“Why don’t we start at the beginning, Bella,” said Jane. “With who you really are. Not the name you called yourself in California, but the name you were born with.” Jane placed a photocopy of a birth certificate on the table. “It’s signed by a Chinatown doctor. You were born right here in Boston. A home birth, at a Knapp Street address. Your father’s name was Wu Weimin.”
Bella didn’t answer, but Jane read the acknowledgment in her eyes. Not that she needed it; the document was only exhibit number one. Jane brought out other photocopied documents. Her records from the San Francisco public schools where the girl was registered under the name Bella Li. The death certificate of her mother, who went by the name of Annie Li, dead at age forty-three of stomach cancer. It was all there in black and white, the paper trail that Jane’s team had doggedly pursued over the last forty-eight hours, a trail obscured in that pre-9/11 era by different jurisdictions, and by the hidden world in which undocumented aliens moved. A world in which a lone mother and child could so easily vanish and reappear under new names.
“Why did you come back to Boston?” asked Jane.
Bella looked her in the eye. “Sifu Fang asked me to come. She’s not well, and she needed another instructor at her school.”
“Yes, that’s the story you keep telling us.”
“Is there a different story?”
“It has nothing to do with what happened in the Red phoenix? Nothing to do with your father killing four people?”
Bella’s face snapped taut. “My father was innocent.”
“Not according to the official report.”
“And official reports are never wrong.”
“If it’s wrong, then what’s the truth?”
Bella glared back. “He was murdered.”
“Is that what your mother told you?”
“My mother wasn’t there!”
Jane paused, suddenly registering the unspoken meaning of those last words, my mother wasn’t there. She remembered the glow of luminol on the cellar step, the bloody imprint of a child’s shoe. “But someone was there,” Jane said quietly. “Someone who was hiding in the cellar when it happened.”
Bella went absolutely still. “How did you …”
“The blood told us. Even if you try to wash it away, its traces remain. Decades later, with a chemical spray, we can still see it. We found your footprint on the cellar steps, and on the kitchen floor, leading toward the exit. Footprints that someone had wiped away by the time the police arrived that night.” Jane leaned in closer. “Why did your mother do it, Bella? Why did she try to erase the evidence?”
Bella didn’t answer, but Jane saw the inner debate play out on her face, a struggle between telling the truth and keeping it secret.
“She did it to protect you, didn’t she?” said Jane. “Because you saw what happened, and she was afraid for you. Afraid that someone would come after you.”
Bella shook her head. “I didn’t see it.”
“You were there.”
“But I didn’t see it!” Bella cried. For a moment her outburst seemed to hang in the air between them. Her head drooped and she whispered: “But I heard it.”
Jane didn’t ask any questions, didn’t interrupt. She simply waited for the story she knew would now be told.
Bella took another breath. “My mother was asleep in bed. She was always so tired after working all day at the grocery store. And that night she was sick with the flu.” Bella stared at the table, as though she could still picture her mother huddled in bed under blankets. “But I wasn’t tired. So I climbed out of bed. I went downstairs to see Daddy.”
“In the restaurant.”
“He was annoyed with me, of course.” A sad smile tugged at her mouth. “There he was, juggling pots and pans. And I was whining for attention and ice cream. He told me to go back upstairs to bed. He was busy, and he didn’t have time for me. Uncle Fang didn’t have time for me, either.”
“Iris’s husband?”
Bella nodded. “He was in the dining room. I looked through the door and saw him sitting at a table with a man and woman. They were drinking tea.”
Jane frowned, wondering why the waiter would be sitting with two patrons. It added to the other puzzle about the Mallorys: Why were they in a Chinese restaurant when their autopsies showed they had just dined on Italian food?
“What were they talking about?” asked Jane. “Mr. Fang and the two customers?”
Bella shook her head. “It was too noisy in the kitchen to hear anything in the dining room. My father banging his pots. The fan blowing.”
“Did you see Joey Gilmore come in to pick up his take-out order?”
“No. All I remember is my father, working at the stove. Sweating. And his old T-shirt. He always worked in his T-shirt …” Her voice faltered and she wiped a hand across her eyes. “My poor father. Working, always working. His hands scarred from all the burns and cuts from the kitchen.”
“What happened then?”
Bella’s mouth twisted in a rueful smile. “I wanted ice cream. I was whining, demanding attention, while he was trying to fill the take-out cartons. Finally he gave in. Told me to go downstairs and choose an ice cream from the freezer.”
“In the cellar?”
She nodded. “Oh, I knew that cellar very well. I’d been down there so many times. There was a big chest freezer, tucked in the corner. I had to climb onto a chair to lift the lid. I remember looking inside for just the flavor I wanted. They were in these little cardboard cups, just big enough to hold one scoop. I wanted the one with stripes of chocolate and vanilla and strawberry. But I couldn’t find any. I kept digging and digging through those little cups, but they were all vanilla. Nothing but vanilla.” She took a deep breath. “And then I heard my father shouting.”
“At whom?”
“At me.” Bella looked up and blinked away tears. “He was screaming at me to hide.”
“Everyone in the restaurant must have heard him.”
“He said it in Chinese. The killer couldn’t understand, or he would have come looking for me. He would have known I was in the cellar.”
Jane glanced toward the one-way mirror. She couldn’t see Frost and Tam, but she imagined their astonished faces. Here was the tale’s missing chapter. The clues had been there all along on the cellar step and on the kitchen floor, but footprints are silent. Only Bella gave them a voice.
“And you hid?” asked Jane.
“I didn’t understand what was happening. I climbed off the chair and started to go up the steps, but then I stopped. I heard him pleading. Begging for his life, in his broken English. That’s when I understood this wasn’t a game, wasn’t some trick he was playing on me. My father didn’t play games.” Bella swallowed and her voice dropped even lower. “So I did what he told me to do. I didn’t make a sound. I ducked underneath the stairs. I heard something fall. And then a loud bang.”
“How many gunshots in all?”
“Just the one. That single bang.”
Jane thought of the weapon found in Wu Weimin’s hand, a Glock with a threaded barrel. The killer had used a suppressor to muffle the sound of those first eight gunshots. Only after dispatching his victims did he remove the suppressor, place the grip in Wu Weimin’s lifeless hand, and fire the final bullet, ensuring that gunshot residue would be found on the victim’s skin.
A perfect crime, thought Jane. Except for the fact there was a witness. A silent girl, huddled under the cellar steps.
“He died for me,” whispered Bella. “He should have run, but he wouldn’t leave me. So he stayed. He died right in front of the cellar door. Blocking it with his body. I had to step in his blood to get past him. If I hadn’t been there that night, begging for my goddamn ice cream, my father would still be alive.”
Jane understood it all, now. Why Wu Weimin did not flee when he had the chance. Why there were two bullet casings on the kitchen floor. Had the staged suicide been a last-minute idea, something that occurred to the killer a
s he stood over the cook’s body? It was such a simple thing, to wrap a dead man’s fingers around the grip and fire the last round. Leave the gun behind and walk out the door.
“You should have told the police,” said Jane. “It would have changed everything.”
“No, it wouldn’t. Who would believe a five-year-old girl? A girl who never saw the killer’s face. And my mother wouldn’t let me say a word. She was afraid of the police. Terrified is a better word.”
“Why?”
Bella’s jaw tightened. “Can’t you guess? My mother was here illegally. What do you think would have happened if the police focused on us? She had my future to think of, and hers as well. My father was dead. Nothing we could do would change that.”
“What about justice? That had no part in the equation?”
“Not then. Not that night, when all she could think about was keeping us both safe. If the killer knew there was a witness, he might come looking for me. That’s why she wiped up my footprints. That’s why we packed our suitcases and left two days later.”
“Did Iris Fang know?”
“Not then. Not until years later, when my mother was dying of stomach cancer. A month before she died, she wrote Sifu Fang and told her the truth. Apologized for being a coward. But after so many years, there was nothing we could prove, nothing we could change.”
“Yet you’ve been trying, haven’t you?” said Jane. “For the past seven years, either you or Iris has been mailing obituaries to the families. Keeping their memories and their pain alive. Telling them that the truth hasn’t been told.”
“It hasn’t been. They need to know that. That’s why the letters were sent, so they would keep asking questions. It’s the only way we’ll find out who the killer is.”
“So you and Iris have been trying to draw him out into the open. Sending notes to the families, to Kevin Donohue, hinting that the truth’s about to be revealed. Taking out that ad in The Boston Globe, hoping the killer will get worried and finally attack. And what was the plan then? Turn him over to us? Or take justice into your own hands?”
Bella laughed. “How could we possibly do that? We’re only women.”
Now it was Jane’s turn to laugh. “As if I’d ever underestimate you.” Jane reached into her briefcase and pulled out the Arthur Waley translation of Monkey, the ancient Chinese folk novel. “I’m sure you’ve heard of the Monkey King.”
Bella glanced at the book. “Chinese fairy tales. What do they have to do with anything?”
“One particular chapter in this book caught my attention. It’s called ‘The Story of Chen O.’ It’s about a scholar who travels with his pregnant wife. At a ferry crossing, they’re attacked by bandits and the husband is killed. His wife is abducted. Do you know this one?”
Bella shrugged. “I’ve heard it.”
“Then you know how it turns out. The wife gives birth to a son while in captivity and secretly places him on a wooden plank, with a letter explaining her plight. Just like baby Moses, the child’s set adrift on the river. He floats to the Temple of the Golden Mountain, where he’s raised by holy men. He grows to manhood and learns the truth about his parents. About his butchered father and his imprisoned mother.”
“Is there a point to this?”
“The point is right here, in the words spoken by the young man.” Jane looked down at the page and read the quote. “He who fails to avenge the wrongs done to a parent is unworthy of the name of man.” She looked at Bella. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You’re like the son in this story. Haunted by the murder of your father. Honor-bound to avenge him.” Jane slid the book in front of Bella. “It’s exactly what the Monkey King would do, fight for justice. protect the innocent. Avenge a father. Oh, Monkey may wreak a bit of havoc in the process. He may break all the chinaware and set fire to the furniture. But in the end, justice is done. He always does the right thing.”
Bella said nothing as she stared at the illustration of the warrior monkey brandishing his staff.
“I understand completely, Bella,” said Jane. “You’re not the villain in this. You’re the daughter of a victim, a daughter who wants what the police can’t deliver. Justice.” She lowered her voice to a sympathetic murmur. “That’s what you and Iris were trying to do. Draw out the killer. Tempt him to strike.”
Was that the hint of a nod she saw? Bella’s inadvertent acknowledgment of the truth?
“But the plan didn’t work out so well,” said Jane. “When he did strike, he hired professionals to do the killing for him. So you still don’t know his identity. And now he’s taken Iris.”
Bella looked up, fury burning in her eyes. “It went wrong because of you. I should have been there to watch over her.”
“She was the bait.”
“She was willing to take the risk.”
“And you two were going to deliver justice all by yourselves?”
“Who else is going to do it? The police?” Bella’s laugh was bitter. “All these years later, they don’t care.”
“You’re wrong, Bella. I sure as hell do care.”
“Then let me go, so I can find her.”
“You have no idea where to start.”
“Do you?” Bella spat back.
“We’re looking at several suspects.”
“While you keep me locked up for no reason.”
“I’m investigating two homicides. That’s my reason.”
“They were hired killers. That’s what you said.”
“Their deaths are still homicides.”
“And I have an alibi for the first one. You know I didn’t kill that woman on the roof.”
“Then who did?”
Bella looked at the book and her mouth twitched. “Maybe it was the Monkey King.”
“I’m talking about real people.”
“You say I’m a suspect, but you know I couldn’t have killed the woman. You might as well blame some mythical creature, because you have just as much of a chance of proving it.” Bella looked at Jane. “You do know how the folktale starts, don’t you? How Sun Wukong emerges from stone and transforms into a warrior? The night my father was killed, I emerged from that stone cellar just like Monkey. I was transformed, too. I became what I am now.”
Jane stared into eyes as hard as any she had ever looked into. She tried to imagine Bella as a frightened five-year-old, but she could see no trace of that child in this fierce creature. If I’d witnessed the murder of someone I loved, would I be any different?
Jane stood up. “You’re right, Bella. I don’t have enough to hold you. Not yet.”
“You mean—you’re letting me go?”
“Yes, you can leave.”
“And I won’t be followed? I’m free to do what I have to?”
“What does that mean?”
Bella rose from her chair, like a lioness uncoiling herself for the hunt, and the two women stared at each other across the table. “Whatever it takes,” she said.
THIRTY-FOUR
I can hear him breathing in the darkness, beyond the blinding glare that shines in my eyes. He has not allowed me to see his face; all I know about him is that his voice is as smooth as cream. But I have not cooperated, and he is starting to grow angry because he realizes I am not easily broken.
Now he is worried as well, because of the personal tracking device he found strapped to my ankle. A device that he has disabled by removing the battery.
“Who are you working with?” he asks. He shoves the device in my face. “Who was tracking you?”
Despite my bruised jaw, my swollen lips, I manage to answer in a hoarse whisper: “Someone you never want to meet. But you soon will.”
“Not if they can’t find you.” He tosses down the tracking device, and when it hits the floor it is like the sound of shattering hope. I was still unconscious when he took it from me, so I don’t know when the device ceased its transmissions. It might have been long before I arrived in this place, which means that no one will be able to f
ind me. And this is where I will die.
I don’t even know where I am.
My wrists are trapped by manacles bolted to the wall. The floor beneath my bare feet is concrete. There is no light except what he shines in my eyes, no hint of sunlight through window cracks. Perhaps it is night. Or perhaps this is a place where light never penetrates, where screams never escape. I squint against the glare, trying to make out my surroundings, but there is only that bright light and beyond it, darkness. My hands twitch, aching to close around a weapon, to complete what I have waited so many years to finish.
“You’re looking for your sword, aren’t you?” he says, and waves the blade in the light, so that I can see it. “A beautiful weapon. Sharp enough to slice off a finger without an ounce of effort. Is this what you used to kill them?” He swings it, and the blade hisses past my face. “I hear her hand was sliced off clean. And his head came off with a single stroke. Two professional killers, yet they were both taken by surprise.” He brings the blade to my neck, pressing it so tightly that my bounding pulse makes the metal throb. “Shall we see what this can do to your throat?”
I hold still, my gaze fixed on the black oval that is his face. I have already resigned myself to death, so I am prepared for it. In truth, I’ve been ready to die these past nineteen years, and with a slash of the blade, he’ll free me at last to join my husband, a reunion that I have put off only because of this unfinished business. What I feel now isn’t fear but regret that I have failed. That this man will never feel my sword’s bite against his own throat.
“That night, in the Red Phoenix, there was a witness,” he says. “Who was it?”
“Do you really think I would tell you?”
“So someone was there.”
“And will never forget.”
The sword digs deeper into my neck. “Tell me the name.”
“You’re going to kill me anyway. Why should I?”
A long pause, then he lifts the blade from my skin. “Let’s make a deal,” he says calmly. “You tell me who this witness is. And I’ll tell you what happened to your daughter.”
The Rizzoli & Isles Series 11-Book Bundle Page 271