White Tiger

“You’re a charming man, Cueball,” Ryker said. He noticed the hard set to Chee Wei’s jaw as he switched on the monitor.

“No offense, Fong,” Cueball said belatedly.

“No problem, Wallace. How’s the Weight Watchers coming along?” Chee Wei pressed the DVD unit’s play button, and stood up straight, hands on his hips.

“Hey, what’s this?” Wallace asked, curious.

“Surveillance from the hotel cameras,” Ryker said. “What the hell else would it be?”

“Don’t get testy there, Supercop.” Wallace’s phone rang, and his chair squeaked as he spun around toward his desk. He snatched up the handset.

The surveillance video was of the hallway outside the Taipan Room. It showed the door to the suite, and further down, the elevator bay. Ryker and Chee Wei also had separate footage taken from the elevators themselves, as well as the front desk. They’d already watched the front desk surveillance, which was how they’d established Xiaohui Zhu as being with Lin Dan before he died.

There wasn’t a lot in the video. It wasn’t full-motion action, but a series of stills taken every few seconds. They watched as Lin Dan and his “kept woman” entered the suite, and not much else. There was some of the expected activity, such as guests coming and going from other rooms, but nothing of note until Xiaohui left the suite in a hurry, dressed in the coat she had worn earlier. Her gait was fast and furious, but neither Ryker nor Chee Wei could determine if it was from fear of a sudden, grotesque discovery, or from fear of being caught and branded a murderess. After that, there was no further activity until room service arrived.

“So how did the killer get in the suite if it wasn’t her?” Chee Wei asked after a time.

“Great question,” Ryker said. “No one else approached the room at all, as far as I could see.”

“So it’s her, then,” Chee Wei decided.

Ryker shrugged, but said nothing.

Chee Wei popped the disc out of the player and looked back at him.

“What, you think someone else did it?”

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense, her doing it,” Ryker said. “Lin was her gravy train. He gave her everything she could have wanted, and all she had to do was lie on her back and take it for a few hours at a time. Even if they’d had a rip-roaring argument over something, where she was a couple of nights ago was a hell of a lot better than where she came from.”

“Come on, Ryker, she’s a dame who got pissed because the john wasn’t going to leave his wife for her,” Wallace opined. He’d spun around in his chair and watched the footage after finishing his phone call.

Ryker didn’t even bother looking at him.

“You got a case of your own, right Cueball? Why not solve yours and let the pros take care of this one?”

Wallace’s chair squeaked in protest and he spun back to his desk.

“Fuck you, Ryker,” he said.

“Now that would be your lucky day.” Ryker walked back to his desk with Chee Wei in tow.

“So if not her, then who?” Chee Wei asked.

“What am I, a psychic?”

Chee Wei pulled out his chair and sat down.

“You know, sometimes things are exactly what they seem,” he said. “I agree we don’t have much in the way of motive, but who else could it have been?”

Ryker sat in his own chair.

“I don’t have a clue,” he said. “But this girl’s in it for the reward, nothing else. Certainly not love, other than the love of money.”

“That much is pretty obvious. So what do you plan on doing? Her DNA’s going to be all over the place.”

Before Ryker could do more than just shrug, Spider stepped out of his office. He pulled on his jacket.

“Ryker, let’s go,” he said simply.

Ryker nodded. He sighed heavily and pushed himself to his feet.

“Call the D.A.,” he told Chee Wei. “Tell him we need to hold onto Zhu as a material witness. And mention that may be revised once the lab work gets done. If we get something good, she could go from material witness to murder suspect.”

Chee Wei cocked his head to one side.

“Why not just go there now, and tell the D.A. she is the murder suspect?”

“Because for some reason, I don’t think she is,” Ryker told him. “I can’t put my finger around it, but she’s not the killing kind of animal-even if she did think Lin was dirt.”

“Ryker,” Spider called again, impatiently. “We’ve got to get downstairs.”

“Coming, Lou.” Ryker looked down at Chee Wei. “Make the call,” he urged.

“She’ll just make bail,” Chee Wei said, “but all right, I’ll do that.”

Ryker shot him a thumbs-up and headed after Furino.

Furino wasn’t the most gregarious of sorts, but his silence during the time it took them to ride the elevator down to the second floor convinced Ryker he knew more than what he was letting on. But Spider was a stand-up kind of guy, the type of leader a cop could follow without too much trouble. In Ryker’s mind, if he wasn’t even going to give him a heads-up on what to expect, then whatever was coming was a done deal. No changes would be made, and if Spider had his orders, he had his orders.

There was quite a reception waiting for them in the conference room. Spider opened the door and stood aside, allowing Ryker to enter ahead of him. The first person he saw was Captain Jericho, of course. Almost four inches over six feet in height with dark hair that was going gray at the temples in the most distinguished of ways, he cut an impressive figure in his uniform. Ryker figured there was a lot more gray in Jericho’s hair than just at the temples; it had been that way for years, and the gray was as perfectly delineated as the day Ryker had first laid eyes on him. As he watched, Jericho squared his broad shoulders and smiled, revealing perfectly capped teeth. Obviously, he subscribed to the premium dental plan.

“Detective Sergeant Ryker, thanks for coming,” he said, his voice booming a bit in the functional conference room. “You of course know Chief Hallis?”

There were other people in the room, but all of them faded into the shadows when Ryker looked to his left and saw the Chief of Police rising from his chair. Chief Hallis had been a cop once, and a good one, rising from the ranks as a patrolman in the early 1970s all the way to San Francisco’s top cop. But that had been a while ago; now, Ted Hallis was just another politician, and it showed when he halfheartedly returned Ryker’s salute.

“Detective Sergeant,” the Chief said.

“Sir,” Ryker responded automatically.

The chief immediately lost interest in him. Ryker looked around the room. Sitting at the end of the long conference table like an emperor was James Lin, dressed in an expensive suit. Next to him was the broad white man Ryker had seen the day before outside of Xiaohui’s sister’s house. Ryker’s chest tightened. This wasn’t exactly a good sign.

He turned to Jericho just as the tall captain was beginning to make introductions.

“Captain, what’s Mr. Lin doing here?” he asked, cutting to the chase.

Jericho paused, and from his expression Ryker could tell he was taken aback that Ryker would even dare to speak before such an august assemblage. He recovered a moment later, and his voice was hard-edged.

“I was going to get to that, detective sergeant. Maybe you’d like to have a seat?” Jericho indicated a nearby chair.

Ryker sighed and pulled out the chair. He settled into it with all the aplomb of a truculent adolescent showing up for after-hours study.

“Thank you, Hal. I’ll make some introductions, and then we’ll get this show on the road.”

Ryker nodded absently. He noticed that Jericho wasn’t exactly up to snuff, performance-wise. As far as he could remember, Jericho never met an audience he didn’t like, and being the star performer was one of his more natural traits. This time, his manner was halting and perhaps even a bit obsequious. Ryker wondered if it was because of the chief, but a small part of him was convinced it was because of Lin and all the money he had behind him.