THE GIRL IN THE WINDOW (The Inspector Samuel Tay Novels Book 4)

by Jake Needham

  “Are you sure it was a gun you heard?”

  The desk clerk looked at Tay like he was an idiot.

  “BANG!” he said again, making a little gun out of his thumb and forefinger. “BANG, BANG. Like that. Two times. I good citizen. I call police. I call right away.”

  The metal door slammed open and Sergeant Lee dived through it in a crouch, her revolver thrust out in front of her. She saw Tay talking to the clerk and she straightened up and tilted the barrel of her gun toward the ceiling, but she didn’t put it away.

  The clerk’s face twisted in puzzlement. “What the fuck?”

  Tay ignored the clerk. “Where’s Kang?” he asked Lee.

  “He said he heard shots and came in ahead of me.”

  Tay glanced back at the clerk. “Another police officer came in here right after the woman ran out?”

  The clerk nodded very slowly and pointed to the staircase. “He go up.”

  “Call it in,” Tay said to Lee.

  “Yes, sir.”

  She pulled out her phone and Tay turned back to the desk clerk.

  “The woman who ran out. Was she a guest here?”

  “No. She come maybe one hour ago. Say she meeting brother in room 201.”

  “Who’s in room 201?”

  The clerk bent forward and reached below the counter top. In the silence Tay could hear the clicking of a keyboard.

  “Uh…it say here Mr. Tan.”

  “Of course it does. What does Mr. Tan look like?”

  “Not know,” the clerk shrugged. “Room rented last night. I not here.”

  “So this woman went up to Mr. Tan’s room?”

  The clerk nodded.

  “What happened after that?”

  “Nothing happen until other men come. Two men first. Then four more.” The clerk’s eyes flicked left and right and then settled. “They have guns. They say they police, but I no think they real police.”

  Tay wasn’t sure what that meant, but he let it go.

  “What happened then?” he asked.

  “They say they here to see Mr. Tan, too. They go upstairs. Three on elevator. Others take stairs.”

  Tay figured Mr. Tan’s room had to be pretty full by then.

  Sergeant Lee put her telephone away. “Fast response cars on the way, sir.”

  BANG!

  The noise came from somewhere above them and it sounded like a gunshot. All three of them reflexively looked up, but of course they saw nothing but the ceiling.

  “Robbie is by himself,” Lee said. “I’ll lead, sir. You’re not armed.”

  Tay pointed a finger at the desk clerk. “Stay here. When the other officers get here send them to 201 and tell them that CID is already up there.”

  The clerk nodded, but neither Tay nor Lee saw him nod. They were already running for the stairs.

  At the first landing, Lee paused and put her ear to a metal door that had the number 1 painted on it.

  Silence.

  Tay felt like an idiot just standing there, but without a weapon he knew he was only in the way.

  Lee turned the knob as quietly as she could and cracked the door enough to peer into the hallway. It appeared empty so she gave the door a hard shove and moved through it in a crouch, her revolver out in front of her in a two-handed grip. She swung the barrel left and right, but the hallway was deserted in both directions.

  She started back to the stairs, but Tay put a hand on her arm. He walked along the hallway and examined the numbers on the door until he found 101 all the way at the end. It was well past the elevator and at least sixty feet from the stairs.

  “The rooms are probably arranged the same way on every floor,” he said. “When we come out of the stairs on the second floor we should be far enough away that they won’t hear us.”

  “If they’re in room 201.”

  “It’s all we have.”

  At the second landing, Lee went through the same routine again: first her ear to the door, then a tiny crack to peer through, then a push and a lunge into the hallway with her pistol in front of her while making herself as small a target as she could. But this time Tay didn’t just stand there. He came through the door right behind her.

  This hallway wasn’t empty like the first floor hallway had been. In fact, it was so crowded that for a moment Tay couldn’t process everything he saw there.

  About fifty feet up the hall a man sat on the floor with his back to the wall. He was dressed in brown pants and a short-sleeved red and white Indonesian-style batik shirt with open-toed leather sandals on his feet. He was tall and thin with long black hair brushed straight back. Even from a distance, Tay could see the man’s breathing was labored and he clutched his left arm awkwardly across his chest.

  The two men who had been watching the hotel from the Toyota were now squatting in front of the man with the batik shirt and one of them was holding a plastic bottle of water to his lips. Behind them, the three men from the silver van stood in a knot talking. Two of them had handguns out and held them down by their legs.

  Halfway between the stairway door and the group of men at the other end of the hall was another man. He was lying face down on the dirty brown carpet with a handgun next to him and he wasn’t moving.

  It was Robbie Kang.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  WHEN TAY AND Lee burst out of the stairwell, the men in the hallway all swiveled toward them and an instant later they had five handguns trained at them.

  “Police! Police!” Tay and Lee screamed almost together. “Put your guns down and get on the floor!”

  That brought smiles all around as well as a few chuckles. Nobody put his gun down, and nobody appeared to be considering getting on the floor.

  One man detached himself from the group and walked slowly toward Tay and Lee. He was older than the others, and he had a shaved head, a blocky face, a muscular body, and big, slightly pointed ears that stuck straight out from his head. Tay thought there was something familiar looking about the man. Did he know him from somewhere? No, he didn’t think so. Then all at once it hit him. The man looked like Bruce Willis with Chinese eyes.

  “Now who the fuck are you?” Bruce Willis demanded, swinging his pistol from Tay to Lee and back again.

  Tay ignored him, walked straight to where Kang was lying on the floor, and dropped to his hands and knees.

  “Robbie,” Tay called softly, “can you hear me?”

  Kang didn’t reply, and he didn’t move.

  Tay took Kang by the shoulders and gently rolled him over. He saw the jagged hole above Kang’s left eye just below his hairline. An exit wound. The entry wound must have been lost in Kang’s hair. The bastards shot him in the back of his head.

  “Call an ambulance, Sergeant!”

  Tay tried not to look at the raw wound bubbling blood. Kang’s pupils were already dilated and he knew what that meant. He reached out and rubbed a streak of blood off of Kang’s face with his hand.

  “Nobody is calling anybody,” Bruce Willis snapped. “Stand up and put your hands on your head.”

  Tay never took his eyes off Robbie Kang. “I’m Inspector Tay and this is Sergeant Lee from CID.”

  “I don’t give a shit who you are or where you say you’re from. Stand up and put your hands on your head!”

  Tay looked over his shoulder at Bruce Willis and slowly rose to his feet. He kept his hands away from his body, but he moved slightly to his left to block the man’s line of sight to Lee.

  “My warrant card is in my wallet in my right back pocket.”

  Behind him Tay heard Lee murmuring into her phone and he knew she hadn’t backed down. Good girl! he thought. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t too late for Robbie after all.

  “Turn around,” Bruce Willis snapped at Tay.

  Tay turned very deliberately and lifted his eyes to Lee just as she pushed her phone back into one pocket.

  “Ambulance is on the way, sir.”

  When Tay’s back was to him, Bruce Willis stepped fo
rward, placed the muzzle of his gun against Tay’s neck, and shoved his free hand into the right back pocket of Tay’s trousers. He pulled out Tay’s wallet and flicked through it with his thumb until he found the warrant card. He plucked it out between his thumb and forefinger and let the wallet drop to the floor.

  “Hey!” Lee snapped. “Show a little respect.”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  Lee shook her head, but she shut up.

  The man studied Tay’s warrant card for a moment then he opened his fingers and let it fall to the floor near Tay’s wallet.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  Tay started to turn around.

  “Hey, I didn’t tell you to move!”

  Tay turned around anyway and lowered his hands.

  “I don’t give a fuck what you told me. I’m an inspector in the Special Investigations Section of the Criminal Investigations Department of the Singapore Police. How dare you point a weapon at me? I demand you lower that gun and identify yourself at once.”

  “You demand, huh?” Bruce Willis snickered. Then he glanced around at the men jammed in the hallway behind him. Right on cue they all snickered, too.

  “It looks to me, man, like we’re the ones in a position to do the demanding here, not you.”

  Tay took a step forward and leveled his finger at the man’s face. “What are you going to do? Shoot a CID inspector? Even you ISD goons aren’t that stupid.”

  “I never said I was ISD.”

  “You didn’t have to. You’re not smart enough to be anything else.”

  “You’ve really got a mouth on you, don’t you, man?” Bruce Willis looked at Tay for a long moment, and then he grinned. “You got anything else funny to say?”

  “Yeah. You’re under arrest.”

  “Under arrest?” the man snorted. “Yeah, that’s a good one all right.”

  “I’m placing you under arrest for the attempted murder—”

  “John,” Bruce Willis called out, his voice rising over Tay’s, “bring the van around to the side door. Henry, get up here.”

  There was a shuffling around of the bodies in the hallway. One man walked past Tay and Lee to the stairs and headed down, and another stepped up next to Bruce Willis.

  “Just a damn minute,” Tay growled. “If you think you going to—”

  “Cuff the asshole,” Bruce Willis snapped to the guy standing next to him, jerking his head at Tay. Then he glanced at Lee. “Her, too. Take her gun.”

  The man stepped forward, spun Tay around, and shoved him into the wall. With professional ease he quickly frisked Tay. Then he produced zip-ties from his pocket, slipped one around Tay’s wrists, and pulled it tight. He pulled Lee’s gun out of her hand, shoved it in his waistband, and did the same to her.

  Tay started to turn back around, but a big hand pushed him roughly into the wall and held him there.

  “Sit down, both of you. Put your backs against the wall.”

  Tay saw how pointless it would be to resist so he looked at Lee and nodded, and they sat down.

  Bruce Willis looked back over his shoulder. “Pick up our guy and help him downstairs. Put him in the van when John gets it around.”

  At the other end of the hall two of the men helped red batik shirt to his feet. He looped his right arm over the shoulder of one of the men and they moved unhurriedly past Tay and Lee to the stairs and started down.

  “You’re not going to get away with this,” Tay said.

  “There’s nothing to get away with,” Bruce Willis said. “We were never here.”

  “Then who shot my sergeant?”

  “No idea, man. How could I know?” Bruce Willis gave Tay a grin that made him want to jump up and rip the man’s face off. “Since I was never here.”

  Tay heard car horns out in Serangoon Road where frustrated drivers were trying to get past the flurry of accidents blocking the road and from somewhere far away came the wal-wal-wal-wal of approaching sirens.

  “Henry, secure their feet. Then strap them to each other. That will hold them until their buddies get here.”

  The man put his foot against Tay’s shoulder and pushed him onto his side.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Tay yelled back at him.

  The man didn’t bother to answer. Instead he produced another zip-tie and whipped it around Tay’s ankles, hauling it up tight before Tay could react. After securing Lee’s feet the same way, he turned them both on their sides, pushed them together, and used two more zip-ties to lace their bound hands and feet to each other.

  “Let’s go, guys,” Bruce Willis said.

  Tay and Lee watched in silence as one by one the men trooped past them and into the stairwell. Bruce Willis brought up the rear.

  “Why did you have to shoot Robbie?” Tay shouted just as Bruce Willis went through the door to the stairwell.

  To Tay’s surprise, the man stopped. He held the door open with one hand and looked back at Tay.

  “We didn’t shoot him.”

  “Now I suppose you’re going to tell me that Suparman was responsible for shooting him?”

  Bruce Willis took a deep breath and pursed his lips.

  “So you know who that is,” he said.

  “Yes, I know who that is. I thought ISD was supposed to be taking him down. You look to me more like you’re protecting him.”

  “You should have stayed out of this, Inspector.”

  “I don’t even know what the hell this is.”

  “I’m not sure I do either, man.”

  Bruce Willis started to say something else, but he hesitated. He stood there in silence holding the door open and looking at Tay for several long moments. Tay just waited.

  “Look,” the man finally said, “we didn’t shoot anybody. We brought Suparman up here to see his sister like we were supposed to, but she wasn’t waiting in the room where we had been told she’d be. She was behind us when we came out of the elevator and she had a gun. We weren’t ready for anything like that. Maybe we should have been, but we weren’t. She shot Suparman and was down the stairs before we could react. Then that other guy came busting in here and Suparman shot him as he tried to take cover. He must have figured it was somebody who was here to finish him off.”

  “That is the dumbest story I’ve ever heard,” Tay said. “You don’t really expect me to believe that, do you?”

  “That’s what happened.”

  Tay shook his head and looked up at the ceiling.

  Bruce Willis appeared to consider Tay’s skepticism thoughtfully for a moment.

  “Look,” he said, “don’t take this the wrong way, man, but I don’t really give a fuck whether you believe me or not. I got a lot bigger problems than that to worry about right now. My boss is going to gut me for this.”

  “Who’s your boss?”

  Bruce Willis chuckled. “Nice try, but you’re going to have to do better than that.”

  “You can count on it. I’m going to do a lot better than that. I’m coming for you, and I’m coming for your boss, and I’m coming for his boss’s boss. I’m going to roll up the whole mess of you for this.”

  “Tough guy, huh? You don’t look so tough lying there on the floor.”

  “Just be patient. You’ll see me again, and when I do you’ll be the one on the floor.”

  Bruce Willis made a little clucking sound with his tongue.

  “You don’t know what you’re getting into, man. Take my advice. Stay out of this. Stick to giving out traffic tickets. This is big boy stuff, and the big boys will grind you up and spit you out.”

  Then Bruce Willis stepped through the door into the stairwell and let the door slam shut behind him. The sound was the exclamation point on his disdain.

  The ambulance attendants burst out of the elevator a few minutes later pushing a gurney stacked with equipment cases. One of them grabbed the closest of the cases and went straight to Kang while the other one produced a knife and cut away the zip-ties binding Tay a
nd Lee together.

  “Either of you hurt?” he asked, looking from one to the other.

  Lee rubbed at her wrists and shook her head.

  Tay didn’t even do that. Instead he pushed himself up on his knees and looked at the man bent over Kang. The man raised his head and caught Tay’s eye. He didn’t say anything. He just gave a small shake of his head. Tay sank back against the wall and closed his eyes.

  The hallway quickly filled with patrolmen from the arriving fast response cars. The patrol sergeant who had command of the scene recognized both Tay and Lee and shooed the other cops away from them.

  “What happened?” he asked Lee.

  “Somebody shot Robbie Kang.”

  “Do you know who it was?”

  She shook her head.

  “Did you or the inspector see him shot?”

  She shook her head again.

  Tay said nothing.

  The sergeant pointed at the handgun lying in the hallway. “Is that Kang’s?”

  “Yes,” Lee said.

  The patrol sergeant walked over to the gun, got down on his hands and knees, and smelled it without touching it.

  “Sergeant Kang didn’t fire?”

  “If he did, I didn’t hear it.”

  The sergeant looked at Tay as if he was going to ask him what he had heard, but Tay wouldn’t meet his eyes so he looked back at Lee.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “What the hell really happened here?”

  “I’m not sure I know,” Lee said.

  The ambulance attendant lifted a blanket of plain white canvas out of his equipment bag and ripped away the clear plastic wrapping. He spread the blanket over Kang, then stood up and began packing his equipment away.

  Tay and Lee sat without moving, their backs still against the wall. They kept their eyes fixed on Kang’s canvas-covered body. They didn’t want to, but neither one of them could take their eyes off it.

  “I let him go in alone,” Lee said. “I should never have done that.”

  Tay continued staring at Kang’s body. He didn’t reply.

  Lee put her hand on his arm. “Are you okay?”

  Tay just tilted his head back. He looked at the ceiling and said nothing at all.