“Yes. Jennifer Paulson.”
“Let me know if she makes the same mistake again.”
It was after nine by the time he reached the Purple Jade Villas. The guards had been told by Hua Yuan to expect him, so they gave his Guoanbu ID only a cursory glance, then sent him on. He remembered the drive to the villa from his earlier visit, but while everything looked the same, it felt different. Perhaps it was the sight of a laborer driving a lawn mower over one of the distant hills, reminding him that the beauty here took considerable effort to maintain.
Hua Yuan did not come out to meet him, so he parked and walked to the door on his own, noticing that the villas on either side were empty of cars. The air was damp here, as was the grass; his leather shoes came out in dark spots. Only when he knocked on her door did he get the feeling that this house was empty as well. It was as if, knowing that he was on his way, the Purple Jade management had sent in a team to evacuate the street.
There was no answer to his knock, or to the doorbell he rang twice. He looked at the heavy door and then, gingerly, turned the handle. It was unlocked, and it opened smoothly.
He stepped inside and instinctively slipped out of his shoes to pad around in socks. He stepped into the living room, with its square window framed in ivy, looking out at his car and the fields beyond, and called, “Hua Yuan? It’s Xin Zhu.” There was no reply.
Further back he found a dining room and, through a pair of double doors, a long kitchen tiled in white, with a counter stretching down the center of the room. It smelled of rust. The kitchen lights burned brightly, so that when he found her, arms and legs bent as if she were running along the floor, the pool of blood spreading out from the gunshot gash in her forehead created a perfect reflection of the fluorescent lamps in the ceiling.
She was wearing a floor-length robe, a different one than she’d worn before, and it hung behind her-again, he imagined her running, the robe flung up by the wind-and her bare, varicose legs were on display. A blood-speckled white slipper hung off her left foot; the other slipper was against the base of the oven, perfectly clean.
About an hour had passed from the time of her call, which meant that the killer could conceivably still be in the house. He went through the drawers until he found a heavy Hattori cleaver, then walked slowly through the house, from the bottom to the top. With his slow, deliberate pace it took twenty minutes to look into every room, and on the way he wondered why he wasn’t just standing in the kitchen and calling Shen An-ling, or the police, or even Purple Jade security. He knew why, though. For the moment, he had silence and solitude. As soon as he made the call, that solitude would be broken, and he needed some time to figure out what had happened, and who should receive his first call.
Back in the kitchen, he returned the cleaver to the drawer, then crouched, groaning, beside Hua Yuan. He took a corner of the robe and pulled it to cover her running legs, then checked the pocket-empty. There would be another pocket between her and the floor, but he didn’t want to move her.
His phone rang.
“Yes?”
Shen An-ling said, “I’ll connect you to Milo Weaver, if you like.”
“Go ahead.”
As he threatened the health of Milo Weaver’s wife and daughter, he returned to the living room and looked for the letter. If Hua Yuan had been expecting him, the letter would be out, perhaps even on display, but it wasn’t here. He peered around the kitchen, careful to step around the pool of blood as he looked in drawers. By the time Milo Weaver told him that Alan Drummond probably wanted to kill him, he was checking the tables in the foyer, and when Shen An-ling sent a message to his phone, signifying that Leticia Jones was returning to Weaver’s hotel room, he was checking the dining room. After hanging up, he returned upstairs to check Hua Yuan’s bedroom. He found many small items from her life-receipts, letters from girlfriends and family, and bills-but with each failure he became increasingly sure that he was going to have to roll over the woman in the kitchen.
So he returned and first tried to tug the robe out from under her, but when he pulled she slid with it. He stood, lifting the hem of the robe upward, and Hua Yuan rolled a little, farting loudly as the body resettled. Zhu closed his eyes, the robe tight in his fist, and reached into the damp hidden pocket. His fingers found moist, folded paper, multiple sheets, which he removed with his index and middle fingers. Then he stepped back, dropping the robe and backing away as the body expelled more gas. He withdrew to a bathroom, set the pages on the toilet seat, and washed his hands with hot water and soap, focusing all his energy on not being sick.
The moisture on the letter was not blood but urine, and Xin Zhu took the sheets to the dining room and laid them out individually on the long table. Her husband, Bo Gaoli, had written on only one side of each of the five pages, so as they dried Zhu could walk down the length of the table and read the entire message. Once he was finished, he returned to the head of the table and read it again. He pulled out a chair and settled down, then called Sun Bingjun.
“Apologies,” he told the old man. “I’m sure you’re busy.”
“I’m always busy, Xin Zhu, or at least that’s what I claim. What is it?”
“How well did you know Bo Gaoli, Comrade Lieutenant General?”
A pause. “We worked together on occasion. I can’t say we were close.”
“And his wife?”
“Hua Yuan? I didn’t know her at all until after her husband died. I stopped by once to give condolences. She seemed to be taking it rather well.”
“Comrade Lieutenant General, would it be possible for you to meet with me? I am at Hua Yuan’s Purple Jade home.”
“Are you interviewing her?”
“Please,” Zhu said, “could you come?”
“Is this serious, Xin Zhu?”
“More than serious.”
It took forty minutes for Sun Bingjun’s Mercedes to arrive, parking behind Xin Zhu’s Audi. By then it was ten forty-five. Through the square window, Zhu saw a tall, broad driver get out and open the door for Sun Bingjun, who walked alone toward the house, his face grim. Sun Bingjun had never been a man of smiles, and, as he approached, Zhu realized that he had known very few men of smiles, because those were the ones who inevitably sank out of view before long, their little grins wavering only at the last moment. Smiling was not Sun Bingjun’s way, though drinking was, but even when he drank to excess, he never stepped too far. He had more self-control than anyone liked to admit.
Zhu met him at the door and brought him into the living room. The old man looked around, showing signs of impatience. “Where is Hua Yuan?”
“In the kitchen. She’s dead.”
Sun Bingjun’s skin knotted around the eyes, then relaxed. “Did you do it, Xin Zhu?”
“She called me this morning about a letter she’d found among her husband’s things. It was written to me. She was evidently scared but wouldn’t go into details. I came as quickly as I could.”
“But not fast enough?” Sun Bingjun speculated.
“Apparently,” Zhu said. “I had to move her body in order to get at the letter in her pocket.”
“Tampering with a crime scene,” Sun Bingjun said. “I hope this letter was worth it. Oh,” he added, looking out at their cars, “and next time, you might want to suggest I drive myself.”
Sun Bingjun was only testing the borders of Zhu’s stupidity here, for he was now, by his very presence, involved, and his driver was a witness. “Come with me,” Zhu said and led him to the dining room. He retreated to a corner and waited, watching Sun Bingjun read the pages through and, like Zhu, read them again.
“Well,” said the old man.
“You see why I needed you to come.”
Sun Bingjun raised his head to look directly at Zhu. “You wanted someone to believe your desperate lie.”
Perhaps inviting him had been a mistake. “That’s not true.”
Sun Bingjun walked to the first page again and read aloud, “ Comrade Colonel Xin Zhu, I am writing to draw your attention to a conspiracy that threatens the very foundation of our Republic. Where did you get this from? One of those pulp novels the kids find so heartwarming these days? Page two,” he said, taking a small step toward Zhu. “ I am coming to you because, as your adversarial history with Wu Liang is well known, I thought you might be able to view my evidence with a clear eye. ” Sun Bingjun smiled. “Very good, that. You turn your prejudice into a virtue.
