The Stone Monkey (47 page)

But as he was about to continue the litany and present the particular offenses Li's voice faded. He glanced at the neck of the Ghost's shirt, which had been tugged open as he'd reached for his pistol.

Li saw a white bandage taped to the man's chest.

And dangling from a leather cord around the Ghost's neck was a soap-stone amulet in the shape of a monkey.

His eyes wide in shock, Sonny Li stepped back, holding the pistol level at the Ghost's face.

"You, you ..." he stammered.

His thoughts were jammed as he tried to figure out what was happening. Finally he whispered, "You killed John Sung at the beach and you took his papers and the stone monkey. You've been pretending to be him!"

The Ghost looked at him carefully. Then he smiled. "We've both been doing some masquerading, it looks like. You were one of the piglets on the
Fuzhou Dragon."
He nodded. "Waiting to get me on U.S. soil to arrest me and turn me over to the police here."

Li understood what the man had done. He'd stolen the red Honda from the restaurant on the beach. Loaban and the police assumed he'd driven it to the city. But, no, he'd stuffed Sung's body into the trunk and hidden it near the beach—where no one would think to look for it. Then he'd given himself a superficial wound with his own gun and swum back into the ocean, awaiting rescue by the police and the INS, who helpfully transported him into the city themselves—first to the hospital and then to the immigration hearing officer.

Ten judges of hell, Li thought again. Hongse had no clue that the "doctor" was the snakehead himself. "You were using the policewoman to find out where the Changs and the Wus were."

The Ghost nodded. "I needed information. She was happy to provide it." He now examined Li more closely. "Why did you do this, little man? Why did you come all the way after me?"

"You killed three people in Liu Guoyuan, my town."

"Did I? I don't remember. I was there a year ago, I think. Why did I kill them? Maybe they deserved it."

Sonny Li was appalled that the man didn't even remember the deaths. "No, you and a little snakehead started shooting. You killed three bystanders."

"Then it was an accident."

"No, it was murder."

"Well, listen, little man, I'm tired and I don't have much time. The police are close to finding the Changs and I have to get there first and then get out of this country and go home. So, one hundred thousand one-color," the Ghost said. "I can give it to you in cash right now."

"I'm not like most of the security bureau officers you're used to."

"You mean you're
more
greedy? Then two hundred thousand." The Ghost laughed. "You would have to work for a hundred years to make that much money in Liu Guoyuan."

"You are under arrest."

The smile on the Ghost's face faded, realizing that he was serious. "This will go badly for your wife and children if you don't let me go."

Li growled, "You will lie down on your belly. Now."

"All right. An honorable and honest security bureau officer. I am surprised.... What's your name, little man?"

"My name is not your concern."

The Ghost knelt on the cobblestones.

Li decided to use his shoelaces to tie the Ghost's wrists. He then—Suddenly Li realized in shock that the shopping bag was between them and that the Ghost's right hand had disappeared behind it.

"No!" he shouted.

The Lucky Hope Shop bag exploded toward Li as the Ghost fired through it with a second gun he had hidden in an ankle holster or his sock.

The bullet zipped past Li's hip. He raised his hand in an automatic gesture, flinching. But by the time he was thrusting his own pistol forward the snakehead had knocked it from his hand. Li grabbed the Ghost's wrist and tried to pull the Model 51 from his fingers. Together they tumbled to the slick cobblestones and this gun too fell to the ground.

Desperately, they clutched at each other, clawing and striking when they could but mostly wrestling and trying to reach one of the weapons that lay on the cobblestones near them. The Ghost slammed his palm into Li's face and stunned him then spun away, struggling to pull the Glock from the cop's pocket.

Li recovered quickly and tackled the Ghost, knocking this weapon too to the ground. The cop's knee struck the killer's back and knocked the breath out of him. Still facing away from Li, the Ghost, gasping and moaning in pain, struggled to his knees. Li's arm remained around the snakehead's throat in a choke hold.

Unstoppable, the Ghost struggled toward the pistol.

Stop him, stop him, Li raged to himself. He's the man who would kill Hongse, the man who would kill the Changs.

Who would kill Loaban too.

Stop him!

He seized the leather thong around the Ghost's neck, the one that held the stone monkey amulet, and began to pull hard. The leather tightened. The Ghost's hands flailed uselessly and from his throat came a gurgling noise. The snakehead began to quiver. His heels were nearly off the ground.

Let go, Sonny Li told himself. Arrest him. Don't murder him.

But he didn't let go. He pulled harder and harder.

Until the leather snapped.

The monkey figurine fell to the ground and shattered. Li stumbled backward, falling hard into the alley, striking his head on the cobblestones. He nearly passed out.

Judges of hell...

The cop could faintly see the Ghost, also on his hands and knees, gasping and coughing, holding his throat with one hand as his other patted the ground for a weapon.

An image came into Li's mind: His stern father reprimanding him for some foolish comment.

Then another one: The bodies of the Ghost's victims in Li's town in China, lying bloody on the sidewalk in front of the cafe.

And he pictured another terrible sight, one that had not yet happened:

Hongse dead, lying in darkness. Loaban too, his face as still in death as his body had been in life.

Sonny Li rolled to his knees and began crawling toward his enemy.

The crime scene bus left twenty-foot skid marks on the Chinatown street, which was slick with runoff from the melting ice from bins at a nearby fish market.

Amelia Sachs, her face grim, jumped out, accompanied by INS agent Alan Coe and Eddie Deng. They ran through the pungent alleyway toward the cluster of uniformed officers from the Fifth Precinct. The men and women stood casually, looking as matter-of-fact as police always did at crime scenes.

Even scenes of homicides.

Sachs slowed and gazed down at the body.

Sonny Li was lying on his stomach on the filthy cobblestones. Eyes partially open, palms flat beside him, level with his shoulders, as if he were about to start a series of push-ups.

Sachs paused, filled with the desire to drop to her knees and grip the man's hand. She'd walked the grid many times in the years she'd worked with Rhyme, but this was her first scene involving a fellow cop—fellow cop and, she could now say, friend.

A friend too of Rhyme's.

Still, she resisted the temptation toward sentiment. This was, after all, a crime scene no different from any other and, as Lincoln Rhyme often pointed out, one of the worst contaminants at scenes was careless cops.

Look past it, ignore who the victim is. Remember Rhyme's advice: Give up the dead.

Well, that'd be damn tough to do. For both of them. But for Lincoln Rhyme especially. Sachs had noticed that in the past two days Rhyme had formed an improbable bond with this man, as close as he'd come to a friendship since she'd known him. She was now aware of the painful silence of a thousand conversations never to occur, of a thousand laughs never to be shared.

But then she thought of someone else: Po-Yee, soon to be another victim of the man who'd committed this crime, if they didn't find him. And so Sachs put the pain away, the same way she closed and locked the storage box in which her Colt .45 competition shooting pistol rested.

"We did what you wanted," said another officer, a detective in a gray suit. "Nobody got closer'n this. Only the EMS tech was in." A nod toward the body. "He's DCDS."

Cop initials perfunctorily signifying the category of lifelessness: deceased confirmed dead at the scene.

Agent Coe walked slowly up to her. "I'm sorry," the agent said, running his hand through his scarlet hair. There seemed to be little genuine sadness in his voice, however.

"Yeah."

"He was a good man."

"Yes, he was." She said this bitterly, thinking: And he was a hell of a better cop than you are. If you hadn't fucked up yesterday we'd've gotten the Ghost. Sonny would still be alive and Po-Yee and the Changs would be safe.

She motioned to the cops. "I've got to run the scene. Could I have everybody out of here?"

Oh, man, she thought, dismayed at what she now had to do—though she was anticipating not the difficult and sad task of searching the scene but something far more arduous.

She pulled her headset on and plugged it into her radio.

Okay. Just go ahead. Do it.

She made the call to Central and was patched through to the phone.

A click.

"Yes?" Rhyme asked.

She said, "I'm here."

A pause then: "And?"

She sensed him trying to keep hope out of his voice.

"He's dead."

The criminalist gave no response for a moment. "I see."

"I'm sorry, Lincoln," she said softly.

Another pause and he said, "No first names, Sachs. Bad luck, remember?" His voice nearly caught. "All right. Get going. Run the scene. Time's running out for the Changs."

"Sure, Rhyme. I'm on it."

She quickly dressed in the Tyvek suit and went about processing the scene. Sachs did the fingernail scrapings, the substance samples, the ballistics, the footprints, the shell casings, the slugs. She took the pictures, she lifted prints.

But she felt she was just going through the motions. Come on, she snapped at herself. You're acting like you're some damn rookie. We don't have time to just collect evidence. Think about Po-Yee, think about the Changs. Give Rhyme something he can work with. Think!

She turned back to the body and processed it more carefully, considering everything that she found, demanding in her mind that every bit of evidence explain itself, offer an explanation of where it had come from, what it might mean.

One of the uniformed officers walked up to her but seeing her stony face he retreated quickly.

A half hour later she'd finished bagging everything, written her name on the chain of custody cards and assembled the evidence.

She made another call to the criminalist.

"Go ahead," Rhyme said grimly. How it hurt to hear the pain in his voice. For years she'd heard so much flat emotion, so much lethargy, so much resignation. That had been tough but it didn't compare to the pain now in Rhyme's voice.

"He was shot three times in the chest but we've got four casings. One casing's from a Model 51, probably the one we saw before. The others are .45. He was killed with that one, it looks like. Then I found the Walther that Sonny was carrying. There was trace on his leg—yellow paper flecks and some kind of dried plant material. And there was a pile of the same material on the cobblestones."

"What's your scenario, Sachs?"

"I think Sonny spots the Ghost leaving a store, carrying something in a yellow bag. Sonny follows him. He collars him in the alley here and gets the Ghost's new gun, the .45. He assumes that's his only weapon. Sonny relaxes and tells the Ghost to get onto the ground. But the Ghost pulls out his backup—the Model 51—and shoots through the bag, spattering the plant material and flecks of paper on Sonny. The bullet misses but the Ghost jumps him. There's a fight. The Ghost gets the .45 and kills Sonny."

"Because," Rhyme said, "the yellow paper and the plant material were on Sonny's legs—meaning the Ghost had the Model 51 in an ankle holster and fired low. The gunshot residue was high on his body—from the .45."

"That's what it looks like."

"And how do we
use
that scenario?"

"Wherever the Ghost bought that stuff that was in the bag, a clerk might know him and have an idea where he lives."

"You want to canvass all the stores near there to see who has yellow bags?"

"No, that'd take too long. It'd be better to find out what the plant material is first."

"Bring it in, Sachs. Mel'll run it through the chromatograph."

"No, I've got a better idea," she said. A glance at Sonny Li's body. She forced herself to look away. "It's probably Chinese herbs or spices. I'm going to stop by John Sung's apartment with a sample of it. He should be able to tell me right away what it is. He only lives a few blocks from here."

to Monday, the Hour of the Monkey, 3 P.M.

To effect capture ... the opponent's men must be entirely encircled without any adjacent places vacant.... Exactly as in war, when a post is surrounded, the soldiers are taken prisoner by the enemy.