Tony did his two tours in Iraq. We do not flinch from taking the fight to those who do us harm. Oh no, we surely do not.”
Tay didn’t bother to ask exactly what that meant.
“Well then, Inspector, I’ve talked enough now. You take over. After all, you’re the one who asked for this meetin’.”
For the next ten minutes, Tay tossed out meaningless questions and nodded earnestly at all of the ambassador’s answers without bothering to listen to any of them. He was seething and needed a little time to calm down before he could trust himself to say anything of consequence.
Who the hell did this clown think he was? He might be the American ambassador — Tay didn’t give a flying fuck if he was the goddamned President of the goddamned United States — but he wasn’t going to pat Tay on the head, tell him that the FBI would take over from here, and oh by the way, they were going to tell the public that Elizabeth Munson committed suicide. Well, on second thought, perhaps it was a little hard to get self-righteous about that, wasn’t it? After all, the suicide story had originally been Tay’s own idea, even if he did regret it now.
“Inspector, I gotta be honest with you about something,” the ambassador suddenly volunteered apropos of nothing at all Tay could see. And when he heard that, Tay started paying more attention. In his experience, when people told him they were going to be honest with him, they usually weren’t.
“I want you to hear this from me,” Ambassador Munson said, looking down at his hands for a moment.
There was something about the gesture that looked wrong to Tay. He wasn’t absolutely sure what, but there was.
“Elizabeth and I were finished. She was going to divorce me and she wanted it to hurt like a son of a bitch. To tell you the truth, for the last few years it felt like that woman was fucking me up the ass with a garden rake.”
Tay glanced at DeSouza and at the two men sitting with him, but they were impassive. He assumed they were accustomed to the way the ambassador expressed himself. Still, he would have given a great deal right at that moment to see what kind of expression Cally had on
“You’re going to hear that from someone sooner or later,” the ambassador continued, “and I wanted it to be me. Anyway, I suppose it doesn’t matter. I can’t see what it could have to do with Liz’s murder.”
Tay didn’t really see either. As far as he knew, no one was seriously suggesting the ambassador had murdered his wife and it sounded unlikely to Tay, too, if only for logistical reasons. For the American ambassador to Singapore to walk into the Marriott on a Monday afternoon, shoot his wife in the head, pulp her face with the gun butt, strip and clean the room, dispose of all her clothing, and then hop a plane without anyone knowing about it seemed unlikely to the point of impossibility. Still, it was interesting to know there had been bad blood between the ambassador and his wife. It was even more interesting to Tay that the ambassador had volunteered it without the slightest prompting.
Tay glanced quickly toward DeSouza again and saw he and the other two men had all turned their faces expectantly in his direction to gauge his reaction. They already knew about all this, Tay thought to himself. He wondered if Cally knew as well.
“I just have one or two more routine questions, sir,” Tay said, shifting his eyes back to the ambassador.
When Tay didn’t show any interest in pursuing the issue of the relationship between the ambassador and his wife, he was certain he could feel the room around him breathe out in relief.
“It is necessary, sir, for me to establish your whereabouts on the day when your wife was killed.”
“That’s outrageous,” DeSouza snapped before the ambassador could say anything. “How can you sit there and suggest-”
“I’m not suggesting anything,” Tay said.
“Calm down, Tony.” The ambassador held up one hand, palm out. “Don’t get your little pecker all knotted up. The man’s not accusing me of anything. He’s only doing his job. Isn’t that right, Inspector?”
Tay’s voice hardened more than he probably should have let it, but he was getting so sick of these buffoons he really didn’t care. “Could you just tell me exactly where you were, sir?”
If the ambassador noticed Tay’s tone, he gave no sign of it.
“I was in Washington all of last week. I didn’t get back until about two o’clock yesterday morning.”
“And precisely when did you leave Singapore, sir?”
The ambassador hesitated a beat. It was only a split second, but Tay noticed and wondered if it meant anything.
“On Monday of last week. I took the morning Singapore Airlines flight to London and then flew from there directly to Washington on United.”
Tay made a mental note to have Sergeant Kang check when the Singapore Airlines flight to London had left on Monday of last week.
“Did your wife have any enemies, sir? Was she in any particular danger you knew of?”
“All Americans in foreign countries have enemies, Inspector. We are all in danger all the time. The more prominent we are, the more danger we are in.”
“In what way was your wife prominent, sir?”
“Because she was my goddamned wife,” the ambassador snapped almost at once. Then he took a long breath and drained the irritation out of his voice. “She was the American ambassador’s wife. That was enough right there to make her a target for these bastards.”
“Have other wives of American ambassadors been murdered like this?”
“Well…”
The ambassador shifted his eyes toward DeSouza, but it was Dewey Garland who responded.
“Not that I can recall, Inspector. We can research the point for you if you like, but I’m not sure I see the relevance of historical experience here. The world has changed in the last few years and American diplomatic personnel have been thrust into the front lines of the war against terrorism. We are all at risk all of the time, as are our families. It’s something we live with every day of our lives, but it makes it no less horrible when exactly the thing we all fear actually happens.”
It was a nice speech, but Tay couldn’t see it had all that much to do with the question he had asked. Nevertheless, he gathered that hidden in it was his answer. Ambassadors’ wives were not routinely tortured and murdered by terrorists, or anyone else for that matter. In that, and perhaps in other ways, Elizabeth Munson had stood alone.
“What thing is that, sir?” Tay asked.
Garland looked puzzled.
“I don’t understand what you’re asking me,” he said.
“You said it is horrible when that thing you all fear actually happens. What is that thing that you all fear?”
“Ah, I see,” Garland said. “We all fear someday our number will come up, that we will be targeted by terrorists as their next victim.”
“And do you think that was what happened here? That Mrs. Munson was targeted by terrorists.”
“Of course, Inspector.” Garland shifted his weight on the couch and folded his arms. His face settled into an expression Tay didn’t like very much. “Do you have a different theory of the crime?”
That was exactly the problem, of course. The American obsession with terrorists aside, Tay really didn’t have a clue as to who else might have killed Elizabeth Munson.
“I’ve read the autopsy report,” Garland continued when Tay didn’t respond right away. “Mrs. Munson was killed by a single, point-blank shot from a weapon suited for very little else but killing a human being. What could that be other than a carefully planned terrorist attack?”
“I thought the ambassador said you were a commercial attache,” Tay said. “Why would a commercial attache be reading an autopsy report?”
To Garland’s credit, he didn’t even blink.
“Touche, Inspector. Very good. Still, you’ll excuse me if I don’t formally acknowledge I may indeed perform a few additional duties around here from time to time.”
“Look, Inspector,” the ambassador interrupted, “this is taking us a pretty long way off the reservation.”
