It was here. The creature was in this room.
THE HUNTER SELDOM REALIZES WHEN HE IS THE ONE BEING hunted. He walks in the woods, rifle in hand, eyes alert for his quarry’s prints on snow-dusted ground. He searches for spoor or sits perched in his tree blind, waiting for the bear to lumber into view. It never occurs to him that his prey might be watching him, biding its time until he makes a mistake.
The hunter who stalks me now would see little to fear. I appear to be merely a middle-aged woman, my hair streaked with gray, my gait slowed by weariness and the weight of the bags I carry, bulging with my weekly supply of groceries. I walk the same route I always walk on Tuesday evening. After shopping at the Chinese market on Beach Street, I turn right onto Tyler and head south, toward my quiet neighborhood of Tai Tung Village. I keep my head down, my shoulders drooped, so that anyone who sees me will think: Here is a victim. Not a woman who will fight back. Not a woman you need to fear.
But by now my opponent knows he should be wary, just as I am wary of him. So far we have sparred only in the shadows but have never actually connected, except through his surrogates. We are two hunters still circling each other, and he must make the next move. Only then, when he emerges into the light, will I know his face.
So I walk down Tyler Street as I have so many times before, wondering if this is the night. I have never felt so vulnerable, and I know the next act is about to begin. The bright lights of Beach and Kneeland streets fade behind me. I move through shadows now, past dark doorways and unlit alleys, the plastic grocery sacks rustling as I walk. Just a tired widow minding her own business. But I am aware of everything around me, from the mist on my face to the scent of cilantro and onions wafting from my bags. No one escorts me. No guardian stands watch. Tonight I am alone, a target waiting for the first arrow to come flying.
As I draw near my home, I see the light over the porch is dark. Deliberate sabotage or merely a burned-out bulb? My nerves hum with alarm and my heart accelerates, rushing blood to muscles that are already tensing for battle. Then I spot the parked car and see the man who steps out to greet me, and my breath rushes out in a sigh of both relief and exasperation.
“Mrs. Fang?” says Detective Frost. “I need to speak with you.”
I pause beside my front stoop, arms weighed down by groceries, and stare at him without smiling. “I’m tired tonight. And I have nothing more to say.”
“At least let me help you with those,” he offers and before I can protest, he snatches the grocery sacks from my hands and carries them up the steps to my porch. There he waits for me to open the door. He looks so earnest that I don’t have the heart to reject his offer.
I unlock the door and let him in.
As I turn on lights, he carries the sacks into the kitchen and sets them on the counter. He stands with his hands in his pockets and he watches as I put pungent herbs and crisp vegetables in the refrigerator, as I stock pantry cabinets with cooking oil and paper towels and cans of chicken broth.
“I wanted to apologize,” he says. “And to explain.”
“Explain?” I ask, sounding as if I really don’t care what he has to say.
“The sword, and why we took it. In a murder investigation, we have to explore all avenues. Follow every line of inquiry. The weapon we’ve been looking for is a very old sword, and I knew you owned one.”
I shut the pantry cabinet and turn to him. “By now you must have realized the mistake you made.”
He nodded. “The sword will be returned to you.”
“And when will Bella be released?”
“That’s more complicated. We’re still looking into her background. Something I was hoping you could help us with, since you know her.”
I shake my head. “The last time we spoke, Detective, I ended up being considered a suspect, and my family heirloom was confiscated.”
“I didn’t want that to happen.”
“But you’re a policeman, first and foremost.”
“What else would you expect me to be?”
“I don’t know. A friend?”
That makes him pause. He stands beneath the harsh kitchen lights, which make him look older than he is. Even so, he is a young man, young enough to be my son. I don’t want to think about how those unflattering fluorescent lights must age my face.
“I would be your friend, Iris,” he says. “If only …”
“If only I weren’t a suspect.”
“I don’t consider you one.”
“Then you aren’t doing your job. I could be that killer you’re searching for. Can’t you picture it, Detective? This middle-aged woman swinging a sword, leaping around on rooftops and cutting down enemies?” I laugh in his face and he flushes, as if I’ve slapped him. “Maybe you should search my house. There could be another sword hidden here somewhere, a weapon you don’t even know I have.”
“Iris, please.”
“Maybe you’ll report back to your colleagues that the suspect has turned hostile. That she’s not going to be charmed into giving away any more information.”
“That’s not why I’m here! The night we had dinner, I wasn’t trying to interrogate you.”
“What were you trying to do?”
“Understand you, that’s all. Who you are, what you think.”
“Why?”
“Because you and I—because …” He gives a heavy sigh. “I felt like we both needed a friend, that’s all. I know I do.”
I regard him for a moment. He is not looking at me; his gaze is focused somewhere beyond me, as if he can’t bring himself to look me in the eye. Not because he’s untruthful, but because he’s vulnerable. He may be a policeman, but he’s afraid of my opinion of him. There’s nothing I can offer him now, not comfort or friendship or even a touch on the arm.
“You need a friend your own age, Detective Frost,” I say quietly. “Not someone like me.”
“I don’t even see your age.”
“I do. I feel it, too,” I add, massaging an imaginary kink in my neck. “And my illness.”
“I see a woman who’ll never get old.”
“Tell me that in twenty years.”
He smiles. “Maybe I will.”
The moment trembles with unsaid words, with feelings that make us both uncomfortable. He is a good man; I see that in his eyes. But it’s absurd to think we could ever be more than mere acquaintances. Not because I am nearly two decades older than he is, although that alone is a barrier. No, it’s because of the secrets that I can never share with him, secrets that place us on opposite sides of a chasm.
As I walk him to the door, he says: “Tomorrow I’ll bring the sword back to you.”
“And Bella?”
“There’s a chance she’ll be released in the morning. We can’t hold her indefinitely, not without evidence.”
“She’s done nothing wrong.”
In the doorway he stops and looks straight at me. “It’s not always clear what’s right and what’s wrong. Is it?”
I stare back at him, thinking: Could he know? Is he giving me permission for what I’m about to do? But he merely smiles and walks away.
I lock the door behind him. The conversation has left me off balance, unable to focus. What to make of such a man, I wonder as I head up the stairs to change my clothes. Yet again, he makes me think of my husband. His kindness, his patience. His open mind, so ready to welcome possibilities. Am I a vain fool to entertain such an unlikely friendship? I am distracted, mulling over the conversation, and I miss the clues that should have warned me. The tremor in the air. The faint scent of unfamiliar flesh. Only when I flip my bedroom light switch and nothing happens do I suddenly realize I am not alone.
The bedroom door slams shut behind me. In the darkness, I cannot see the blow hurtling toward my head, but my instincts spring to life. Something whooshes just above me as I duck and spin toward the bed, where my sword is concealed. Not the decoy reproduction that I surrendered to the police, but the real Zheng Yi. For five centuries sh
e has been passed down from mothers to daughters, a legacy meant to protect us, defend us.
Now, more than ever, I need her.
My attacker lunges, but I slip away like water and roll to the floor. Reach under the box spring for the niche where Zheng Yi is hidden. She fits into my hand like an old friend and makes a musical sigh as she slides from her scabbard.
In one fluid motion I rise and whirl to face the enemy. The creak of the floor announces his location, to my right. Just as I shift weight to attack, I hear the footfall, but this one is behind me.
Two of them.
It’s the last thought I have before I fall.
JANE CROUCHED DOWN BESIDE IRIS’S BED, READING THE EVIDENCE and not liking what it said to her. There were red splatters on the floor and on the edge of the sheets where a body had fallen. The blood loss was minimal, certainly not enough to be fatal. Rising to her feet, she stared down at smeared drops, across which a body had been dragged. She had already spotted more blood on the stairs, and on the front porch where the door had been left wide open, alerting Iris’s neighbors that something was very wrong.
Jane turned to Frost. “You’re sure about the time? It was nine PM when you left last night?”
He nodded, a dazed look in his eyes. “I didn’t see anyone else around when I came out of the house. And I was parked right outside.”
“Why were you here?”
“To talk to her. I felt bad about what happened. About taking the sword.”
“You came to apologize for doing your job?”
“Sometimes, Rizzoli, the job makes me feel like an asshole, okay?” he shot back. “Here’s a woman who was already a victim. She lost her husband and her daughter. And we turn her into a suspect. We interrogate her. We made her a victim all over again.”
“I don’t know what Iris Fang is. I do know that she’s been at the center of this from the beginning. Everything that’s happened seems to revolve around her.” Jane’s cell phone rang. “Rizzoli,” she answered.
It was Tam on the line. “Kevin Donohue says he has an alibi for last night.”
“And his men?”
“That’s the problem. They’re each other’s alibis. All three swear they spent the evening together in Donohue’s residence, watching TV. Which means we can’t believe a word from any of them.”
“So we can’t rule them out.”
“We can’t prove it in court, either.”
Jane hung up and turned in frustration to the window. On the street below, a trio of elderly Chinese women stood staring up at her, chattering among themselves. What do they know that they’re not telling us? Nothing about Chinatown was ever straightforward, nothing was as it seemed. It was like peering through a silk screen, never getting a clear image, a complete picture.
She turned to Frost. “Maybe Bella will finally talk to us. It’s time to put all our cards on the table.”
BELLA LOOKED EVEN MORE HOSTILE TODAY, her hands closed in fists, gaze hard as diamonds. “It’s your fault this happened,” she said. “I should have been there. I would have stopped it.”
Jane looked into those glittering eyes and suddenly imagined the young woman springing up like a wildcat, attacking with teeth and claws. But she kept her voice calm as she said: “So you knew this would happen? You knew they would take her?”
“We’re wasting time! She needs me.”
“How will you help her when you don’t even know where she is?”
Bella opened her mouth to speak, then glanced at the one-way mirror, as if aware that others were watching.
“Why don’t we start at the beginning, Bella,” said Jane. “With who you really are. Not the name you called yourself in California, but the name you were born with.” Jane placed a photocopy of a birth certificate on the table. “It’s signed by a Chinatown doctor. You were born right here in Boston. A home birth, at a Knapp Street address. Your father’s name was Wu Weimin.”
Bella didn’t answer, but Jane read the acknowledgment in her eyes. Not that she needed it; the document was only exhibit number one. Jane brought out other photocopied documents. Her records from the San Francisco public schools where the girl was registered under the name Bella Li. The death certificate of her mother, who went by the name of Annie Li, dead at age forty-three of stomach cancer. It was all there in black and white, the paper trail that Jane’s team had doggedly pursued over the last forty-eight hours, a trail obscured in that pre-9/11 era by different jurisdictions, and by the hidden world in which undocumented aliens moved. A world in which a lone mother and child could so easily vanish and reappear under new names.
“Why did you come back to Boston?” asked Jane.
Bella looked her in the eye. “Sifu Fang asked me to come. She’s not well, and she needed another instructor at her school.”
“Yes, that’s the story you keep telling us.”
“Is there a different story?”
“It has nothing to do with what happened in the Red phoenix? Nothing to do with your father killing four people?”
Bella’s face snapped taut. “My father was innocent.”
“Not according to the official report.”
“And official reports are never wrong.”
“If it’s wrong, then what’s the truth?”
Bella glared back. “He was murdered.”
“Is that what your mother told you?”
“My mother wasn’t there!”
Jane paused, suddenly registering the unspoken meaning of those last words, my mother wasn’t there. She remembered the glow of luminol on the cellar step, the bloody imprint of a child’s shoe. “But someone was there,” Jane said quietly. “Someone who was hiding in the cellar when it happened.”
Bella went absolutely still. “How did you …”
“The blood told us. Even if you try to wash it away, its traces remain. Decades later, with a chemical spray, we can still see it. We found your footprint on the cellar steps, and on the kitchen floor, leading toward the exit. Footprints that someone had wiped away by the time the police arrived that night.” Jane leaned in closer. “Why did your mother do it, Bella? Why did she try to erase the evidence?”
Bella didn’t answer, but Jane saw the inner debate play out on her face, a struggle between telling the truth and keeping it secret.
“She did it to protect you, didn’t she?” said Jane. “Because you saw what happened, and she was afraid for you. Afraid that someone would come after you.”
Bella shook her head. “I didn’t see it.”
“You were there.”
“But I didn’t see it!” Bella cried. For a moment her outburst seemed to hang in the air between them. Her head drooped and she whispered: “But I heard it.”
Jane didn’t ask any questions, didn’t interrupt. She simply waited for the story she knew would now be told.
Bella took another breath. “My mother was asleep in bed. She was always so tired after working all day at the grocery store. And that night she was sick with the flu.” Bella stared at the table, as though she could still picture her mother huddled in bed under blankets. “But I wasn’t tired. So I climbed out of bed. I went downstairs to see Daddy.”
“In the restaurant.”
“He was annoyed with me, of course.” A sad smile tugged at her mouth. “There he was, juggling pots and pans. And I was whining for attention and ice cream. He told me to go back upstairs to bed. He was busy, and he didn’t have time for me. Uncle Fang didn’t have time for me, either.”
“Iris’s husband?”
Bella nodded. “He was in the dining room. I looked through the door and saw him sitting at a table with a man and woman. They were drinking tea.”
Jane frowned, wondering why the waiter would be sitting with two patrons. It added to the other puzzle about the Mallorys: Why were they in a Chinese restaurant when their autopsies showed they had just dined on Italian food?
“What were they talking about?” asked Jane. “Mr. Fang and the two customers?
”
Bella shook her head. “It was too noisy in the kitchen to hear anything in the dining room. My father banging his pots. The fan blowing.”
“Did you see Joey Gilmore come in to pick up his take-out order?”
“No. All I remember is my father, working at the stove. Sweating. And his old T-shirt. He always worked in his T-shirt …” Her voice faltered and she wiped a hand across her eyes. “My poor father. Working, always working. His hands scarred from all the burns and cuts from the kitchen.”
“What happened then?”
Bella’s mouth twisted in a rueful smile. “I wanted ice cream. I was whining, demanding attention, while he was trying to fill the take-out cartons. Finally he gave in. Told me to go downstairs and choose an ice cream from the freezer.”
“In the cellar?”
She nodded. “Oh, I knew that cellar very well. I’d been down there so many times. There was a big chest freezer, tucked in the corner. I had to climb onto a chair to lift the lid. I remember looking inside for just the flavor I wanted. They were in these little cardboard cups, just big enough to hold one scoop. I wanted the one with stripes of chocolate and vanilla and strawberry. But I couldn’t find any. I kept digging and digging through those little cups, but they were all vanilla. Nothing but vanilla.” She took a deep breath. “And then I heard my father shouting.”
“At whom?”
“At me.” Bella looked up and blinked away tears. “He was screaming at me to hide.”
“Everyone in the restaurant must have heard him.”
“He said it in Chinese. The killer couldn’t understand, or he would have come looking for me. He would have known I was in the cellar.”
Jane glanced toward the one-way mirror. She couldn’t see Frost and Tam, but she imagined their astonished faces. Here was the tale’s missing chapter. The clues had been there all along on the cellar step and on the kitchen floor, but footprints are silent. Only Bella gave them a voice.