He leaned next to her, resting his forearms on the low wall, studying the hopeless gridlock in the streets below. Tay wondered if the traffic in Bangkok required motorists to carry around emergency supplies of food and water when they drove. Maybe even a chemical toilet. He waited quietly, knowing Cally was struggling with some kind of decision.
“There’s something else I didn’t tell you,” she finally said.
Tay stayed silent.
Cally twisted around and rested her back against the low wall.
“Marc Reagan and I met the ambassador at the residence the morning after he came back from Washington.”
She paused, thinking.
“He said there were two things we needed to know about his wife’s death. The first was what he told you at your meeting, that he and Mrs. Munson were discussing a divorce. The second was something he didn’t tell you.”
Cally took a deep breath. She made Tay think of a surgeon who was reluctant to cut. But then she took another breath and just did it.
“Elizabeth Munson was a CIA intelligence officer. She was working under what is called non-official cover, developing informants in terrorist groups in Southeast Asia. According to the ambassador, he was the only one at the embassy who knew it.”
Tay was silent for a moment. He didn’t know exactly how far out on a limb Cally had gone by telling him that, but he suspected it was a very long way indeed.
The day had faded nearly into darkness and the stationary streams of traffic below glowed like strands of pearls stretched between the city’s buildings. The temperature had dropped and the air tasted like a mouthful of coins.
“Okay,” Cally went on before Tay could decide what to say. “Then let’s see what we’ve got here.”
She leaned back against the wall and folded her arms, crossing one ankle over the other. “Exactly what did the two murders have in common?” she asked.
Tay assumed the question was rhetorical so he said nothing.
Cally held up one finger. “Both women were killed by a single shot into the ear with a.22 caliber handgun and both women were restrained in some way when the shot was fired.”
She held up a second finger. “The faces of both women were beaten into pulp, both probably postmortem, and both bodies were posed in exactly the same way.”
A third finger. “Both crime scenes were sanitized after the killings.”
A fourth finger. “One victim was an American ambassador and the other victim was an American ambassador’s wife who was working under cover for the CIA.”
Now Cally held up five fingers, spreading her entire right hand, palm outward, like a cop stopping traffic. “And both of the murders occurred in places where American embassy personnel met intelligence sources.” Cally cocked her head at Tay. “That’s it, right? That’s all the two cases have in common?”
“Not quite,” Tay said.
Then Tay told Cally about his conversation with Lucinda Lim and repeated her story about Elizabeth Munson having a female lover for whom she was planning on leaving her husband.
“Come on, Sam, surely you’re not saying that Elizabeth Munson and Ambassador Rooney were-”
“I guess they could have been,” Tay interrupted. “Although that’s not what I’m telling you.”
“Then what are you telling me?”
“It can’t be a coincidence that two women prominent in American diplomatic circles, both of whom had sexual involvements with other women, were both brutally murdered in American embassy safe houses within a few days of each other.”
Cally shifted her eyes to Tay’s. “You think somebody in one of our embassies is responsible, don’t you?”
There was a loud sound from somewhere just then, a sound that Tay couldn’t immediately identify. He wondered briefly if it was the sound shit made when it hit the fan.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do.”
Cally uncrossed her ankles and crossed them back again in the opposite direction.
“Goddamn,” she murmured in a low voice. “Goddamn it all to hell.”
The setting sun was a bright orange ball burning through a thin haze streaked with purple and green.
“It may not be that easy,” Tay said. “Something about the two crime scenes doesn’t feel right to me.”
“You mean they aren’t really alike?”
“No. They are. That’s the problem. They’re too much alike.”
“I don’t understand.”
Tay paused and organized his thoughts. “Take the gun, for example. How could it be the same gun? The killer couldn’t have flown with it from Singapore to Bangkok. He would have had to bring it by train or car and even that would be risky because he might have been checked by Thai customs. Why take that chance?”
“It’s probably not the same gun,” Cally said. “Just the same caliber.”
“Exactly,” Tay nodded. “But then why use exactly the same caliber gun? And why shoot the ambassador exactly the same way Mrs. Munson was shot? It’s as if the killer consciously tried to match up the details of the two scenes to make sure we thought the same person murdered both women. Then, there was that business with the flashlights, too.”
“What business?”
“In the case of Elizabeth Munson, the flashlight was already in the hotel room. Using it on her was strictly opportunistic. In the case of Ambassador Rooney, surely it wasn’t just lying around. It’s too much of a coincidence to believe that exactly the same kind of flashlight that was in a room at the Marriott was also in your safe house here in Bangkok. The killer must have brought it with him.”
“I get it,” Cally nodded. “He was duplicating the first crime scene. So we would know that both women were killed by the same man.”
“Or woman.”
It was nearly dark and the damp air had turned far too cool for them to stand around any longer in their bathing suits. At least, Tay thought it was the air that suddenly made him feel cold. Maybe it wasn’t.
“What does the posing of the bodies mean, Sam? What is the killer telling us?”
Tay shook his head. “I have absolutely no idea.”
Cally must have felt cool, too, because all at once she pushed herself away from the wall and walked back to where she had left a pool bag on the grass beneath her lounge chair. She pulled out a T-shirt and shorts, slipped them over her bathing suit, and slid her feet into a pair of rubber thongs.
Tay walked over just as she finished.
“I hate to go now, Sam,” she said turning around, “but I have to. I promised some friends I’d have dinner with them tonight.”
Tay hadn’t really thought much about it, but he had just been assuming that he and Cally would spend the evening together. Probably have dinner. Maybe even check out a little of Bangkok’s famous nightlife. Apparently not. Tay hoped the disappointment didn’t show on his face.
“I’ve got some meetings at the embassy tomorrow morning,” Cally added. “But I can be back by early afternoon. Maybe we can have another swim then and decide where to go from here.”
“I told my boss I’d be back in Singapore tomorrow. He wasn’t all that happy about me coming to Bangkok in the first place.”
Cally didn’t say anything.
“I guess I could always poke around a little on my own while you’re in your meetings,” Tay ventured tentatively.
“You could.”
“It might be useful.”
“Probably would be.”
“I could give the Chief a call, and tell him-”
“I think that’s the best thing for you to do.”
Cally swung her bag over her shoulder.
