Phuc Khiev, and a man named Maxim Schell. Nguyen, Khiev, Schell, and
Morrison were armed with handguns. Nguyen's was in his hand, Khiev's
on the floor under his body, Schell's still tucked into his belt. None
of them got a shot off, though some of the other dead men did fire
their weapons.
'Morrison's gun, a little .22, was locked in his right hand in a death
grip, and shot empty. Nobody got hit with a .22 that we can tell. We
haven't come up with IDs on the other dead men yet, but all of them had
guns, too.'
Michaels said, 'So what do you think happened here?'
'No way to tell for sure. The dead guys were mostly shot in the back
or back of the head, so what it looks like is some kind of ambush. You
have to figure that if you have a dozen armed men, most of whom didn't
do any shooting before they got taken down, there were a lot of other
guys in here blasting away, too. Forensics hasn't gotten the blood all
sorted out, but a quick prelim says there were a few who got hit hard
enough to bleed, but who didn't stick around.'
'Jesus.'
'We'd take his help if he offered. You must have some ideas. You got
anything for us?'
Michaels thought about it. Toni would tell the director anyway, it was
her job now, so it didn't matter if Dixon knew. He said, 'Morrison had
some kind of valuable data and he used it against the Chinese. We
think maybe they were after him. Maybe they caught up with him.'
'What kind of data?'
'Sorry, that's need-to-know only.'
Dixon shook his head.
'Doesn't seem right. The dead guys were all sitting down when the
shooting started. And according to the interviews with the
screenwriters, everything was quiet until somebody yelled 'Gun!' At
which point, all hell busted loose. It sounds more like a negotiation
than a face-off.'
'It must have been an ugly scene in here.'
'Yeah. Though a couple of the screenwriters were more pissed because
they didn't get to see the movie than they were upset about all the
corpses. Welcome to L.A.'
Michaels considered what Dixon had said. A negotiation.
Yes, it did, didn't it? Why would the Chinese be negotiating with a
man who had wiped out a couple of their villages?
Maybe they wanted him to tell them how. Maybe they were willing to pay
for it?
Well, if Wu was the guy negotiating, he hadn't done too good a job of
it, had he? And Morrison wasn't going to be pedaling anything,
either.
Paris, France
Jay sat slouched in a wicker chair at the Cafe Emile, looking out on
the Champs Elysees, not far from the Arc de
Triomphe. He sipped black, bitter espresso from a tiny china cup, and
smiled at the couples who strolled past.
