The Interior (Red Princess 2)

She shook her head. A moment later she asked, her voice weak, “Henry?”

David looked around. Investigator Lo wasn’t taking any chances. He held Henry by the back of the neck.

“Lo’s got him,” David said.

Hulan didn’t respond, just kept her head buried. David waited at her side and watched as the neighbors gradually dispersed. The Tsais resumed their positions next to their son. Suchee knelt beside them, speaking soothingly. Just as the thought that they’d have to get the boy out of the sun crossed David’s mind, the threesome stood. Tsai Bing’s father picked up his son’s shoulders, while the two women each took a leg. As they started for the house, David turned away, uncomfortable at the sight. A year ago he had not seen a dead body. But since January he’d seen nine. What struck him—beyond the horrible and cruel images of what had been done to once living, breathing creatures—was the matter-of-fact way these peasants handled their dead. In America he’d seen policemen and FBI agents and coroners and forensics experts and paramedics and minimum-wage drivers from funeral homes. The physicality of death was something that was kept far away from the surviving loved ones. But here in the Chinese countryside the body was given over to the family to be washed, clothed, and cremated or buried. And David thought if this were Hulan or his own child, he might not have the strength to take that lifeless form into his arms and touch it so intimately, even as a last act of love.

He felt Hulan move. She turned and faced him. Her cheeks were drained of color.

“Let’s go back to Beijing,” she said.

She pushed away from the wall and, while David waited, went inside the Tsais’ house to say good-bye to Suchee. She reemerged quickly, headed across the dirt expanse, and stepped into the cornfield. David, Lo, and Henry followed swiftly. When they reached Suchee’s farm, Hulan took one last look around, then ducked into the front seat of the car Lo had commandeered. Once David and Henry settled in the back, Lo started the engine and they pulled out of the little compound.

Each person seemed lost in his or her thoughts as they bumped across the rutted dirt road leading back to the main highway. Hulan slumped in the front seat, her head resting against the window. She felt hot, sick, exhausted. Next to her, Lo drove with his usual quiet determination, yet his thoughts were very much on the report he would give to his superiors back in Beijing. How would he explain Hulan’s actions at the Tsai farm? In the backseat, Henry stared morosely out the window. David contemplated Henry, thinking.

When they reached the crossroads, Lo asked Hulan where she wanted to go. “Back to Beijing,” she muttered in Mandarin. When his eyes continued to question her, she expanded. “On the expressway. We can’t take Knight’s jet. The man is a criminal of the worst sort. Once we get in the air, we are with his people. We can’t allow that to happen. Just drive, Investigator. We’ll be back home soon enough.” Lo turned right and began to speed along.

David sat forward and asked, “How’d you know about Tang Dan?”

Hulan sighed tiredly. “It always bothered me that the killer didn’t take Miaoshan’s papers. He took Guy’s and those were only copies, which verified that Miaoshan hadn’t been killed for them. She’d been killed for another reason altogether.”

David leaned back. How had Miaoshan gotten the papers? Guy said an American gave them to her. She didn’t get them from Keith; she gave them to him. Was Aaron Rodgers still a possibility? Or Sandy Newheart? They came to the turnoff to Knight International. The compound was hidden behind a low rise, but David glanced in that direction and saw Henry looking suddenly alert. His dreams and his failures lay just over that rise, and as soon as they passed it Henry drooped down once again, looking more dejected than before.

“Lo, turn around,” David said.

“Attorney Stark?”

“Stop the car and turn around.”

Lo slowed, and Hulan said, “No, keep going. Let’s get home.”

The car sped up again.

“No! We have to turn around!” David put a hand on Lo’s shoulder. “Please!”

Lo pulled over. Hulan turned in her seat to look at David. Her face was ashen and covered with a thin sheen of sweat.

“We’ve done what we came to do,” Hulan said, utterly exhausted. “I solved Miaoshan’s murder. You found the person behind the bribes. I suspect that with further questioning at Beijing Municipal Jail Number Five, Mr. Knight will confess to killing or hiring someone to kill your friend.”

“This isn’t finished,” David said, then turned to Henry. “Is it?”

“The inspector is right,” Henry said. “We should get back to Beijing.”

David smiled. Sadly, triumphantly, Hulan wasn’t sure which.

“Let’s go back to the factory,” David repeated.

“There’s no reason to do that, Inspector Liu,” Henry said. She stared at him. He was a broken man, but she didn’t feel sorry for him. As if reading her thoughts, he continued. “I’ve made some terrible mistakes in my life. One of the worst was underestimating you and Mr. Stark. As you say, we’re all tired. Let’s go back to Beijing. Once we’re there I’ll explain everything. You’ll have your case, and I suspect you’ll be a hero…” He tipped his head and amended, “A heroine.”

Hulan passed her good hand over her eyes. They ached and she longed for ice to put on her lids, for a cold drink to refresh her parched throat, for cool sheets to appease her burning skin, and something, anything, to stop the throbbing in her arm.

David pressed his case. “We should secure the records in the computers. They may have already been erased, but I think we should see if they’re still there.”

Tired, Hulan ordered Lo to turn the car around.

“Please, no!” Henry blurted. “There’s no reason to go back.”

But whatever sympathy Hulan might have had had been used up in the last hour, and she wordlessly stared out the windshield.