afternoon. We’ll both get some space. But if I call to check up on you, don’t give me a hard time about it.”
“As long as you don’t do it, like, every five minutes.”
“I want you to know, you’re more important to me than my work. You know that, right?”
She was quiet for a moment and then, without any sarcasm or scorn, she said, “Yeah. I know that.”
“I’d do anything for you.”
“OK, I know you love me, but let’s not overdo the caring-dad bit here, all right?”
Well, back to normal.
“And we’ll have supper together,” I said. “We’ll figure out a time and a place later.”
She nodded. “That’ll work.”
We headed for the door. “So, you have to tell me. Did you have that jawfish speech prepared, or did you just make it up on the spot?”
“I’m pretty good thinking on my feet,” she said. “So, can I ride back to the hotel with Agent Jiang?”
“Agent Jiang?”
“Yeah. You told me to before. Remember? That I should ride with her to see how she drives.”
“OK. And then tonight I’ll see you for supper.” We passed the front ticket counter with its tropical fish. “By the way, have you heard of the ampullae of Lorenzini before?”
“No. What are those?”
“They’re these electrosensory organs on a shark’s head. A researcher named Lorenzini discovered them.”
“Huh,” she said. “How about that.”
As we were exiting, a man wearing a suit that cost more than I make in a week brushed past us, almost knocking into me. “Watch where you’re going,” he grunted.
Then Lien-hua met Tessa and me outside by the steps, and as they were walking away, I saw a patrol car grind to a stop in the middle of the No Parking zone.
Detective Dunn clomped out and tossed a cigarette to the pavement.
It’s never a good sign to see a homicide detective show up during a missing person investigation. I hoped that didn’t mean Cassandra’s body had been found.
I decided that before going to see Ralph, I needed to talk with Detective Dunn.
37
On their way back to the hotel, Lien-hua tried to ease up on the gas. After all, teaching Tessa bad habits would not be the best way to cultivate Pat’s friendship.
Tessa sat quietly, staring out the window. Lien-hua decided it would be polite to start a conversation, but she didn’t want Patrick’s stepdaughter to feel like she was being profiled, psychoanalyzed.
Start with something safe.
“So, Tessa, what did you think of the aquarium? Not the spooky backroom stuff, I mean the fish. The sharks.”
Tessa shrugged. “Yeah, I liked it, but I saw a couple sharks eat this fish. That was way disgusting. I don’t like watching things die.”
Oh. Great conversation starter that was.
“Well, we have that in common then. I don’t like watching things die, either.” Change the subject, change the subject. “I heard Pat call you Raven. Is that your nickname?”
“Just for him. No one else.”
“You don’t like it?”
“No. I do. But don’t tell him. I never had a nickname before. I like Raven.” Tessa paused. Stared out the window, at the clouds.
“Sometimes I wish I could fly like they do. Today, I pretended I was flying with the sharks.”
“While they were swimming over your head?”
“Yeah. I thought it’d be cool to swim with ‘em. I used to swim a lot, when I was a kid. For a while I even wanted to be a lifeguard.”
She swung her gaze to Lien-hua. “Do you swim?”
“No. I never learned how. Just between you and me, I’ve always been kind of scared of the water.”
“Afraid you might drown?”
Lien-hua drummed her fingers against the steering wheel. “Are you hungry, Tessa? Need to grab a bite to eat?”
“I’m OK.”
Lien-hua noted the mileage. Nine more minutes to the hotel.
“So, Agent Jiang. Your first name, Lien-hua, what does that mean, anyway?”
Good. Safe ground again.
“It means lotus. My mother was Buddhist-”
“Was? What, did she switch to something else?”
“I’m afraid she was killed, Tessa. In a car accident. Three years ago.”
Death again. Why does this conversation have to keep coming back to death?
“Oh. Sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
“It’s OK.”
A taut silence. They’d both lost their mothers prematurely. Un-related by blood, thought Lien-hua, but sisters in sorrow.
After a few moments, when the time finally felt right to continue her explanation, Lien-hua said, “Many Buddhists consider the lotus the most beautiful flower in the world. It grows in the mud, but blooms pure and white, untainted by the soil. The Lotus Sutra is one of the most sacred Buddhist texts.”
“A sutra. That’s a discourse, right?”
“Yes. A teaching of Buddha. In the Lotus Sutra, the lotus represents how humans live in a corrupt world but can reach enlightenment and live uncorrupted lives, with absolute happiness and beauty, free from life’s illusions.” Lien-hua paused for a moment.
The next sentence reminded her too much of the incident no one in her family spoke of. It was hard to say the words. “So, when I was born, naming me after the lotus seemed like a good way to honor my mother’s faith.”
“So, do you believe that too?” asked Tessa. “The stuff about enlightenment and happiness and everything?”
Lien-hua nearly missed her turn, whipped the car to the right, snaked between an SUV and a minivan-both with babies in the backseat, both driven by women talking on cell phones-and jumped onto the Five.
“Sorry about that,” Lien-hua said.
“No, it wasn’t bad,” said Tessa. “Patrick was right.”
“Anyway, to answer your question, well… I used to believe in those things, but in this job… well… I guess I’ve seen too much corruption in people to believe them anymore. I think we can live beautiful lives, Tessa, wonderful lives, but we’re not just rooted to this world, we’re also a part of it. I don’t think we can ever be perfectly free or pure. We can’t rise above who we are.”
After a long pause that stretched into awkwardness, Tessa asked softly, “Can someone else lift us?”
The girl’s question caught her unaware. Lien-hua searched for the right words. The right answer. Found none. “I don’t know, Tessa. I guess I never thought of it quite like that.”
When Lien-hua was talking about how people are corrupted, but also beautiful, Tessa thought that, for just a flicker of a moment, she sounded like her mom.
When Tessa’s mom had found out she was dying of breast cancer and that the chemo wasn’t working, she told Tessa one day that everyone has a form of cancer. Tessa hadn’t understood what she meant, but then her mother, who was a faithful churchgoer, explained, “Even Jesus knew that. It says in the Bible that he didn’t trust people because he understood human nature. He knew what mankind was really like.”
