15th Affair (Women's Murder Club 15)

Ling had a whispered talk with his client, who looked up at me through the thick lenses of his glasses. He nodded and heaved a long sigh.

Then he said, “This is the only thing I know about the airplane. I don’t think it means anything, and please don’t get mad at me.”

I felt a chill, as if we were on the edge of a breakthrough, but I was afraid to trust the feeling. This mutt had been a total disappointment.

“Night before last,” said Yee, “me and Mr. Soo both got home at the same time and I notice that Mr. Soo’s car is all banged up. I say, ‘What happened, Mr. Soo? You all right?’”

“He’s very mad. He got into a car fight with a police lady he calls Dirty Mary.”

Did he mean me?

“Why Dirty Mary? Like Clint Eastwood?”

The kid nodded and went on.

“Anyway, Mr. Soo had already told me after the crash that he needed proof for his boss that some man was on that plane. He said Dirty Mary stopped him from doing his job. That made him look bad. But I think he did find the body,” said Yee.

“What makes you think that?” I asked.

“Like a week and a half ago, I helped him unload his car and I saw a body in the back wrapped in a sheet. I just saw a foot that was all burned. Mr. Soo shut the trunk before I could see more.”

Pictures were coming up in my mind and tumbling end over end. The first time I saw Mr. Soo outside the ME’s office, he’d said he wanted to see his son. I’d turned him away and a bunch of cops had backed me up.

“Was he looking for his son?” I asked Henry Yee.

“No, it wasn’t his son,” said Yee. “It was someone else.”

I thought of the missing victim of WW 888. The body had gotten mysteriously lost at Metropolitan Hospital. I remembered the chaos that night, the exhausted, traumatized people, more corpses than any one morgue could handle.

I could imagine someone disguised in hospital scrubs, looking at rows of bodies on gurneys, reading toe tags. I could imagine someone wheeling a corpse out of the hospital emergency room.

No one would have stopped a person in scrubs. Not that night.

I was breathless, almost faint. I stood up and, placing the flats of my hands on the table, I leaned toward our only material witness.

“Think, Henry. Did Mr. Soo mention the name Michael Chan? Was he looking for the body of Michael Chan?”

“He never said the name,” Yee said.

The kid looked terrified. Of me? Or of retaliation?

Ling said his client had cooperated fully. The interview was over. Yee was released.

I still had questions. Plenty of them.

PART FOUR

CHAPTER 71

CINDY CALLED TO say, “Lindsay. I’ve got breaking news. Big-time. Can you meet me downstairs in five minutes? I’ll drive you home after.”

“Give me a hint,” I said, shutting down my computer and locking my desk drawer.

She was speed-talking. Warp speed.

“A tip came in twenty minutes ago. From a guy who saw the photos I’m running of the Four Seasons’ Jane and John Doe, and he says he’s got video of them. In the hotel. On a hidden camera. He’s going to show me the video. Is that enough hint for you?”

It certainly was.