The Stone Monkey (Lincoln Rhyme 4)

"Can't she stay with them?"

Wilson shook her head sympathetically. "I'm afraid not. They have no claim to her. She's an orphaned citizen of another country. She'll have to go back to China."

Sachs nodded slowly then gestured the social worker aside. She whispered, "She's a girl. You know what happens to baby girl orphans in China?"

"She'll be adopted."

"Maybe," Sachs said dubiously.

"I don't know about that. I just know that I'm following the law. Look, we do this all the time and we've never heard about any problems with the kids who go back to the recipient country."

Recipient country . . . The phrase troubled her as much as Coe's harsh "undocumenteds." Sachs asked, "Do you ever hear anything at all after they go back?"

Wilson hesitated. "No." She then nodded to the INS agent, who spoke in Chinese to the Changs. Mei-Mei's face went still but she nodded and directed the baby to the social worker. "She will . . . " Mei-Mei said. Then frowned, trying to think of the English words.

"Yes?" the social worker asked.

"She will be good take care of?"

"Yes, she will."

"She very good baby. Lost mother. Make sure she good take care of."

"I'll make sure."

Mei-Mei looked at the girl for a long moment then turned her attention back to her youngest son.

Wilson picked up Po-Yee, who squinted at Sachs's red hair and reached out to grip a handful of the strands with curiosity. When she tugged hard, Sachs laughed. The social worker started for her car.

"Ting!" came a woman's urgent voice. Sachs recognized the word for "wait" or "stop." She turned to see Chang Mei-Mei walking toward them.

"Yes?"

"Here. There is this." Mei-Mei handed her a stuffed animal toy, crudely made. A cat, Sachs believed.

"She like this. Make her happy."

Wilson took it and gave it to Po-Yee.

The child's eyes were on the toy, Mei-Mei's on the girl.

Then the social worker strapped the child into a car seat and drove away.

Sachs spent a half hour talking to the Changs, debriefing them, seeing if she could learn anything else that might help shore up the case against the Ghost. Then the exhaustion of the past two days caught up with her and she knew it was time to go home. She climbed into the crime scene bus, glancing back once to see the Changs climb into an INS minibus. She and Mei-Mei happened to catch each other's eyes for an instant, then the door closed, the bus pulled into the street and the vanished, the piglets, the undocumenteds . . . the family began their journey to yet another temporary home.

*

Evidence exists independent of perpetrators, of course, and even though the Ghost was in custody Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs spent the next morning processing the information that continued to arrive regarding the GHOSTKILL case.

An analysis of the chemical markers in the C4 by the FBI had determined that the likely source of the plastic explosive used to blow up the ship was a North Korean arms dealer, who regularly sold weaponry to China.

Recovery divers from the Evan Brigant had brought up the bodies of the crewmen and the other immigrants from the Fuzhou Dragon, as well as the rest of the money--about $120,000. The cash had been logged into evidence and was being stored in an FBI safe deposit box. They also had learned that Ling Shui-bian, the man who had paid the money to the Ghost and had written him the letter that Sachs found on the ship, had an address in Fuzhou. Rhyme assumed he was one of the Ghost's little snakeheads or partners, and he emailed the name and address to the Fuzhou public security bureau with a note telling them about Ling's involvement with the Ghost.

"You want it on the chart?" Thom asked, nodding at the whiteboard.

"Write, write!" he said impatiently. They still would have to present the evidence to the prosecutors and reproducing the information as it was written on the whiteboards would be the most concise and helpful way to do this.

The aide took the marker and wrote down the information that had just come in.