The Ambassador's wife

basket, slathered it with orange marmalade, and chewed thoughtfully.

“You think he’s going to show up?” Tay asked.

“Yes.”

“He’s pretty late if he is.”

“This isn’t Singapore, Sam. Things here run on Thai time. Just relax. It might even do you some good.”

Before Tay could make up his mind what that was supposed to mean and compose a suitably caustic reply, August was standing next to their table. Tay hadn’t seen him come in, but suddenly there he was. Cally slid over on the bench to make room and he sat down next to her. He placed a large, brown envelope on the table and put her digital camera on top of it.

August was wearing a baggy, white linen shirt and a faded pair of jeans. He hadn’t shaved in several days and his hair was casually pushed back. Tay risked a quick glance at Cally, but he couldn’t read anything on her face.

A different waitress, also red-vested and wearing a long, black apron, appeared almost immediately at August’s elbow with a smile on her face so warm and wistful that it caught Tay’s eye.

“How you today, Khun John?”

“I’m good, Noi. Your boyfriend still treating you right?”

“I sad, Khun John. Gunter go Berlin, na kha. He say he come back Noi in two week but he no back. It one month now, Khun John. I so sad, na kha.”

August reached out and rubbed the girl’s forearm with a tenderness that surprised Tay.

“If you want your old job back, Noi, all you have to do is ask. You’re the best dancer who ever worked for me. You know that.”

The waitress didn’t say anything to that, but she shifted her feet and looked down at the floor and for a horrible moment Tay thought she was about to cry.

“Just brown toast and a glass of milk for me,” August said to her.

At that, the waitress looked up and Tay was relieved to see her smile back in place.

“Kha. I get.”

When she was gone, August looked at Tay and lifted his eyebrows.

“I don’t recommend the coffee here,” he said. “I think they brought in a Brit to make lousy coffee just to keep their English breakfast experience authentic. If you want coffee, there’s a Starbucks over on Beach Road.”

“This is fine,” Tay said.

It wasn’t, of course. August was right. The coffee was terrible, but Starbucks was way too American for Tay and he had no intention of taking any advice from August this morning anyway, no matter what it was about.

“Suit yourself,” August shrugged and shifted his eyes to Cally.

“You okay this morning, darling?”

“I’m fine, John.”

August eyed the half-empty plate in front of her. “You’re really packing the food away there, girl. Something give you an appetite?”

“It must be the sea air,” she said.

Tay had had enough of this cutesy crap from both of them, and he was just opening his mouth to tell them that when August moved the camera and opened the brown envelope he had put on the table.

“I went by a friend’s place last night and got him to print the stuff off your digital camera,” he said.

The waitress came back just then and August held the envelope in both hands and waited until she set out his milk and toast. When she was gone, he removed a stack of photographs from the envelope, split them into two stacks, and laid them on the table.

“These are the photographs from the Munson crime scene you gave me last night, and these are the ones from the Rooney scene I printed off your camera.” He spoke to Cally and ignored Tay. “Take another look at them.”

Cally pulled the photographs toward her, but Tay was thinking about what August had just said. If August had carried the camera somewhere last night and made these prints, then that must mean after getting the camera from Cally he left-

“You saw something in the photographs,” Cally said, interrupting Tay’s reverie, “didn’t you, John?”

“Maybe.”

Cally looked through the stack of photographs very slowly while she forked the rest of her eggs into her mouth with her free hand. As she finished with each photo, she lifted it off the stack and handed it across the table to Tay.

The first photograph was a close-up of Ambassador Rooney’s face, or more precisely where Ambassador Rooney’s face would have been had it not been beaten into a mash of tissue and bone. Tay tasted his breakfast rising in his throat and quickly looked away. Cally continued eating while she methodically worked her way through the photographs and passed them to Tay. He pretended to look at each of them and found that if he kept his eyes just on the upper edge of the prints he could appear to be studying them without actually looking at them.

“I don’t see it, John,” Cally said when she had finished going through the photographs. “Do you think the two crime scenes are different for some reason?”

“Not really,” August said, “They’re almost identical.”

“Almost?”

“Almost. Look at the flashlight in your photos.”

Cally pushed her plate away and held out her hand to Tay. He gratefully passed the whole stack of photos back to her and she rifled through them quickly until she found the one she wanted. Then she dealt it out on the table like a blackjack dealer hitting a soft sixteen. Tay steeled himself and took a quick look.

“Now look at the flashlight in the Singapore photos,” August said.

Before Cally could locate the photograph August was talking about, Tay had worked it out. He had no need to refer to the photographs taken in the Singapore Marriott. The images were seared into his memory forever.

“The flashlight in Singapore was inserted with the lens pointing inward,” Tay said. “In Bangkok it was inserted with the lens pointing outward.”

August glanced at Tay. “Very good, Sam. That’s it exactly.”

By then Cally had located the photograph of the flashlight protruding from Elizabeth Munson. She held it side by side with a similar photograph of Ambassador Rooney.

“You’re right, John,” she said, “you’re absolutely right. But what does it mean?”

“Fucked if I know,” August said as he leaned back in the booth. “You asked me if I saw any differences in the crime scenes and that’s a difference. But that’s all I can tell you. I’m not clairvoyant.”

Cally continued looking at the pictures for a few moments and then stacked them together with a little shrug and offered them to Tay. He shook his head and she put them down on the table.

“Do you think the same man killed both women, John?”

“That’s the way it looks.”

“And you don’t think these murders were acts of terrorism, do you?”

“No.”

“Why not? They could have been.”

“I doubt it. Our local heroes around here are mostly simple souls. They’ve never gone in for anything but bombings and, even then, most of the major players are pretty much off the board these days anyway. Take Jemaah Islamiyah, the bunch that tried to truck-bomb the embassies in Singapore a few years ago. We grabbed Hambali upcountry in Thailand and they pretty much went into the toilet. Even Abu Bakar Bashir is trying to put some distance between himself and them these days. They’re not really much of a factor anymore.”

August lifted his glass and finished his milk, then wiped his lips with a napkin with a gesture that Tay found unexpectedly prim.

“Then you’ve got the rest of your usual suspects. The Islamic Defenders, the Moro Liberation Front, and the delightfully named Bearers of the Sword. In my opinion, none of them could mount a competent attack on a vending machine these days.”

“Then you’re saying that we shouldn’t be looking at terrorism as a motive here since terrorism is dead in Southeast Asia?” Cally asked. “Is that it?”