"Really?"
"He's that kind of guy, you can rely on him. And anyway, where the hell else is he going to go? I think you need to tail him, and see if that guy is actually following him. No one knows you, so there is no risk. Follow him, get on the same bus, and watch him get off to make sure he's in the right place. See what the tail does and then get off at the first stop after the park. I will follow on the next bus and meet you at that same stop. We'll regroup there and make a plan."
"Roger, lady. You should have been in the army."
"Yeah, well, I guess it kind of rubbed off from my Dad... Let's go."
Jobert rolled up the newspaper that he had been holding for the last 20 minutes — without reading a single word — and glanced at his watch. Ten minutes past eight. He looked casually around the Rosa Parks Transit Centre one more time. No sign of either Sam Blackett or Pete Halland. He should give them a while yet, but it was looking like he'd chosen wrong. Three to one. Two to one really, he didn't see the airport as likely. So had Halland taken the train rather than the bus out of Goa?
Jobert had backed the bus for no good reason. He glanced at his watch again. He could jump in the car and belt it up to the Amtrak but the chances were that they'd be long gone. Or he could wait here and hope that Halland was late, and Blackett wasn't showing herself until her boyfriend did. His phone rang. Wallace.
"Yeah? Got anything from those Homeland Security computers?" he asked.
"He landed at LAX yesterday evening on a United flight out of Honolulu, and changed to a plane for Detroit that got in to you first thing this morning. If he took a cab he could be anywhere by now. He hasn't used a card anywhere since then. No hotel, no car rental, no bus ticket. Nothing. It must all be cash, or he's walking. And there is nothing on the phone since the original call."
"Shit, we dropped this frickin' ball, and badly, we should have had him on the watch list from the get-go." Jobert swore again. "Is he at least carrying the phone that she called him on, can we triangulate it?"
"Nope, signals dead. Switched off."
"And hers?"
"Still dead, been dead since just after she made the call to him."
"So they're in the wind."
"No show at the bus station?"
"Not yet, I suppose there's a faint chance that he's late, and she's holed up somewhere waiting and watching, but I don't have a good feel about it." Jobert got up as he talked, it was time to do another lap of the place and check he hadn't missed them.
"So we're going to have to rely on the PD? Her picture is all over the wires."
Jobert sighed. "Yeah. We're all out of leads until they start using phones, or cards, or pop up on some camera that we got covered. I don't see any of those as too likely, mostly we just have to hope that some good citizen spots her, and the PD play ball and we get to her first."
"You want some more good news?"
"Not really."
"Hubert can't get into the machines at De Chip."
"What!" Jobert stopped in his tracks. "I don't believe it."
"It's true, he told me some kinda hacker genius set up their systems. And the research on Terry New's background supports that; he dodged a hacking conviction when he was a kid. His parents weighed in for him, spent a fortune on a top lawyer. Seems he was some kind of prodigy."
"So if we can't do it the high tech way, we're going to have to go old school," said Jobert, with some relish.
"You need to be careful. People are already asking where the hell you've got to - don't pull any stunts. They've got a black mark on you already for Shibde; Paul, go easy huh?"
"Don't worry, I'm not going to step that far out of line — getting rid of that black mark is what this is all about, not getting another one. If I can get to her first, and talk to her with that murder charge hanging over her head I'll have the leverage I need to find out what the hell went down in Shibde. This is going to work out for us, don't sweat it. Did you get anywhere with finding someone at Detroit PD that can give us the tip off if she gets caught there?"
"Yeah, I got that one covered."
"Ok, that's something — we're not dead yet, Mart, we're not dead yet. Stay tight."
Sam had a little time to think on the bus ride south. Mostly she was watching for the landmarks that Lucy had pointed out on the way north. The bridge over the freeway was the trigger to concentrate, and she kept part of her mind alert for it. The rest was trying to deal with seeing Pete again, trying to work out what she felt.
She was still thinking about it when they went over the freeway. The two car parks on the left came up next and then the Church. The lights went red at just the right moment and she had plenty of time to look around. And there he was, sitting on the base of a statue of some bearded old dude. Pete had his hands behind his head, resting against his backpack. Apparently without a care in the world. The bus bumped into gear as the light changed, so she stood and took her place behind a couple of kids who were also getting off at the next stop.
It wasn't far, and as she stepped onto the street, she glanced back up towards the park. He was only a few hundred yards away. She looked round for Lucy, and found her leaning against the doorway of a bail bonds joint, hands buried in the pockets of her hoody looking like she belonged. Sam walked over and leaned against the wall beside her. Lucy didn't acknowledge her.
"So?" asked Sam.
Lucy didn't look around. "The guy with the paper just walked past the bus stop, carried right on going. I got on with your boy and came down here, like you said. He got off in the right place and here I am."
"Do you think anyone else could have picked up the tail?"
"No one else got on for another couple of stops. Then it was just a couple of brothers. I sat on the back seat, and I didn't see anyone behind us in a car or nothin'. Hard to tail a bus, they stop so often, you'd stand out like a vegetarian at a cook-out."
"So we're good to go?"
"I think, but depends how cautious you want to be."
"Let's do everything we can - that guy with the paper spooked me, I don't like coincidences."
"Sure thing, I'll lead him like you said?"
"Yup."
Lucy pushed off the wall with one foot, and started up towards the park. Sam gave her a hundred yard head start and then followed. The plan was simple enough, Lucy would go beg for money again, and meanwhile instruct Pete to follow her around the city from a safe distance. And Sam would follow Pete from an equally safe distance to try and establish if he was being tailed.
It was a question of balancing the risk. She might be spotted or recognized out on the streets, and the more time she wandered around downtown Detroit, the more chance there was of it happening. So she worked hard to ensure that it was safe.
It wasn't something she had done before, but she had been taught to hunt in the mountains and forests of Vermont by her father and she had acquired an ability to concentrate deeply on her surroundings. He used to talk about animal instincts, and needing to free them up to be used, instead of suffocating them with thousands of years of human civilization. And then he had always started to talk about how important it was in combat... and she had always stopped him. She didn't want to know.
Lucy led them a merry dance around the streets of Detroit. She knew the city like the back of her hand; into busy shops where Sam had to close up tight to keep Pete in sight. Then they would spill out of a side entrance into a completely empty alleyway. Sam focused on the people between her and Pete, and it took 20 minutes for Sam to decide that no one was tailing him apart from herself. The cast of characters between them changed constantly, no one could have maintained a tail through the maze that Lucy led them without standing out.
Sam crossed the street, jogged a hundred yards, then recrossed and stooped to tie her shoelace while Lucy and then Pete walked past. It was everything she could do not to look up at him. She knew that if she caught his eye it was going to be really hard not to grab him and hug him. Lucy didn't change direction immedi
ately and it was ten minutes before Sam started to recognize the approach to Lucy's building. She watched Pete disappear into the alley a couple of minutes later, and then took one last long look around the street before she followed.
Pete was waiting for her just inside the broken down door. Lucy stood a few feet off and no one was talking. It was gloomy and she couldn't see his expression.
"What was all that about?" he asked. "And what on earth did you do to your hair?"
Sam couldn't find any words. There was so much that she wanted to say, and she had no idea where to start. "Pleased to see you too," she muttered, eventually. She felt shaky. She could hear it in her own voice.
"What the hell is going on here, Sam?" Pete moved a step closer as he spoke, hands out, open, questioning, looking to connect with her eyes.
"Did you bring the stuff I asked for?" She was trying hard to hold back the emotion that was pushing up her throat and threatening to choke her.
"Sure, two pay-as-you-go mobiles and as much cash as I could get my hands on easily - a thousand bucks."
"Thanks, we're going to need it... I don't know where to start..." She could no longer hold it back. It had been there, suppressed, hidden, since Roger Ravert had died in her arms. Now it was pushing out from the shadows, and she couldn't help it. "He just died, right there..." she put her hands to her face, shaking, tears in her voice. "I barely knew him, but god it was so awful..."
"Hey, let it out, girl," he said it gently enough, but he didn't move towards her as he would have before.
"There was a knife... a guy with a knife; he was hiding in the room..."
"What room?" asked Pete.
"The hotel room, his hotel room, in China..."
"What were you doing in this guy's hotel room in China?"
"We had a meal, and..." she stopped, realizing how it sounded.
"Uh-huh."
"No, not like that, it wasn't like that."
"I didn't say it was like that, you can do what you want; I just wondered why you were going to the hotel room of some guy who ends up dead."
"He was really drunk and I was just trying to... help. God, I missed you," she added, suddenly. And unexpectedly.
"Hmm." He bit his lower lip.
"I'm sorry... about what happened in Goa."
He shrugged.
"It was almost like it was too good to be true... I was waiting for something to go wrong, and when it didn't..."
"When it didn't, you helped it along?"
"Maybe."
They both fell silent.
"So hey, welcome to the Metropolitan," said Lucy, sometime later. "Let's get upstairs, we can have coffee."
"I guess you know that I'm Pete." He turned to her.
"I guessed," said Lucy, with a smile.
"I'm sorry, I just, er... it's been... this is Lucy," said Sam. "She's been helping me. She lives on the roof."
"She lives on the roof?"
"Let's get up there," said Lucy again, "I'll put some water on and then go get us some breakfast, I think you two have a lot more talking to do." She turned and led the way across the lobby and up the stairs.
Sam glanced at Pete and nodded, and they followed without saying anything more. They climbed the steps in silence.
"Sit down," called Lucy when they got to the top. She was already setting up the stove and a pan of water.
"Lucy makes the best coffee around here. So long as you like it black and strong."
"Then let's take a seat," said Pete. "I think Sam needs to start from the beginning and tell me the whole story."
They sat on the floor in the sunshine, and Sam started to explain. She was a couple of minutes into it when Lucy handed out coffee.
"I'm going to go and get us all something to eat." She gave Sam her mug. "Any particular orders?"
"Donuts?" said Pete.
"Sounds great," said Sam.
Lucy nodded and headed back to the stairs. Sam carried on with her story, watching Pete's face all the way through, but he gave little away. When she was finished, he took a final slug of coffee and then put the mug down.
"That's a hell of a tale," he said.
"But what the hell am I going to do?"
"I've no idea right now," replied Pete, "but I'm sure we'll come up with something."
Chapter 7
Sam surveyed the remains of the donuts and coffee. She was stuffed, but not in a good way. Solid carbs, sugar and caffeine had left her feeling bloated, tired and buzzing all at once. She felt exhausted and dirty. She could smell the sweat and grime coming off her, and the stickiness on her teeth. She hated not being able to wash properly. She stood up restlessly, and leaned on the parapet that surrounded their roof. The midday sunshine was hot on her face. Below her, cars and people moved up and down the street — all going somewhere, but just so much meaningless motion from up here.
"Here," said Pete.
She turned back to him and he handed her a phone.
"The number for this one is the only thing in the speed dial." He held up a second identical phone.
She nodded. "Thanks."
He sat back down. "So what were you doing in China when this all kicked off?"
"I had a commission for a story about Shanghai—"
"That's why you were there?"
"Yeah. What about you, where did you go after India?"
"I stayed for a while, worked my way down the coast looking for some new surf spots. Ended up in Sri Lanka which was interesting — there's no one on those waves right now — then flew out to Bali and had a go at a couple of the classic surf spots in Indo—"
"Jeez, it's all about the surfing."
"I did try to tell you that."
Sam stopped herself, there was no point reworking the same old argument about whether they should stay and surf, or move on and find the next adventure, the next story to write. "What about the snowboarding?" she said, finally.
"I bought a ticket to Vancouver via Hawaii a couple of weeks ago, and I've been on Oahu ever since. I was going to stay there while I waited for the snow to start falling, and the season to get going up at Whistler. I've got a job sorted, working at a bar in the village, should keep me going through the winter."
"Nice life."
"I try." He smiled, and then licked the sugar off his fingers one by one. "So what are we going to do next?"
Sam pulled the letter out of her back pocket, and handed it over. "This is what he gave me to pass on to his wife, it's not much help, but it tells us that somewhere there's an explanation." Sam watched him read. She knew it off by heart by now.
"So he knew someone was after him, and this was his insurance?" Pete said when he had finished.
"It looks like it, but it didn't work."
"What the hell was he mixed up in?"
"I don't know."
"Bloody hell. Maybe we should be investigating his company?"
"If we can find whatever it was that he left for his wife, it will tell us the answer a lot more quickly," Sam replied.
"It's got to be in their house, right?"
"I'm not so sure, in the worst case, it could be in a safety deposit box or something."
"Have you Googled him?"
"No... I left my laptop in the hotel room, and anyway, this place doesn't have wifi..." retorted Sam.
"It's somewhere to start. I mean, we need to know as much as we can about this guy to have any chance of figuring out where he might have hidden whatever it is."
"But this is something personal between him and his wife — how is Google going to help with that?" asked Sam.
"So what did you think we were going to do? Break into his house?" replied Pete.
"Well—"
"It's not just his house; it's a crime scene too, right? There will be cops crawling all over it."
"Only while they're doing the actual investigation, then they'll just lock the place up and leave it, surely?"
Pete gazed at her for a long moment. "It's definitely no use
going to the police?"
"I don't think so... I think those people in my hotel room were setting me up for this. If they are somehow connected to the Chinese authorities — who are already saying I'm guilty of the murder in Shanghai — then they will have made sure that there's plenty of evidence that I also killed Madeline. I need something to push back against that with, some evidence that there was something else going on that will make the cops look into it further. Otherwise, it's just a done deal." She leaned forward and tapped the letter. "This is the only chance, but on its own it's useless, I could have typed it myself."
Pete stared at it in silence for a long while. Then he said, "People. We need to talk to the right people. His friends must have some ideas on this."
"And how are we going to talk to them without getting ourselves arrested?"
Pete was silent. "I know. Facebook."
"What?" asked Sam and Lucy.
"Facebook; if one or both of the Raverts were on it, and then they might have posted some stuff that will give us a clue as to where he hid this stuff. If it's not in the house, then it might be connected to an anniversary dinner, a reference to where the wedding was.... anything. It's a start."
"Will we be able to see anything if we're not friends?"
"Depends on how on top of their privacy settings they were; you know what Facebook were like for changing the rules and leaving everything exposed until you go and redo your settings. We need a laptop and a dongle, or maybe just a tablet with a phone connection, battery will last a lot longer too." Pete stood. "Lucy, can you lead me to an electronics shop?"
"I don't know is this really going to help?" Sam said.
"I don't see what else we can do at the moment. Unless you want to break into the house?"
Sam was silent. She stared out at the city below them. The house was the obvious place to start, but it was a very high risk option. I suppose we could give this a go.
"Pay cash." She looked back to Pete. "We don't want this thing to be linked to you, and don't go together."
"What?" asked Lucy.
"Just in case, let's be seen together as little as possible. Lucy, you can lead and Pete can follow, just don't walk together."
Chinese Burn Page 8