She had just an inkling of what she might be looking at when she remembered one of the earlier user help sites she had consulted. She went back to it now, typing in its suggested commands as slowly and deliberately as a seven year old on her first computer. To her astonishment, the computer opened a video application and began to display what seemed to be a short, animated film on a mini-screen. Except that it was nothing like anything she had seen on a computer before.
It was a sequence of satellite navigation images, the kind you’d see on any GPS device in a car, unfolding in real time. Maddy watched it and felt as if she were driving, the arrows suggesting a right turn here, a change of lane there. The display showed the time remaining to destination, the miles elapsed and, crucially, the street names. The current image suggested there were twenty-one minutes remaining.
She clicked on the controls and fast-forwarded to the last two minutes of the journey. East on Whittier, south on Soto Street, coming to a stop between Seventh and Eighth: Boyle Heights.
In this empty apartment in the dead of night, alone with a glowing screen, Maddy felt the adrenalin thump through her system. For the first time since her sister had died, she was certain she had found the man who killed her.
Chapter 50
Boyle Heights was the neighbourhood where Rosie Padilla had lived and died. Now Madison knew what she was looking for. She opened up the third of the three files she had been sent, instantly fast-forwarding to the final thirty seconds. This GPS sequence ended in Alhambra, where Mary Doherty had been found dead less than twenty-four hours ago. She took a deep breath and clicked on the second file, the one she had been avoiding.
There was no mistaking it. The little chequered flag graphic that popped up in the final few frames, the one usually accompanied by a voice saying ‘You have reached your destination’, appeared now on the downtown location of the Great Hall of the People and the Opium Den, the last place Abigail was seen alive.
Frantically now, Maddy clicked on every possible icon or button, hunting for more information. Remembering everything Katharine had taught her, she eventually right-clicked to produce a menu called ‘Properties’. There, amid the technicalia, was a date and time: eleven thirty last Sunday. According to the police estimate of the time of Abigail’s death, that would fit with what was almost certainly the last hour of her sister’s life.
Maddy checked the timings on the other files too, each one fitting the date and time of the victim’s death. This car had been at or close to the scene of the killing in three of the four cases, never more than an hour before the presumed time of death. Tellingly, there was no file for Eveline Plaats, perhaps because her last hours alive had been spent on the base itself.
Now Madison studied the Properties more closely and saw that the hieroglyphics contained one long number set apart from the others. Her right hand trembled with excitement as she went back to the first document that had been left for her in Dropbox. She ran her eye down that list of names until she found Yang, doing her best to remember at least part of the thirteen-digit number alongside it. Then she went back to the Properties on the GPS video. She let out a long, focused breath.
It was the same number. She now understood that those three little videos she had been sent were computer animations of the movements of Yang Zhitong’s car, based on tracking data. She had heard about these tracker devices, installed into cars as an anti-theft mechanism: wherever the car went, its movements were transmitted to a computer that stored them minute by minute, a detailed record of precise co-ordinates. The films were just those numbers translated into graphics, made to look like regular satellite navigation.
That list of names and numbers left in Dropbox must have been produced by the tracking company that ran the service for the garrison or perhaps by the garage that maintained the cars of the junior officer elite, each vehicle allocated its own, unique, thirteen-digit code. It made good sense: if that Ferrari story was true, these privileged young men had expensive tastes. Were one of those cars to be stolen, you’d want to know where it was.
But it had proven to be Yang’s undoing. There it was, hard data that put him close to or at the scene of three crimes. It was incontrovertible.
Her mind was speeding now, each thought completing an electric circuit that started another, lighting up bulb after bulb. This time it was the word tracking. It triggered a memory, one she had to work hard to dredge to the surface. But there it was. The man Leo had introduced her to at the debate venue, the Republican big shot, Ted Norman. He had castigated Leo for failing to respond to his repeated offer of help. She closed her eyes and recalled his exact words. You know I have a software business, tracking technology and all that.
So that’s where these files had come from. It meant her hunch had been right. She had been sure the source of this help, ‘the Messenger’, was the Sigurdsson campaign, eager to maintain the anti-China drumbeat that had seen their candidate advance so rapidly. This confirmed it. Norman was not only chairman of the Republican party in California but the owner of the company that had, it seemed, tracked Yang’s car. Norman had doubtless made his data available to the Sigurdsson campaign team – who, thanks to Madison’s story, knew exactly where to look.
A window was still open on her screen from one of the dissident sites. She went to the story of the road accident, when Yang had demanded he be allowed to get away with driving drunk and crashing a car simply by shouting his father’s name. A photo accompanied the story. It was snatched and grainy, showing several faces, none looking directly at the camera. But at the centre, with a head of jet-black hair, slicked back off his forehead like an old-school movie star, was Yang. He was not smiling, but had his lips pursed in an expression of … what was it? It took Madison a while to realize that it was a look she had seen often on those born into power and money. It was impatience.
She went to the bathroom and was about to put the light on when she stopped herself. She stared instead, in the gloom, at the mirror, wondering if they were still looking. What could they see in the dark like this? Nothing? Or maybe they were gazing at her now through a night-vision lens, her body a mere ghost of white lines. She looked over her shoulder, at the empty wall above the bath. Maybe they were looking at her from there. She bent over, feeling the ache in her sides and her ribs, splashed some cold water on her face and, as she pulled herself back up to full height, she resisted the urge to whisper into the mirror, ‘I’ve got you.’ But she felt it all the same.
Madison returned to her desk. She checked her phone one more time: no word from Enrica. The last message had come an hour ago, saying that a nurse had emerged to tell Enrica, ‘That woman of yours is a true fighter.’ Every minute they were still operating or checking or scanning, Maddy could breathe.
Back in her chair, she repressed the fatigue winding itself around her like bindweed and got to work. She would not allow herself to think of Katharine as anything but alive. She would not allow herself to think of Abigail. She would not linger on their faces. But she would do this for them. It was time to make her move.
Chapter 51
‘Sorry to turn the tables like this, Howard.’
‘Madison? Is that you?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s – what time is it?’ She could hear a woman’s moan, irritated rather than erotic. ‘Maddy, it’s six o’clock in the morning. On the weekend.’
‘Actually, it’s just past six o’clock. And I’m sorry. But I wouldn’t have come here unless I’d done what you told me to do.’
‘Madison, where are you?’
‘I’m outside your front door.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Madison.’
‘Can I come in?’
‘It’s the …’ There was a rustle. ‘Yes, I’m dealing with it. Go back to sleep, darling … Madison, I’m coming down.’
She continued her slow jog on the spot, keeping herself moving. In her eagerness to get here as soon as she deemed acceptable, and in this she took her cue
from Howard Burke’s dawn appearance at her own door, she had come out without a coat. Even in LA, six am in February was cold. Especially for insomniacs who occasionally forgot to eat. She could feel her nose turning red.
There was the sound of one then two locks being turned and the door was open. Filling the frame was Howard Burke, haggard in a dressing gown, the kind she thought no one wore any more. He looked drawn, his stubble apparently growing in real time. ‘Madison, what the fuck is this?’
‘You told me the problem with my first story was that it was vague and unsourced. You were right. So I now have the real story, with documentary proof. And it’s way stronger – and way bigger – than I ever believed.’
Reluctantly, his face still a picture of scepticism, he pushed the front door wider, allowing Maddy to step inside without actually inviting her to do so. She went past him, while he remained static, still gazing straight ahead.
She made straight for the big table in the living room, setting up her battered old laptop.
‘Not there,’ he said. ‘Kitchen.’
She did as she was told, following his heavy, sleepy steps into the room, waiting for him to turn on the light. She noticed the children’s drawings stuck to the fridge and decided in that instant that Howard had probably tried, despite everything, to be a good dad – a thought that nearly undid her resolve. She needed to stay strong.
Howard pulled up a chair and nodded for her to do the same. They were both at the kitchen table. She brought out the laptop but he put his hand on hers before she could open it. ‘Is this about Katharine? I heard you were there.’
Maddy wanted to say that of course it was about Katharine, it was about everything, it was all connected and surely he didn’t think Katharine had been hit by accident. But she remembered the piece of paper that she kept in her pocket for this exact purpose, the note from Jane Goldstein. Alex Katzman, Analyst. She would not do or say anything to add to that impression.
‘How is she?’ he said, trying again.
‘She’s breathing on her own. She’s alive.’
‘But will she …?’
‘I don’t know. Enrica says the brain scans are not yet definitive. So we don’t know.’
He nodded, a cue to get to the business in hand.
She proceeded to walk him through what she had, step by step and in a voice of studied calm: the evidence that four women had been killed by lethal drugs overdose; the failure of the police to investigate properly and the strong indications that the Chief of Police had been receiving bribes; the association of the drug used in the murders with Garrison 41; the GPS data that linked one specific junior officer with the location of those crimes committed off the base and at the relevant times; the chequered past of that one individual. And finally, the revelation of his identity.
‘Jesus Christ,’ was what Howard said, putting his hand over his mouth. ‘Christ almighty. Christ alive.’ He stood up and then he sat down again. ‘Jesus.’
Maddy said nothing. There was no need. The facts said it all.
Finally, Howard asked her to step outside and wait for him in the family room. He needed time to think. He closed the kitchen door and there were a few moments of reflective silence. And then Maddy heard Howard’s voice, low and intense, speaking on the phone.
Had he called Jane? Or was he going to cut out the middleman and talk to his handler on the base direct? Too crude? How did it work then, she wondered. Clearly Howard Burke did not rely solely on his own instincts, using his judgement alone to determine what would or would not be acceptable to California’s Chinese guests, or else there would have been no need to make a call. Obviously self-censorship only went so far. On the big occasions, there was no ‘self’ about it.
Maddy prepared herself for the ‘no’ that was bound to come at any moment. She was ready for it, with a back-up plan. And if she had to open that particular parachute, she would do so with a clear conscience, knowing she had tried the alternative. No one could say she hadn’t tried.
Howard emerged from the kitchen, carrying two cups of coffee. He put them down on the table and said, ‘You’re going to need that.’
Maddy looked up at him, disbelieving.
‘Why?’
‘Because you’ve got a story to write.’
Leo Harris looked at the menu and concluded there was nothing at this or any other restaurant he felt like eating. Each word on the menu – diner food: oatmeal, pancakes, cream – nauseated him. There was still time to get up and leave. Bill Doran would come here, look around and figure he’d been stood up: a small, but satisfying humiliation.
But Leo knew he would not do it. He had asked for this meeting; he had been desperate for it. Within a few minutes of Madison’s story going live, he had decided this was one of those days when you break the glass and pull the red cord. A state of emergency.
He hadn’t told Berger. He had barely known how to look at him after he found those photographs of the dead women – including Abigail Webb – on the mayor’s phone. Suddenly everything about his boss had unnerved him. Leo found himself studying that election flier photo of Berger and his wife, noticing for the first time how very blonde she was. Was the mayor some kind of fetishist, capable of God knows what darkness? It had taken Madison’s bombshell of a story to dispel those fears.
Except larger, more rational fears had simply taken their place. Which was why he was here and why he had not breathed a word of this meeting to Berger himself. Keep the candidate out of it, maximum deniability. Also, he knew the mayor would disapprove. No negotiating with terrorists, no negotiating with Republicans. It meant weakness.
And now here he was, the old boy swinging through the glass door, pot belly first, in a rumpled, shapeless blue jacket, looking around to find Leo, then giving a raised hand of greeting – the hand clutching a dog-eared file. You’d know Doran was an old-school political consultant from a hundred yards away: shabbily dressed, unhealthy pallor, always clutching reading material.
‘Hi there, boy wonder,’ Doran said, taking the opposite seat in the booth. ‘How’s the sorcerer’s apprentice?’
Same joke every time. Different wording, but the same intention: a reminder of who was once a kid who knew nothing and who had taught him all he knew. Not that long ago either.
‘Thriving, Bill, thriving.’ Leo tried to smile brightly, but it was an effort and he knew Doran could see through it. People – Madison included – always asked him why a certified political genius like Leo hadn’t gone into politics himself. ‘You’re smart, you’re talented. You know all the moves. Why aren’t you the candidate, rather than that jerk?’ Well, this, right here, was the reason. You’d have to eat a plateful of shit and smile like you’d won the Superbowl. That was the job. And moments like this were a reminder to Leo that he couldn’t do it. He wasn’t a good enough actor.
‘So to what do I owe this pleasure, a late breakfast with the child prodigy of California state politics?’
‘You’ve seen the Times?’
‘Yep.’ Doran made a show of looking at the menu, denying Leo eye contact: the non-poker player’s alternative to a poker face.
‘The story’s moved to a new level now, I think we’d agree.’
‘Oh yes, I’d agree with that.’
‘It’s not a joke any more, is what I mean, Bill.’ He reached across the table, touching Doran’s hand. He immediately regretted the gesture: it made him look desperate, like a dumped girlfriend pleading that they give it one more try. But now Doran was looking him in the eye.
‘It never was a joke, Leo.’
‘Sure, but we’re playing with fire now. We both care about this state too much—’
‘Save that for the ad, Leo. What’s your point?’
‘My point, Bill. My point …’ He took a sip of the iced water already placed on the table. ‘There could be riots. There could be pogroms. People now know this city’s been terrorized by the …’ he lowered his voice, though given that this was now the most wide
ly circulated news story on the entire internet, it made no sense, ‘… son of the Chinese fucking president-to-be. There’s going to be rage, Bill. People are gonna need an outlet. A target. We’re hearing shops are already closing in Chinese areas. They’re frightened, Bill.’
‘You mean Chinese-American areas. Unlike you to slip up on that stuff.’
‘OK, very funny, Bill. You can make a joke of this if you like. I think we have a responsibility—’
‘Like I said, Leo. Save it. What do you propose?’
‘A joint initiative.’
‘A what?’
‘The two candidates meet and announce that they jointly agree not to fan the flames of tension at this difficult time for the state of California.’
‘They call for calm.’
‘Exactly. “This is beyond politics. And both my opponent and I agree we will not exploit it for petty, partisan advantage.”’
‘I get it. Where?’
‘Could be on the steps of City Hall.’
‘My dead body. Gotta be neutral.’
‘We could find a venue downtown, it could—’
‘Not in LA at all. That says Berger’s in charge.’
‘All right, then,’ said Leo breezily, surprised this was going so well. ‘Sacramento. Steps of the statehouse.’
‘Goatfuck?’
‘Exactly. Joint goatfuck, the two stand together.’
‘Who goes first?’
‘We can iron out the details later.’
‘Who goes first?’
‘I don’t know, we’ll flip a coin. Are you in?’
‘No.’
‘What?’
‘No, I’m not in.’
‘Is this about going first? Because if it is, I’m sure we could sequence—’
‘No. It’s not about going first.’
‘Venue? Timing?’
‘None of those things, Leo. I was never going to say yes. I wanted to hear you out, was all.’
The 3rd Woman Page 37
