by Steven James
“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. Unrelated 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 a
n 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—”
“Calvin, that’s enough specifics. I’m sure I’ll recognize you.”
“Yes, of course. All right, my boy, I’ll see you then.”
A few minutes after our conversation ended, I arrived for my meeting with Ralph at the San Diego FBI field office.
You wouldn’t know that the imposing green and brown building on Aero Drive was a federal building just by looking at it. There’s no sign, just a street number, and the dark-mirrored windows, prominent video cameras, and security fence make it look like any one of a dozen other office complexes in San Diego’s biotech corridor.
No, you’d never know that 9797 Aero Drive was an FBI field office unless someone told you so.
There’s nothing as effective as hiding in plain sight.
As I entered the facility, I gave Terry a call. If anyone could get us into Austin Hunter’s Gmail account, Terry could. “Hey, Terry. It’s Pat.”
“Oh no.”
“What?”
“Whenever you call, it means I’m about to do something illegal.” “Yeah, but you can cover your tracks so well, you’ll never get caught.”
I could hear him tapping at his keyboard. He was probably at the NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, although it was hard to tell. He often worked from one of their remote, undisclosed sites. “Listen,” I said. “I’m wondering if you can hack into someone’s Gmail account. I’ve got the address right here.”
“That’s it? My thirteen-year-old niece could do that for you.”
“This is an important case, Terry. I think it might help us track down a missing woman.”
Without a moment’s hesitation. “Give it to me.”
I gave him Austin Hunter’s Gmail address. “The password might be encrypted,” I explained. “He was a Navy SEAL. He might have taken extra precautions.”
“Passwords were made to be cracked. The Chinese have a whole division of military hackers. Back in June of 2007 they were able to get into the Department of Defense database and download submarine navigation schedules before the DOD was able to shut down that part of the system.”
“I never heard that before,” I said.
“That’s because, according to both the Chinese and U.S. governments, it never happened.” More tapping at the keyboard. “I’m at least as good as the Chinese. Stay on the line,” he said, “this’ll only take a minute.”
“I’m stepping on the elevator,” I said. I looked at my watch. Terry was fast, let’s see how fast. “Call me back in three.”
Victor Drake slammed the door to his office.
He’d just left a useless—completely useless—meeting at the aquarium with that imbecile Warren Leant. The man was clueless, and he would soon be jobless.
Cops were all over that stupid aquarium. All over it.
From the very beginning of the project, Victor had demanded that the Project Rukh researchers keep only hard copies of their files and leave nothing sensitive on their computers. After all, anyone with half a brain knew how to hack into someone else’s system these days, and on a project like this, you couldn’t take those kinds of chances.
Thankfully, it looked like Ms. Lillo had followed protocol and only kept printed notes and then sent them by courier to Building B-14. However, while the idiot cops were dinking around on the lower level, through his own ingenuity, Victor had managed to sneak in and erase Ms. Lillo’s hard drive, just in case.
Victor assessed his situation. He still didn’t have the information pulled together for the general, who would be arriving in less than forty-eight hours, and he still had no idea where Austin Hunter was—or where that little wench Cassandra Lillo had run off to.
Not good. Not good. Not good.
He needed to get a handle on this whole situation. Maybe meet with Dr. Kurvetek and those two gorillas, Geoff and Suricata. Figure out what to do if Austin Hunter or Cassandra Lillo decided to go to the authorities.
Victor picked up the phone, and, as much as it annoyed him to have to rely on other people to help solve his problems, he punched in Geoff’s number.
Less than a minute and a half later the elevator doors opened and my phone rang. Terry. “The last email Hunter received has a video attachment,” he said intensely. “And . . . you need to see this one, Pat.”
“Tell me.”
“You’re going to have to watch it.”
I stepped into room 311, and I signaled with my finger to Ralph that I’d be off the phone in a moment.
“Terry—”
“I’m sending it to you right now.”
I was getting exasperated, but I didn’t want to waste time arguing. “All right. Thanks—”
“And, listen. There’s a lot of chatter out there right now. I figured if you haven’t heard yet you will soon enough. I wanted to be the one to tell you. He’s back.”
“Who is?”
“Sebastian Taylor. He was sighted last week in DC.”
Terry’s comment almost made me forget about the video. Taylor had been the governor of North Carolina until a few months ago. Before that, he’d officially worked as an overseas diplomat for the state department. However, in October, Terry had helped me uncover Sebastian Taylor’s other, not-quite-so-official job with the CIA. As a result, I’d outed Taylor as an assassin and he ended up murd
ering a man in cold blood, and almost succeeded in killing me too. He’d been on the run ever since.
“Any leads?” I asked.
“No. But believe me, they’re looking.” He paused and then he continued, “Watch the video, Pat. Find this woman. Do it fast. You only have till eight o’clock.”
His tone of voice chilled me. “Terry, when I hang up, call me back for a video chat. I might have some questions for you after watching this thing.”
I ended the call and turned on my computer’s video chat camera. Then I positioned myself next to Ralph and gave him a quick update on the arsonist case and Cassandra’s disappearance. He nodded. Listened. Took a few quick notes. Then I told him that Sebastian Taylor had been sighted.
“I had a feeling he’d be popping up again,” Ralph grumbled. “I just hope he shows up here somewhere near me.” Ralph took a moment to redirect his thoughts. “By the way, I called Lien-hua. She’s on her way over.”
I nodded and then connected my computer to the large high-def screen on the wall so that both Ralph and I could watch the video.
Then Terry’s face appeared on my laptop screen. “Be prepared,” he said. “It’s intense.”
I opened his email’s video attachment and pressed “play.”
39
The video began with a close-up of a human eye. Dark brown. Bloodshot. A tear poised on the tip of the eyelash. The smeared mascara told me it was a woman’s eye, and it looked like she’d been crying for a while.
The image lingered there until the tear dropped sadly from her eyelash. Then the video slowly panned backward to reveal the rest of her face. I recognized her immediately from the photo I’d seen on her name badge in her purse. “It’s Cassandra Lillo,” I whispered to Ralph. “Our missing woman.”
After a moment, Cassandra stared up, then down, then from side to side as if she were looking for something.
Another tear fell.
The only audio was the sound of a man’s slow, heavy breathing. The cameraman.
My heart began to hammer. I didn’t like this. I knew already that this video was not going to have a pleasant ending.
