by Jake Needham
Anyway, forget that. I think I found out what’s going on here and why Tyler became such a problem for them. Call me as soon as you get this. You’re not going to believe what I’ve discovered.
There was no signature, but it didn’t need a signature.
Tay picked up his coffee, took a sip, and read the note through from the beginning again to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. He hadn’t. Emma was clearly excited about whatever it was she had discovered, but he couldn’t help but wonder a little. He had been gone less than twenty-four hours. That was hardly enough time for Emma to make much of a breakthrough.
Tay took a final sip of coffee, returned the mug to the table, and picked up his cell phone again. Thumbing it on, he scrolled through the call list until he found the last time he had called Emma at the Ritz-Carlton. It wasn’t difficult. He made so few calls that his call list was almost empty.
“What do you mean she checked out?” Tay asked the Ritz-Carlton telephone operator.
“I mean she is no longer in the hotel, sir. She left yesterday.”
“That’s impossible. She was there yesterday.”
“That may well be, sir, but she checked out overnight.”
“At what time?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I am not authorized to give out any details with regard to our guests. I’m sure you understand that at the Ritz-Carlton we value the privacy of every guest and we—”
“This is Inspector Samuel Tay of Singapore CID,” Tay snapped.
Technically that was still true even though he was on suspension. At least it was close enough.
“I need to know exactly when Ms. Lazar checked out and whether she indicated where she was going,” he continued.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I’m still not authorized to give out that information over the telephone.”
“Now look here, young lady—”
“Would you like me to connect you to our general manager?”
Tay hung up. All he needed right now was an extended argument with some supercilious git. Besides, he had just asked by reflex. He didn’t really see what good knowing Emma’s checkout time would do him, and he knew perfectly well no one ever told a hotel where they were going when they checked out.
Tay picked up the note Emma had left for him and examined it again. There was nothing about it that told him when it had been written or when it had been left in his mailbox.
He had been away less than a day. Yet in that time, Emma had not only discovered something so significant that she thought it explained why Tyler had been murdered, she had tried to reach him repeatedly by telephone, and then she had come to his house and put a note in his mailbox. After that, she had checked out of her hotel and disappeared.
None of that made any sense to him.
He turned his telephone off, tossed it on the table, and lit a cigarette.
When the doorbell rang, Tay dumped his cigarette into the ashtray and leaped to his feet. It had to be Emma, he thought. He walked quickly to the front door and pulled it open.
It wasn’t Emma. It was Sergeant Kang.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but your telephone is off.”
“I know it’s off, Sergeant. It’s off because I turned it off.”
“This is important, sir, or I wouldn’t have bothered you.”
Tay went out and opened the gate, and Kang followed him into the living room.
“Well, Sergeant,” Tay said as soon as he closed the door, “out with it then. What’s this all about?”
“That woman writer you’ve been helping, sir, when was the last—”
“I was just trying to reach her, Robbie, but she’s checked out of the Ritz-Carlton. Have you talked to her again?”
Robbie Kang’s eyes slid off of Tay’s and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Tay felt a sudden sense of physical discomfort, like the feeling he got when he was about to vomit. He had no doubt at all Kang was going to tell him something awful.
“She’s dead, sir.”
Tay pointed to a chair, and Kang sat down.
“Tell me,” was all Tay said.
“Her body was found early this morning in an alley behind the Maxwell Road Food Centre, sir. I wanted you to know before you read it in the newspaper.”
“I don’t read the newspaper,” Tay said. It was a ridiculous response to hearing that Emma was dead, of course, but it was the first thing that came to mind.
Tay was stunned. Of course he was. But Tay had also been a homicide detective for most of his life and it only took a moment for his professional instincts to shove aside his shock.
“Behind the Maxwell Road Food Centre you said?”
“Yes, sir. Only a few hundred yards from the apartment where Tyler Bartlett was found, if you can believe that.”
Tay could believe it all too easily.
“What was the cause of death?”
“It looks like strangulation, but until the pathologist—”
“Were there any signs of sexual assault?” Tay interrupted.
“No, sir. None. No damage to her clothing, and no indication of a struggle.”
“Robbery?”
“We didn’t find a purse, so possibly it was stolen, but her watch and jewelry were untouched. It doesn’t look like a robbery to me. She was just… well, strangled. We think whoever strangled her caught her by surprise. Probably grabbed her from behind.”
Tay lit a cigarette, tossed the box back on the table, and shook out the match.
“Do you think she was killed where she was found?” he asked.
“No, sir. We figure she was strangled somewhere else, and the body was dumped there. I think she could have been strangled in a car and then the car drove there to get rid of the body. That would be consistent with someone grabbing her by surprise from behind. If she had been in the front seat—”
“I get it, Sergeant,” Tay interrupted. “What time was she found?”
“Just before five this morning.”
“When I called the Ritz-Carlton a few minutes ago, they told me she checked out last night.”
“Not exactly, sir.”
Tay looked at Kang, drew on his cigarette, and waited.
“We found a Ritz-Carlton card key in one of her pockets so we took it to the hotel and checked the room number. That’s how we initially identified her since she didn’t have a purse. The hotel said a man had checked her out just before midnight last night. He told the cashier she wouldn’t be coming back, and he paid her bill.”
“Did this man collect her things, too?”
“There was nothing in her room. Either he took whatever she had there, or she took it when she left.”
“Why would you kill somebody and then go pay their hotel bill?”
“Maybe she hadn’t been killed at that point. Maybe she’d been kidnapped and the kidnappers were trying to keep her from being reported missing. But later they changed their mind about keeping her and killed her instead.”
“Did you trace the credit card this guy used?”
“He paid cash, sir.”
“That must have gotten him noticed. I’ll bet nobody has paid cash at the Ritz-Carlton in at least a decade.”
“There wasn’t much to notice, sir. A local man, the cashier said. Middle-aged, average height, average weight, wearing a dark suit. Nothing distinguishing about him at all.”
“Have you looked at the surveillance video?”
“The camera covering the cashier’s desk started malfunctioning about an hour before the man showed up. We’re still searching the images from the other cameras, but it doesn’t look good. Whoever he was, he seems to have walked right between the areas covered by cameras. It was almost like he knew where they were.”
Tay smoked quietly and thought about that. Could somebody have hacked into the hotel’s security system, determined where the cameras were, and shut off the only one they couldn’t avoid? He really had no idea, but it supposed it was at least possible. Almost eve
rything seemed possible these days.
“Anything else, Sergeant?” Tay asked, putting out his cigarette.
“No, sir. That’s all we’ve got now. I’ll keep you posted.”
Tay nodded as he stood up, but he didn’t say anything else.
“I almost forgot, sir.”
Sergeant Kang was at Tay’s front gate when he stopped and turned around.
“That disk drive you asked me to give to the Wangster to check out?”
It took Tay a moment to remember what Kang was taking about, but then he did. The disk drive Betty Lee had given them, the one that Tyler had set up in her apartment and connected to her Wi-Fi. He had asked Kang to find somebody to examine its contents, and Kang had told him about a computer geek who owed him a favor, a Chinese kid who called himself the Wangster.
“What about it, Sergeant?”
“Well, sir, it’s encrypted. The Wangster says the encryption is the most sophisticated he’s ever seen.”
“So you’re telling me he’s not going to be able to tell me what’s on the drive?”
“No, sir. The Wangster says he can crack any encryption scheme ever invented. He just thinks this one is going to take him a while.”
“So what are we talking about, Sergeant? Days? Weeks? Until the next millennium?”
“I don’t know, sir. I’m sure he’s working as fast as he can.”
Tay was less certain of that. He thought the industriousness of anyone who insisted on calling himself the Wangster was very much an open question. But he didn’t say that. He just nodded and closed the door behind Sergeant Kang.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
TAY WENT OUT into the garden, sat down at the table, and leaned against it on his folded forearms. It was time to smoke. Occasionally he did ask himself what smoking was doing to his lungs, but this wasn’t one of those times. Besides, by now they must be like asphalt. They could take another pack. Or two.
He was surprised to see his hand shaking as he lit up. He watched it with disembodied interest. After all the death and brutality he had seen, why was Emma Lazar’s murder so hard for him to accept?
He hardly knew her, yet something about her had given him hope that he might. His history with women was abysmal. The ones to whom he was attracted always ended up walking away from him, or even on a couple of occasions dying. The ones to whom he was not attracted wouldn’t leave him alone. Was that the story of every man’s life, he wondered, or just the tale of his?
When Tay realized what he was thinking, he closed his eyes in shame. Emma was dead and here he was feeling sorry for himself about losing a girlfriend he hadn’t had. He had lost nothing, not really, and Emma Lazar had lost everything. She was young and beautiful and intelligent, and now she was gone. And for what?
Was Emma’s murder connected to the murder of Tyler Bartlett? Of course it was. Tay had no doubt of that. To say it wasn’t connected would be to say it was just a coincidence she was murdered while she was investigating Tyler Bartlett’s death. The Maxwell Road Food Centre was only a few hundred yards from the shophouse where Tyler was found hanging from his bathroom door. Was that another coincidence?
Horseshit, Tay said to himself. Emma had left him a note saying she had found something significant. She had found whatever it was, and they had killed her because of it. But what had she found? And who had killed her?
Tay’s gut told him that Tyler’s murder had something to do with the work he was doing at The Future, but what exactly? The development of software for driverless cars leading to two murders? That was ridiculous. There had to be another explanation, something he just couldn’t see. But… what?
There was one thing at least of which Tay was certain. Tyler had stumbled over something he wasn’t supposed to know, and he had been killed for it. Emma had been trying to find out what Tyler had discovered. She may have, and now she was dead, too. Did that mean that now he was in danger, too? Surely not. He knew nothing. Less than nothing, to be honest. But did whoever killed Emma realize that? Maybe they thought Emma had already told him what she had discovered.
Tay got up and went back inside his house. Upstairs, on the table beside his bed, his old Smith and Wesson .38 wheel gun was just where he had left it. Since he was on suspension, he wasn’t authorized to carry it. If he got caught with it, he could think of half a dozen people who would take delight in using that to roast his ass. On the other hand, if somebody came after him the way they had come after Tyler and Emma, not having it would be worse. Being dead was a hell of a lot more permanent than getting your ass roasted.
He scooped the .38 off the bedside table, clipped the holster to his belt, and went back downstairs.
Tay thought briefly of calling John August to tell him about Emma’s murder, but he didn’t really see what good that would do. It wasn’t like August could tell him who was responsible. Besides, calling August involved an annoying rigmarole. Tay had a number for him, but nobody ever answered it. The only way he could reach August was to call that number, hang up, and then wait for August to call back. Sometimes August did, sometimes he didn’t. It pissed Tay off, but that was the way it was.
Tay took out his cell phone, but before he could decide whether talking to August was worth jumping through all his hoops, it rang. Tay looked at the phone in surprise. He didn’t get many calls. Almost none, really, especially now that he was on suspension. He looked at the display, but it said UNKNOWN CALLER. Of course it did.
Tay didn’t really want to answer it, but ignoring a ringing phone was a hard thing to do. Sometimes Tay could. This time he couldn’t. Maybe he was just tired.
“Hello?”
“Inspector? I’m sorry to bother you at home. I hope you don’t mind.”
It was a woman’s voice. Pleasant, nicely modulated, but not one Tay recognized.
“How are you today?” she continued.
There were a great many things that annoyed Tay, and he noticed the number of things that annoyed him had steadily increased as he grew older. But there was one thing that had been right at the top of his list of supremely irritating crap for as long as he could remember: people who started talking when he answered the telephone without first clearly identifying themselves.
There was only one way to deal with people like that. He punched the disconnect button and hung up.
Tay was inside making coffee when his phone rang again. He glared at it. Why had he brought the damn thing into the kitchen with him?
He tried to ignore the buzzing, but whoever was calling simply refused to hang up and the telephone kept right on buzzing like a pissed off bee. Tay wondered if it could be the same woman who called before calling back to apologize. A nice thought, he knew, but much too nice to be true. More likely she was calling back to make his life miserable for having hung up on her. He gritted his teeth and picked up the telephone.
“Hello.”
“We were cut off. I really don’t understand what—”
“Who is this?”
“Oh… uh, I’m sorry. I thought you knew. This is Susan Hoi.”
Susan Hoi was a pathologist at the Centre for Forensic Medicine, whom Tay had occasionally worked with on cases. She was young and attractive, and Tay had never been able to figure out how she had ended up in a profession in which cutting up dead bodies was the daily routine. She just didn’t seem the type to him, even if he wasn’t entirely certain what the type might be.
“It’s been a while since we’ve talked,” she said. “How are you?”
Indeed it had been a while. Susan Hoi had made her interest in Tay so plain that he had fled without a second thought, and he avoided her whenever possible. It was his usual reflex, he knew, nothing to do with Susan Hoi really, and the older he got the more he wondered why he did it every time a woman showed interest in him. Unless he stopped, he was going to end up a lonely, disgruntled old man living all alone. Of course, there were plenty of people who said that’s what he was right now, but he tried not to think about th
at.
“Look,” Susan Hoi went on before Tay could decide what to say, “this isn’t a social call. Sergeant Kang asked me to talk to you.”
“Talk to me? About what?”
“I’ve had a preliminary look at a woman’s body that was brought in early this morning. Sergeant Kang said you had an interest in the case.”
“Did Robbie tell you what my interest in the case is?”
“No, but I don’t really care.”
“You do know I’ve been suspended from CID, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And that telling me anything about your examination would be completely improper?”
“Yes, I know that. Now look, Sam, do you want to hear what killed this woman or don’t you?”
Tay said nothing.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Susan Hoi said. “All of the usual features of asphyxial death Sergeant Kang observed at the scene are present. My preliminary conclusion is that the cause of death was ligature strangulation.”
“Robbie didn’t say anything about a ligature mark.”
There was a brief silence.
“Would you like me to go on?” Dr. Hoi asked.
Tay cleared his throat. “Yes,” he said. “Please.”
“A mark on the neck is generally the principal external sign of ligature strangulation, bearing in mind, of course, the possibility of coincidental signs of strangulation. The appearance of the ligature mark naturally depends on the nature and texture of the ligature material. When there is a pronounced pattern, such as the weave of a cord or plaiting of a thong, the same pattern may be imprinted into the skin. When a fabric, such as a scarf or towel has been used, the marks on the neck may be difficult to interpret. A broad, flat band, for example, may leave no mark at all. In this case, there was almost no mark. It was present, but it would have been difficult to observe in situ. Hence, Sergeant Kang’s assumption of manual strangulation rather than ligature strangulation.”