The Rook (17 page)

“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.”

“That’s in the Bible?”

“Not an exact quote,” her mother had said. “But it’s in there.

Second chapter of John, the last couple verses. We have cancer of the heart, Tessa. Evil doesn’t crawl into us—Jesus said that too.

It’s already there, in our hearts; always looking for a way to climb out.”

Corrupted.

Rooted to this world.

Just like Agent Jiang said.

And just like Agent Jiang, Tessa’s mom didn’t believe people could become pure; however, her mom did believe people could become purified—lifted from the soil when they found God finding them. Like her mom used to say, “Nobody reaches the Light on their own, but the Light can reach us.” The last time Tessa saw her before she died, she’d asked her, “So, what was God doing when you found him?”

And her mom’s answer had totally floored her: “Shaking me with both hands, trying to wake me up.”

But now as Tessa thought about her mom again, her mother’s words, her mother’s death, the feeling that Agent Jiang was like her mother passed quickly.

Agent Jiang was not like her mother. No she wasn’t. Not at all.

Tessa pulled the lotion out of her satchel and tugged up her shirtsleeve. “So,” she said. “Is that why you got into law enforcement, then? To fight the corruption in the world?” She started massaging the lotion onto the scar the killer had given her. “Or was it just to meet guys?”

Lien-hua was silent for a moment. “Someone I knew was killed, Tessa. Someone very close to me.”

“So, revenge?”

“Maybe. A little. Maybe to try and make a difference. Motives aren’t always that easy to pin down.”

“Yeah. That’s what Patrick says.”

“I’m sure he does.”

Tessa spread some more lotion onto her hand and pressed it against the scar.

Rubbed.

Well there you have it. This scar right here proves how corrupted
people really are. Evil coming out of someone’s heart and scarring me forever.

They pulled into the hotel parking lot, and Agent Jiang said,

“It hurts to lose those we love, Tessa. We don’t always know what to do about it. So we do what we have to do. We all find different ways to deal with our pain and loss.”

Tessa stopped rubbing the scar. Pain and loss. Yeah, she knew all about those. The loss of her mother. The painful memory of how she got this scar.

Tessa could deal with the scars she’d given to herself while she was trying to deal with the loss of her mother. Those were her problem. Those didn’t bother her so much.

But the scar that guy gave her last fall, that one was different.

That one she didn’t want anything to do with, ever again. And no matter how hard she rubbed it or put the stupid lotion on it, it was never going to go away. She should have realized that weeks ago.

If only she could get rid of it. Cover it up. Never see it again.

We all find different ways to deal with our pain and loss.

Tessa pulled down her sleeve, then closed the bottle of lotion and slipped it into her satchel.

Trying to heal her scar hadn’t worked.

Maybe it was time to try another way of dealing with it.

A way of never having to see it again.

As she stepped out of the car and Agent Jiang said good-bye, Tessa drew out her cell phone, brought up her Internet browser’s search engine, and typed in the keywords “Tattoo Studios, San Diego, CA.”

38

My conversation with Detective Dunn concerning Cassandra Lillo was brief and to the point. He told me that Cassandra’s body had not been found, but that if a body
were
found—hers or anyone else’s—it would be his jurisdiction, not mine. Period.

His words left me both relieved and annoyed. I still didn’t have a clue as to why Homicide was involved in any of this, and, unless Lieutenant Graysmith changed his mind or Detective Dunn got a personality transplant in the next day or two, I couldn’t count on their help to find out. Also, we still had no solid leads as to Cassandra Lillo or Austin Hunter’s whereabouts. We didn’t even know for certain that either of them had committed, or been the victim of, a crime.

After my chat with Dunn, I checked my voice mail. Two messages.

First, the plates on the Ford Mustang came back belonging to an ex-con named Suricata Horan. History of assault, a manslaughter conviction, served some time in New Mexico. Typical hired thug.

I figured I could bring him in, have a little talk, but at this point it would probably be a waste of time. Guys with his kind of rap sheet almost never open up unless you have something specific on them. But I made a note of his name to keep in mind as the case unfolded.

When I listened to my second message, I was surprised to hear an old, familiar voice: “Patrick, my boy, I’m giving a lecture at UCLA today and I hear you’re just down the road. If you can make it up here, perhaps we can meet for dinner. Please, do give me a ring.”

The man didn’t have to tell me who he was, I would have recognized his voice anywhere—Dr. Calvin Werjonic, PhD, JD. My mentor.

Calvin had pioneered the field of environmental criminology more than forty years ago. But computing and correlating all the factors that affect the spatial and temporal aspects of crimes is so complex that only advanced computer operating systems can handle the algorithms within a manageable and useful time frame, so only in the last two decades had technology advanced to the point where his theories about geographic profiling and geospatial investigation could actually be implemented. Calvin is a brilliant man, a kind man, a legend in the field of criminal investigation, and a longtime friend.

I’d seen him the previous week on CNN, and even though he’s over seventy years old, he appeared as lucid and incisive as ever.

I lead seminars on criminology all over the world, but in the presence of Dr. Calvin Werjonic I still feel like an elementary school student.

I knew I couldn’t make it to L.A., not with this case heating up, but as I drove to the FBI field office, I returned Calvin’s call and asked if he could swing through San Diego before heading back to his office in Chicago. “Calvin, it would be great to see you. Besides, I wouldn’t mind talking over this case with you and … well, talking over this case.”

“I see,” he said thoughtfully. “So you have a personal matter you’d like to discuss and it’s so sensitive you don’t wish to mention it over the phone. You were hoping to bring it up offhandedly in the course of our conversation, no doubt.”

Sometimes having friends who are professional investigators can be really annoying. “Something like that,” I said. “So do you think you could meet me down here?”

And, to my surprise, he agreed. “Yes, well, I believe I can, my boy. I’ll change my flight connections and swing through before leaving for Munich tomorrow evening. We’ll meet in the morning, then—10:30 a.m., in the parking lot beside the Alcazar Garden in Balboa Park. Bring your walking shoes and some of that good coffee you so enjoy. I’m six-two with speckled gray hair. I’ll be wearing a tan—”