River of Glass (28 page)

Harold Sun said, “I got your message. I have something you want, but what do you have that I need?”

“Freedom. I don’t care about your little business venture. I just want Tuyet and the two women you took yesterday.”

“You’re saying if I give you three women—three specific women—you’ll stop investigating. But it’s a little late for that, isn’t it?”

“The cops don’t have anything on you yet. As long as I can keep the women quiet—and I can—you can go on buying and selling girls to your heart’s content.”

“How do I know I can trust you?”

“You pick the time and place. You bring your people, I’ll come alone. However you want it.”

“Tomorrow morning. Ten
A.M
. Indian Springs in Percy Warner Park. You know it?”

“I can find it.”

“If there’s so much as a single cop, I’ll know.”

“How will you know?”

“Trust me, I can smell a cop a mile away. I do, and I’m gone. Oh, and bring ten thousand dollars. That’s a bargain. The ugly one’s not worth much, but I can get that and more for the other two.”

“Where am I supposed to get ten thousand dollars?”

“I don’t care where you get it,” he said. “Just get it. And if you try to screw me over tomorrow? I’ll send those women back to you in pieces.”

The call ended, and Claire and Talbot looked at me. I recapped the conversation, and Talbot put his head in his hands and said, “Of course you have to call the police.”

38

T
ogether, Percy and Edwin Warner Parks covered almost 3,000 acres, mostly heavily wooded. Driving through parts of the Warner parks, it was easy to forget the city was just a few miles away. Indian Springs was one of the most remote places in the parks—few hikers, few picnickers, no Frisbee golf stations. Presumably, that was why Sun had chosen it.

I got there at eight and settled in at the picnic shelter with a couple of bottled waters. A few scattered raindrops pattered on the roof of the picnic shelter. Malone came out of the woods to tell me she and her crew were already set up. They were good. A glint of light on a gun barrel and a shadow at the tree line that might have been a man were the only signs that I was surrounded by heavily armed guys in Kevlar. I told Malone about the glint and the shadow, and the next time I looked, they were gone.

I had a leather bag full of money from the Metro PD evidence room. I put it on the picnic table and paced and stretched, wondering how early Sun would get there and how he planned to scout the place.

At nine, Frank called. I was glad for the distraction.

He said, “I was thinking about your friend the sculptor.”

“Billy Justice?”

“I was thinking, what if Justice is a name and not a concept? So I went down to the station and pulled up every Justice in the system, first name or last.”

A tingle started in my stomach. “You found him?”

“Justice Hogarth. Honor student, eighteen years old, killed in a random shooting by a drug dealer, name of Cornelius Snow. Arrested and released more than a dozen times. The last time was for murder, but all the witnesses got amnesia.”

“You worked the case?”

“All of us on the list worked one or more of Snow’s cases, one way or another. Hogarth’s old man made a stink with the media, accused the whole system of being corrupt. He was a big-time war hero, got some traction with it for a while, and then everybody moved on.”

“Everybody but Hogarth’s old man.”

“We got him, Jared. We got the son of a bitch.”

N
INE THIRTY
came and went. Then ten. A few more droplets fell. My neck began to ache. Ten thirty, a man in a baggy green jacket drove up and parked next to the picnic shelter. Malone jogged out of the woods in a pink tracksuit and hustled him away. She looked good in pink.

Ten forty-five. I dialed Sun’s number. No answer.

Malone walked out of the woods again and said, “He’s not coming. We might as well pack it up.” She looked deflated.

“It was worth a shot,” I said.

“We’re treading water here, McKean. Nothing’s making sense. You know what the medical examiner found about the Asian girl in Helix’s basement?”

“No, what?”

“No smoke in her lungs. She didn’t die in that fire. She was already dead. Knife wound to the stomach.”

“There was no reason for Helix to keep a dead woman shackled in his basement. Which means somebody else put her there.”

She nodded. “Which means he really was being set up. Sun and his people probably thought the body would be too burned for us to notice the knife wound.”

I sat down on the picnic table, feeling numb. I had no grief to waste on Helix, but I’d liked Simone. And as Malone had pointed out earlier, I was the one who’d put the target on their backs.

“Helix was into a lot of bad things,” she said, reading my mind—or maybe just my face. “He put himself out there. Maybe you gave somebody an idea, but it’s just as possible he drew that attention all by himself.”

“Maybe.”

“You were getting close. They needed to point you in a different direction. If it hadn’t been Helix, it would have been someone else. Go home, McKean. Get some rest. You’ll feel better.”

“I think I’ll stick around a little longer.”

“Suit yourself.”

With Malone and her team gone, I felt vulnerable, exposed. Eleven thirty came and went. At twelve o’clock, my cell phone rang. I picked up.

“Sun? Where were you?”

“I told you I could smell cops a mile away.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Seriously? They might as well have been wearing neon signs.”

“Listen, I—”

“No, you listen. You’re lucky, I’ll give you another chance, but you need to know how serious this is. How serious
I
am. Choose.”

“Choose? Choose what?”

“What will it be? An earlobe? A whole ear? Maybe a finger? Yes, I like that. You get to choose which of these lovely—or not so lovely—ladies gets to lose a finger.”

The veins in my temples pulsed until I thought they might explode. “You’re crazy.”

“If I were crazy, I’d enjoy this part of it, but I don’t. Choose now. You don’t have much time.”

“I’m not going to choose, you psychopath.”

“Then the stakes go up. Shall I cut off these pretty little nipples? You can carve a lot off of a woman before she dies. Karlo taught me that.” A woman shrieked—Ashleigh, I thought—and he came back on the line. “That was just a taste of what will happen to these women if you fail to choose. One. Two.”

“I’m not choosing.”

“Fine,” he said. “Then they both lose an eye.”

Another shriek, and then both women were sobbing. Sun said, “Decide!”

Impossible. Ashleigh, I thought. Khanh had been through enough. And she was a better person. But Khanh was stronger. Ash seemed tough, but she was weak underneath. I wasn’t sure she could survive it.

“Khanh!” I blurted. Then, “No! No, wait!”

“Too late.” There was a thunk and another scream. “I’ll be in touch,” Sun said, and the line went dead.

I
CLIMBED
into the Silverado, numb. I felt cold, as if I’d just been immersed in ice water. Another chance, he’d said. But when, and how? I wasn’t good at waiting, but there didn’t seem to be much else to do.

I drove to Saint Thomas and slipped into my son’s room. Maria was asleep on a cot by his bed. Paul lay on his back, eyes closed, the monitor wires attached to his chest and the IV tube taped to his wrist. His breathing seemed normal. The monitors flashed and beeped at the right times. Careful not to wake them, I pulled a chair over to his bed and watched him sleep until my eyelids grew heavy.

The buzzing of my cell phone woke me.

“Don’t talk,” Sun said. “Just listen.”

I looked out the window, saw an opaque sky and a sheet of rain against the glass. On the cot, Maria stirred, then rolled over and lay still. I slipped out into the hall, phone to my ear.

“No police,” Sun said. “You got cute last time, and a lady lost a finger. You going to get cute again?”

“No.”

“Good.” He reeled off an address. I didn’t need to write it down. It was Ashleigh’s.

I
SHOULD
have called Malone, or even Frank, but the memory of our last appointment stopped me. I kissed my son gently on the forehead and took the elevator down to the lobby, where a clot of concerned visitors stood in front of the glass doors, watching the rain.

“Flash flood warnings,” a woman said, consulting her cell phone.

I pushed past them into the parking lot. Rain pelted my skin and plastered my hair to my scalp. I was drenched in seconds.

I found the Silverado and pulled out of the lot, hunched over the steering wheel, windshield wipers slapping the glass, my headlights making a bubble of light in front of me. Occasionally, another car emerged from the gray as I passed it or it passed me. Through sheets of rain, I caught an occasional glimpse of other vehicles lining the sides of the road.

Smarter—or less desperate—drivers, waiting out the storm.

It took about a century to get to Ashleigh’s. I left the keys in the ignition and the driver’s door open, drew the Glock as I pelted to the front door and kicked it open. It opened with a bang, and I realized too late that Sun had left it ajar. I stumbled into the foyer, skidded on the slick tiles.

“Ash?” I called. My voice sounded strained. My muscles felt taut, vibrating beneath the skin.

No answer.

The dining room was empty. So was the den.

I found her lying on the living room floor, in a puddle of muddy water. She was dressed in bikini panties and a torn blouse that clung to her skin. Her back was to me, a two-pronged burn below one shoulder blade. A length of cotton rope bound her hands. Her hair was matted with mud and rain.

“Ash. Ah, God, Ashleigh.”

I knelt beside her, pressed my fingers to her neck and felt a thready pulse. A relieved breath burst from my lungs. She was alive.

I dialed 911, then used my pocket knife to cut the ropes. Rubbed her icy hands in mine until they warmed. Her eyelids fluttered open. Then her arms snaked around my neck, and I rocked her like a baby until we heard the wail of sirens.

“Stay with me?” she said.

“I’m not going anywhere. Did they—”

“They cut off her finger. God!” Her voice rose, tinged with hysteria.

“I know, I know. Do you know where you were?”

“I don’t know anything. They used something . . . a taser, I think.” She gave a little hiccupping laugh. “I guess I got the story this time.”

“I guess you did.”

She clung to me as they loaded her into the ambulance, one fist clenched in my shirt, the other squeezing my fingers until I thought they would break. As the paramedics wheeled her into the emergency room, a doctor with a craggy face and a bad comb-over peeled her hand from my shirt and injected a sedative into her vein. She whimpered once, then fell silent. A few minutes later, her grip on my hand loosened and he helped me lower her to the pillow.

When her breathing was even, he gave me a nod and I went out to the waiting room and watched the hands of the clock creep around its face. The big hand had inched its way around twice when my phone buzzed. Sun.