secure.”
“Then I must wonder why you are taking me to a place where you know I will be killed.”
“Because I want to make sure she can find you.”
“Manning, your logic escapes me right now.”
Manning glanced in the rearview mirror and met Lin’s eyes quickly before looking back at the upcoming highway interchange. “I want her to know where you are. If she knows where you are, then I know where she has to go. And that makes it an even match.”
Lin was silent for several moments. “So you intend to face the killer alone.”
“Yes.” Manning merged onto the freeway, heading south. “Lin Yubo, when did Ren Yun come to California?”
“Three days ago. Why?”
“The killer is part of his entourage. It’s the only answer.”
“Impossible. Ren Yun has vetted his staff thoroughly. In fact, he uses people who live mostly outside of the mainland, just to ensure no one with…hostile intent can appear in our midst.”
“Then you’ve all been played. This was something that’s been planned for years, Lin Yubo. This isn’t some spur of the moment kind of thing. This is cold-hearted revenge. For whatever you did to this person during your time with the CCP.” Manning glanced in the rearview mirror again. “Did you ever think you would have to pay for that?”
Lin made a dismissive sound and looked out the window. His eyes were unreadable behind his dark sunglasses. Manning concentrated on the freeway ahead as the Golden Gate Bridge loomed in the near distance.
Keeping several car lengths back, Meihua Shi followed the black GTO as it hurtled down the freeway. There was no chance her battered brown Toyota Corolla could keep up with the big muscle car if Manning became alerted and tried to lose her, so she made certain to hang very far back. Sometimes she lost sight of the GTO, but that didn’t unnerve her. Thanks to the listening devices she had put in the vehicle while he slept, she knew everything. And in case she missed something, she had left a small wireless recorder in the trunk, stuffed inside the insulation. She intended to retrieve that later and review the conversation between Manning and Lin, just on the off-chance something was discussed that she couldn’t catch over the wireless earpiece in her left ear. Her heart hammered in her chest. The anticipation was so very strong now. She knew she could pull abreast of Manning’s car and kill Lin with a single gunshot-she did have a small caliber pistol, just in case-but that was not her plan. She wanted him to suffer. First, the grief of losing his sons. And then, the fear that would envelop his heart when he realized her revenge was as unstoppable as a hurricane. She wanted him crushed and demoralized before she released him from the bonds that tied him to this earth.
And when it was complete, she would be free to join her parents and brother in the afterlife. The crushing weight of years of planning and training for her vengeance would be lifted from her shoulders, and she would be forever free of terrestrial troubles.
For the first time in decades, she felt something else besides the pulse of anticipation that swelled in her breast.
She felt relief.
Content that her time would soon be up, she drove on, keeping the GTO in view whenever possible.
The homicide department at the stationhouse was vacant, so Ryker didn’t have much trouble getting Chee Wei to translate all the relevant facts pertaining to James Lin. Lin’s history with the Chinese Communist Party was interesting; while he had always known Lin was as corrupt as they could possibly come, he hadn’t ever thought he might have been a personal friend of Mao’s. And to find out that he was responsible for some very serious purges in China was something else. Ryker knew Lin was dirty, very dirty, but he hadn’t figured him to be a mass murderer. But hey, you learned something every day.
More compelling was the death of his eldest son, Lin Jong. Ryker questioned if Jong was even Lin’s real son, since China had a one-child policy. Chee Wei corrected him in that only eastern China had a one-child policy; Lin Jong was born in Chongqing, a huge city in southwestern China, and one where the policy was not in place. There was no data on Jong’s mother, but she was most assuredly a different woman than Lin Dan’s. A ‘second wife’, Chee Wei explained, something that was still acceptable in China even today.
“I might get myself one of those too,” Chee Wei said, with a toothy grin.
“You might want to get yourself a first wife before you start planning the second. And make sure you hide all the knives and frying pans, because the first will definitely find out about the second.”
Lin Jong had been killed pretty much the same way as his younger brother-he’d been sexually mutilated, and then stabbed. Unlike Lin Dan, there was no other woman involved as with Xiaohui. Lin Jong had been alone, in an expensive condominium he owned in Shanghai’s fashionable Bund district. The security cameras apparently captured an image of a female leaving Jong’s condo. A middle aged female.
“And of course, there’s no photo,” Ryker said.
“Nope. But she sounds a lot like our Amy Wong.”
“Who we already suspected wasn’t some middle aged matron to begin with. Okay, what next?”
“Not a hell of a lot. Like my cousin said, Shanghai police have the case pretty much closed up-nothing new was released to the rest of the law enforcement community after this, which is why he figures the Public Security directorate is calling the shots. Guess they’re just like the FBI, they don’t want to get involved with the rest of us.”
Ryker leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. He looked over at Wallace’s vacant desk, then across the room at Spider’s darkened office. Footsteps sounded in the hallway, followed by the squeak of the hinges on the men’s room door.
“We’re missing something,” he said.
Chee Wei rolled his eyes. “Duh. You think?”
“Thought you were going to work on not being such a smart ass all the time.”
“I am. I’m trying real hard to be a dumb ass.”
“Keep up the good work.” Ryker found his thoughts drifting to images of Valerie Lin, lying spread-eagled beneath him as he slammed into her again and again, her mouth forming a perfect O as she came, the muscles of her sex gripping him like a hot, wet glove. He squirmed slightly in his chair, then slowly leaned forward and rested his elbows on his desk. He was glad Chee Wei didn’t have x-ray vision, or he’d be able to see Ryker was still able to pop a boner almost on command.
But the younger detective still noticed something was wrong. “Dude, you all right? You look like you’re about to pass out.” Chee Wei favored him with a concerned look. “Or puke, maybe. You’re not going to puke, are you? That would really gross me out.”
“A couple of nights ago you saw a guy with his dick cut off, and that didn’t gross you out?”
“That’s different. I didn’t know that guy, and besides, he was a creep. But if you start puking, I might puke too. It always happens that way. When I was a kid, I puked all over my older sister when the girl in
Ryker shook his head and put his face in his hand. “I’m not going to puke.”
“Oh. Well, that’s good.”
Ryker sat up straight suddenly and looked at the papers between them. “Hey. Did Jong live in Shanghai full time, or did he live in the U.S.?”
“Here in America. He has an address in Santa Cruz, I think. Family there, too.”
“All right. So what was he doing in Shanghai?”
“Visiting? Business? Who knows?”
Ryker thought about that for a long moment, then got to his feet. “Stay here. I’ll be right back, I just want to make a phone call.”
“You make phone calls all the time from your desk, why not now?”
“You ask too many questions.”
