“And you hid?” asked Jane.
“I didn’t understand what was happening. I climbed off the chair and started to go up the steps, but then I stopped. I heard him pleading. Begging for his life, in his broken English. That’s when I understood this wasn’t a game, wasn’t some trick he was playing on me. My father didn’t play games.” Bella swallowed and her voice dropped even lower. “So I did what he told me to do. I didn’t make a sound. I ducked underneath the stairs. I heard something fall. And then a loud bang.”
“How many gunshots in all?”
“Just the one. That single bang.”
Jane thought of the weapon found in Wu Weimin’s hand, a Glock with a threaded barrel. The killer had used a suppressor to muffle the sound of those first eight gunshots. Only after dispatching his victims did he remove the suppressor, place the grip in Wu Weimin’s lifeless hand, and fire the final bullet, ensuring that gunshot residue would be found on the victim’s skin.
A perfect crime, thought Jane. Except for the fact there was a witness. A silent girl, huddled under the cellar steps.
“He died for me,” whispered Bella. “He should have run, but he wouldn’t leave me. So he stayed. He died right in front of the cellar door. Blocking it with his body. I had to step in his blood to get past him. If I hadn’t been there that night, begging for my goddamn ice cream, my father would still be alive.”
Jane understood it all, now. Why Wu Weimin did not flee when he had the chance. Why there were two bullet casings on the kitchen floor. Had the staged suicide been a last-minute idea, something that occurred to the killer as he stood over the cook’s body? It was such a simple thing, to wrap a dead man’s fingers around the grip and fire the last round. Leave the gun behind and walk out the door.
“You should have told the police,” said Jane. “It would have changed everything.”
“No, it wouldn’t. Who would believe a five-year-old girl? A girl who never saw the killer’s face. And my mother wouldn’t let me say a word. She was afraid of the police. Terrified is a better word.”
“Why?”
Bella’s jaw tightened. “Can’t you guess? My mother was here illegally. What do you think would have happened if the police focused on us? She had my future to think of, and hers as well. My father was dead. Nothing we could do would change that.”
“What about justice? That had no part in the equation?”
“Not then. Not that night, when all she could think about was keeping us both safe. If the killer knew there was a witness, he might come looking for me. That’s why she wiped up my footprints. That’s why we packed our suitcases and left two days later.”
“Did Iris Fang know?”
“Not then. Not until years later, when my mother was dying of stomach cancer. A month before she died, she wrote Sifu Fang and told her the truth. Apologized for being a coward. But after so many years, there was nothing we could prove, nothing we could change.”
“Yet you’ve been trying, haven’t you?” said Jane. “For the past seven years, either you or Iris has been mailing obituaries to the families. Keeping their memories and their pain alive. Telling them that the truth hasn’t been told.”
“It hasn’t been. They need to know that. That’s why the letters were sent, so they would keep asking questions. It’s the only way we’ll find out who the killer is.”
“So you and Iris have been trying to draw him out into the open. Sending notes to the families, to Kevin Donohue, hinting that the truth’s about to be revealed. Taking out that ad in The Boston Globe, hoping the killer will get worried and finally attack. And what was the plan then? Turn him over to us? Or take justice into your own hands?”
Bella laughed. “How could we possibly do that? We’re only women.”
Now it was Jane’s turn to laugh. “As if I’d ever underestimate you.” Jane reached into her briefcase and pulled out the Arthur Waley translation of Monkey, the ancient Chinese folk novel. “I’m sure you’ve heard of the Monkey King.”
Bella glanced at the book. “Chinese fairy tales. What do they have to do with anything?”
“One particular chapter in this book caught my attention. It’s called ‘The Story of Chen O.’ It’s about a scholar who travels with his pregnant wife. At a ferry crossing, they’re attacked by bandits and the husband is killed. His wife is abducted. Do you know this one?”
Bella shrugged. “I’ve heard it.”
“Then you know how it turns out. The wife gives birth to a son while in captivity and secretly places him on a wooden plank, with a letter explaining her plight. Just like baby Moses, the child’s set adrift on the river. He floats to the Temple of the Golden Mountain, where he’s raised by holy men. He grows to manhood and learns the truth about his parents. About his butchered father and his imprisoned mother.”
“Is there a point to this?”
“The point is right here, in the words spoken by the young man.” Jane looked down at the page and read the quote. “He who fails to avenge the wrongs done to a parent is unworthy of the name of man.” She looked at Bella. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You’re like the son in this story. Haunted by the murder of your father. Honor-bound to avenge him.” Jane slid the book in front of Bella. “It’s exactly what the Monkey King would do, fight for justice. protect the innocent. Avenge a father. Oh, Monkey may wreak a bit of havoc in the process. He may break all the chinaware and set fire to the furniture. But in the end, justice is done. He always does the right thing.”
Bella said nothing as she stared at the illustration of the warrior monkey brandishing his staff.
“I understand completely, Bella,” said Jane. “You’re not the villain in this. You’re the daughter of a victim, a daughter who wants what the police can’t deliver. Justice.” She lowered her voice to a sympathetic murmur. “That’s what you and Iris were trying to do. Draw out the killer. Tempt him to strike.”
Was that the hint of a nod she saw? Bella’s inadvertent acknowledgment of the truth?
“But the plan didn’t work out so well,” said Jane. “When he did strike, he hired professionals to do the killing for him. So you still don’t know his identity. And now he’s taken Iris.”
Bella looked up, fury burning in her eyes. “It went wrong because of you. I should have been there to watch over her.”
“She was the bait.”
“She was willing to take the risk.”
“And you two were going to deliver justice all by yourselves?”
“Who else is going to do it? The police?” Bella’s laugh was bitter. “All these years later, they don’t care.”
“You’re wrong, Bella. I sure as hell do care.”
“Then let me go, so I can find her.”
“You have no idea where to start.”
“Do you?” Bella spat back.
“We’re looking at several suspects.”
“While you keep me locked up for no reason.”
“I’m investigating two homicides. That’s my reason.”
“They were hired killers. That’s what you said.”
“Their deaths are still homicides.”
“And I have an alibi for the first one. You know I didn’t kill that woman on the roof.”
“Then who did?”
Bella looked at the book and her mouth twitched. “Maybe it was the Monkey King.”
“I’m talking about real people.”
“You say I’m a suspect, but you know I couldn’t have killed the woman. You might as well blame some mythical creature, because you have just as much of a chance of proving it.” Bella looked at Jane. “You do know how the folktale starts, don’t you? How Sun Wukong emerges from stone and transforms into a warrior? The night my father was killed, I emerged from that stone cellar just like Monkey. I was transformed, too. I became what I am now.”
Jane stared into eyes as hard as any she had ever looked into. She tried to imagine Bella as a frightened five-year-old, but she could see no trace o
f that child in this fierce creature. If I’d witnessed the murder of someone I loved, would I be any different?
Jane stood up. “You’re right, Bella. I don’t have enough to hold you. Not yet.”
“You mean—you’re letting me go?”
“Yes, you can leave.”
“And I won’t be followed? I’m free to do what I have to?”
“What does that mean?”
Bella rose from her chair, like a lioness uncoiling herself for the hunt, and the two women stared at each other across the table. “Whatever it takes,” she said.
I CAN HEAR HIM BREATHING IN THE DARKNESS, BEYOND THE BLINDING glare that shines in my eyes. He has not allowed me to see his face; all I know about him is that his voice is as smooth as cream. But I have not cooperated, and he is starting to grow angry because he realizes I am not easily broken.
Now he is worried as well, because of the personal tracking device he found strapped to my ankle. A device that he has disabled by removing the battery.
“Who are you working with?” he asks. He shoves the device in my face. “Who was tracking you?”
Despite my bruised jaw, my swollen lips, I manage to answer in a hoarse whisper: “Someone you never want to meet. But you soon will.”
“Not if they can’t find you.” He tosses down the tracking device, and when it hits the floor it is like the sound of shattering hope. I was still unconscious when he took it from me, so I don’t know when the device ceased its transmissions. It might have been long before I arrived in this place, which means that no one will be able to find me. And this is where I will die.
I don’t even know where I am.
My wrists are trapped by manacles bolted to the wall. The floor beneath my bare feet is concrete. There is no light except what he shines in my eyes, no hint of sunlight through window cracks. Perhaps it is night. Or perhaps this is a place where light never penetrates, where screams never escape. I squint against the glare, trying to make out my surroundings, but there is only that bright light and beyond it, darkness. My hands twitch, aching to close around a weapon, to complete what I have waited so many years to finish.
“You’re looking for your sword, aren’t you?” he says, and waves the blade in the light, so that I can see it. “A beautiful weapon. Sharp enough to slice off a finger without an ounce of effort. Is this what you used to kill them?” He swings it, and the blade hisses past my face. “I hear her hand was sliced off clean. And his head came off with a single stroke. Two professional killers, yet they were both taken by surprise.” He brings the blade to my neck, pressing it so tightly that my bounding pulse makes the metal throb. “Shall we see what this can do to your throat?”
I hold still, my gaze fixed on the black oval that is his face. I have already resigned myself to death, so I am prepared for it. In truth, I’ve been ready to die these past nineteen years, and with a slash of the blade, he’ll free me at last to join my husband, a reunion that I have put off only because of this unfinished business. What I feel now isn’t fear but regret that I have failed. That this man will never feel my sword’s bite against his own throat.
“That night, in the Red Phoenix, there was a witness,” he says. “Who was it?”
“Do you really think I would tell you?”
“So someone was there.”
“And will never forget.”
The sword digs deeper into my neck. “Tell me the name.”
“You’re going to kill me anyway. Why should I?”
A long pause, then he lifts the blade from my skin. “Let’s make a deal,” he says calmly. “You tell me who this witness is. And I’ll tell you what happened to your daughter.”
I try to process what he’s just said, but the darkness suddenly spins around me and the floor seems to be dissolving beneath my feet. He sees my confusion and he laughs.
“You had no idea, did you, that this was always about her. Laura, wasn’t that her name? She was about fourteen years old. I remember her, because she was the first one I got to choose. Pretty little thing. Long black hair, skinny hips. And so trusting. It wasn’t hard to talk her into the car. She was carrying all those heavy books and her violin, and was grateful for the ride home. It was all so easy, because I was a friend.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Why would I lie?”
“Then tell me where she is.”
“First tell me who the witness is. Tell me who was in the Red Phoenix. Then I’ll tell you what happened to Laura.”
I am still struggling with this revelation, trying to understand why this man knows my daughter’s fate. She disappeared two years before my husband died in the shooting. I never imagined any connection between the events. I had believed that fate simply delivered a double blow, a karmic punishment for some cruelty I’d committed in a past lifetime.
“She was such a talented girl,” the smooth voice says. “That first day we rehearsed, I knew she was the one I wanted. Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Violins. Do you remember her practicing that piece?”
His words are like a blast that hurls shrapnel through my heart because I know now that he’s telling the truth. He heard my daughter play. He knows what happened to her.
“Tell me the name of the witness,” he says.
“This is all I’ll tell you,” I say quietly. “You are a dead man.”
The blow comes without warning, so violent that it whips my head backward and my skull slams against the wall. Through the roaring in my ears I hear him speaking to me, words that I don’t want to hear.
“She lasted seven, maybe eight weeks. Longer than the others. She looked delicate, but oh, she was strong. Think of it, Mrs. Fang. For two whole months, while the police were searching for her, she was still alive. Begging to go home to her mommy.”
My control shatters. I cannot stop the tears, cannot suppress the sobs that rack my body. They sound like an animal’s howls of pain, wild and alien.
“I can give you closure, Mrs. Fang,” he says. “I can answer the question that’s been tormenting you all these years. Where is Laura?” He leans in closer. Though I can’t see his face, I smell his scent, ripe with aggression. “Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll put your mind at rest.”
It happens before I even think about it, a feral reaction that surprises us both. He flinches away, gasping in disgust as he wipes my spit from his face. I fully expect that another blow will follow and I brace myself for the pain.
It does not come. Instead he bends down and picks up my tracking device, which he had earlier tossed to the floor. He waves it in my face. “Really, I don’t need you at all,” he says. “All I need to do is replace this battery and turn it on again. And I’ll just wait to see who shows up.”
He leaves the room. I hear the door swing shut, and footsteps thud up the stairs.
Grief is my only companion, gnawing with teeth so sharp that I cry and flail against the manacles, scraping skin from my wrists. He had my daughter. He kept her. I remember the nights after Laura vanished, when my husband and I clung to each other, neither daring to say what we were both thinking. What if she is dead? Now I realize there was a far worse possibility, something that we had not imagined: that she was still alive. That during those two months, as James and I felt hope die and acceptance take its place, our Laura was still breathing. Still suffering.
I slump back exhausted, and my screams fade to whimpers. The frenzy has left me numb. Leaning against the concrete wall, I try to reconcile what he has just told me with what I already know, which is this: Two years after my daughter’s abduction, my husband and four other people were massacred in the Red Phoenix restaurant. How could these events be related and what ties them together? This he never explained.
I struggle to remember everything he said, searching through the fog of grief for clues. One sentence suddenly comes back to me, words that instantly freeze the blood in my veins.
She lasted seven, maybe eight weeks. Longer than the others.
My head lifts at the revelation. The others.
My daughter was not the only one.
WHAT DID DETECTIVE INGERSOLL KNOW, AND WHY WAS HE killed for it?
That was the question that consumed Jane as she sat late into the afternoon, sifting through her notes about Ingersoll’s murder. Spread across her desk were the crime scene photos of his residence, ballistic and trace-evidence reports, his cell phone and landline logs, and his bank card charges. According to Donohue, a death contract had gone out on Ingersoll weeks ago, right about the time when he began asking questions about missing girls. All the cases were old ones that had since dropped off the radar of departments across Massachusetts. She stared at a photo of Ingersoll’s body and thought: What monster did you awaken?
And what do missing girls have to do with the Red Phoenix?
She reached for the files on those missing girls. She was thoroughly familiar with the details of Laura’s and Charlotte’s disappearances, so she focused on the other three cases. All the victims were pretty and petite. All were good-to-excellent students. All were multitalented.
Patty Boles and Sherry Tanaka played in tennis tournaments. Deborah Schiffer and Patty Boles participated in art fairs. Deborah Schiffer played the piano in her school orchestra. But none of the three knew one another, at least according to their parents. And they were different ages at the times of their disappearances. Sherry Tanaka was sixteen. Deborah Schiffer was thirteen. Patty Boles was fifteen. One in middle school, two in high school.
Jane thought about this for a moment. Remembered that Laura Fang was fourteen years old when she vanished.
She jotted down the order in which the girls disappeared.
Deborah Schiffer, age thirteen.
Laura Fang, age fourteen.
Patty Boles, age fifteen.
Sherry Tanaka, age sixteen.
Charlotte Dion, age seventeen.
It was like staring at a royal flush. Every year, a different girl, a different age. As if the kidnapper’s taste had matured as the years passed.