River of Glass

by Jaden Terrell

  “You think this is my fault?”

  “I’m not saying that. Though, you look at it one way, and you kind of painted targets on their backs. I’m just saying, these guys are playing for high stakes. You and your shadow . . . you haven’t exactly been keeping a low profile.”

  I nodded toward the smoldering ruin. “They’re already cleaning up. If they act true to type, either Sun is writing the list, or he’s the next one on it.”

  She sucked in a lungful of smoke and held it, then slowly blew it out. “You’ve been watching Sun for the better part of a week. You might be wrong about him.”

  “Or someone—maybe Helix—tipped him off, and he’s lying low.”

  “Could be.” She took a long breath in through her nose. “There’s something you need to see.”

  I followed her past the charred frame of the house to the body bags lined up neatly along the front fence. Three adult females, one adult male.

  She paused. “You think you could ID these guys?”

  I knelt and unzipped the first bag, eyes watering at the stench—the sulfur-and-charcoal stink of burnt hair and seared skin blending with the charred-meat smell of flesh and the sickening sweetness of cooked spinal fluid.

  Beneath the blisters and the curling skin, it was easy enough to discern Helix’s features. I zipped the plastic over his face and turned to the next body. It was a woman, a few tufts of Pomeranian-colored hair surrounded by puckered red skin. Simone.

  The next was the young woman Simone had said was twentyone. I looked up at Malone. “I don’t know her name, but she was at Helix’s house. These are the only three people I met here.”

  “Take a look at the other one anyway,” she said.

  I peeled it open and looked down into the face of an Asian woman. The heat of the fire had contracted her facial muscles and pulled her lips into a gruesome grin.

  I pulled the zipper open a little more, saw the dragon eye brand on her collarbone.

  Malone said, “It’s not Tuyet, is it?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “She’s the one you found in the basement?”

  “Shackled to a table. I hope to God the smoke got her before the flames did. We found something else, too.”

  I zipped up the last bag and followed her to the van where the forensic evidence was being processed. She gestured for me to wait, then stepped inside and came out a moment later with a cloth-bound ledger.

  “We found this in the basement, in a fireproof safe.” She handed it to me, and I glanced down the columns, names on the left, dates and monetary amounts in the center, generic aliases—Mr. Smith, Mr. B, Mr. K—on the right.

  On the last page, five lines from the bottom, was Tuyet’s name, followed by last Tuesday’s date, a six-digit amount, and the name Mr. J. There was one name below hers. No date, no sale amount. Probably the woman in the body bag.

  I ran my finger down the columns again. “You think this book is the real deal?”

  “We found three sets of shackles in the basement. Between that and the book, it looks like they brought the girls in groups of three.”

  “Any connection to Sun?”

  “Not yet.”

  I looked back at the body bags. One man, three women. Four adults. I said, “What about the baby?”

  “What baby?”

  “Little girl, less than a year old. I saw her when I was here before.”

  “Maybe it was someone else’s baby. A guest’s.”

  We both looked toward the house, the queasiness on Malone’s face echoing the churning in my gut. The fire had reduced the house to scraps, but some of the scraps were recognizable. A scorched refrigerator, a cracked toilet lid. And in what would have been the back bedroom, the charred slats of a baby’s crib.

  Her hands went to her mouth. “Ah, no, McKean. Not that.” And then, “I guess I’d better go and tell the fire chief.”

  She was back a few minutes later. “There was no baby,” she said, her face awash with relief. “Thank God for small miracles. No pun intended.”

  “Thank God,” I echoed. “But if she isn’t here, where is she?”

  I LEFT Malone with the crime scene and went back to find Khanh and Ashleigh talking quietly beside the Channel Three van. Portia perched in the back of the van, complaining bitterly to the cameraman about something I couldn’t hear.

  “Let’s go,” I said to Khanh, stepping between her and Ashleigh. “I’ll fill you in on the way back.”

  Ashleigh cocked an eyebrow. “After I called you here, that’s it? You aren’t even going to tell me anything?”

  “I’ll tell you everything when it’s all over.”

  “I need something now.”

  I thought it over. “I already told you there was no meth lab here. But here’s something else. Helix had a baby. She’s missing.”

  Ashleigh smiled. “I like the baby angle. Viewers love babies, and nothing draws people in like babies and tragedy.” She turned to Khanh and pressed another business card into her hand. “Call me if you want to talk.”

  35

  Back at the motel, I checked the Fast Trak. Sun’s car was at his house. I kicked off my shoes and turned on the television, flipped through the channels until I found a documentary on cane toads. Khanh went into the bathroom and came out in her pajamas. She curled into the other bed, reading The Shining, Shining Path.

  The documentary showed a black-and-white photo of a girl pushing a doll carriage. Inside the carriage was a monstrous toad in a baby bonnet and a christening gown. Cute.

  My cell phone buzzed. I looked at the caller ID. Maria.

  “I don’t want you to panic,” she said, as soon as I picked up. “But there’s a problem with Paulie. His heart. He’s okay, for now. But can you meet us at Saint Thomas?”

  “For now?”

  “For the moment. He needs surgery. His body has been handling the murmur for a long time, but the resp—” Her voice caught. “They say the respiratory infection affected his ability to compensate. He’s conscious, but . . . they’re going to operate tonight.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  She gave me the room number, and we hung up.

  Khanh looked up from her book. “On way where?”

  I tried to steady my breathing, keep my voice calm. “Kids with Down syndrome are prone to a lot of other disorders. Leukemia. Heart defects. My son has something called a ventricular septal defect. A hole in his heart. It causes a heart murmur, which isn’t life-threatening, but sometimes things happen to make it worse. Like overexertion, or a bad cold.”

  “He have bad cold.”

  “And it stressed his heart. He needs surgery. I have to go. I’m sorry.”

  She reached over, touched the back of my hand. “No need sorry. Of course, you need go.” She turned her head away. “Not able watch Sun forever.”

  He’d led us to his house, to the import store, to nearby restaurants. Everywhere but to Tuyet. I wondered if Khanh had let herself realize that if Tuyet was depending on Sun for food and water, she was already dead.

  I wrote my cell number on a pad next to the motel phone and promised to call when I knew something. Then I went back to the truck and brought back a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver. Full cylinder, extra box of ammo. Laser site activated by squeezing the grip. The laser was a mixed blessing, since a shooter could follow the beam back to you in the dark, but if you were a novice, it upped your chances of stopping the target.

  Khanh listened carefully while I showed her how to use it, and when I left, she had it on the desk beside her, the grip just touching her left hand.

  “I’ll call you,” I said again.

  “I be here.”

  Saint Thomas Hospital was a few miles west of downtown, a twenty-minute drive from our Brentwood motel room. From the outside, it looked more like an office building than a hospital, but it was the best place in the state, maybe in the country, if you had something wrong with your heart.

&nbs
p; When I walked into Paul’s room, he opened his arms and grinned. “I have surgery, Daddy.”

  “I know, Sport.”

  His smile grew wider. “I gonna look like Frankenstein!”

  Maria sat in the armchair beside the bed. “I told him he isn’t going to get a big scar up the middle, just a few very tiny ones. He’s too excited to listen to me.”

  I lowered the rail on one side of Paul’s bed and scooted onto it. He slid into the curve of my arm and leaned his head against me. He looked good, but it worried me that they’d scheduled a night surgery. It meant they weren’t sure it could wait until morning.

  “I gonna get a needle stick?” he asked, brow furrowing.

  “I don’t know, Sport. We’ll have to ask the doctor.” I kissed him on the head, and Maria passed Paul the remote. We watched cartoons and talked about nothing until the nurses came and prepped Paul for surgery. Maria and I signed a sheaf of terrifying permissions. Then D.W. brought in three Styrofoam cups in a cardboard carrier, and the three of us went to the surgical waiting room, drinking bitter coffee and hoping for the best.

  “He’s going to be okay,” I said. “Even getting a pacemaker is an outpatient procedure these days.”

  “It’s heart surgery,” Maria said. “A heart is a big deal.”

  “I’m just saying, this is a really routine surgery. We always knew he might have to have it one day. Virtually nobody has any complications.”

  “Virtually,” she said. “One to two percent. That’s one in a hundred.”

  “Those are good odds.”

  “Not when it’s your child.”

  An hour passed. Two. The average surgery for ventricular septal defect was between three and four hours. At two and a half, I was pacing like a caged wolverine.

  Maria rubbed her eyes and tossed the Women’s Fitness she’d been reading onto a pile of dog-eared magazines. “I used to think, oh if only Paul didn’t have Down syndrome, everything would be perfect. Now all I can think is, oh if only Paul didn’t have this heart problem, everything would be perfect.”

  “Me too,” I said. “It changes your perspective.”

  D.W. stood up and stretched. His eyes were red, with purple hollows underneath. “I’m going to go pick up some Jell-O. For when he wakes up. Either of you want anything?”

  “Something decadent and chocolate,” Maria said.

  “Nothing for me.”

  He gave her a peck on the lips and left, shrugging into his Tennessee Titans windbreaker. Maria touched my cast, then gently closed her fingers over mine. “Does that hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Tell me he’s going to be okay.”

  “He’s going to be okay, Maria. I promise you he’s going to be okay.”

  An hour later, I went down to the lobby to call Khanh.

  “I’ll come with you,” Maria said. “I need to stretch my legs.”

  When I turned on my phone, the voice mail and missed call icons flashed on the screen. I pushed the voice mail icon, and Khanh’s voice said, “Me, you friend, we go stir pot.”

  Shit.

  I dialed her number. No answer. Called the motel room. A canned voice invited me to leave a message since no one was available to take my call.

  Double shit.

  Maria rubbed her face with her hands. “What’s going on?”

  “She’s not answering. Her message says she’s gone to stir the pot.”

  “That sounds bad. Maybe you should go and check on her.”

  “She’s a grown woman. I’ll check on her when Paul gets out of surgery.”

  She reached for my hand again, pressed it to her cheek. “You have no idea how much I want you here, but I really think you should go.”

  36

  The room was empty, as I’d known it would be. The Smith & Wesson was gone. A note on the pillow repeated the message: You friend and I go now, stir pot.

  I only had one friend who would be willing to help Khanh stir the pot. I dialed Khanh’s cell again, then Ashleigh’s. Both went to voice mail, and I left them the same message, short and simple: Call me.

  I texted Malone the basics, knowing there was nothing she could do. Khanh and Ashleigh had left under their own power to confront a man we couldn’t prove was dirty. A man who wasn’t even in Malone’s jurisdiction.

  Damn it, Ash. She should have known better.

  I understood Khanh’s impatience, though. I should have expected this from a woman who would walk into a minefield.

  My tracking device said Sun was at home. I pinged it to make sure, and the response told me the device was still in place.

  Impulse and adrenaline urged me to squeal up to his front door and kick it in. Common sense and self-preservation held me back. Instead, I took the time to pack my laptop and equipment. Glock in the shoulder holster. Colt .45 in a holster that fit snugly inside my belt. Beretta .38 strapped to my ankle.

  I drove too fast to Sun’s street, then slowed down and cruised the block. It was after ten, and traffic was light. The houses were empty and mostly unlit, except for the flicker of televisions. There were no streetlights, so the road was lit only by the crescent moon and the Silverado’s headlights. No sign of Ashleigh’s car. I drove a grid, a half mile in each direction, in case they’d parked some distance away and walked in. Nothing.

  They had to have come here. What else could Khanh have meant when she said she was going to stir the pot?

  I parked on the next street and walked back, careful to stay in the shadows. Sun’s house was dark, not even a porch light. The gate to the backyard creaked as I slipped through it. The pool was lit, a rippling blue glow in the blackness.

  Cupping my hands around my eyes, I peeked in the garage window. Sun’s car was there. No sign of Ashleigh’s. I pulled out my LED light and scanned the ground beneath the windows and by the sliding glass doors. There, on the concrete patio was a footprint. It was small and slender, like a woman’s, tread marks blurred but discernible. I listened at the door, heard nothing but my heartbeat and the wind, and bent to get a closer look. Something glinted in the grass beside my boot. I shone my light on it, and a chill sank deep into my bones.

  A small jade monkey on a silver chain.

  I CALLED Malone and texted Frank, then drove to the Brentwood police station and made a missing persons report to a beefy detective who said, “I’ll put out a BOLO on both women, but let’s hope they show up embarrassed and hung over in the morning.”

  “From your lips to God’s ears,” I said, but I didn’t believe God was listening. Or if He was, that He gave a tinker’s damn about any of us.

  My last call was to Harold Sun. It went straight to voice mail: This is Sun. You know what to do.

  I waited for the beep and said, “You have something I want. I have something you need. Call me.” I wasn’t sure he would. Fifty-fifty, maybe. Events were spiraling out of his control, and by now he knew I was a threat. He’d want to take me out if he could get away with it, but he had no way to know if I was a lone gun or in contact with the police. Either way, we both had to assume that any arrangement either of us made was a trap.

  There was no sense staying at the motel. I swung back to pick up the rest of my belongings, then realized Khanh’s duffel was still there. I felt another stab of guilt as I unzipped it to put in her toiletries and soiled clothing.

  There wasn’t much inside. A few more photos of a smiling Tuyet—riding a motor bike, trying on a New York Yankees baseball cap, striking a ballet pose in front of a statue of Buddha. Another photo of Tuyet and an older woman sitting on the steps of a coffee shop, arms around each other. In the older woman’s face was the ghost of her younger self, the woman who had stolen—at least for a time—my father’s heart.

  There wasn’t much else. A passport, a wallet with a few wrinkled twenties, a small ivory Buddha. For luck, I guessed.

  Quickly, I stuffed the clothing and toiletries inside and carried both bags to the truck. If she came back, she’d find the room empty, b
ut she wasn’t coming back. Not unless I went and got her.

  On the way to the truck, I called Maria. “How is he?”

  “Out of surgery. Still sleeping.”

  “What did the doctor say?”

  “He said it went well.”

  I breathed out a relieved sigh. Then something in her tone registered. “It went well. But?”

  “I worry about the 1 percent. Did you find Khanh?”

  “She’s gone, Maria.” I looked up at the sky, the purpling bruise around the moon, and shook my head. “She’s just gone.”

  37

  By the next morning, Sun’s car still hadn’t left his garage. Ashleigh and Khanh hadn’t shown up looking sheepish after a tumble with a couple of cowboys and a mechanical bull, and according to Portia Ross, the police were no closer to finding the Executioner. But when I stopped by the hospital, Paul greeted me with sleepy eyes and a thumbs-up, so things were looking up. He poked my cast with a gentle finger. “Hurt, Daddy?”

  “A little. You?”

  “Uh huh.”

  Maria said, “They’re giving him Advil and Tylenol for the pain. And something else, in his IV.”

  I stayed with him while Maria and D.W. went downstairs for breakfast, then when they got back, kissed him good-bye and drove across town to Hands of Mercy. It had occurred to me that no one would have thought to notify them of Marlee’s death.

  Claire sat at her desk beside a young black woman in jeans and a red tank top. A spiral sketchbook lay open between them, along with a set of colored pencils. They took turns adding lines to a drawing that looked like a cactus giving birth to a pineapple.

  Claire’s smile faded when she saw my face. “Letisha, would you mind finishing this in the art room?” The black girl looked at me, then at Claire. She gathered up the art supplies and went upstairs with an exaggerated sway of her hips. Claire shook her head. “These girls are so sexualized. It’s the only language they know. But you didn’t come here for a lecture on the destructive nature of trafficking.”

  “I came here to give you some bad news.”