THE DEAD AMERICAN (The Inspector Samuel Tay Novels Book 3)

by Jake Needham

  Tay had always been the straightest of arrows. He believed in the justice system and he believed in his role in that system as a policeman. Then something happened that changed things for him. He saw a murderer walking free because his superiors feared a prosecution would be too embarrassing for them. The man had murdered three women, one of them a friend of Tay’s. And he walked away because of politics.

  But that woman was also a friend of John August, and John August convinced Tay the only way to get justice for her was for them to deliver it. To kill both her murderer, and the man he was doing it for.

  Tay may not have pulled a trigger himself, but he arranged the circumstances in which John August did. And Tay thought that was pretty much the same thing.

  It was after that Tay had begun to see the world differently. He still believed in the justice system, most of the time, and he still believed in his role in it as a policeman. But he understood now that there were occasional exceptions to even the most rigid of moral codes.

  That had been one then.

  Perhaps this was another one now.

  Still, there was one big difference between then and now, and it was an important one. Then he’d had John August to hide behind. Now he was on his own.

  Tay poured a cup of coffee, took it into his living room, and settled into the same leather chair where he sat the day Emma Lazar rang the bell at his gate. Tay unclipped the holster of his old Smith and Wesson from his belt and put it on the table.

  As he sipped the coffee, a thought occurred to him. He turned it around, examining it from all sides, but the more he considered it the more he liked it.

  Perhaps the thing to do was to decide how to do it and leave the question of whether he would do it for later. Planning was something Tay was good at. Making fine moral distinctions was a lot harder for him.

  So Tay leaned back, put his feet on the table, and planned.

  And the more he planned, the more he realized how difficult it would be for him to get to Goodnight-Jones. He could hardly take a taxi out to Sentosa, find 237 Ocean Drive, and walk up and ring the doorbell, could he? A somewhat more stealthy approach was called for, but stealth would be difficult at Sentosa Cove.

  The Cove wasn’t the sort of neighborhood where people hung out on the sidewalks. It was quiet and empty, most of its residents possessing more homes in more different countries than they could remember. A car on the streets would be conspicuous enough. A taxi coming into the area would be even more conspicuous. And a man on foot would be most conspicuous of all.

  At least that narrowed it down, didn’t it? If Tay was going to the Cove, he had to have a car. Normally when he needed a car, he took one from the CID pool, but that wasn’t an option here. He doubted he was entitled to one while he was on suspension and, even if he were, using a CID car to take him out to the Cove to shoot Goodnight-Jones was too unseemly for him even to contemplate.

  Tay got up, found his phone book, and looked up car rental agencies. He found a place not far from him that was open twenty-four hours a day, and he called and booked a car and told them he would pick it up within an hour. First he asked for a Toyota sedan, but then he changed it to an Audi. An Audi would fit in better at the Cove than a Toyota.

  So he had taken the first step, hadn’t he? With the booking of a rental car to drive to Sentosa, he had begun assembling the tools he needed for the task. His eyes fell on his revolver on the table. Was he really thinking about using his own service revolver? Yes, that was important to him somehow. He wasn’t a murderer. He was bringing justice. His service revolver was exactly the right tool.

  If he did it at all.

  Perhaps that was the way to approach the problem. Don’t try to decide. Just begin as if he knew exactly what to do.

  After all, he would have a thousand chances to turn around and come home without going through with it, wouldn’t he? Picking up the rental car and taking his revolver and driving to Sentosa didn’t commit him irrevocably to anything, did it?

  There you go, Tay thought to himself. That’s the ticket.

  Take everything one step at a time.

  Tay stood up, clipped the holster to his belt, and went upstairs to get a jacket.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  THE AUDI WAS a black A6 that would be almost invisible in the darkness. Tay liked that. He thought getting a black car was a good omen.

  He flashed his warrant card at the rent-a-cop manning the gate to the Cove and rolled right in. He was pretty sure the kid hadn’t gotten a close enough look to read his name. He probably hadn’t even recognized it as a police warrant card, but it was official identification and Tay was driving an expensive car, and that combination worked magic on almost every Singaporean. Tay didn’t know whether the official ID or the expensive car attracted more deference but, either way, in combination they were lethal.

  The streets of the Cove were as deserted as Tay thought they would be. Out here on Sentosa the air sparkled and there was no haze. Haze was probably forbidden under the local regulations.

  Tay drove slowly, watching his surroundings. He followed Ocean Drive past the entrance to the W Singapore Hotel, then turned off onto Coral Island doing his best to look like a man who had just made an accidental wrong turn.

  But his performance was wasted since there was no audience. He didn’t see another car nor a living human being anywhere. As he reversed direction at the turnaround in the middle of Coral Island, he checked out the backs of the houses along Ocean Drive on the other side of the narrow channel. As he remembered, many of them had private docks. Although some of the docks were empty, at least half of the houses had boats behind them.

  The other thing he noticed was that nearly all the houses were dark. The place looked downright spooky. Rows of spectacular houses worth five or ten million dollars each, maybe more for all Tay knew, perfectly trimmed tropical vegetation everywhere, and not a sign of an actual human being.

  An idea began to take shape in Tay’s mind.

  The Audi rolled slowly back over the short bridge that connected Coral Island to the rest of the Cove, then turned right on Ocean Drive. Tay checked the house numbers. They were all in the hundreds.

  He was pleased to see that most of the houses had covered parking areas in front that were open to the street, rather than closed garages. He wasn’t sure why they did. If he was going to pay ten million dollars for a house he would damn well expect it to have a garage. He supposed it must have something to do with the open, Californian look of the architecture. But regardless of the reason, it suited him fine.

  He checked the house numbers again. He was now into the low two hundreds and he began trying to guess how far ahead 237 Ocean Drive would be. It was one of the houses on the right, backed up on the channel rather than on the ocean, so it would have a boat dock behind it.

  He saw 229, 231, 233, and 235, all dark and apparently empty. As he came to 237, he slowed as much as he dared and swept his eyes over the house.

  Tay thought it was a monstrosity. Three levels of white stucco with a pair of giant wooden entry doors polished to a high gloss that were big enough for a small airplane to taxi into the living room. The place had so much glass on every level that it could have been turned into a new car showroom without changing a thing. The front courtyard was paved in square, off-white ceramic tiles and the entry was flanked with two tall sculptures that looked to Tay like piles of old truck tires that had been spray-painted yellow.

  But what attracted Tay’s interest even more than the ugliness of the architecture was the light behind the closed draperies in the right-hand corner of the second floor.

  He didn’t stop, of course. He kept the Audi’s speed steady and drove on, checking the next few houses he passed.

  239, 241, 243, and 245. All dark. All apparently empty.

  At the end of Ocean Drive there were several apartment buildings and a large turnaround tucked between the buildings and the ocean. There were a few lights scattered here and there. Not many,
but a few. He brought the Audi around in a smooth circle and turned back up Ocean Drive the way he had come. Had anyone been looking down from one of the apartments at just that moment, Tay thought he would look like a man searching for an address he had accidentally driven past.

  As Tay drew close to 237 again, he double-checked the houses he was passing. 245, 243, 241. All of them were still completely dark.

  When he got to the driveway for 239, he braked sharply, swung in, and doused his headlights. He edged the Audi forward into the empty covered parking area on the right side of the house and cut the engine. In the sudden silence, Tay strained his ears for any noise and his eyes for any sign of a light, but all he could hear was the slight ticking of the Audi’s engine as it cooled and all he could see was the darkness that closed in all around him.

  He reached up and turned off the dome light in the Audi, slipped out the driver’s door, and closed it quietly behind him.

  Okay, he was here.

  Now what?

  Tay eased out of the parking area and looked up at the house that was involuntarily hosting him. It was built of cedar planks polished to the sheen of a fine whiskey. And glass, a lot of glass. But draperies were pulled over every bit of the glass and no light glowed behind any of them.

  The house no doubt belonged to a wealthy Indonesian or Chinese who was even now in an equally elaborate house he owned in some other country. Tay didn’t really care. As long as whoever it was stayed wherever he was for at least another hour or so, that would be good enough. Nobody who passed would pay the slightest attention. The Audi looked like it went with the house.

  Tay moved silently along the side of the house toward the back. He couldn’t see very well, but there was enough ambient light to keep him from falling over his own feet.

  His eyes swept the side of 237 Ocean Drive he could see from where he was, but there was no sign of life. The light he had seen as he drove past was on the other side of the house so he felt safe. It would take a piece of phenomenally bad luck for Goodnight-Jones or someone else to glance out from one of the dark rooms on this side and spot him.

  Tay stopped in the shadows at the back. Tied up at a small wooden pier behind 239 Ocean Drive was what looked like a speedboat, but a bright blue cover enveloped the craft and it was difficult to tell exactly what it was. There was no fence between 239 Ocean Drive and 237 Ocean Drive, and Tay could see that the property next door had a large floating dock behind it. Two aluminum gangways ran from the edge of the backyard down to the dock. There was no boat tied up alongside it. Either Goodnight-Jones was still waiting for his ride, or he had already gone and forgotten to turn off the light.

  Tay’s hand brushed against the revolver under his jacket.

  Was he really going to do this?

  He thought about young Tyler Bartlett left hanging from his bathroom door, and about Emma Lazar discarded like trash in an alleyway. He thought about the two hundred thirty-nine souls on MH370 when it plunged into that dark and empty ocean. And he imagined Zachery Goodnight-Jones strolling across that lawn, walking down one of the gangways onto the floating dock, and boarding a small boat that would take him away from the responsibility for any of it.

  Yes, God help him, Tay thought, he probably was going to do this.

  The more pressing question now, he supposed, was how he was going to do this. Without getting inside 237 Ocean Drive somehow, he wasn’t going to do much of anything, and he doubted Goodnight-Jones had left a door open for him.

  There was also the matter of whether Goodnight-Jones was in there alone. Goh said he was, and Tay thought that was probably the case. When you slipped quietly away into the night, you didn’t tell other people what your plan was. Still, it was possible he had one or two people with him, and Tay wasn’t going to kill innocents the way Goodnight-Jones had. If there were other people there, things would get complicated.

  Tay slipped through the waist-high hedge of boxwood bushes that was the division between the two backyards and pressed himself into the shadows against the back wall of 237 Ocean Drive. The rough stucco scratched his arms.

  To his right he could see most of the back lawn. The grass was neatly trimmed and sloped down to the dock in a carpet as even as a golf green. The whole back of the house opened out to a white-tiled terrace, the outer rim of which was about three feet above the lawn. Crape jasmine bushes covered in white pinwheel-shaped flowers had been planted in black-glazed ceramic pots all along the edge to form a kind of railing.

  Tay edged away from the wall. He crouched down below the edge of the terrace and duck-walked to what he thought was about the middle. Then he slowly raised his head and peered between two of the crape jasmines.

  The back of the house was composed entirely of glass, and all the drapes on the first floor were standing open. There were no lights on inside, but Tay could make out most of the large, well-furnished room that faced the terrace. It had exactly the bland, international look that he expected. It could have been a suite in any Four Seasons Hotel anywhere in the world.

  Through a door across on the opposite wall of the room Tay saw a dim, indistinct glow as if light from another part of the house was seeping down a staircase. He tilted his head back and studied the upper floors. Sure enough, there in the left-hand corner of the second floor, the corner furthest away from him, he saw light behind closed drapes.

  Watching for any movement of the drapes where the light was, Tay pulled himself up on the terrace and padded silently to the rear doors. There were two of them, both glass, one on the left of the room and one on the right. He tried them both, and they were both locked. Of course they were. Tay slipped over the edge of the terrace again and duck-walked back to where he had begun.

  So much for getting in through the back of the house.

  That left the front.

  Tay worked his way along the side of the house and squatted in the shadows watching the street. When he was sure no one was coming, he eased his head around the corner to check out the front doors. Like the back, the front of the house was mostly glass, but all of these drapes were closed.

  He was looking directly into a parking area similar to the one in which he had left the Audi next door. On the right side was a dark-colored Mercedes coupe, but tucked between it and the front of the house was a motorcycle that looked fast and powerful. The Mercedes was just what he expected, but the motorcycle surprised Tay. He would never have picked Goodnight-Jones as someone who rode a bike.

  Maybe Goh had been wrong about Goodnight-Jones being there alone. Maybe there was someone else inside the house with him after all.

  Tay leaned further out until he could see the upper floors. No lights anywhere except on the second floor in the opposite corner. Whoever was in the house was clearly there. Either in a single large room that ran the width of the house on the second floor, or in a suite of two rooms, one on the front and one in the back.

  Glancing both up and down Ocean Drive to make sure there wasn’t any stray traffic, Tay broke cover and moved quickly to the front doors. He checked for video surveillance. He saw none, and he put his hand on the handle.

  He squeezed the latch, and to his surprise he heard a dull click and the left-hand door opened.

  “I left it unlocked for you,” a voice said from somewhere behind him.

  Tay felt his heart clench as if it were on the verge of stopping. His right hand drifted toward to the revolver under his jacket.

  “For fuck’s sake, Sam, don’t shoot me.”

  Even before Tay turned around and saw the figure standing deep in the shadows next to the motorbike, he knew.

  It was John August.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  AUGUST STEPPED OUT of the shadows and made a beckoning gesture. Tay walked into the parking area, and August leaned back against the Mercedes and folded his arms.

  “I guess there’s no point in asking what you’re doing here,” Tay said, dropping his voice to a whisper.

  August looked amused.
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  “You don’t have to whisper,” he said. “No one’s going to hear you.”

  “You mean Goodnight-Jones isn’t in there?”

  August shook his head. “Not now.”

  “But he was.”

  “Oh yeah,” August said. “He was here for at least a couple of days.”

  “When did he leave?”

  “Just a few minutes ago.”

  Tay thought about that. “I didn’t hear a boat.”

  “Go in and look around for yourself,” August shrugged.

  Tay realized August’s suggestion wasn’t exactly responsive, but he thought nothing of it. August often wasn’t very responsive.

  He walked back to the front door, pushed it open, and stepped inside. August came in behind him, flipped on the light, and closed the door. They were standing in the long, rectangular entry hall tiled in a black and white checkerboard pattern that had a grand looking staircase at the end. On one wall was a high chest painted in bright swirling colors and on the other was a large mirror in a thick gold frame that could have been stolen from the Louvre. It was the same look as the room he had seen through the back windows. International bland.

  “Up the stairs and to the right,” August said.

  As Tay mounted the stairs, he sensed something in the air around him. He felt like a man swimming upward into dirtier and dirtier water.

  At the top of the steps he turned right toward an open door at the end of the hall. Light spilled out of the room and illuminated the hallway. It was clearly the light he had seen from outside behind the drapes on the second floor.

  Tay could see more and more of the room as he neared it. From the bookcases along the far wall and the red leather chair just past the door, he decided it must be a study.