THE FLENSE: China: (Part 1 of THE FLENSE serial) Page 6

  He turned left again at the next corner, as if sensing that he’d been seen, and by the time Angel reached the spot, perhaps fifteen seconds later, he had vanished. Her feet slapped to a stop, and she looked desperately about her, hoping for a sign to tell her where he’d gone.

  There was an alleyway here, too narrow and cluttered to allow a car to pass through it. Some of the doors were flush with the buildings’ walls, others were recessed. Some stood atop a handful of steps, some at street level. Only a few were lit by overhead bulbs.

  A truck rumbled past on the street behind her, splashing through puddles from an earlier rain. Somewhere off to the right, two or three blocks away, a pedestrian walk signal chirped with merry abandon. She turned toward it and stared, peering into the white mist drifting up from the wet roadway. But the intersection was empty.

  Deep in the alley a garbage can lid clattered to the ground. A cat meowed and emerged out of the shadows into the glow of a lamp. Something fluttered in the darkness high above, a pigeon disturbed by the noise, perhaps.

  Angel peered balefully at the cloaked doorways and barred windows. The air was laden with warm humidity and smelled of packed dirt, rotten garbage, and fried pork. Beneath it all was a hint of ginseng and clove. The man could be hiding anywhere along the alley’s length. Or he could be long gone.

  He’s here. He’s waiting for you.

  A neon sign for a massage parlor hummed several doors down, signaling in both Mandarin and English that the establishment was open and taking walk-in customers. She was tempted to check it out, as it seemed a likely route of escape for the man, but warning bells clanged inside her head.

  She took a tentative step forward.

  The pedestrian crossing signal began to chirp again. Angel didn’t bother looking this time. She knew the street would be empty.

  Where had he gone? Why had he broken into their rooms? Did he find whatever he’d been after? The questions were only the latest in an expanding list now crowding her thoughts.

  Sighing resignedly, she turned around. It wasn’t worth the risk. And now that she’d decided against it, the adrenaline of the pursuit began to dissipate. Her injuries now drew her attention. The back of her head pounded from being slammed into the wall and her face ached terribly from where the man had punched her. Her whole body throbbed from the force of her blood pulsing through it.

  She raised a hand to check the nail she’d torn away from the bed as she tried unsuccessfully to take DeBryan’s pack from the thief, the same one she’d broken earlier. The fingertip was bleeding, coating her hand and the knife, which she still held. She pried her fingers apart and slipped the weapon into the back pocket of her slacks.

  A few bumps and scrapes were no worse than she’d experienced in the past. It went with the job sometimes. The psychological injuries would trouble her longer, the pain of realizing how much her safety and security had been violated. She was more than familiar with those things. That pain, she knew, would never quite go away. Her body would heal after an injury, might even scar, but the mind never cured completely. It would always bleed a little from every wound inflicted ever upon it and never fully scab over.

  Fine, she thought bitterly, let him have the damn laptop. And whatever else he managed to swipe. She curled her aching fingers into a fist, nestling her throbbing finger tightly inside, and headed back to the hotel.

  * * *

  An officer from the Shanghai City Police Force stopped Angel the moment the elevator doors opened on the eleventh floor, shouting from the middle of the hallway in broken English not to step out as an active criminal investigation was in progress.

  “I know that!” she replied, trying to keep her voice from shaking, and stepped out anyway. His eyes widened at the sight of her, but he didn’t move to block her way.

  She pointed at the woman who’d poked her head out of her room as she ran past earlier. The elderly lady was speaking with another officer. Her carefully coiffed hair had begun to unravel and a forgotten cigarette dangled from her lips, ash longer than the talons on her fingers drooping toward the floor and smoke curling in the opposite direction.

  Hearing their voices, the man attending to her looked over. He spoke a few more words, and then the woman turned and her face went pale. She nodded anxiously. The officer immediately left her side.

  “You know man in room 1137?”

  Angel nodded and turned toward him. It was DeBryan’s room. “He can vouch for m—”

  The officer placed his hand on his service revolver and said something to his partner. The first officer nodded and demanded to see her papers.

  “They’re in my room across the hall. 1138. I don’t have my—”

  “What your name?”

  She told him, adding that she was a reporter.

  “You know man in 1137?”

  “Yes. I said I did. Bring him out here. He’ll tell you—”

  “He no help you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  The officer gestured at her blouse, and she saw for the first time the dark red spots on it, as if she’d spilled wine on it. Her nose had bled, and she hadn’t even noticed. “Why you bleeding?” he demanded.

  “I was chasing a man. He punched me. I tried to stop him, but—”

  “Why?”

  Angel was getting frustrated with the officer not letting her finish.

  “He broke into my room and stole my computer laptop.”

  “Your room? Why you go into other room? American’s?”

  “What? I didn’t. The man, the thief, he was in there.”

  “In your room, in other room. Which one? Why you leave? Why you run away?”

  “I didn’t run away! Ask that woman. She saw the man. He broke into our rooms and stole things. I was chasing after him trying to stop him.”

  The officer turned and translated to his partner, who spoke once more with the woman. She shook her head and said something back.

  “She no see man.”

  “He was there!”

  Angel glanced over his shoulder to where the door to DeBryan’s room stood open. She could just make out the back of a third officer standing inside. Now he turned, and she saw that he was wearing latex gloves and shoe covers.

  “Just, please,” she said, but it seemed to her that the world was closing in, the walls crowding her. Her words sounded like they were coming from somewhere far away. “Mister DeBryan will confirm what I’m telling you.”

  “He won’t,” the officer replied, and his words also sounded too faint. He grabbed her arm.

  “I don’t understand.” But she did, and the officer’s next words only confirmed it:

  “American is dead.”

  Chapter Eight

  The police finally released her shortly after two the next afternoon, following a long, exhausting night of questions.

  The detectives had been relentless, asking about her relationship with the murdered photographer, the missing items from their rooms, the reason for their stay in Shanghai. When she told them about investigating the tragedy at Huangxia, they left the room for several minutes, then returned even more suspicious, insisting that she was lying. There was no tragedy on the resort island, nothing reported anywhere about it. She was using the earthquake in the region as a distraction.

  “It’s true!”

  “There no tragedy on Huangxia!”

  She couldn’t tell if they were genuinely ignorant of the situation there or part of the cover-up. When she told them she’d been there herself less than twenty-four hours before and seen the devastation with her own eyes, they screamed at her in frustration, slamming the table with their palms and ordering her to stop lying and tell the truth.

  “The place was empty! Everyone’s dead or gone. I saw the bodies, hundreds of them. We both did. The soldiers made us leave.”

  It was off season, they said. No tourists, only locals.

  She had no photographs, nothing to prove her assertions. Not that she thought
it would help. They would simply claim the images were fake. The officers seemed determined not to believe her.

  She had considered telling them about the tiny memory disk DeBryan had given her, the one wrapped inside the tampon. The police had confiscated it before interrogating her, along with anything else she’d been carrying or allowed to retrieve from the room, once the hotel manager gave her access to it. It had all been sealed inside a plastic baggie before being catalogued and whisked away. The disk remained undetected. And without knowing exactly what was on it, she decided there was too much at stake to risk letting them have it. She knew she was innocent. She had to have faith that her innocence would eventually force them to release her. Surely the hotel security cameras would substantiate her story.

  “Camera video will be checked,” she was told, “once we have warrant. It not like United States. People have rights to privacy. Must follow protocol.”

  DeBryan’s backpack had finally been recovered in the alleyway, right where she’d told them the attacker had led her. It was covered in blood, which she was certain their analysis would show belonged to him. “And blood on knife we found in pocket?” they demanded.

  “I don’t know! I suppose it might be his, but also mine.” She showed them her finger.

  “Blood on clothes?”

  She was certain that belonged only to her. She had bled, she told them, not from a struggle with DeBryan, but with the attacker.

  “Laboratory test will prove if you are telling truth!”

  The rest of the pack was of little help. It had been emptied of everything but a few useless notes, DeBryan’s identification papers, and a pair of dirty socks. Several more items were found in a trashcan a block away, but when they were shown to her, Angel couldn’t confirm that any of it was his. Neither laptop had been located, nor the phone Cheong had given DeBryan to replace the one he’d lost on Huangxia.

  At half past one the chief of the Criminal Investigations Division interrupted the interview to tell her she was free to go. Hotel security cameras confirmed her story, he said. He spoke quietly but with emotion.

  Exhausted, hungry, and slightly hungover, Angel wanted to lash out at him. Why had it taken so long to review the camera footage? How had hotel security been so lax? What were they going to do to recover the missing laptops? But before she could say anything, the chief brusquely pushed his detectives from the room before shutting the door behind them and turning to her.

  He stood for a moment and studied her with such intensity that she found herself unable to move. Finally, he threw the bag with her belongings onto the table and told her that he wanted her out of his city that very day. “I don’t care where you go, just leave.”

  “But—”

  He leaned in over the table and spoke in a near whisper. “You will also not speak of Huangxia again. If you do, we may decide to reanalyze the evidence collected this morning and I am certain it will implicate you in your colleague’s death, you and no one else. I will then do everything in my power to make sure you answer for the crime. I don’t care who you know or where in the world you are.”

  Angel was livid. How dare this man, this Inspector Liu, threaten her? How dare he censor her? He had no right! “The United States has no extradition treaty with your country,” she told him.

  “But France does,” he replied, just as assuredly.

  “The agreement was never ratified,” she countered. But the conviction had gone out of her. Despite the failure of the French parliament to ratify the treaty the president signed nearly a decade before, she knew it wouldn’t stop the police and the government from acting under the principle of aut dedere aut judicare if the Chinese demanded it. The subject had been in the news a lot lately, but mainly in regard to the extradition of terrorists and those accused of economic and cybercrimes. With some bitterness, she had to admit to herself that her own government would capitulate to a request made by Beijing. The French, her own people, more than deserved their reputation as pushovers.

  Of course, she could easily avoid being sent back here if it ever came to it, but that would mean never going home again, never seeing her brother. And that just wasn’t possible.

  The chief investigator pushed himself off the table and nodded once, briskly. “One of my officers will escort you back to your hotel, where you may recover the rest of your belongings. He will take you to the airport and wait with you until you are on the airplane.”

  She got up to leave.

  “We know you did it,” he said, and he looked at her with deep contempt, as if he truly believed that she was no better than a common thief. Then he spun on his heels and left the room.

  * * *

  Alvin Cheong was waiting in the lobby when Angel arrived at the hotel. She saw him the moment she stepped through the front doors. He pressed his cigarette into the crystal ashtray beside him and stood up to meet her. He nodded once and, without a word being spoken, her police escort immediately dropped back. Angel was surprised when the officer didn’t board the elevator with them, as the CID chief had instructed.

  “How did you know I’d be released?” she asked.

  “Chief Inspector Liu is an acquaintance,” Cheong explained, leaning forward to press the button for her floor.

  “Acquaintance,” she mumbled. “How convenient.”

  “He takes a particular interest in my activities.”

  “You mean 6X’s activities.”

  Cheong shrugged.

  “He disapproves.”

  He laughed in surprise. “No, my dear.”

  Angel was silent as the elevator passed between the third and ninth floors. No one got on with them, but at this early hour of the afternoon, she knew that there were probably more guests checking out than in; the elevators would be filled going down. She’d noticed, for example, how the hotel lobby had been lousy with businessmen, all standing about in their tight secretive groups, smoking their cigarettes. There had been only one family present, and they looked like they were heading out for an afternoon of shopping or sightseeing. The absence of police, indeed of any sign of last night’s mishap, was conspicuous only to her.

  “I’ve been ordered out of the country,” she said, turning to him. “I’m sorry, but—”

  “Liu requested only that you leave the city. You do not have to leave China.”

  Angel gave him a sharp look.

  He sighed. “This whole affair has been a rather unfortunate distraction, drawing more attention on you than I would have preferred. It would have been easier for you to start your investigation without the spotlight. Alas, the photographer’s death will—”

  “You didn’t want DeBryan anyway. And now he’s out of the picture. Funny how it worked out that way.”

  He frowned at her, but didn’t rise to the challenge, which only made her more suspicious of him.

  “In the matter of your release,” he quietly told her, “I had to pull some strings, smooth some ruffled feathers. The police were ready to process you.” It was a veiled threat, and Angel readily saw through it.

  The bell rang, indicating they’d arrived on her floor. The doors opened onto an empty hallway.

  “I’m the victim here,” Angel whispered. She didn’t know why, but it felt wrong to keep shouting, just a few meters away from where her colleague had died. “I didn’t do anything to DeBryan. Why would I? I barely knew the man.”

  “That’s exactly what I told Liu. It was just a random crime; that’s what I said. You just happened to get caught in the middle.”

  “It wasn’t random.”

  He ignored her. “It took some convincing, but I finally managed to assure him that you were innocent.”

  “I am innocent!”

  “According to him, the blood evidence was quite compelling, telling a very different story.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “As I said, he was ready to charge you.”

  “He said the hotel video confirmed my story.”

  Alvin sighed
. “Perhaps it did, but it won’t help you now. I’ve just been informed that the video has gone missing.”

  “In the space of an hour?”

  “It happens. The City Police are overworked and understaffed.”

  He stopped and turned to her. “But enough about that. It’s immaterial now. You are free, and the police have suspended any charges against you. There is, however, still the matter between us to be addressed.”

  Angel felt the hair on her scalp prickle, which it did when she sensed someone was railroading her. She didn’t know what this man’s intentions were beyond getting her to look into a mysterious train derailment in Inner Mongolia, nor could she figure out how it might be related to a group of crazies who were convinced that the end of the world was coming. She didn’t think he’d tell her if she asked.

  More tellingly, she found she just didn’t care.

  “You expect me to work for you now, after all this? How can I even trust you?”

  They arrived at her door, and Angel couldn’t help but stare at the one across the hall. There was no police tape on it, no indication that a man had died here less than twelve hours before. What exactly had happened in there? It seemed pretty clear that DeBryan had interrupted the intruder and gotten a taste of the man’s blade for it. But had the man been anything more than just a common thief, as Cheong suggested? It was just too coincidental to be dismissed.

  She also wondered what might have happened if they’d returned just a few minutes earlier. Would she now be the one zipped inside a plastic bag and slid into a refrigerated drawer in whatever passed for a police morgue in this country? Somehow, that just didn’t seem to be part of the script.

  And what exactly is the script?

  She wish she knew.

  She sucked in a sharp breath when the door suddenly opened and DeBryan stepped out of the room dressed in one of the hotel’s plush robes. Except, she realized a half second later, it wasn’t him but a tall elderly Chinese gentleman.