by R. J. Jagger
It could have been someone else.
There were no indicators.
Nothing in the house was disturbed.
They headed back across the canal and watched for two more hours, on the offhand chance he would come back. When nothing happened by three in the morning, they came back and went to bed with the knifes under their pillows.
ONE GOOD THING came of last night; they resolved to look for the treasure buried by Shi Xianggu so long ago.
It would probably be fruitless.
Someone in the ancestry chain had to have read that part of the journal by now, someone with an adventurous soul. But then again, maybe not, or maybe they didn’t believe what they read, or maybe they did believe it but lived halfway across the world. Interestingly, there were no updates. If someone had invested a good deal of time and money and didn't find the treasure, wouldn’t they have documented it and kept their notes with the journal?
Maybe, just maybe, the treasure was still there.
Exactly where Shi buried it.
The description of the location wasn’t exact.
WE LOADED THE HOLD OF A SINGLE-MAST, 12-METER FISHING BOAT AND SAILED ALONG THE SHORELINE, A FATHOM OR TWO OFF, PRIMARILY INTO A WIND THAT VARIED BETWEEN 6 AND 12 KNOTS. ON THE FIRST DAY, WE LEFT AT THE FIRST RAYS OF DAWN AND DIDN’T ANCHOR UNTIL THE SUN SET. THE SECOND DAY WE SET OUT AT DAWN AGAIN, ONLY THIS TIME THE WIND WAS AT OUR BACK, 3 OR 4 KNOTS. THE SEAS WERE CALM. WE WERE LOOKING FOR A UNIQUE LANDMARK, SOMETHING WE’D REMEMBER IN TEN YEARS, IF IT CAME TO THAT. THERE WERE LOTS OF ROCK OUTCROPPINGS, SOME ONLY AS HIGH AS A FEW METERS AND OTHERS MUCH TALLER THAN OUR MAST. WE DECIDED TO USE ONE OF THOSE AS A MARKER BUT DIDN’T FIND ONE THAT STOOD OUT. WE ANCHORED THAT NIGHT AND SET OUT AGAIN IN THE MORNING.
WE FOUND WHAT WE WERE LOOKING FOR AT HIGH NOON ON DAY THREE, NAMELY A ROCK CROPPING ROUGHLY AS TALL AS OUR MAST. WHEN THE SUN WAS DIRECTLY OVERHEAD, THE SHADOWS ON THE CROPPING TOOK THE SHAPE OF A BEARDED FACE. WE USED THAT AS OUR MARKER.
THE CROPPING WAS APPROXIMATELY 500 METERS OFF A SANDY SHORE. WE SAILED DIRECTLY TOWARDS SHORE AND ANCHORED FIFTY METERS OUT. WE ROWED A DINGHY DIRECTLY TO SHORE. FROM THERE, WE WALKED 200 STEPS SOUTH, DIRECTLY AT THE WATER’S EDGE. THEN WE WALKED DIRECTLY INTO LAND, ROUGHLY 200 STEPS, WHERE WE CAME TO THREE LARGE TREES THAT FORMED A TRIANGLE, WITH EACH SIDE BEING ABOUT TEN STEPS. WE BURIED THE GOLD IN THE MIDDLE OF THAT TRIANGLE, TWO METERS DEEP.
“The key will be to find that rock cropping,” Kanjana said. “That could take forever because our only window of opportunity is high noon. Plus, we don’t know what angle they were looking at it from. It could have been between them and shore but maybe they were heading right at it.”
“I wish they’d been more specific,” Prarie said.
Kanjana tilted her head.
“Maybe yes, maybe no,” she said. “If they’d been more specific, there’d be a greater chance it’s gone. If it’s still there, it’s because of the lack of specificity. The one good thing we have going for us is that the rock cropping hasn’t changed much over time. It will pretty much look the same now as it did back then. The three trees, however, will be long gone. They won’t even be there in a fallen form. They would have disintegrated by now.”
“That could be a problem.”
“We’ll have to rely on the step count,” Kanjana said.
That discussion was last night.
NOW, TODAY, when Prarie stepped out of the shower, Kanjana was in the kitchen, pacing, with a half-gone cup of coffee in hand.
“So what’s the agenda for today?” Prarie said. “Start looking for the treasure?”
Kanjana shook her head.
No.
“First we get your journal back.”
“You mean go to Petchpon’s?”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Kanjana said. “My guess is that the safe’s in his basement. That’s why he went down there last night.”
Prarie shrugged.
Could be.
Could not be, too.
“Remember, the journal itself is worth a fortune,” Kanjana said. “The gold’s a long shot, but he journal’s a sure thing. More than that, though, I need to see this shrine on his bedroom wall with my own eyes.”
“Trust me, it’s a total creep-fest.”
“Yeah, I know,” Kanjana said. “What I’m interested in is who is other photograph is, the one besides me.”
37
Day 3—August 15
Wednesday Morning
TEFFINGER WOKE WEDNESDAY MORNING when Jinka crawled over him to answer a phone. She got more and more of a business look on her face as she talked, then hung up and said, “I have to do a response.”
Teffinger rolled onto his back and stretched.
“A body?”
Jinka headed for the shower and said, “A floater. You want to tag along?”
Teffinger needed to find Aspen Leigh. Everything else was clutter but no new ideas had come to him during the night. Hopefully his brain would start working when he got coffee in the gut.
“May as well,” he said.
Jinka turned the shower on, popped her head back out the door and said, “You were pretty rough last night.”
That was true.
“Sorry,” he said.
She blew him a kiss.
“That wasn’t a complaint.”
THE FLOATER WASN’T ACTUALLY FLOATING, just her face was. The rest of her was wedged below the brown surface of the Phraya in an industrial pier south of Bangkok, where the river bent east. Jinka had the crime unit photograph the scene and then let the divers extract the body.
The face belonged to a woman in her early twenties.
Most of her flesh was gone, eaten by whatever it is that chews on dead bodies in the water.
The stench was unbearable.
“She’s been dead about a week,” Jinka said.
Teffinger was thinking the same thing.
The cause of death wasn’t evident.
“I feel like I’ve seen her somewhere before,” Jinka said.
Teffinger studied the face.
“How could you?”
No answer. Teffinger looked over to find Jinka focused on something in the distance. He followed her gaze to a small, wiry man walking towards them. The man took one last drag on a cigarette and flicked it away just before he got to them. His eyes were slightly bloodshot and his teeth were nicotine grey. His hair was thinning and slightly greasy, combed straight back. He appeared to be middle-aged, maybe a little past. What struck Teffinger was the intensity in the man’s face. He was clearly someone with a lot going on behind those eyes. Teffinger suspected that not all of it was healthy.
Some people, Teffinger didn’t like from the first moment he saw them.
This guy was one of them.
The man threw Teffinger a brief sideways glance, then talked to Jinka with quick, jagged words. Teffinger didn’t understand the conversation but did understand the look on Jinka’s face.
She didn’t like the man either.
She was a little afraid of him, too.
Suddenly the man stuck a cigarette in his mouth, lit it, said a few more words to Jinka, then turned and walked away. He never looked squarely at Teffinger. He never extended his hand to shake. When he got out of earshot, Jinka said, “That was my boss, Petchpon.”
Teffinger tossed his hair.
“The guy’s a jerk.”
“You can tell?”
Yes.
He could.
Some things were universal.
“He wanted to know if I was making any progress on the Tookta case. He’s getting pressure from above, on account of who her father is. That complicates things.”
“How?”
“Because he wants someone arrested yesterday and doesn’t really care if it’s the right guy or not.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to do what I always do,” Jinka said. “I’m going to find the guy who killed her and not waste time o
n stupid games.”
38
Day 3—August 15
Wednesday Morning
FIVE YEARS AGO, Wing bought an old furniture manufacturing warehouse in eastern Bangkok that had a great second story with hardwood floors and lots of windows. Most of the time it sat empty and abandoned. Today would be different. He took Jamaica there mid-morning, retrieved a high-quality sound system from of a heavily-locked room and got it set up in the main area. He put in Jamaica’s demo, Say It, and cranked it up to mid-level.
Say it, if you mean it.
Say it, if you don’t.
Say it, just to twist me.
Say it, or I won’t.
With the music playing, they swept the floor and brushed cobwebs off the windows. Five minutes later, people started showing up.
Dancers.
Cameramen.
Choreographers.
Costume consultants.
The goal today was to come up with the rough choreography concepts, see how things looked through a variety of camera pans, and start thinking about costumes, lighting, staging, props, special effects, transitions, and where to shoot. Although Wing had a fairly good picture of the final product in his head, there was still a lot missing and, if history meant anything, a good portion of what he now envisioned would be thrown out in the next couple hours.
This was day one.
The day that counted.
The day that would make or break the video and to some extent, by association, Jamaica herself.
When everyone arrived, Wing got them together, introduced Jamaica and said, “Today we’re going start production of the best damn music video the world has ever seen. You’re here because in my mind you’re the best of the best. Your job is to prove me right. What we create will be viewed twenty or thirty or forty million times. With that comes a corresponding responsibility and a truckload of work. Let me begin by giving you my preliminary vision of where we’re trying to go.”
THEY WORKED UNTIL the caterers showed up with lunch. Wing ended up outside on the shady side of the building, sitting on the asphalt with his legs stretched out, eating a sandwich and fruit cup.
Ten minutes later, Jamaica found him.
“There you are.”
He patted the ground next to him and she sat down.
“The more I think about last night, the more I think you might be right about Moon.”
“You mean what I said about her giving my name up?”
“Sort of, but not exactly,” Wing said. “It still goes against everything I know about her, but let’s suppose for a moment that she got blinded by greed and decided to keep the paintings for herself. The best way to do that would be to hire somebody to kill you. She wouldn’t even have to tell the person why, she’d just have to pay him.”
Jamaica chewed on it.
It fit what happened.
It fit what happened perfectly.
“So what do we do? She won’t stop until I’m dead—”
“I think the best way to handle it is to get the paintings out of her hands,” Wing said. “With them gone, she won’t gain anything by having you killed.”
A beat.
“So how do we get the paintings away from her if it’s true that she’s really trying to keep them for herself?”
Wing shrugged.
“Maybe we steal them from her.”
“But we don’t even know where she has them.”
Wing handed his cell phone to her.
“They’re your paintings, not hers,” he said. “Call her up and ask her where they are. You have a right to know.”
“Do you think she’ll tell me?”
“She’ll have to tell you something,” Wing said. “Whatever it is, we’ll check it out. If it turns out she’s lying, then that proves what’s going on.”
39
Day 3—August 15
Wednesday Morning
PRARIE AND KANJANA arrived at Petchpon’s mid-morning to find two red engines shuffling cars in the railroad yard. They made a pass down the man’s street, saw no signs of life or cars in the driveway, then doubled back to the railroad yard’s parking lot and kill the engine under a tree. Staying behind boxcars, they made their way to Petchpon’s backyard and walked directly towards the house as if everything was normal.
Every window in the back was cracked open.
Kanjana climbed in, opened the back door for Prarie, then relocked it.
There.
They were in.
Inside the bedroom, Kanjana studied the wall, saying nothing but clearly effected. She tapped a finger on her photograph and said, “This was taken two weeks ago at my house. Whoever took it was across the canal using a telephoto lens.”
She studied the other photo.
The woman was wildly attractive, in her late twenties, with long black hair, hazel eyes and light brown skin.
“Do you know her?”
Kanjana shook her head.
No.
She didn’t.
“It’s pretty clear what we have here,” Kanjana said. “The newspaper clippings are Petchpon’s trophies. Me and this other woman are his next victims. We need to find out who she is and warn her.”
Prarie swallowed.
“Should we take the photo?”
A long beat.
“No, we can’t let him know we were here. Let’s find the safe.”
THEY SEARCHED that level of the house, thoroughly, and found nothing.
The door to the basement was locked.
They hunted for the key but couldn’t find it.
“Stay here,” Kanjana said. “I’m going to step outside and see if the basement has any windows.” Sixty seconds later she returned and said, “No windows.”
“So what do we do?” Prarie said. “The safe’s down there. I can feel it.” No response. “I don’t care if he knows we were here. I say we just break it down.”
Kanjana shut her eyes and concentrated.
Then she said, “I don’t want to put him on guard or do something to make him accelerate his plans. It’s too risky until we figure out who this other woman is.”
Prarie exhaled.
“Okay.”
Kanjana put her arm around Prarie’s shoulders and said, “I know it’s frustrating, but be patient. What we’ll do is lie in wait tonight at my place and kill him if he comes.”
“Do you really want to go that far?”
“After seeing that wall and after what happened last night, yes,” Kanjana said. “After we kill him we’ll come straight here and get the safe.”
“It’s too heavy”
“We’ll bring a dolly,” Kanjana said. “Remind me to take my photo off the wall when we come back. I don’t want any ties to a dead man’s house, especially when the dead man’s a detective. Let’s wipe our prints right now, before we leave. When we come back we’ll wear gloves.”
40
Day 3—August 15
Wednesday Afternoon
THE FLOATER was a 22-year-old woman named Mint, who turned out to be a dancer with an impressive pedigree that included a musical in Hong Kong, a stint in Neon Knife’s world tour last year, as well as a prominent position in the most recent music video of Snap Snap, which was released just last Saturday. Kanjana pulled the video up on YouTube, pointed Mint out to Teffinger and said, “I knew I’d seen her somewhere before.”
Teffinger was impressed.
The song itself was fantastic, with a catchy hook.
The video was creative.
The choreography was dead-on.
At the end everything faded to black, then one red wing materialized and flew into the distance.
“Not bad,” he said. “I don’t get that last part though.”
“The wing?”
Right.
The wing.
“That’s the producer,” she said. “His name’s Wing Boonmee. He puts that at the end of every video.”
“Well, he knows what he’s doing, that’s f
or sure.”
True.
Very true.
MINT DIED FROM BLUNT TRAUMA to the head, powerful enough to not just crack her skull, but smash it.
A personal act.
Done up close.
Most likely an act of passion.
“I want to get into her love life,” Kanjana said. “That’s where her killer is.”
Teffinger didn’t disagree.
“It would be interesting to know where she got dumped into the river,” he said. “Maybe there’s a security camera in the area that picked up something.”
MINT’S APARTMENT was on the third floor of a nice complex off Soi Wat Suan Phlu, just east of the river.
Her purse was there, with money inside untouched.
Her cell phone wasn’t there.
There was no evidence of a struggle.
There were no bloodstains.
Everything was normal. Then Jinka found something that made her face grow serious, namely a photograph of two women standing together with their arms around each other. She handed it to Teffinger and said, “This is Mint and this is Tookta.”
Teffinger looked at it.
Then focused on Jinka and said, “The same Tookta who got stabbed in the chest Friday night?”
She nodded.
“They knew each other. That’s weird, isn’t it?”
It was.
It was indeed.
“Somehow their murders are connected,” Jinka said.
Teffinger shrugged.
“You never know.”
HIS PHONE RANG and the voice of Sydney Heatherwood came through from Denver. “How are things going?”
“Hold on.”
To Jinka, “Work. I’m going to take this outside.”
Fine.
No problem.
Out on the street, he stepped into the shade of a large Buddha statue and told Sydney about Mint’s murder and the fact that Mint and Tookta knew each other. He also brought her up to speed on the pressure Petchpon was putting on Jinka to solve Tookta’s murder.
“This could all work to your advantage,” Sydney said.
Teffinger wrinkled his forehead.
“How?”
