by Steven James
“What?”
“I think I might know who Shade is.”
“Who is it?”
“I need to check first.” She started to tie back her hair. “I’ll come too.”
“No, no. You have to stay here with the device.”
“You can’t go alone, Pat.”
“Lien-hua, I’m still not sure who to trust in the police department or even the FBI. If Melice and Shade see a big team coming, they’ll disappear and this’ll go on and on. They might go after Tessa.
I can’t let that happen.”
“But it might be a trap.”
“Of course it’s a trap, that’s why we shouldn’t both be there, and that’s why we definitely shouldn’t bring the device. You need to stay here with it. Besides, if one of them is at the warehouse and one comes here, we can get them both. Divide and conquer. I’ll be all right. This ends. And it ends tonight.”
“But Pat-”
“Shh.” I touched my finger lightly to her lips. “That’s sign language for I’ll see you soon, don’t worry about me, we’ll talk more when I get back.”
She looked like she was going to argue with me, but at last, she repeated my newly invented sign and pressed her finger against my lips.
Then she gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. Just on the cheek, that was all. But it was a kiss, and it felt intimate and familiar and natural.
And it gave me swift courage and it sharpened my resolve.
“I’ll see you soon,” I said.
“I’ll be here.” Then she added. “Don’t worry. I can take care of myself.”
“I know you can.”
I went into the suite’s closest bedroom, looked over the device one last time. I thought perhaps it would be better if Lien-hua and I didn’t have all of our eggs in one basket, so, I removed the cesium-137 pack from the bottom of the device just like Dr. Osbourne had shown me, then I slipped the device and my cell phone back into the laundry bag, and, taking only the cesium-137 unit with me, I went to go find Shade. In his home office next to his library, Victor was handing the suitcases of money to Geoff and Dr. Kurvetek when a man built like an NFL linebacker burst through the door, and aimed a gun at his head. “FBI,” the guy said. “Shut up. Lay down. And I might not shoot you.”
Victor dropped to the floor as the two henchmen in the room simply gazed at the agent.
“I said down,” the big guy growled, leveling his weapon at Geoff.
Then, from his position on the carpet, Victor saw Suricata, who had slipped to the bathroom a few minutes earlier pull a long knife from his jacket and take another silent step closer to the FBI agent’s back.
But Victor must have stared at Suricata a moment too long because the agent noticed Victor’s eyes and pivoted to face his assailant.
Suricata was quick, knocking the agent’s gun away and swiping at him with the knife, backing him into the room. Dr. Kurvetek took advantage of the brief scuffle and ran past them into the hallway.
Meanwhile, Geoff rose, pulling a gun of his own.
Victor wanted to leave but he really needed to shred the rest of those papers. Of course, if his henchmen could stop this guy, he could shred them in a few minutes. Two against one.
He decided to wait it out.
Suricata raised his ten-inch custom-made dagger and sneered at the FBI agent. “I’m Suricata. It’s important to know the name of the man who kills you.”
“Oh. Well, in that case, I’m Ralph,” the guy said. “Let’s dance.”
Suricata flipped the knife around in his hand, tossed it into the air, then snatched it out of its rotation and feinted toward the FBI agent named Ralph. Geoff was aiming his gun, but as Suricata and Ralph ducked and turned, he couldn’t seem to get a clear shot at the agent. Suricata jabbed the knife at Ralph, and for an instant it looked like he was going to bury it in the agent’s chest, but Ralph spun away from the blade and sunk a massive fist into Suricata’s stomach, catching him by surprise. Two more blows to the stomach, one to the back, and Suricata was down.
“Stop right there,” said Geoff, taking careful aim at Ralph and grinning. “Hmm… homicide by cop. Always hate to see that-”
But an intense-looking woman stepped out of the library and cut him off in mid-sentence, “Drop your gun, Officer Rickman.” Victor recognized her from the PROC meeting. Another FBI agent.
Geoff hesitated and the woman continued, “Don’t tempt me. I don’t like dirty cops, and shooting you would save the taxpayers a lot of money. Drop it now.”
Geoff made eye contact with her, slowly set down his gun, and Victor began sliding along the wall toward the door as Ralph cuffed Suricata and the woman cuffed Geoff.
Victor was almost to the library. He might still be able to slip away.
“What took you so long, Margaret?” said Ralph.
“I wanted to let you have a little fun first, Agent Hawkins.”
“Well, there’s a first time for everything. Thanks. Someday I’ll return the favor.” Ralph picked up the knife. “This is nice. I needed a new knife.”
Margaret saw Victor beside the door. “Going somewhere?”
Victor froze. “No, no. Just wanted to thank you. Those two men broke into my house and were about to-”
“Help you finish shredding those papers?” She gestured toward the stack of research beside the shredder. Victor watched her begin paging through the files. Then she said, “I think we’ll need to confiscate these as evidence.”
Ralph picked up the boarding pass from Victor’s desk. “The Philippines, huh? I hear that’s a nice place. And no extradition treaties with the U.S. How convenient.”
And in that moment, Victor Drake wished, oh how he wished, he hadn’t used up his bottle of pills. One song ended, or so Tessa thought, and another began. It was hard to tell. Every song rolled effortlessly into the next.
The music and the gyrating dancers made it nearly impossible to talk, so eventually, when Riker signaled for her to follow him, she clung to his fingers and let him lead her through the sea of people, to a bar located around the corner from where the band was jamming.
The bar was just far enough from the heart of the music so people could actually call out their orders to the bartender and be heard.
Riker straddled a chair. “Whadd’ya want?” he asked Tessa.
For a moment, Tessa thought about having a drink. It wouldn’t have been her first one, but she didn’t like how alcohol clouded her thinking, made reality fuzzy. No, she didn’t want that. Not tonight.
Tonight she wanted to savor every moment.
She shook her head.
“C’mon.” He signaled with a finger to the bartender and pointed at a Corona. “I’m buying.”
“I don’t want any,” she said again.
He looked at her, eyes smoldering. The lights from the club flickering, dancing across them. “Don’t ravens drink?” Then he put his hands on her forearms, gently. So gently. A light touch. An endearing smile. “The night’s just getting started,” he said.
The little girl inside of her felt herself drifting farther onto the ice.
He cared about her. He did. His tenderness proved it. She could trust him. It would be OK. He would hold her tonight and she would hold him and her heart would have a safe place to go.
“OK,” she said at last, when the long tremulous moment was over. “But just one.”
96
The warehouse loomed before me like a giant coffin in the night.
Shade or Melice was probably waiting for me. Maybe both of them. But I can do pretty well fending for myself when I have to, and I knew that if they were here, this would be my best chance at catching them.
Watchful, cautious, I stepped from my car and leaned beneath the crime scene tape. Then I pulled out my SIG and my Maglite and approached the great black coffin.
The criminalists had chained the door to the warehouse shut, but it didn’t take me long to pick the lock. I creaked the door open, entered the dusty stil
lness, and took in the scene. High above me, the jagged windows let only slivers of city light into the building.
No sign of Shade of Melice.
With my flashlight, I located the window I’d climbed through after scaling the outside wall. Then I swept the light along the wall to find the staircase I’d descended.
Missing… what was I missing?
I moved the light toward the area where I’d first seen Melice.
Ralph was to your left… the tank with Cassandra was at the far end of the warehouse.
Swinging the light like a giant saber, I walked warily forward. I could hear the faint sound of dripping water from somewhere. The lonely air around me took the sound and toyed with it, magnified it, making the innocent drops of water sound like the soft, wet heartbeat of the building. Other than that, complete silence. No sign of Shade or Melice.
After a few moments, I found the remnants of the tank where Cassandra had been imprisoned for over twelve hours. I stepped inside the tank’s remains and stood where she stood. This is where she screamed. Where she wept.
The rusty ring beside my feet.
Gently dripping water.
The camcorders used to record the women had been hidden in the wall about four meters away. I shone my flashlight on the area.
The camera angles in all eight videos were consistent, so the cameras had been mounted in the same place for all the shots. I’d read in the criminalists’ report that Melice had used two cameras, one of which he’d moved subsequent to filming Cassandra’s video.
I walked to the room where the cameras had been located, made sure no one was waiting in ambush for me, then found the cameras’ original positions. After checking the sight lines, I returned to the tank and saw that Melice had done an amazing job of concealing the cameras’ locations. Both were set in shadowed recesses in the wall and wouldn’t have been visible from inside the tank.
Just two tiny holes in a wall full of shadows.
Four meters away.
I tuned my ears to listen for any hint of movement, but heard nothing. If Shade or Melice were here, so far they’d been deathly still.
Windows, high and off to the left… the glint off the windows
…
You’re still missing something, Pat. Think.
The chain lay beside my foot, still attached to the metal ring. The last link of the chain was bent, opened, scratched. I guessed Ralph had used a tool of some kind to wrench it open. I studied the chain, counted the number of links. I bent low, aimed the beam of my light at the place where the metal ring was attached to the bottom of the tank. Then turned and looked up at the writing on the wall. Remembering the water fingering away from the tank and into the room, I let my light follow the cracks in the uneven floor as they spread away from the tank.
What was I missing?
I thought of John Doe’s suicide, the fires, the abduction, the death of Austin Hunter.
Once again, I wondered what I would have done if someone had been threatening to hurt Lien-hua. Even before having her hand on mine, even before feeling our fingers intertwine or receiving her gentle kiss, I would have done anything to save her.
Anything.
As I let myself think of her, the last couple days became more vivid to me, colored richer by my feelings. I pointed the light at the place on the floor where she had leaned over to help Cassandra.
As far as we knew, Cassandra was the only one to survive this tank. Seven other women had died right where I was standing-all within the last four months; beginning about the same time the Illusionist attacked Tessa, the same time Sebastian Taylor disappeared. The same time Lien-hua first flew to San Diego to profile the arsonist.
Motives. Dripping water. Echoing.
Thorough. Professional.
Lien-hua found the exit door at the aquarium.
She was also the one who found the gloves at the site of Monday night’s fire.
I aimed my light at the now-broken chain once again.
Melice asked for Lien-hua by name. She was the one who tried to make the case for Dunn being Shade.
Fact. Fiction.
Fiction. Fact.
Someone had to tell Melice about the device. You told Lien-hua the device was in the evidence room. She whispered something to Melice during the interrogation. The note from Shade said, “You missed something, Dr. Bowers.”
I missed something.
No, no, no.
Lien-hua was the one who offered to tell Cassandra about Hunter’s death. She held Cassandra. Let her weep against her shoulder.
Psychopaths just look at other people as objects to be used and then discarded…
Everything I knew about the case was beginning to split apart.
Lien-hua was the one who quickly bandaged Melice’s hand with her sock. So quickly. That’s where he’d hidden the pick-in the hand she wrapped…
There was no robbery, no murder, no crime, no motive, the room wasn’t locked.
I grabbed the chain. Yanked it.
The room wasn’t locked.
The eyewitness to Melice’s trial in DC was killed… Lien-hua knows DC. She used to be a detective there… What had Osbourne said? The government was worried about the Chinese… She’s Chinese. She’s planning a trip to Beijing.
Defeating him in his own castle.
Every thought was a betrayal to my feelings, to my world, to all I’d come to believe about the woman who told me she needed me.
Semantic aphasia… using the words that your listeners want to hear. It’s a way of manipulating people.
Lien-hua was the one who led us to the warehouse, and both times Shade had called me, Lien-hua wasn’t beside me, wasn’t in view. Reality began to splinter apart.
No, it couldn’t be.
Yes, it could.
Nothing was as it seemed.
I bolted for the door with one thought ripping through my mind: Lien-hua was Shade and I’d just left her alone with the device. Creighton Melice set the garment bag on the edge of the reception desk at the Surfside Inn. “Excuse me,” he said to the man working behind the counter. After he had his attention, Creighton flashed the FBI badge Shade had given him at the Blue Lizard Lounge in November. “I’m looking for two people who checked in here earlier today. They’re suspects in the terrorist bombing yesterday at the naval base. I assume you’ve heard about it?”
The man’s nervous nod said it all.
“All right, then. You’d recognize them. A very attractive Asian woman and a man who-”
“Yeah. I know ‘em. They’re in room 524. The guy nearly wrenched my arm out of its socket.”
“That would be him. Room 524, got it. We’ll bring in one of our men to watch the front desk while I go up there. I need you to wait in the back room and lock the door. Give us at least thirty minutes. Am I clear?”
More nods, then the man backed away from the desk and, rubbing his wrist, disappeared into the back room while Creighton picked up the garment bag, entered the elevator, and pressed 5.
Lien-hua pulled the curtains shut and took the device to the far room of the suite.
She let her mind walk slowly through all that had happened over the last couple days. Every moment became another flower, and in her heart she placed them in a vase and began to arrange them in a way that caught all the light she’d ever known.
She untied the laundry bag.
This is what she’d wanted, wasn’t it?
A new beginning? A chance to fall in love again?
She slid the device out. Just to see it. Just to look at it.
In Pat’s arms she felt stronger and weaker than she had in years. Was that a good thing or a bad one? Who could tell? Feelings do that, twist and change our motives, our dreams. She heard the door to the hotel room creak open.
A flicker of excitement and apprehension caught hold of her. She reached for her gun just in case it wasn’t who she expected.
“Hello?” she called. “Is that you?”
97
I skidded around a corner, then punched the accelerator again.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t Lien-hua.
I had to be wrong. Yes. I had to be.
A good investigator doesn’t look for evidence to prove his theories, but to disprove them.
And I’d never wanted to disprove myself more than I did right then.
I needed to trust the evidence.
Evidence. Yes. Not conjecture. I was doubting Lien-hua only because of circumstances, events that could be read different ways.
Trust the evidence wherever it takes you.
My thoughts spun backward, funneling hours and hours of our investigation into a few brief seconds.
I had to be wrong. I had to be.
The chains. The cameras. The angles. The videos.
Blind spots.
The evidence room.
Wait. The person who checked on the device in the evidence room was a man. Not a woman.
Not a woman. Not Margaret. Not Lien-hua.
But I needed more than that. I needed more.
You missed something, Dr. Bowers.
Yes, I did.
The handwriting on the envelope, on the wall. I’d seen Lien-hua’s handwriting a hundred times, and even though handwriting analysis has never been my specialty, I could tell it wasn’t hers. And the analysts already determined it wasn’t Melice’s, so unless there was another abductor we didn’t know about…
Not just the handwriting, the video.
And then, everything about the case unraveled again. All the facts began to mount in a new order. My head was finally starting to clear.
The AFIS records were altered.
The thermal satellite imagery showed Hunter slip the device into the car. That’s how Shade knew the police had the device.
Terry mentioned Sebastian Taylor had been sighted.
Crease after crease, my preconceptions unfolded.
Mental origami.
Dupin. Think like Dupin.
The video of Cassandra in the tank was exactly one minute and fifty-two seconds long.
Yesterday Calvin told me to stop looking at the facts and to start looking at the spaces between them. “One cannot adequately understand the movement of the planets,” he’d said, “until one has identified what they all orbit around.”