White Tiger

Raymond’s nimble fingers worked the tape deck controls. The tape ran in reverse. The doorman opened the door and the woman back-stepped into the lobby. She’d almost vanished off-screen, returning to the point where she’d first appeared, when Raymond hit Play again. The woman walked toward the entrance. Her reflection showed in the glass doors. Just before the doorman opened the door for her, her reflection became more solid, almost equal in quality to a low-resolution digital camera picture. The doorman’s uniform jacket, behind the door, darkened the glass and somehow gathered sufficient light to show her face, clearly enough for Ryker to realize she was Chinese. Raymond hit a button and the face swelled to fill the TV monitor. The edge of the screen flickered uncertainly while the center of the picture remained stable, giving them a blurry but almost-distinct mug shot. To Ryker’s relief, she looked nothing like Valerie Lin whose features were softer and more feminine. Not that this woman was by any means ugly. He thought of Michelle Yeoh, whose strong features had mesmerized him throughout Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Raymond indicated a slimline printer connected to Duffy’s master control panel by a USB cable. Ryker expected the printer to do something, but Raymond picked up a folder with the hotel logo instead, and opened it to show him a glossy hardcopy of exactly what was on the TV monitor. “Here’s one I prepared earlier,” she said. “So how are we doing?” Her smile told him she already knew she’d made a lot of people very happy, starting with Ryker and not necessarily ending with Captain Jerko.

“You’ve shown this to hotel staff?”

“Soon as the ink was dry. Duty manager doesn’t know her. Cleaning staff manager is checking it out, they hire temporary staff as needed, and they took on four new employees last week. Kitchen staff is more stable.”

Ryker stared at the print. He knew it was just a trick of light and camera angle, like a portrait whose eyes followed you around the room, but the woman seemed to stare at him, and he didn’t like what he saw. The killer’s eyes were lifeless black stones. He didn’t deny that her face held a measure of physical beauty, but those eyes….

“Where’s the cleaning manager?” he said, passing the print to Morales.

Raymond got up and headed for the door, clapping Duffy on the shoulder as she passed him by. Ryker added his nod of thanks, which Duffy acknowledged with a serious scowl that said he was too busy doing his job to shake hands or exchange verbal pleasantries, but had nonetheless taken a professional pleasure from assisting the S.F.P.D. in their hour of need.

“Just so we’re clear,” Morales said, as Raymond led them toward another door. “That wasn’t Danny Lin’s wife, was it?”

“That would be too easy,” Ryker said. “No, it’s not her. She’s a new player, worse luck. We need to fax this to Furino, stat. Luis, can you talk to the duty manager?”

“Sure.” Morales took the print to the reception desk.

Raymond knocked on the door and entered, taking them into an L-shaped office with a window onto a delivery bay. Two of the three desks were occupied by women wearing matching black pants suits. Raymond introduced Ryker to one of the pair. “Hey Martina, this is Detective Sergeant Ryker. You got anything for us?”

Martina spread four sheets across her desk, turned so Ryker could read them. They contained employee names, addresses, contact telephone numbers. Each had a passport-sized photograph stapled to the top right corner. None matched the Chinese woman who’d left the hotel at 08:18. One was Caucasian, two were Afro- Americans, the fourth a Latina with a winning smile.

“They started work here last week?” Ryker asked.

“That’s right.”

“The woman we’re looking for is Chinese.” Martina gave Raymond a look, as if accusing her of withholding that gem of information. Ryker said, “We only just found out ourselves. How about before last week? Can you check everyone who started this month?”

Martina chewed her lip for a second. “I suppose that’s okay. I’m not trying to be difficult or anything. I’m just not sure if I should be asking for a warrant, that’s all. Because it’s private employee information, I mean.”

“We’re not taking anything away, Martina,” Raymond said. “We just want to look at the photographs. We’ll get a warrant if we need to take anything away. Okay?”

Martina opened a filing drawer divided into sections with colored folders. She extracted one, flipped through pages, and fished out half-a-dozen sheets. To Ryker’s annoyance only four of them had photographs attached. Two were Chinese, but neither resembled the face he’d seen reflected in the glass door. He studied the two sheets without photographs. The first had been filled out by Maria Fernandez, aged 25, whose flowing looped handwriting was legible but required concentration to read. The second was filled out in neat capital letters that could have been printed by a machine. Amy Wong had been working at the Mandarin Oriental for eleven days. She’d had two of those days off. Her supervisor’s initial comments were favorable, Amy was punctual, her work was satisfactory, and she worked well on her own.

Ryker tried to recall where he’d heard that name before. When it came to him he nearly slapped his head. Amy Wong was one of the characters from Futurama, a show whose off-the-wall humor consistently made him laugh out loud. He accepted that it was probably just a mild coincidence. There must be hundreds of Amy Wongs in the country, perhaps dozens lived in San Francisco alone. Did he really expect a killer to watch the same cartoons as he did and pick a character name as her alias?

In the file was a copy of Ms. Wong’s photo identification, in this case, a California driver’s license. Ryker looked at it eagerly, but frowned when he saw the picture. Amy Wong we definitely in her 50s, and the jowls on her jaw line didn’t jibe with what he had seen in the video.

Well, she’s all we’ve got.

Raymond wrote the name in her notebook. She moved into a corner and turned her back to the room while she made a call on her cell.

Ryker tapped Amy Wong’s sheet and said, “Martina, did you hire this woman?”

“I don’t remember the name. Some are referred to us through agencies who do the hiring and firing. Let me look up the reference code. Right here, see?” She pointed to a string of letters and numbers printed along the top of the sheet. She tapped on her computer keyboard. Something changed on her LCD monitor, which Ryker couldn’t really see because of the angle. “Oh, for Pete’s sake. Whoever assigned that code made a mistake when they typed it into the system. Carelessness.”

Ryker would have called it stupidity, and included Martina in that general category, but he kept his mouth shut and looked at Raymond, who was listening to whoever was on the other end of her phone. She held the device away from her ear and said, “The address is a rented apartment in Chinatown. The lieutenant wants to know if you want a SWAT unit.”

“Let’s keep it low profile,” Ryker said. “Request a search warrant. Call the building supervisor and have him meet us inside, with keys.”

Raymond relayed his request. Martina looked up at him, confused. “You don’t mean to tell me this woman’s a criminal?”

“We’re just checking her out, along with a hundred other people who work here. I’d appreciate if you don’t talk about this with anyone.” Ryker stared at her until she lowered her gaze and nodded, taking the hint.

Raymond offered Ryker her phone. He took it and said, “Ryker.”

Spider said, “How sure are you that this could be the killer?”

“It’s a zillion to one. That’s why I’m stepping lightly.”

“I’m not suggesting you might screw this up, Hal. But don’t screw it up.”

“Ten-four.” Ryker hung up and gave the phone back to Raymond. “Want to come along?”

“Let me think about it. Please God, yes.”

They rounded up Morales and headed back to the parking lot. Raymond still seemed a little surprised as she buckled herself into the back seat. She gave Morales the address and Ryker stuck the flashing bubble on the roof, but the car stayed put while Morales consulted an A-Z street guide. “Guess we’re missing the heavy metal rock track,” Ryker said. Raymond quickly looked out the window to stop herself from laughing.

“I like to know where I’m going before I burn rubber,” Morales said. “You hot shots want to drive, just say the word.” He put the car into gear and headed for the exit ramp.

“For the love of God don’t say ‘burn rubber’ again, it turns me on,” Raymond said. Before Ryker had a chance to think up a suitably witty reply she added, “So what happens if we find Miss Wong? We know she likes to