MQuinn 03 - Lethal Beauty

by Wiehl, Lis

  “I did not tell them anything,” Chun said. “They asked about Lihong and I told them he left. That’s all.” When the cop and the woman had shown her the photo and told her Lihong was dead, she had realized that they could offer her no protection. That the hope that had led her to open the door to them had been a false one. But by then it was too late to undo what she had done. “They showed me a photo of his dead face and I said I had no idea who it was.”

  “Lihong is dead because he defied me.” Kenny looked at the ring of faces. “But there are things worse than death.” He turned back to Chun. “You are a fool.” His tone was conversational. “You will soon know how good your life was here, but it will be too late to get it back.” With his free hand, he grabbed one of her ears and twisted, squeezing it like a lemon. It felt like it was ripping right off her head.

  She screamed then. Blood flew from her open mouth and freckled his face. Letting her head drop, he stepped back, his features drawing together in disgust.

  “Look at her! Let this be a lesson to you all. If you try something stupid, you’ll be punished.”

  Chun saw that there was no point in trying to placate him. She might as well tell the truth. Maybe one of the others would take her words to heart and find a way to get free. “We are not slaves,” she said with her broken mouth.

  “Ha! Don’t tell me what you are and what you are not. I brought you here. I treated you like my own daughter. But no more. No more. You are a fool. You know the saying. ‘Wait to butcher the donkey until after it has finished its job on the mill.’ ” Kenny let out a sound that was somewhere between a grunt and a laugh. “Now you are the donkey. And you haven’t finished your job. You still owe me money, and you’ll still be paying me back. Just in different ways from before.” He voiced another Chinese proverb: “You’ll be like the freshly bought horse. The only way to break it in is by constantly mounting it and continually beating it.”

  He took a deep breath. “And I promise you this: you will be broken in.”

  He turned to the rest of them. “Let Chun be a lesson to you. You take what I give you and you are grateful for it. And you pay what you owe.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Bo’s feet ached. How did so many women manage to spend entire days walking around on their tiptoes? The saleswoman had told her that the high-heeled shoes she had bought were specially engineered to be more comfortable. More comfortable than what, was the question. Instruments of torture? Bo lived in sneakers, both on the floor of the tea factory and off it.

  Now she shifted from foot to throbbing foot, a cement wall cold against her back. For over an hour she had been stationed across the street from Warren Paczkowski’s apartment building. She was pretending to check her phone, randomly scrolling up and down. Not making eye contact with the men who walked by and took second and sometimes even third glances. Her new glasses with the thick black frames made her look studious, or at least like someone trying to look studious. She had purchased the clear-lensed glasses at the Spy Shop. Their thick side pieces hid a video/audio recorder. But it was her clothes that drew men’s eyes. This morning she had pulled on the tight jeans, the padded bra, and the low-cut sweater. The heels made her stand with her bottom back and her chest forward. Her coat was styled to look like a snug-fitting motorcycle jacket, only it was made of black vinyl, not leather. It was not nearly warm enough, but she hadn’t wanted to bundle up. Her body was the lure.

  And Paczkowski was the fly.

  She had prayed and prayed for justice, and she had been rewarded with nothing. Maybe eventually there would be justice in heaven, but she could not wait. Dandan deserved justice on this earth. And it wasn’t like Bo was going behind God’s back. He could watch for all she cared.

  She was willing to do whatever it took to get this man with the unpronounceable name to admit the truth. To admit that even in America, justice had gone to the highest bidder. How different were things here, really? In China, the authorities had beaten Bo and killed her baby. In America, the authorities had let the killer of her firstborn walk free.

  She closed her eyes for a second, remembering how Charlie Carlson had brought her the terrible news, knocking on her door just before nine on a Tuesday evening.

  “Are you Bo Yee?” he had asked when she peeped out.

  “Yes?” Even though she was here legally, her heart still sped up.

  “I’m with the Seattle Police Department. May I come in?”

  As he took a seat on the edge of her gold brocade chair, she realized she had never before had a man visit her apartment. She was still married, even if she had been separated from her husband for sixteen years. China would not let Bo’s family leave, and there was no more money for smugglers. It had all been spent on Bo.

  The policeman looked around her apartment, furnished with other people’s castoffs. Even her electronic keyboard, her most prized possession, had once belonged to someone else in her church.

  When Bo was lonely (and she was often, so achingly lonely), music soothed her soul. It connected her to something bigger, to something beyond words. She had found the connection by accident, when she had bought a cassette player and a half dozen tapes of classical music at a garage sale.

  Eventually she had also found a church here, one where a good number of the congregants were Chinese. Back home she had not been religious, but just like music, the sermons and the fellowship had filled some of the empty spaces inside her. She had made a few friends, people who told her about places to eat, grocery stores that sold food she recognized.

  On Sundays she had started slipping into a front pew early just so she could hear the pianist, Abigail Endicott. Watch her fingers dance over the keys, her feet move on the pedals. When Abigail saw her interest, she had offered to teach her, taken her on as a private student for free. Since Bo couldn’t afford to buy a piano, she practiced at home on the electronic keyboard Abigail gave her. After the older woman began to find it too tiring to play for both services, Bo took her seat at the piano for Sunday’s second service. Her life was a quiet round of work and church and work again.

  Now the detective asked, “Do you have a daughter named Dandan?”

  “Yes?” A tiny seed of hope sprouted within her. For a moment, she thought he was here to tell her that the Chinese government had relented, that they could be reunited.

  His expression didn’t change. “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Sixteen years ago.” A gulf of time. An eternity.

  “In China?”

  She nodded. It was impossible to find words, to form them with her tongue.

  “Any chance she could be here in Seattle?”

  Bo started to smile, but then something about his unsmiling face and shadowed eyes made the smile fall from her face like a plate from the shelf.

  “The thing is, the body of a young Asian woman has been found. And she had your address and this photo in her possession.” He took the tattered photo from his jacket pocket. It had been slipped inside a plastic sleeve. It was Bo’s family, the three of them, in a park, all of them smiling. All of them young. Taken when Bo was pregnant, although she hadn’t known it then. She held the photo and her fingertip touched her old self’s belly, then her daughter’s tiny face. Everything inside her was still. Holding its breath.

  “Could I show you a drawing of the girl’s face?”

  Bo didn’t think she had moved, but she must have nodded, because he was handing her a second plastic sleeve. Over the years her husband had managed to send her a few letters. About a year ago, the letter had been accompanied by a photo of the two of them. Even without that photo, Bo would have known her only living child’s face. In the drawing the girl’s eyes were closed, her cheekbones high, her face slim and somehow elfin.

  “That is my daughter,” she said. The words felt like she was hearing someone else say them. “That is Dandan.” This couldn’t be real. It must be a dream. Or a mistake. A terrible mistake. “How can my daughter be here? She is in Chi
na.” The words sounded as if someone else were saying them.

  “Somehow she made it over here, but we don’t think she’s been here long. She was working in a massage parlor when a client stabbed her.”

  In China her daughter worked in a roadside stand that sold soup. “But she doesn’t know how to give massages,” Bo said. A pulse of hope raced through her.

  “I’m afraid it wasn’t that kind of place. Only men went there. Do you understand what I am talking about?”

  She understood then. Through church, Bo had met other women from China, women who had been forced to pay back the human smugglers who had brought them here, pay with the only thing they had of value.

  At the funeral home, Bo asked the man who worked there if she could have some time with her daughter. He looked at her, his pouchy eyes sad and tired, and finally nodded.

  Then he opened the door to a small room where her daughter lay on a metal table. A white sheet had been pulled up to her chin. After the man left, Bo clambered up and tried to gather Dandan in her arms. Her daughter’s body was as cold and firm as the table. Like a doll. A perfect, life-sized doll, clumsily stitched in places. Bo had howled then, pressing one hand against her mouth so that only the faintest sounds leaked out.

  After she composed herself, she had cleaned her daughter’s body with a damp towel she had brought with her. She had dressed her body in the new white clothes she had purchased for her, including a long white dress. She had slipped shoes on her feet. They were too big, and for a moment she had caught herself worrying that they would blister her daughter’s feet. As if Dandan would again walk on this earth.

  Several months later, she had sat in the courtroom only a few feet from the man who had killed her daughter. Behind her tinted glasses, she had stared at him. Sweaty and red-faced and overweight. Older even than Bo. She had imagined Dandan under his weight. Listened to the lies told about her daughter and that pig of a man. Watched as Warren Paczkowski chose to ignore all the evidence of Leacham’s guilt. Paczkowski and Paczkowski alone.

  And here he was. Stepping out of his apartment building. Bo unzipped her jacket until it flapped open, pushed it back. Then she started walking, too fast, her face still tilted toward her phone, her thumbs moving as if she were texting, her hands slick on the plastic. Watching Paczkowski out of the top of her vision.

  Running into him so hard her face bounced off his chest. Her hand flew up to pin her glasses in place. She needed them for this to work.

  “Hey, watch it!” Instinctively he reached out to grab her as she teetered on her heels and started to fall.

  “Sorry.” She thrust her chest toward him. This was the man. The man who had chosen to let the killer go free. Freed the killer who felt her daughter’s life was worth less than a tissue.

  “You almost knocked me over.” The anger left his face as he looked down at her. Not at her face, but at her cleavage.

  “Sorry!” She smiled up at him through the thick layer of lashes she had painstakingly glued on top of her own this morning. It had been much harder than when the girl at the makeup counter had done it.

  He snorted a laugh. “For a little thing, you pack a pretty powerful punch.”

  “Sorry!” she repeated, toying with her hair. “It was an accident.”

  “That’s okay. I know you didn’t mean to.”

  She tilted her head. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee to apologize for my carelessness?”

  “Oh.” He blinked. “Um, I guess so.”

  “My name is Song,” she said. She put out her hand, but instead of fully shaking his, she just briefly pressed his fingertips.

  “Song,” he repeated. “That’s a pretty name. My name is Warren.” He gestured. “There’s a coffee shop down the street?”

  They started walking. She was freezing. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “I guess I didn’t dress right for the weather.” She made no move to zip her jacket.

  Bo had hoped for his arm, but instead he shrugged out of his own coat and put it around her shoulders, his hands lingering for a moment.

  “Thank you,” she said as it sagged heavily across her shoulders, smelling of cigarettes and sweat. It came down to her knees.

  Now Paczkowski was the one who walked with his arms folded against the cold. “You’re a tiny little thing, aren’t you? If you took off those shoes, you wouldn’t even come up to my chin.”

  “I’m little, but I’m strong.” Stronger than he knew.

  At the entrance he held the door for her, and she rewarded him with a smile.

  As they reached the counter, he said, “Even though I know you’re the one who almost knocked me over, why don’t you let me buy you a coffee? After all, it’s not every day I’m lucky enough to literally run into a beautiful woman.”

  She forced a smile while she looked down at her toes. “Thank you.” She ordered a house coffee, even when he encouraged her to order whatever elaborate drink she wanted. Bo normally only drank tea, but for now, she wasn’t Bo. She was Song. The former juror—she had to think of him as Warren now, instead of Paczkowski—got a mocha for himself.

  “Sorry if I was kind of rude back there,” he said as they waited for his mocha. “I work with just all guys. I forget what it means to be polite.”

  “No problem!” Bo giggled, trying to ignore how it stuck in her throat. The last time she had flirted had been before Dandan was born. “Here, let me give you back your coat.”

  “Are you sure you’re warm enough?”

  “I am now.” She gave the word now a special emphasis, as if offering him credit.

  After they got their drinks, he sat down at a booth. When she sat on the same side, his eyes widened. Bo kept her face blankly smiling, her face turned toward him.

  “So what do you do that you work with all guys? I’m a student.” She had prepared an entire back story if he asked her which college, what she was majoring in, etc. But he didn’t.

  “I’m an electrician. But I haven’t been at work recently. In fact”—he took a deep breath, his chest rising—“I might not go back.”

  “Why not?” She moved a little closer.

  “I came into some money.” Warren shrugged, but his face was proud.

  “An inheritance?”

  “In a way. Now I’m thinking of getting my own business.”

  “Really? How will you do that?” She kept her face—and her glasses—turned toward him like she was a flower and he was the sun.

  Under the table, she adjusted her shirt, pulling it a little tighter, then leaned even closer to him. Weaving her web.

  CHAPTER 29

  The thought of how Lihong had tried again and again to turn to her for help haunted Mia. In the headlong tumble that was her life, she had forgotten him, but he had not forgotten her.

  Was his the body in the morgue? Or was it possible that he still might be out there someplace?

  Even though it was a Saturday morning, Mia and Charlie were trying again to find out by going to the last place they knew for sure Lihong had been: Perk Up.

  “No rest for the wicked,” Charlie said as Mia got into his car. They pulled away from her house, where everyone was still sleeping.

  “Weekends are for the weak,” Mia answered in her best imitation of Charlie’s growl.

  At the coffee shop there was just one girl at the counter, a blue-eyed blonde with a diamond stud in her nose that Mia presumed was fake. A family was already ahead of them: a mom and dad and a daughter. The girl looked ten or eleven. Her brown hair straggled down her back in long wet snakes. She was sagging against her mom.

  “We need a twenty-ounce coffee,” the mom told the barista.

  “Room for cream?”

  The mom looked down at her daughter. “Do you want any milk in it, honey?”

  The girl nodded, and the mom turned back to the barista. “Yeah, leave an inch or two at the top. Sophie had a swim meet this morning, and we don’t want her to be too tired for her basketball game this afternoon.”
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  Mia bit her lip to stop herself from saying anything. Were the parents even thinking about the kind of message they were sending little Sophie? That you should ignore what your body was telling you loud and clear? That you did whatever you could to win the meet, be awarded the scholarship, get on the news highlights reel? Lance Armstrong hadn’t come out of nowhere.

  When it was their turn, Mia said, “I’m looking for another barista who works the early-morning shift during the week. I talked to her a few days ago. She’s Asian American and has blond hair.”

  “Laura,” the girl said. “She’s on break. Should I get her?”

  “Maybe I need my coffee first,” Charlie said. “I’ll have a twenty-four-ounce Mindsweeper to go. With an extra shot and whipped cream.”

  “That already comes with four shots,” the girl told him.

  “I know.”

  Maybe wrinkled, rumpled Charlie should be the cautionary example for the parents, Mia thought, not Lance Armstrong. Look, Sophie, if you drink all your coffee like a good girl, maybe you can grow up to be a homicide detective who doesn’t know the meaning of the term day off.

  “I’ll just have a sixteen-ounce nonfat latte.” Next to Charlie, Mia felt a little prim and proper. After the girl went to the espresso machine to make their drinks, she turned to Charlie. “Don’t you ever worry about your heart exploding?”

  “I’m just training it to work harder and faster.” He thumped a fist over his chest. “Besides, if I’m going to be working on a Saturday, I need a boost.”

  Sophie and her parents had just left, so Mia said, “At least you have a hundred pounds on that poor girl. Those parents were basically blood-doping their kid.”

  He shrugged. “We live in a quick-fix culture.”

  She pressed her lips together. “Maybe not everything needs to be fixed.”

  After the barista handed over their drinks, she went in search of the girl Mia had talked to earlier in the week. Laura was tying her apron when she came out but stopped when she saw Mia. “Are you here about that guy who was asking for you?”