Lee spoke to her comfortingly. “Don’t worry. When we leave, you’re going to go back to bed and forget we were ever here. You can tell them you slept through the whole thing.”
The girl nodded enthusiastically.
“Stay with her,” Jason said to Lee.
Jason turned and nodded to Bai before cautiously opening the door to the basement. He slipped swiftly and silently through the entry. She followed, dogging his footsteps as he moved rapidly down crude wooden steps.
Reaching the foot of the stairs, Bai stepped off onto soft soil. Light filtered down through cracks in the porch decking overhead. As she looked around, Bai realized the girl had been wrong in calling it a basement. It was a tall crawl space. The house was supported by thick brick columns eight feet high and spaced roughly ten feet apart.
Cautiously slipping around the stairwell with Jason, she spied a light at the far end of the crawl space near the back of the house. Two men, framed by the glow of an electric torch, held a conversation. One leaned against a brick column and talked, as the other man, standing knee-deep in the ground with a shovel in his hand, listened.
Jason motioned for her to stay behind him as he crept in the direction of the diggers. The ground rolled and swelled gently like waves on open water. The single bulb of the electric torch cast deep shadows, creating the impression the ground reached up to meet her. She concentrated on her footing while, at the same time, trying to keep an eye on the men under the light.
The man standing in the hole and leaning on a shovel saw them first. He picked the shovel up to point it at them and yelled, “Who are you?”
Jason ran forward to stab the barrel of his gun against the other man’s head before the dazed gangster could figure out what was going on. Bai stood between the digger and the stairwell. She slipped the knife from the sheath on her arm. The digger froze. His eyes darted around furtively while his mouth hung slack.
Bai realized immediately the hole was a grave. Next to the grave lay a black plastic garment bag stuffed to the point of bursting. Her heart sank. She motioned for the grave digger to put down his shovel. When he’d tossed the potential weapon aside, she walked over to kneel down next to the garment bag and slit it open with her knife.
The stench of voided bowels made her head jerk back. The person stuffed in the bag was familiar. Standing up in shock, she took a step back and put a hand over the opening in her stocking cap to cover her mouth.
Bai motioned to the grave digger with her knife and took her hand from her mouth. “Sit down! And keep your hands in the air where I can see them.”
Jason shoved his hostage toward the grave. He gestured with the barrel of his gun for the man to take a seat next to his friend. “Sit.”
The gangsters did as they were told. Deep frowns etched their faces. Bai could empathize. She wasn’t enamored of the situation either.
“Who’s in the bag?” asked Jason.
“Mrs. Yan.”
“I thought she went back to China.”
“In spirit only, it would seem.”
Bai’s mind whirled with questions. She knew a mother’s instincts to protect her young were strong and wondered what Mrs. Yan had gotten herself into. Did Jimmy Yan know his mother was dead? What had happened to Jia? The woman’s death posed more questions than answers.
She caught Jason’s eye and motioned in the direction of the men sitting in the partially dug grave. “Keep an eye on them for a minute. I need some time with Mrs. Yan.”
He acknowledged her request with a nod then turned back to watch their prisoners. Bai returned to the garment bag with the sleeve of her leather jacket pressed against her nose. She sliced the bag wide open with her knife then tried to move Mrs. Yan’s arm to the side. She wanted to see what kind of wounds, if any, the woman had suffered.
When she touched Mrs. Yan’s clammy skin, she gagged. She had to hold down her bile as she pulled on the arm. The woman was stiff. Rigor had already advanced, which meant the woman had been killed more than three hours, but less than three days, ago. Bai’s eyes were tearing as she tugged Mrs. Yan’s arm away from the body.
The limb straightened but remained raised in the air in a final salute.
“Shit . . .” The word just escaped her lips.
Jason had ears like a bat. “What is it?”
It took her a moment to answer. “Mrs. Yan looks like a pincushion. Defensive wounds are on the insides of her arms as well as her hands. The wounds look shallow.”
She forced herself to count the wounds that ranged from the area around the woman’s upper thighs to her chest. She quit counting at thirty. Mrs. Yan had obviously fought her attacker. Somebody either really hated the woman, a reaction Bai found understandable, or was just a horribly incompetent killer.
She turned again to the two men sitting in the grave. “She must have fought like a demon. Who did this?”
Bai stood to walk over and confront the men. The grave diggers looked at one another and shook their heads, refusing to talk. She thought one of the men had coughed. The grave digger sitting in front grabbed his shoulder. Blood seeped from a small bullet hole. She turned to Jason, stunned.
He shrugged. “The lady asked a question. Answer her.”
The wounded man’s eyes were bright, tearing with pain. He cried, “We don’t kill ’em. We just bury ’em.”
Then it registered. Bai’s eyes darted around the dark confines of the crawl space. Her voice sounded shrill in her ears. “It’s a graveyard!”
Jason’s stare caught her eye. He willed her to breathe, something she’d somehow forgotten to do. She put her hand up to acknowledge the unvoiced directive and took a deep breath.
Jason looked around at the rolling ground with a smile showing through his mask. “Sammy’s been a busy, busy boy.” He turned back to the grave diggers. “So, where is he?”
The wounded man glared at Jason and spit on the ground. Another cough. A small hole appeared in the man’s forehead. He toppled face-down in the dirt.
Jason addressed the remaining prisoner. “You’re going to have to dig that hole a little deeper.” He pointed the gun at the man’s head. “That is, unless you want to join your friend. If I were you, I’d start telling me everything you know about Sammy Tu.”
Bai looked at Jason with her jaw agape. He’d just casually killed a man. She found herself uncharacteristically speechless.
The man, either Chan or Shen—not that it mattered—blurted out a confession: “Sammy drove a girl to Vancouver. He’s going to auction her overseas. He left last night. He’ll be back the day after tomorrow.”
The man’s eyes were like saucers, his face ashen. He trembled with fear.
Jason’s voice was calm. He seemed almost disinterested. “Where in Vancouver?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t. I’d tell you if I knew.”
Bai blurted out, “Who killed Mrs. Yan?”
The grave digger’s head jerked around to look at her. “I don’t know, lady. I got a call from Sammy this morning. He told me there was a body down here to bury. That’s all I know.”
“You don’t know much,” Jason said coldly.
The man turned to Jason and shrugged. Jason’s gun coughed again. The grave digger toppled forward to lean against the back of his dead companion.
Jason and Bai were alone with the dead. She could feel their ghosts surrounding her. Clammy perspiration formed beneath her mask while a roaring in her ears left her deaf. Cold fear wrapped her in a coiled embrace then swallowed her whole.
Bai panicked and ran. She stumbled in the loose dirt and went down on one knee as her fingers plunged into moist soil. Tears blurred her vision. She realized crying didn’t make any sense. Then again, the death she’d witnessed didn’t make any sense.
Jason was suddenly beside her. His hand gripped her arm, like a steel band, to lift and steer her as she blindly stumbled across the crawl space. She glanced back once as she careened toward the stairs. Under the electric torch, Mr
s. Yan’s arm stood aloft as if beckoning. The two dead gangsters slumped in the shallow grave in a lovers’ embrace.
When she reached the stairwell, Bai angrily brushed off Jason’s hand to bolt up the stairs. She scrambled to the top and lurched through the door. Lee looked up, startled. She ignored him as she ran to the sink and shoved aside a pile of dirty dishes. She held onto the edge of the counter with one hand while she pulled up her mask with the other to retch. Her body trembled.
When she finally looked up, Jason stood over her. He turned the faucet on. She put her shaky hand under the flow to scoop up cold water and rinse out her mouth, soaking her clothes in the process.
He spoke, his voice soft but compelling. “Be careful what you ask for.”
She stopped rinsing long enough to look up at him.
His voice sounded sad. “You asked for my help. I helped you. That’s what I do.”
He stepped away to let her to reflect on his words.
Dish detergent sat on the edge of the counter. Bai slipped her knife into the sheath on her sleeve and poured soap into her hands. She scrubbed at them, determined to rub out the stench of death. As she rubbed her hands raw, flashes of the gangsters’ deaths and Mrs. Yan’s final gesture kept intruding. The lingering images haunted her.
Bai could hear Jason and Lee talking quietly behind her. She gritted her teeth and turned off the water before pulling down her mask. With no dishtowel in sight, she rubbed her hands on her jeans as she turned around.
She apologized for being such a girl. “Sorry.”
Lee smiled behind his mask and shrugged off her apology.
Jason stared. His challenging gaze made her angry. Before she could say anything, he suddenly smiled and turned his attention to their hostage. The girl drew in on herself. Bai watched closely for fear he might shoot the young prostitute.
“There’s been a change of plans,” Jason said ominously. The girl’s eyes widened. “You’re going to go upstairs, wake everyone up and evacuate them through the back of the house. There is a back door, right?” He asked the question in a soothing voice, while waving the silenced gun in the girl’s face. She nodded up and down like a bobble-head. “Good. You never saw us.” He shook his head back and forth for emphasis. “We were never here.”
The girl imitated him eagerly, her head swaying in unison with his.
“You smelled smoke,” he added. “The front of the house was on fire.” Jason mimicked flames by wiggling his fingers. “You ran upstairs to get everyone out of the house. You’re a hero.” His smile was triumphant.
The girl continued to stare stupidly at him as if mesmerized. He turned the girl around and shoved her in the direction of the door. “Now run, and do what I told you. But remember . . . we were never here!”
The girl glanced back once, fearfully. When she realized Jason didn’t plan to shoot her, she bolted. Jason took the green canister out of his pocket, pulled the pin, and tossed it down the stairwell. A sharp bang erupted accompanied by the crackling of wood.
“Time to leave,” Jason said as he shepherded Lee and Bai toward the door. “That was an incendiary grenade. In about ten minutes this whole house will be an inferno.”
Lee and Bai didn’t need further encouragement. They sprinted for the front door. By the time they reached the car, flames licked at the front porch. Layers of crusted paint acted as an accelerant, like gas on dry tinder. Fire spilled across the veranda to engulf the front of the house.
Jason drove away from the conflagration calmly, while pulling the balaclava over his head and running his hand through tousled hair. Lee and Bai followed his example, pulling the masks off and discarding them.
Lee leaned forward from the backseat to speak with Bai. “What did you find in the basement?”
“It wasn’t a basement. It was a crawl space.” Her voice was raspy from the acid bile. She pulled a stick of gum out of her pocket, unwrapped it, and chewed. “They were using it for a graveyard.”
Lee’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “No way!”
“We found Mrs. Yan down there,” she added.
Her revelation brought back the image of Mrs. Yan. She lost her train of thought and her heart skipped a beat.
“Holy shit,” he mumbled.
“Yeah . . . holy shit,” she replied tiredly.
“What else?”
She looked aside at Jason. She wasn’t sure how much to divulge. He refused to look at her. “That’s all there was,” she offered lamely. “It seemed like enough at the time.”
She turned around in her seat to meet Lee’s gaze. His disbelieving stare questioned her. He always seemed to know when she was lying.
“It would seem that things are about to get interesting,” Lee said. “What do you think will happen when the fire department puts out the flames and discovers a body in the rubble?”
She wanted to correct him: bodies. Instead, she kept her mouth shut, turned around, and closed her eyes until Jason’s voice interrupted her jumbled thoughts.
“Mrs. Yan’s body will be burned beyond recognition. It will take weeks, if not months, to identify the remains. If they start digging, they’ll find more bodies. It’ll become apparent the deaths are gang related. At which point, the police will make things very difficult for Sammy Tu and the Wah Ching.”
When Bai opened her eyes, she saw that Jason was smiling, happy at the thought of Sammy Tu’s problems.
Lee posed a question to Bai. “And what about the girl?”
She couldn’t tell him that Jia had been smuggled out of the country without revealing how she’d gotten the information. He would see through any lie she told. Instead, she shook her head and covered her face with her hands. She wasn’t prepared to deal with the callous murders in the crawl space. She was still trying to get her head wrapped around the needless violence.
Jason spoke without turning to look at her. “Tell him, Bai.”
She turned to look at Jason. He continued to ignore her. She spoke softly. “Two Wah Ching were in the basement burying Mrs. Yan. They told us that Sammy Tu has taken Jia to Vancouver to sell overseas.”
Lee put his face between the seats again to stare at her in surprise. “You left two men in the basement to burn alive?”
“No,” she replied tiredly, leaving it at that.
Lee was silent as he mulled over the information. He turned to Jason. “No prisoners?”
Jason’s reply was indifferent. “No prisoners.”
Lee sat slowly back in his seat. After a short while, he asked, “Why Vancouver? And why sell the girl overseas?”
“Simple,” explained Jason. “She’s too close to home in Oakland. She might escape and find help. In Vancouver, they’ll sell her off to Asia or the Middle East. There’s always a market for young girls. She’ll end up somewhere she doesn’t speak the language and has no friends—a slave.”
“Are we going after her?” asked Lee.
Bai wasn’t sure how to respond. She wanted to go after the girl, but she found herself momentarily overwhelmed. Her cases typically involved finding someone who didn’t want to be found—a runaway or a deadbeat dad. This was her first foray into the slave trade. It wasn’t going well.
Her answer was feeble and she knew it. “We need to talk about it.”
She stalled for time, trying to figure out what to do.
Ignoring her indecision, Lee plowed on. “I think we should go after her. ‘Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.’”
His tone challenged her. She didn’t have the energy to argue.
“People are dying,” she said in her own defense.
“Bad people are dying, Bai,” Lee asserted. “That doesn’t alter the fact there’s a young girl out there who’s in for a life of misery if we don’t help her.”
She nodded in sympathy. She understood what was at stake.
Her cell phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number. When she answered, a very officious voice asked, “Mrs. Jiang?”
S
he corrected the caller. “Miss Jiang.”
“I see . . .” said the voice. “This is Mr. Ketchum, provost at Darryl Hopkins.”
Her insides went cold. “Has something happened to Dan?”
“No. Dan is fine. The boy she assaulted, however, will require stitches. I think it would be best if we met, Miss Jiang. We need to discuss your daughter’s behavior.”
She put her hand to her forehead. “I’m about an hour away. Will around two o’clock be convenient for you, Mr. Ketchum?”
“I’m looking forward to meeting you, Miss Jiang.”
She closed her phone to end the call. Both Lee and Jason stared at her. “Dan’s fine. She beat up a boy.”
Lee looked concerned. Jason smiled.
Bai had never named Dan’s father. All you had to do was look at Dan and Jason to see the resemblance. She’d inherited his handsome features and, obviously, her quick temper.
“The principal wants to see me.” Her words sounded ludicrous after the events of the last hour.
Jason looked aside to smile at her. “Weren’t you about Dan’s age when you first beat me up?”
She couldn’t help but return his smile at the memory. “You deserved it. You pulled my ponytail.”
“I couldn’t help myself,” Jason said in his own defense. “I was in love.”
The look he bestowed on her said he still was.
Lee and Jason bracketed Bai as she entered Darryl Hopkins. Arched double doors opened onto an entry hall in the red-brick, deco-styled building. A security desk fanned around the narrow corridor to corral unsuspecting visitors. The only way past the kiosk was through a metal detector.
Two uniformed guards waited behind the desk. They scrutinized Bai and her entourage as she approached. The inspection seemed professional. The faces of the men showed practiced detachment.
“My name is Bai Jiang. I’m here for my daughter.”
White Ginger Page 5
