"To be honest, I was hoping her to be the daughter, but the text exchanges Ed gave us, indicate they were lovers."
"Let's go tomorrow morning, then."
"Sure"
Jack lay on the bed with his eyes wide open. He was trying to consolidate his thoughts around the case. He knew that Dr. Chung was murdered. The killers were somehow related to his employers. There are two mystery figures, Chen and the tall male, with a tattoo of Lee's family crest. Who were these two people, and how were they connected to this murder? What was he going to find in the locker tomorrow? There was a possibility that the locker contents were already emptied out, and he could discover nothing.
Jack had barely slept all night. He skipped his morning workout and went to meet Neil in the lobby. Neil had brought Dr. Chung's phone with him. They decided to switch the phone on and tried calling Chen.
As the phone was switched on, they received five messages from Chen. Jack remembered that Dr. Chung's last message to Chen was about him leaving for Canada. She probably did not have a chance to respond before he was killed. Neil read the messages and translated them to Jack.
Neil reading the third message, "All the messages are regular breakup messages. She is trying hard to convince him not to go. She was angry in the first two messages as she did not know he was married. Then third, fourth and fifth messages are her pleading him to come back."
Jack realized that Chen did not know yet that Chung was dead. He thought they might be lucky, and the locker might not have been cleared out yet. Jack thought of a plan for a few minutes and said, "Let's go to the address. We will call Chen from the place and tell her that Chung is dead. We will keep an eye on the place and see if Chen shows up to clear the locker."
Neil was impressed by Jack's plan. He went to the concierge and rented a car for themselves. Cab would not have been a good option in case they have to chase someone or escape quickly. They started driving towards the locker location, which was one hour away. As they left the city, Jack could see some small-scale manufacturing plants around him. The area looked much more underdeveloped than Jack had seen in central Wuhan city in the last two days. Jack saw a beautiful countryside with large rice fields. Jack then noticed something, which at first, he thought is a zoo. He then realized that it was open, and animals were grouped together in small cordoned areas. Jack was surprised at the sight of the farm. He saw some rhinos, tigers caged, then he saw a massive cage with at least thousands of bats. Jack did not understand what the location was.
Neil saw the confused look on Jack's face and said, "This is one of the many wildlife farms." Jack thought he heard it wrong at first. How can you farm wildlife? But then he remembered reading about the wet markets of China. He was disgusted but chose not to say anything.
They reached the location, which looked more like a warehouse. It was similar to a self-storage facility Jack was used to seeing in Canada. They found a fuel station across the road and parked their car. They could see the office entrance of the storage facility and thought that it was a good enough view.
Neil pulled out Dr. Chung's phone and called Chen. She answered in one ring. Without saying hello, she started crying. Surprising to Neil, she started talking to him in English. "Thank you, honey, for calling. I have been worried. Please come back. I miss you so much."
Neil was awkward at that point. He coughed, "Hmm. Ms. Chen, this is Neil Carter. I am a friend of Dr. Chung. I have some bad news for you. Dr. Chung passed away two days ago."
Before he could talk more, Chen hung up the phone. Neil looked at Jack with a mixed expression of confusion and excitement. They had hit the jackpot. Chen was now spooked, just as they had intended. Jack still wanted to verify and called the number back. Chen had switched off the phone. Now Jack was sure. All they could do now is hope Chen shows up.
Chapter 17
Jack and Neil were now sitting in the car for over two hours. Neil was starting to lose hope. The storage locker had one visitor in the last two hours. Finally, a middle-aged man had pulled up his pickup. Jack's first thought was that Chen might have sent someone to clean up the locker. But the man just attached the garbage bin on the outside of the building to his truck and left.
Neil finally said, "I am going to use the restroom inside."
Jack nodded but kept his eye on the entrance of the building. Jack stared at the entrance door, almost without blinking when he was distracted as his phone beeped. Ed had sent Dr. Chung's financial records of the last six months, highlighting few transactions. There was a deposit of one million Yuan in February 2020. Then there were cash withdrawals of ten thousand Yuan consistently every two weeks since then—one more cash withdrawal on twenty-five thousand Yuan a week before his murder. Jack started analyzing the transactions, trying to find what they meant.
Jack quickly looked up from the phone and saw a woman walking inside the building. The woman was wearing black trousers, a blue crop top, and a scarf was covering her face completely. He rushed out of the door and called for Neil. He received no response from Neil.
Jack ran across the road to the storage building in fear of missing out on the storage contents. He opened the main door and entered a small lobby, which was smaller than ten by ten feet. On his right side, there was a small window with a pass-through. There was a speaker on the wall beside the window. Jack wondered why this storage facility had this level of security. On the left, there was a door that looked like a heavy steel door made to guard something important.
The person behind the window looked up with Jack's sudden arrival and started talking to him in Chinese. Jack was trying hard, but all he could understand was her hand gesture, asking what he wants. Jack began to pace between the window and the door shouting to the lady behind the window, "I need to get in, I need to talk to the woman who just went in." He seemed to have lost all the hope when Neil ran inside the entrance. Jack went to him in a rush and said, "We need to get in now, a lady just entered, and we need to track her before she destroys the locker's contents."
Neil calmed Jack down. He went up to the lady behind the window and pulled up a police badge of Wuhan Police. The lady buzzed open the steel door, and they entered. Jack was looking at Neil angrily. Neil looked at Jack, shrugged, and said, "What?"
Jack frustratingly said, "Would have loved to have Wuhan PD badge for myself. I was looking like a fool pacing around that small room trying to talk to her"
Neil laughed and said, "Relax. You have to earn the badge". Jack was annoyed and felt like punching him in the shoulder. They were walking in the hallway with lots of shutter doors on both sides. Jack observed the self-storage layout. They decided to split to cover more ground. As Jack turned right, Neil disappeared behind him, going straight. Jack passed about ten more doors when he heard a noise. He followed the source of the sound but did not see any open doors.
He was about to turn back when he saw a cloud of smoke coming out of the door at the end of the hallway. He ran towards it and opened the shutter in a hurry. He wanted to text Neil, but there was no reception. He also did not know where exactly he was.
As Jack opened the door, the woman turned around and let out a small shriek. She was still covering her face with a scarf. Jack saw that the box with some documents was on fire. He ran outside, pulled out a fire extinguisher, and put out the fire. Then he just stood there trying to catch his breath. The woman was standing there in shock. She was confused about what had just happened in the last thirty seconds or so. She came to her senses and made a run for it. Jack quickly held her hand and pulled her back. The woman fell down on the floor, almost hitting her head on the steel wall. Jack glanced through the locker and saw there was nothing else other than a burnt box of documents. Jack tried to scan through the pile of ash and saw two papers which were half burnt. He quickly read through the title of one of the documents, named "Sales Memo," and there were half visible lines below.
Jack looked at the woman and saw that she was scared. He advanced his hand for a handshake, "H
i, I am Jack Wilson. Do not worry, I am not going to harm you. I am a friend of Dr. Chung. Are you Ms. Chen?"
The woman did not respond. Jack continued, "I know you are Chen. I want you to know that Dr. Chung was killed, and I am looking for his killer. Any information you can provide will be helpful to me."
The woman thought for a few moments and said, "Yes, I am Chen. I knew Dr. Michael Chung for the last few months."
Jack smiled at her. "Can you tell me Chen, were you dating Dr. Chung?"
Chen let out a laugh, "Women like me do not date. We provide service."
Chen's reply just hit Jack in the head like a baseball. He realized then Chen was an escort who Chung used to see. This explains the cash withdrawals every two weeks.
Jack continued, "Can you tell me, Chen, what did you just burn?"
"I have no idea. I was doing what I was told to do".
"Dr. Chung told you to burn these documents in case he leaves you suddenly?"
"Yes. How do you know that?"
"Never mind. Tell me, Chen, Chung used to pay you ten thousand Yuan every two weeks. Why did he pay you twenty-five thousand Yuan last week?"
Chen was looking at Jack in complete shock. How did this person know so much? Dr. Chung had paid Chen in cash. She paused for a moment, "Last week for the first time, Michael took me out for dinner at his favourite restaurant. Before he used to visit my apartment only. It was like a date. For the first time in months, Michael was emotional. I could feel he was weeping. He had too much to drink that night, so we came back to my apartment. He had never spent the night with me. That was our deal. But I could not leave him alone that night. After we came back, he drank more. He started talking to himself after a while. The next day, I got an envelope with twenty-five thousand Yuan. I thought he must be thanking me for taking care of him. But when I got a call this morning about his death, I opened the envelope again, and a note fell down. It had the locker's address, a key to the locker, and a message telling to burn the documents inside the locker. I do not know what they are, but I did this to honour him."
Tears were flowing from Chen's eyes now. "You see, Michael never saw me as an escort. He was always nice to me. He wanted to talk. Nobody wants to talk to us."
She chuckled and continued, "He wanted to chat with me like we were teenagers. He always said he wasted his youth in studying and now want to experience dating as teenagers."
Jack interrupted Chen, "Can you tell me what he was talking to himself?"
Chen trying to remember, "He was saying he had done something bad, people have used his talents to build something bad. He repeating that constantly."
Jack wanted to ask further questions, but he spotted a white paper amid all the ashes in the half-burnt box. One of the documents was not burnt completely. He quickly went to the box and tried picking up the paper. It was still hot from the fire, and it burnt his hand. Jack let out a small cry, and the paper dropped out of his hands. He took out a handkerchief from his pocket and picked up the paper. It was an office memo. The letterhead was Wuhan Pharma and the Lee family crest beside it. The note was titled, "Launch of the new vaccine." Jack checked the date on the memo, it was from November 2019. Jack folded the paper and kept it in his pocket.
Jack looked at Chen. She was looking devastated. She looked at Jack and weakly said, "You know Michael had told me that he would take me back to Canada once his assignment here is complete. He wanted me to stop being an escort. He always said that if I could complete my education, I would be able to get a respectable job. I could provide a better life for my daughter."
With tears rolling down her eyes, she sat down on the floor. Jack looked at her, and a strange sadness filled his heart. Without realizing what he was doing, he placed his hand on Chen's shoulder. He helped her stand up. He looked at her pretty face and said, "Let me walk you out."
Jack collected the remains of the documents, placed it in a bag, and left the locker. Chen was guiding him to the exit. Jack was feeling sad about Chen. Weirdly he felt connected to the stranger who had lost someone special. He wanted to help her more. He stopped her, "You know Canada has an immigration program where you can apply and move to Canada. Let me see if I can help you with that." Chen smiled at him and continued walking.
Once they reached the lobby, he texted Neil to come out. They exited the building and waited for Neil to come out. Jack was looking at Chen, who was staring into the blank. The thought of a pretty poor lady forced into working as an escort was very much daunting. He felt respect towards Dr. Chung to help out Chen. Whatever the intention, Chung had given Chen a hope of a normal, respectful life. Jack decided to put in a good word about her with the officials at Shanghai consulate.
Jack was looking at Chen with pity when he saw a laser point on her stomach, slowly moving up. Before he realized what it was, before he could react, he saw Chen falling down. Her face had a weak smile. Her muscles had stiffened up like it was tied with ropes. Her body had given up and was not making any effort to avoid the fall. Within a fraction of seconds, she hit the ground hard. At first, Jack assumed that she has fainted from heatstroke. He bent down to pick her up. Jack saw blood coming out of her forehead. He located the wound and realized what had just happened. Chen was shot in the forehead by someone. He immediately started canvasing the surroundings to look for a person who had taken the shot.
He saw a person in a black jacket on the roof of the fuel station packing up a bag. Jack ran across the road to chase him down. The shooter spotted Jack running and jumped down the roof and started to enter his car. Jack grabbed his jacket and pulled him back. The shooter fell on his back. Forgetting that he had a gun, Jack jumped on him and started hitting the shooter in the face. One punch, two punches, Jack was powering his punches with all the frustration, sadness and hatred accumulated over the last few weeks. Jack's mind was quickly racing through his tragedies. In Jack's mind, this person was responsible for not only Chen's murder but all the bad things that had happened over the last few days. Jack, without realizing, was raging at this stranger. Jack realized that he had thrown at least twenty-odd punches at this person.
He came back to the reality that he was a policeman and not a murderer himself. Jack paused for one second, and the shooter taking this opportunity kicked Jack in the stomach.
Jack was thrown off balance. The shooter punched Jack hard in the face. Jack rolled down on the side, landed on his stomach. The shooter was now pointing his .9 mm gun at Jack's face. Jack saw the shooter's eyes. One of the eyes was swollen red from the punches, and the other eye had no remorse. This person was a killer. He had done this number of times. Suddenly when Jack thought it was over, the shooter fell to the side. Someone had shot the shooter in the right arm. It was Neil from across the road. The shooter ran to his car and drove away, almost running Jack over.
Neil came running to Jack and helped him up, "What the hell happened here?"
Jack took a few breathes and looked at Chen's body from across the road. Just as he started to run across the street, Neil stopped him. "We cannot go back. Let's get out of here before the local police show up. I will take care of the CCTV footage later."
They got into the car and started driving back. Jack was staring out of the window, feeling disgusted about himself. As they drove past the storage, Jack got one last glimpse at Chen's dead body. He couldn't help but think of the daughter Chen was leaving behind. He did not know Chen for more than twenty minutes. But she had seemed like a nice lady who was working hard to make life better for her daughter. Jack felt more pain at the thought of her daughter. Jack prayed in his mind for her daughter.
Jack could not overcome the guilt of Chen dying. Neil was patiently driving while letting Jack sit quietly.
Chapter 18
As they reached their hotel, Jack briefed Neil about his conversation with Chen and the subsequent incident. He did leave out one piece of information. Jack had seen the same tattoo on the neck of the shooter when he punched him. Jack did not want Neil to
talk about the coincidence. Jack knew none of this was a coincidence. He knew Lee's family was behind the death of Dr. Chung and now, Chen. Jack failed to understand the reason altogether. He had no evidence connecting the family to the murders, other than a man with a tattoo of their family crest on his neck. The man was present before or during both the murders. Jack did not know how to proceed with the case.
He was waiting for information from Ed about the missing data from Chung's computer and more information on Emily. The thought of Emily being house arrested on his command was not easy for Jack. He felt guilty like he was cheating on her. Why had Emily visited Dr. Chung just before his murder? In his mind, he believed that Emily had not killed Dr. Chung with her own hands. But he did not yet eliminate the theory that she was connected to his death.
Jack was now feeling the effects of the beating he had received from the shooter. He opened the bottle of acetaminophen and popped two pills.
Jack started checking his emails. Ed had sent Emily's file to Jack. He quickly sat up and read through the information. He read it again and again.
He got up from his bed, put on his coat, and went to Neil's room. He repeatedly knocked on the door until Neil opened up. Neil yawned, "Dude, it is almost midnight, you want me to sing a song for you?"
"Ha-ha, funny. Come on, we are going to Shanghai. I will explain in the car."
Neil shook his head with a smile, "I wish I could kill you, man."
The security at the consulate let them through without asking any questions. Of course, Neil's presence made it easy. Jack went directly into the forensic department. The forensic lab was officially part of a janitorial department. Jack obviously knew this was a setup for countries top officers working crime investigation to get into China. Though Jack thought it was funny. He said to Neil, "Poor fellas, where they dedicate their lives to clean up the crime scene, on paper, they are cleaning toilets."
The Hidden Agenda Page 9