Expose

by Danielle Girard

  From beneath her rose a sharp earthiness. She smelled the musty scent of drying roses. She lay on a bed of rose stems, their thorns against her skin. And she imagined forcing their sharp tips to bend with her weight, to give in beneath her.

  Across her belly came the sensation of the walking creatures. Giant spiders, she’d imagined back then, describing them the way a child might have described a monster in his closet. To Aleena, they’d been hornets, thousands of them, crawling around her face and nose, forcing her to keep her eyes closed, not to breathe.

  Turning her head, she used the table to push the blindfold aside, and the room came into view. A sliver of light bent across the space, emanating from one corner and illuminating the room in a soft glow.

  It felt like daylight.

  She saw the creatures now, the light dappled by their shape as they buzzed above her, at first maybe ten but then more, slowly dancing into her vision. They landed, their touch like the softest kiss, on her skin. Not spiders or hornets but something magical—butterflies bred with hummingbirds, their brilliant wings like a master drummer on her belly. She imagined being one with them, flying free, graceful toward the light. She drew from their energy, and they made her stronger, more powerful.

  The clomping of his feet sounded overhead.

  She heard him move slowly down the stairs, and she loosened her hands, let her body go slack. Her pulse quickened, and she fought the fear.

  As she fought to separate mind from body, his bare feet rustled on the floor. She would welcome him, welcome the pain as she had his first touch so many years ago.

  He brushed her face with the back of her hands, and she arched into him. He made a sound of confusion and drew his hand away, but she did not lower herself. He wanted her fear. He fed upon it.

  She would not give him that.

  As he set his tool against the table, the vibration of its metal shivered through her. She fought against the desire to scream, to move, against her own pulse, which rocketed in her throat.

  He loosened the restraint, and she swallowed the cry in her throat. Listened, motionless, to the clatter of the chain releasing on one end. He was moving her.

  She pictured the chains loose at her sides. The adrenaline rushed through her as she imagined leaping up and thrashing the chains against him. Not yet, she told herself. Not yet.

  One inhale at a time, she tamed her breath, focused on letting her tongue fall to the back of her mouth. Soon her breath became a low hum; her eyelids weighed against her eyes, as though she could really sleep.

  He lifted her hand and let it go so that it swung upward and down again, landing across her body. The metal cuff connected with her hip. The pain passed. She did not flinch. Instead, a smile rose in the back of her mouth. Holding her mouth still, the satisfaction rose in her.

  He dropped his grip, and she sensed his fear in the quickness of his motions. Did he think she might be dead? His hand touched her neck. Her pulse batted against his fingertips. He knew she was very much alive.

  But then what was wrong with her? He must be wondering.

  His fingertips touched her eyes, the pressure as he lifted the lid. Her eyes rolled back. The white startled him, and he gave a quick, low sound, almost like a bark.

  His palm pressed on her forehead.

  His fear grew.

  He reached beneath her to lift her from the table as she drew a long, slow breath.

  On the exhale, she swung her head toward him. Latched her teeth onto his arm and sank into the flesh.

  He howled and batted at her face with his free hand, but she swung the chain and connected its heavy tail to his back like a steel dragon, whipping through the air.

  He dropped to his knees, her teeth embedded in him, both of them rolling to the floor. In the fall, her teeth were ripped from his arm, her mouth full of tissue and blood.

  She landed on top of him, naked and bleeding. She spat on the ground, lifting her hand to strike at him with the heavy metal cuffs.

  He tried to twist, to draw his knees to his chest, but she sat astride him. He screamed, gripping his arm to his chest as he tried to protect himself from the assault.

  She beat him with the metal cuffs of her restraints, striking him in the head on one side, the jaw on the other. He covered his head with his uninjured arm, and she arched back and punched him in the groin, carrying the weight of the chain along with her. It swung and struck her thigh, but she did not flinch, even as the angry welt grew like a snake beneath her skin.

  When he had grown still, she reached for the dagger he had used to burn her. It felt light in her hand as she raised it above her head as though she had the power of a hundred men. He pitched to his left, and her right knee hit the concrete hard. The ball of her foot touched the floor, and the burn burst apart on her foot. Wetness under her feet where the blisters had spilled their clear fluid.

  But she could not be thrown. He faced her. The eyes that had been amber with green were dulled, the light in them gone. Fine red lines webbed the whites, making them look slightly yellow. His hair had receded back on his forehead, and his brows had become scraggly and wild.

  He had been sleek and powerful. He was the tiger.

  But now she saw through the act. He cowered like a child, cried out. “Don’t kill me. Please.”

  A laugh erupted from her throat. That she should spare him.

  “Please,” he whispered.

  She gripped the base of the dagger in both hands and lifted it above her head. Letting out a roar, she brought it down into his chest. His body jerked beneath her, a resounding crunch as the blade broke through the ribs. A warm, thick fountain of blood sprayed across her arms and chest. Its warmth ran down her neck. She cast the dagger aside and wiped the blood from her cheek with the back of her hand.

  She didn’t move as his body struggled beneath her. He rocked in shallow motions, his breaths growing wet and raspy. They quickened. His fingers reached for something that wasn’t there, closing around air.

  A minute later, a whisper of his breath expelled and then stilled.

  He uttered not one more word as the blood spilled from him.

  She slowly crawled off him, moving on her hands and knees until she reached the wall.

  Beneath his body, the blood inched its way from him. Only after some minutes did she recognize that the buzzing had started again. Imagining some mythical beast, she watched as the creatures darted past them. Too small for a hummingbird, too fast for a butterfly. But then one landed on the lifeless Bengal, resting on his chest just below his collarbone.

  Its backside rose and fell as she made sense of the shape. A dragonfly, its head a brilliant red, its tail the brightest pink. Its wings shuddered as it settled on the dead man’s skin.

  The creature looked so frail, yet as it rose back into the air, it carried such power. She had the strangest sense that it had given her the strength to kill him.

  She reached out for the creature, but it darted away, spinning like a helicopter around her head. She moved across the cold, concrete floor, every motion painful and slow.

  He was dead. She was safe.

  A door slid open. Before she could look up, she heard a quick scuffle of feet, followed by something metal pressed hard and cold against her face. The rounded end dug into her cheek, biting at her gums through the skin. A long, low click echoed as the bullet entered the chamber.

  49

  Hal carried his coffee into the living room, still trying to get the pieces to fit.

  “What is it?” Schwartzman asked.

  “Professor Ramseyer wears a pinkie ring with a dragonfly. At first, I thought the symbol on it was a key, but seeing the one from the security footage on Tabitha Wilson’s abductor, they’re the same—I’m sure of it.”

  “But it can’t have been Ramseyer,” she said after a moment. “He’s way too short to be the man who shoved Tabitha Wilson into that trunk.”

  “Right,” Hal agreed. “So why would Professor Ramseyer have the same
ring as the man who had abducted Tabitha Wilson? And what does it have to do with the Century Hotel and ANS Optera?”

  “Have you guessed who wrote it yet?” she asked.

  “Wrote what?”

  “The dragonfly poem I was telling you about earlier.”

  “A poem?” he repeated. “I don’t remember.”

  “I found a famous poem about dragonflies. It was written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.”

  Tennyson. “Like the professor’s cat,” Hal said.

  “It could be a coincidence.”

  “Maybe,” Hal said. But not necessarily. He spent a moment thinking it through. “So Deming Bao was staying in the penthouse—his company owns the Century Hotel. He had to have been the man who took Tabitha Wilson. The penthouse is the only place in that hotel without cameras in the elevators.”

  “But what’s the connection between Bao and Ramseyer?” Schwartzman asked. She began straightening the books and papers on the coffee table, as though struggling to sit still.

  “Bao must have been the renter.” Hal’s mind churned through what he’d seen at the house.

  “But there had to be more than that,” Schwartzman said. “You don’t get matching rings with someone you hardly know. That can’t be a coincidence.”

  “No,” he said as his phone rang again.

  “No sign of Bao at any of the airports or jet centers,” Dispatch reported. “Maybe he’s skipping town another way.”

  “Make sure everyone is on alert,” Hal said. “And see what we can find out about his past, would you? Maybe you can get someone from the State Department on it.”

  “On the Saturday after Thanksgiving?”

  “Call Homeland Security. They’re working,” Hal snapped, ending the call. It was true that Deming Bao might have been leaving town by car or maybe by train, but he wasn’t getting back to China without a plane.

  “He’s still here?”

  “For now,” Hal said, lifting his coffee. He was surprised to find the cup empty. Setting it down, he thought back through the original assault file from the Berkeley Police Department. “After her attack, Tabitha Wilson had said the man had called himself Bengal, like the tiger.”

  She settled in beside him. “Right.”

  “Did you notice the pictures in the professor’s dining room?” he asked.

  “Sure,” she said. “There were artifacts, some photographs, and the one drawing—like a child’s drawing.” She grabbed his arm. “Of a tiger.”

  “Right.”

  “But I don’t get it,” she said. “It was a child’s drawing.”

  “And Deming Bao grew up in an orphanage.”

  “So maybe Ramseyer didn’t just rent to him. Maybe the professor actually knew Bao, even as a child?”

  Hal leaned into his laptop and returned to the web page with ANS Optera’s management team.

  “But how? Unless . . .” She stopped.

  Hal pointed to Deming Bao’s picture. “Unless Bao is his son.”

  Schwartzman leaned in. “Oh my God.”

  “Bao’s clearly got some Asian heritage, but there’s something about them,” Hal said, getting to his feet.

  “Their mouths,” Schwartzman said. “And maybe the brow. I would never have put it together.”

  “We’ve got to find George Ramseyer.” Hal pocketed his phone and headed for the front door.

  Schwartzman locked up behind them and handed him her car keys.

  He pulled from the curb as she fastened her seat belt. He was already dialing Dispatch.

  “It’s Harris. I need a number for George Ramseyer, over in Berkeley.”

  Beside him, Schwartzman typed on her phone. “Tabitha Wilson and Aleena Laughlin said their attacker was in his early twenties. That was fourteen years ago, which means he’d be midthirties now.”

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I’m Googling George Ramseyer.”

  “What for?”

  Her thumbs danced across the keyboard. “When we were at the house, Ramseyer said the trip in 2004 was his third sabbatical. I’m seeing if I can find out where his first ones were.” She stopped typing and scrolled down the page.

  “To check if the timing would work for Bao’s age.”

  “Right.”

  Hal drummed his fingers on his knee.

  “Here,” Schwartzman said, and the tone in her voice made it clear she’d found something. “In 1980, Ramseyer took his first sabbatical.”

  “To?”

  She looked up, eyes wide. “Uzbekistan.”

  “Where the hell is that?” he asked.

  There was a short pause before she said, “According to this map, it’s about fifty miles from Tajikistan.”

  “Where Bao grew up.”

  “Right,” she said.

  Hal’s phone rang. A DC number. “Harris.”

  “This is Carl Liehland with Homeland Security.”

  Hal glanced at Schwartzman, raising a brow. “Carl, how are you?”

  “I’m calling about a Deming Bao. You requested a search on him.”

  “I did.”

  “May I ask why?”

  Harris filled in Liehland on the killings in San Francisco while the Homeland Security officer listened in silence. When he was done, he asked, “You have something on him?”

  “He’s on a watch list,” Liehland said in a flat tone.

  “Like a terrorist watch list?”

  “No. Like a piece-of-shit watch list.”

  Hal couldn’t tell if Liehland was being facetious. “You want to expand on that?”

  “Bao was arrested in Germany in August 2003, accused in the murder of a prostitute in Berlin. The German police didn’t have enough evidence to convict him, but he was asked to leave the country and not return.”

  The traffic on the bridge slowed. In front of Hal a sea of red lights spread out for at least a mile. Up ahead flashed the red and blue lights of patrol cars. From behind came the heavy bleating of an ambulance, trying to get past.

  There had been an accident.

  A minute later, traffic stopped completely.

  50

  Hal ended the call with Carl Liehland by promising to keep him apprised of the situation with Deming Bao. Liehland would add Bao’s name to the airline no-fly list in case he tried to get on a plane somewhere else.

  Now Hal had to find him. But first, he had to get off the damn bridge. Traffic remained frozen. As the ambulance moved past, Hal tried to cut in behind them, but he wasn’t in a department car. No lights, no siren. He punched the gas to cut into the next lane as someone honked.

  As he inched forward, trying to wedge himself through the traffic, he thought about the conversation with Kyle Miller in Starbucks, about following Susan Slade around Ramseyer’s house. “The grad student told Kyle Miller that the renter was using the professor’s office. There was a picture of him on the desk,” Hal said.

  “I was thinking about that, too,” Schwartzman answered, pointing to an opening in the next lane.

  Hal switched lanes and continued to move forward slowly. Too slowly.

  “Maybe it wasn’t so strange that the renter used that office,” Schwartzman said. “Because it was his dad’s.”

  “Right,” Hal agreed. Traffic started moving again, but the car in front of him had stopped. He honked at the car to move.

  “And maybe it wasn’t Bao’s picture at all,” she added. “Maybe it was the professor’s.” She looked out across the bay. “You think Bao’s there? At the professor’s house?”

  “I don’t know. There’s no one answering at the home number,” Hal said.

  “But that doesn’t mean anything. I rarely answer my home phone,” she said. “He’s probably got a cell phone. Or maybe he’s at his wife’s sister’s house. Remember, he said she was the head curator.”

  “Right. At the Legion of Honor.”

  “Hang on,” she said, typing on her phone again. “I’ll get her name.” A moment later, she said. “Mel
inda Wang Michaels.”

  Hal dialed Dispatch again and told them he needed a home phone number, repeating the name Schwartzman had given him.

  “Got it. Want me to put you through?”

  “Yes,” Hal said. He was crossing Yerba Buena Island, midway over the bridge, when the traffic began to slow. Where the hell was everyone going on the Saturday after Thanksgiving? He switched lanes.

  The line rang four times and went to voicemail. Hal ended the call.

  “Should I contact Dispatch so we can try again?” Schwartzman asked.

  Hal shook his head. “We just go to the house, hope we get lucky.” Hal continued toward the exit. He’d been to the professor’s house twice, but he hadn’t considered that a real connection existed between Professor Ramseyer and the tenant. Deming Bao. Bengal. Bao was part Asian or Indian . . . or something else. His mother was . . . who the hell knew who his mother was.

  “You think he knew?” Schwartzman asked as though reading his mind.

  “You mean the professor?”

  “He had to have known that it was Bao who assaulted those women,” she said.

  Jesus, had Ramseyer helped?

  No. He’d been in India. Surely someone had verified that the professor was actually in India on sabbatical. But if he’d been in town, someone would have seen him. He was well known in the community.

  Finally, they reached the Gilman Street exit. Hal sped up toward the campus. “We should call for backup,” Hal said.

  Schwartzman called 9-1-1 and requested a couple of Berkeley black-and-whites to meet them at the professor’s house. The look on her face reflected his fear. What if Deming Bao had killed Tabitha Wilson? What about the professor? Was he desperate enough to kill his own father?

  At Ramseyer’s house, Hal sprinted up the steps to the front door, Schwartzman on his heels, and banged on the glass. She had a phone pressed to her ear and was breathing heavily. “The police are on their way.”

  The cat rounded the corner of the house and circled Schwartzman’s feet again, clawing its way up her slacks the way it had on Thursday. Two days ago, Hal had been standing in this exact spot. If Tabitha Wilson had died in the last two days, Hal would feel responsible. He jabbed the doorbell with his thumb. Jabbed and jabbed, rang it four times.