mind, a testament to her strength.
Instead, she brewed him a cup of tea and sat beside him on the sofa, a gentle hand on his shoulder, lightly stroking it as he opened up to her for the second time in the last twenty-four hours.
It felt good to be with her. To share his demons. His fears. His pain.
When he told her about the note and its cryptic message, she said, “Show me.”
He pulled it out of his pocket and handed it to her, watching her carefully as she unfolded it.
“Looks like your handwriting,” she said. “But… different.”
“Read it,” Donovan said.
She did as he asked, reading aloud. “ ‘Autogenous work that can get you arrested.’ ” She stared at the nine underlined spaces drawn beneath it. “A crossword puzzle clue?”
Donovan nodded. “Two words.”
Her brow furrowed as she thought it over. Then her expression changed and she looked at him. She’d gotten it much quicker than he had.
“Inside job,” she said.
Donovan nodded again.
“And you think this means you killed those men? That’s ridiculous, Jack. You’re not built that way. You don’t have it in you.”
“That’s just it,” Donovan said, trying to keep his desperation under control. “I do have it in me.” He pointed to the note. “You’re right about that being my handwriting, because I wrote it.” He paused. “Only I didn’t.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Inside job,” he said. “Get it? It’s a message. A joke. When I blacked out last night, I did things I wouldn’t normally do because I wasn’t in control of my own body.”
Rachel stared at him for a long moment. And in that moment he thought he’d lost her. She was willing to go only so far with this stuff and now he’d crossed a line. Her hand stiffened on his shoulder, a ripple of fear just beneath the surface of her fingertips.
Then she surprised him.
“Gunderson. He’s doing this.” And when she said it, he wanted to put his arms around her and hold her forever.
“He’s inside me, Rache. Last night he managed to take control and he wants me to know it. That’s why he played hide-and-seek with Nemo’s body. It’s just the kind of move Gunderson would make.”
It was a ridiculous notion, of course. Something you’d hear on the mental ward at Mercy Hospital. But was it any more ridiculous than what he’d been through these last couple days? Unlike Sidney Waxman, he’d already suspended any inkling of disbelief that may have plagued him.
Apparently Rachel had as well.
She stood up, heading toward an adjacent hallway. “Give me a minute to get dressed.”
“Why? Where are we going?”
She turned, looking at him with concern. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”
49
They took twenty-sixth out of Bridgeport and headed into Chinatown.
Rachel drove, weaving her Celica in and out of traffic with the seasoning of a pro, reminding him for a moment of A.J. Donovan, watching her watch the road, the concern still in her eyes. How long, he wondered, before this steely support of hers broke down?
Chinatown was eleven blocks of gaudily painted pagoda-domed buildings, nestled among two-story walk-ups, dry-goods stores, and restaurants, plenty of restaurants. Dim sum and roast duck were the specialties, advertised on multicolored signs written in various dialects.
No matter the time of day or night, the streets always seemed to be crowded. Businessmen, shopkeepers, students, prostitutes, and just about every type of petty criminal you could name.
On its surface, Chinatown was no different from any other cultural stronghold in the city. But beneath the surface, Triad rule had wormed its way into every crevice of the small district, a fact Donovan had become well acquainted with many years ago, when he’d worked a case down here. He’d learned quickly that what happens in Chinatown stays in Chinatown.
Unlike Vegas, however, they didn’t advertise.
There were no parking spaces on the street, so Rachel pulled into a public lot near the train station and they walked the two blocks to her mother’s apartment.
Rachel’s mother and grandmother lived in a second-floor walk-up, just above a restaurant called Ling Su’s. The strong odor of clams and roasted garlic assaulted Donovan’s nostrils as they climbed a dilapidated flight of stairs to a door marked 1.
Above the doorframe, a sheet of yellowed paper featuring an ornate drawing of a scowling Chinese warrior was held in place by a blue plastic pushpin.
Rachel had said little since they’d left her apartment and wasn’t offering much now. She knocked, showing him a small, timorous smile as they waited for an answer.
A moment later, the latch turned and the door opened and a middle-aged Chinese woman-whom Donovan could easily have mistaken for Rachel in a dark hallway-peeked out over the safety chain.
Evelyn Wu smiled warmly at the sight of her daughter. “Rachel, honey.”
“Hi, Ma.”
Closing the door, Evelyn unhooked the chain, then opened it wide for them, motioning them inside. “Come in, come in. I’ll make some tea.”
“No, Ma, we don’t have time.”
Evelyn searched her daughter’s eyes. “Is something wrong?”
“We’re here to see Grandma Luke. Is she awake?”
Evelyn offered a short grunt that suggested this was a silly question. “You know your grandmother. Always up at the crack of dawn.” She glanced at Donovan. If she was alarmed at all by his appearance, she wasn’t showing it.
“I’m sorry,” Rachel said. “This is my… my friend, Jack.” Then she said something in Chinese that Donovan didn’t catch and wouldn’t understand if he had.
A look that mirrored Rachel’s spread across Evelyn’s face and she nodded, heading down a short hallway. “I’ll tell her you’re here.”
She opened a door and the murmur of a television bled out into the hallway as she disappeared behind it.
“What did you just say to her?” Donovan asked.
“That you’re battling an angry spirit.”
The directness of Rachel’s tone startled Donovan. He hadn’t thought of it as something so simple and matter-of-fact, but what better way to explain it?
An angry spirit. Gunderson was that, and then some.
As they waited, he glanced around the room, which was small and modestly furnished. A doorway opened onto a tiny but serviceable kitchen, where an ancient refrigerator hummed noisily.
A table near the kitchen doorway held framed family photographs: Rachel as a child, clinging to the leg of a man he guessed was her father; Rachel and her mother, taken when she was still in her teens; Rachel at the prom with an unknown escort…
Donovan thought of Jessie and wondered if he’d ever see such a photograph in his own home.
A moment later, Mrs. Wu appeared in the doorway and nodded to Rachel, who took him by the arm and led him down the hall. They stepped into a small room dominated by a wasabi-green Barcalounger that was situated in a corner across from an old Zenith console.
The Beverly Hillbillies played on-screen, Granny wielding a shotgun.
An Asian version of Granny sat in the Barcalounger, dwarfed by the big chair, an ancient Chinese woman
