a lucky triple or quadruple coincidence. No, the probability was that the killer had committed his crimes exactly when and where he knew Yang was close by. To do that would have required an intimate knowledge of Yang’s life, with the ability to follow and predict his movements, who he would meet and where he would go. It would have needed familiarity with Yang’s past, the understanding that the spoiled, obnoxious young officer would be easy to cast as a man capable of killing women.
There was only one person who checked all those boxes. For a moment, she summoned the memory of Dr Lei, the man of medicine, utterly familiar with needles and skilled in using them. It was easy to imagine him harbouring some pathological obsession with blonde women or else the desire to set up the privileged Yang for a fall. But then she remembered: he had been out of the country for the last month, away when at least three of the four murders had taken place.
That left only Chen Jun. He was in a position to know whatever he needed to know about Yang, who was under his direct command. He merely had to follow Yang, watch where he went, find a suitable victim – and know that the GPS record would go a long way towards convicting the young officer.
But that row of numbers did not add up either. Too good to be true. She only had to think of the lengths Chen had gone to, at least at first, to keep her from discovering Yang, doubtless leaning on the pliant Chief of Police, blocking the path of his detectives, making sure, by whatever intermediary, Maddy ran headlong down the blind alley that led to a wounded and physically harmless army veteran.
Chen’s reaction to her first story mentioning the base had surely been alarm, worried about the political damage a killer on his patch would cause. At that time, he had striven hard to steer her away: tailing her, stalking her, intimidating her. That effort, she guessed, had culminated in Chen sending those thugs to beat her up at Mario’s rally outside the base, his clearest instruction to back off. He only changed tack, leaking the critical information on Yang’s past, once he was assured she had no other suspect in mind. He was as ignorant of the killer’s identity as she had been. Her performance on the base with Charlie had given him a hint, pointing him towards the Princelings. He’d obviously made his own inquiries, checked the GPS numbers and seized his chance to damage a major political rival.
Chen had originally wanted to block her – until he realized she could be nudged into advancing his interests. His action had been thoroughly opportunist. If she was right and Yang had been framed, someone else had done the framing.
She paid the cab and was glad to see the lights on in the Padilla house. As she got nearer, the sound suggested the house was full too.
One of the countless cousins opened the door, her face registering surprise before she flung her arms around Maddy. ‘Thank you so much, Madison,’ the woman said into Maddy’s neck. ‘Thank you so much. You brought justice for our Rosie. I didn’t think we’d ever see it.’ She held her tight, until Madison felt her neck turn wet from the woman’s tears. She was reminded again how this outcome suited absolutely everyone: the bereaved, including Quincy and her mother, the LA Times, Jane and Howard, Colonel Chen, Leo, Berger and the Democratic party, the President of the United States – pretty well everyone, in fact, except the young jerk called Yang Zhitong, who was about to spend his life behind bars (or worse), and her, the girl who never learned to leave well alone.
‘Is Mario here? There’s something I—’
‘Mario!’ the woman shouted, as if they were still kids in their mom’s house. ‘He’ll be right down.’
Mario appeared from the kitchen at the end of the corridor, wiping his lips.
‘I’m sorry,’ Maddy began. ‘You’re eating. I didn’t mean—’
‘No, just a quiet family dinner.’
‘For fifty people.’
He smiled. ‘Something like that. Join us?’
‘I’d love to, Mario,’ and as she caught the smells of hot, home cooking, she meant it. ‘But I just need to ask you something.’
‘OK. But let me get you a beer. I owe you one.’
They went to the room where they had spoken a few days ago, though it felt as if years had passed since then. She held the bottle of beer Mario gave her, but did not drink.
‘Mario, something you said at the rally the other day.’
‘Which one! I’ve almost lost track.’
‘You said there were other cases which needed to be reopened too. “Go back through the record of the last few years, and you’ll see crimes that were never punished, suspects never arrested, charges never brought.” You were talking about the base. It sounded like you’d found something.’
‘Yeah, I did some research.’ He took a swig from his bottle. ‘You re
ally want to get into this now? It’s Saturday night, Madison. The bad guy’s in jail. You got him.’
‘I know. Just indulge me. Did you go through the records?’
Mario nodded.
‘And what did you find?’
‘There’s quite a lot of shit there, Madison.’
‘Are we talking about more murders?’
‘No, we’re not. I found a few cases of drunk driving. Just waved away with a warning. No prosecution. Some fights, you know, in a bar. And several rapes.’
‘I remember hearing something about that.’
‘You won’t have heard much. They hushed those up pretty good. Usually just a blanket denial and the suspect quietly flown back to China.’
‘But?’
‘But some are easier to keep quiet than others. Some victims keep talking, filing complaints.’
‘And those are the ones you picked up in your research?’
He took another chug of beer, nodding as he did so.
‘And do you have a record of all that? Could I see it?’
He looked wary. ‘What’s this about, Madison?’
‘I’m not sure yet. I just want to be …’ She thought about telling him what she was thinking, how the Yang story was too neat, how at every step the evidence all but invited investigators to look for the culprit on the base, but she held herself back. ‘I think there might be an opening,’ she said instead. ‘The taboo has been broken. For the first time, the base has been forced to respond to public pressure. Thanks to you.’ She smiled, to reinforce the compliment. ‘I think we might be able to get more action on these other cases.’
‘What, now?’
‘No, not now this minute.’ She smiled again, as if to say, I’m not that crazy. ‘But we need to move fairly fast. Before this window closes again. You know, for the sake of the other families.’
‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘I’ll show you where I got to. Then will you have something to eat?’
The 3rd Woman Page 39