by Finn Bell
It’s hard to believe. Almost too hard but the evidence, which at first seemed to so conclusively prove one thing, now so very clearly proves the other. James Chen, a small, ordinary looking Asian man and his wife, took down some of the most hardened career criminals in the south. Becca Patrick would have a stroke. And then, finally, I ask the one question that’s been gnawing at me this whole time. “Why? Why did you do all this?”
James finally shifts his position towards me, and I steel myself involuntarily in the dark but he only makes his way to sit next to me, trying to get himself further out of the rising water.
Then he says, “It started with William, my son. Andrea and I, we love our children Nick. There’s nothing we wouldn’t do for them. Nothing. You heard the news stories about William?” James asks.
“Yeah,” I answer.
“It’s all true. Yes, we had money and success, but that wasn’t it. I didn’t realise it at the time but our lives were perfect. We had our problems like everybody does but we worked hard, tried to help people, tried do good things, but above all we had each other. Things were good and simple. Then William got sick. The reporters made a big thing about us using all our money to find him a cure but that didn’t really mean much to us. We just wanted our son back. I’d do it all again. And yes, it was harder, life was different when we came back. The only thing left was that little old house in Lawrence.
“There were a lot of changes for the kids to deal with, especially William. He took it very hard and felt responsible, like it was all his fault. We are a proud family. We have history in Lawrence, my family has been there since the 1800s, made ourselves who we are. When we originally came here from China we had nothing. They didn’t even allow my family to live in town at first, they said we were too dirty and poor and Asian. But we worked hard and sacrificed and saved, and eventually the Chens were one of the most successful mining families around here. We had built a better life for ourselves. Our grandparents and great uncles used to tell the stories of how we changed our lives. Of how we could find gold better than anyone else. And William, he believed it all. He was so sick for so long and when he finally got better he had all this energy, this hunger for life. He was sixteen and strong and he wanted to change things,” James says, the warmth of memory in his voice.
“This was one of our original mines,” James continues. “My grandfather made a map long ago, him and his father. Both the known and the secret mines. William found it among boxes of keepsakes. He felt bad about his cancer, about us spending all our money. He decided to try and look for more gold himself, just like his ancestors. We didn’t know at the time, all this came out later. Too late. I don’t know when he started coming to this place, but at some point he met the Black brothers here. William told me one day he was already in the mine when they showed up, carrying boxes of drugs. I think they had planned to hide the drugs here. They dragged him out and William said he thought they were going to kill him but Remu recognised him from the news stories and figured out who he was.”
It makes sense, I think. The gangs are dangerous but they try to avoid attention where possible and killing William Chen after all the recent media coverage would have created a public uproar.
“Then Remu and his brothers did something else instead. They drugged him. We think they used a combination of heroin, cannabis and other things. Kept him here for two days, pumping him full of drugs. Then they just let him go. They even drove him back to Lawrence. They dropped him off at the edge of town, near the school. My daughter Bella saw it all. Strangers throwing her brother out of a car and onto the street like he was trash. She helped him home,” James says as his voice rises in anger.
Figures, I think. Heroin and fentanyl most likely, and synthetic cannabis. If you were an absolutely heartless bastard that’s what you’d use. They would have known what they were doing too, give him low doses but in quick succession, keep him hydrated, don’t let him sleep or eat and two days would be just about enough. Most people think addiction is a choice, like it is with alcohol or smoking. At first that may be the case but some drugs are a whole lot worse than others, and on the severe end of the scale, like using a combination of these drugs, you could get someone dependent after maybe four or five doses.
With these drugs there’s a physical component to the addiction; it’s biology, it’s not just down to simple will power to stop anymore. It’s a popular method used in human trafficking, especially with sex slaves, because it’s a way to control people.
Then I realise I actually know exactly when it happened. I remember the missing person’s report for William Chen. Maud said he was found the next day after being lost in the woods.
“Angus Wu knew didn’t she? But she covered it up,” I say, thinking back to what the doctor had told us.
The Chen family paid to put her through medical school, she grew up with James’ father and even delivered William as a baby. The police log was closed on the missing person report and the reason stated for William’s disappearance was that he had become confused after experiencing side effects from medication. It makes sense too; you love your son, who has already survived a cancer scare and then he suddenly goes missing for two days. He must have been in pretty bad shape when his sister brought him home. Of course you take him to the doctor right away.
“Yes,” James says. “Angus wasn’t exactly sure what they’d used but she explained to us what had happened. She wanted to have him admitted to hospital for treatment but William was adamant he didn’t need to go in. He’d just won a big scholarship to go to university and he was afraid that if any word of this got out it would jeopardise it. We tried to tell him that wouldn’t happen but he was frantic, yelling, not himself, he almost became violent. Agnus didn’t want to risk sedating him, not knowing how many drugs were still in his system, so in the end we took him home.
“I still think about that decision every day. We should have listened, should have taken him straight to hospital, but he was so scared. And after what he had just been through we didn’t want to put him through that too,” James says.
“And the next day he seemed so much better,” I say, already knowing how it would have happened.
“Yes, he seemed more like his old self. Angus agreed to help him at home in Lawrence, to keep it quiet. I wanted to go to the police but William kept saying no, said he wouldn’t tell them anything. I think it was about more than the scholarship, I think he felt ashamed. Didn’t want people to know. And he seemed so fragile. The past few years he’d been through so much, and then this happened to him. I couldn’t bear forcing him so Andrea and I decided to wait until he was stronger, give it some time, and when he was in a better state of mind and was ready we’d go to the police,” James says.
“Only that didn’t happen, did it?” I prompt.
“For a while he seemed like his old self again. But things changed so fast. Every time we brought up going to the police he broke down completely. We had huge arguments about it. He simply refused to talk about it, insisted that he wouldn’t say anything to the police. It’s like he wanted to act like it never happened.
“We talked to him about seeing someone, a therapist or something, but it just caused more fighting. He was still seeing Angus regularly and she said he was doing better. As the weeks went by we eventually decided to stop pushing him, to wait for him to come to terms with it and come to us about going to the police when he was ready to.
“I don’t really know when it changed. Maybe a month after it happened. He started struggling at school, not seeing his friends. It’s like he slowly became a different person, always quiet, quick to anger. He wasn’t really eating or sleeping. That’s when we took him to see a therapist and it all came out. He’d gotten more drugs from somewhere.
“We got him treatment even though he didn’t want it. Kept it all confidential. Over the school holidays we took him to a rehabilitation centre. We thought about going to the police then, without him, but what could we say on our own? J
ames wouldn’t testify and was now choosing to use illegal drugs. We were worried they would arrest him. We didn’t know what to do anymore. Anyway, he stayed there for six weeks and it really did seem like it worked.
“When he came back he still saw Angus and the therapist but it didn’t last. He started having outbursts and his sisters were scared of him. Then he started cutting school and staying out late. It was a nightmare. He still looked like our son but it was like there was a different person in there. William was just gone. And he had money, he was getting it from somewhere. We didn’t know what to do.
“We were trying to get him into another treatment program at a private hospital. The therapist said it was the best one in the country, but you had to pay and we needed time to save up the money. Then one morning Andrea found drugs in his room and confronted him. He hit her, right in front of me and his sisters. We struggled then, and I never meant to hurt him but I was so angry and I hit him, I hit my son. He ran outside, yelling that he was never coming back,” James says.
I don’t really want to hear the rest, but I know what happened. This is the part where, as Becca Patrick said, even worse things happen to good people who bad things have already happened to.
James has a far-away tone in his voice when he continues. “We followed him out of the house. I remember it so clearly. I was ahead of Andrea, she was calling after him but he never looked back. Not once. Just kept running. I don’t think he even saw the logging truck. I know he never turned his head. And I knew. I knew the instant it hit him that he was dead.
“Everything changed right then. My boy was gone. He didn’t feel anything, I’m sure. He was just gone. He went under the wheels. I… I went and picked him up but I couldn’t recognise his face anymore. And he seemed so small, so light, and I couldn’t help thinking, this can’t be happening, this isn’t my son, because he’s so happy and good and strong. This…”
“I’m sorry James,” I say.
“That’s when I realised William didn’t really die when he was hit by the truck,” James says. “He died months ago, here in this mine. Our mine. These people killed him. They took him and they scraped out every bit of love and hope inside him and gave the empty shell back to us.
“I picked him up off the road and carried him back into the house. I put him in his bed. I don’t know why I did that,” he says.
* * *
“I’m not sure if it was the next morning or a few days later when I came into the kitchen to see Bella yelling and pointing at the TV,” James continues. “Andrea and Kylie were crying. There was a piece on the news about Remu Black and Bella was yelling, ‘That’s him, that’s the man from the car, the man who left William at the edge of town’.
“At first I didn’t understand what she was talking about, then I realised I was looking at the face of the man who helped kill my boy. I can still remember the news story. It was about how Remu Black had again been acquitted, this time failing to be convicted for murder. The story went on to list the gang family, all the suspected crimes and how Remu had never once been convicted.
“Bella was yelling, ‘We should do something Dad! We should do something!’ And I realised she was right. But what could we do? We had no proof, no evidence. My daughter saw someone drop off my son at the edge of town. That was it. But I saw the look in my daughter’s eyes and I knew I had to do something. I’m her father, I am William’s father. I had to make things right, but I didn’t know what to do.
“I started by learning about the gang and about the Black family, about Remu. It wasn’t hard, there’s a lot of news coverage about drug busts, illegal guns, suspected murders. I come from the IT industry so I was careful, used public Wi-Fi and masked my browsing on a phone I paid for with cash, nothing linking back to me. That’s when I started learning that these people live in a different world. I had still considered going to the police up to that point but when I read how often they got away with things I gave up on that idea. The more I found out about the gangs and about the Black family, the clearer it became that the law couldn’t do anything to stop them.
“These men could do what they wanted to anyone and still walk free. The gangs even controlled things in prison, so that when someone actually was convicted he was kept safe, kept comfortable. This doesn’t seem right. This isn’t justice. It isn’t fair. They took William. I have always tried to do the right thing. Tried to be good. My family have been so fortunate, this country gave us so much. But I didn’t know how to live by the rules anymore and make things right, make things be ok again. I didn’t know what to do.
“Then the final straw came a few weeks after William. My daughters had gone back to school by then and they came home in tears. Kylie said there were men selling drugs to the older teenagers at the sports fields after school, and she saw him there, Remu Black, sitting in a car.
“My daughters, my babies, they had this look no matter what I told them. Like they didn’t believe me anymore. I felt like I couldn’t make things better and I can’t tell you how bad that feels. I remember thinking that it hasn’t stopped, not at all. Because we’re not special, we don’t even matter. These men can change our whole lives forever, take our son on a whim, but to them it’s nothing. It’s just another day and nobody can do anything to them.
“That’s when I decided. I knew what I had to do. At first I only talked to my wife, then eventually we talked to the girls. We all agreed. We felt the same way, that we needed to make things right again. We knew who they were and we made a plan, we were careful,” James says.
With a sinking feeling I realise that of course they had to include the kids. On the night it all happened they brought Remu Black and the other men to their house and sedated them. Then James and Andrea tied up and blindfolded their own kids. Probably rehearsed the lies carefully one last time. Everything planned out, a place for everyone. Like those named coffee mugs hanging on their hooks in their kitchen. Then they set all of this in motion, to make things right again. I can picture it but it remains hard to believe.
And yet also not hard at all.
I’ve met plenty of parents who have lost their kids. Suddenly dead and gone because of some criminal with a sick need for more – more sex, or drugs, or money, or whatever. I’ve looked in those parent’s eyes, seen the brothers and sisters left alive clinging to each other.
What would you do if you lost a child that way? I wonder. If you knew they died badly, far too young, too scared and in pain. Knowing that for them there’s no ok afterwards, no happy ending, just this. What if you were sure you could get away with it?
What would you do if you were given the man who did it, on his knees, gun to his head? If you knew how slim the chances were of him ever being convicted. If you knew he wasn’t going to change or ever feel sorry, that he enjoyed doing it and would do it again as soon as he got out. If he was smiling unrepentantly, looking up at you, confident that you can’t do anything to him because good, normal people never do. Would you pull that trigger?
“Sam Black, you brought him here?” I ask, knowing the final pieces now, knowing it all.
“Yes, I did the research and knew what kind of people these were. I wanted him to see it like I did, to feel what I felt. I wanted him to see his own son die in front of his eyes. Andrea’s a nurse and she does shift work at the hospital so it wasn’t hard to get word to him. Tell him exactly how and when to get out undetected, where to go. We had a plan, but then Remu escaped and got away from me on the way here. I caught him again but we ended up taking much longer to get here than I intended originally.
“By the time we got here Sam Black was already dead. I saw him lying there on the other side of the stream. I considered going over so I could show Remu his father’s body but in the end I didn’t. There didn’t seem to be any real point. These people won’t change, won’t listen or ever feel sorry. They don’t even think there’s anything wrong with how they live or what they do. And there had already been so much violence and killing. I just wan
ted it to be over. I wanted all of them to be dead.
“So instead I brought Remu into the mine. I thought it was right somehow. This is where he did what he did to my son. This is really where he killed William, so this is where I would kill him. I hid the dynamite here earlier. The plan was to leave their bodies down deep and blow up the tunnel. It’s old and caving in anyway; I reckoned it wouldn’t take much to bring it all down. Remu Black would finally be gone and this would just be a forgotten blocked-up mine. Everything would be ok again,” James finishes.
“But then we showed up,” I say.
“I was about to kill him. I’d already untied him, I even had the shotgun to his head when you came around that corner. I saw the light and I panicked. I thought maybe it was another gangster and I fired. You shot Remu and he ran off down the tunnel. I wanted to go after him but then the cave-in happened.
“It was an accident. I know I must have caused it with that gunshot but it wasn’t part of the plan. I still had the lamp and I used it to find you. I thought it would be another gangster but it was you, and I saw you were a cop. I had to help you. I was scared then and thought that somehow you’d figured out what I had done. But when you came to I realised you didn’t know. That you followed Sam Black here. Please, you must believe me. I did all this and I’m not sorry. I’m happy Sam and Remu and all the others are dead. They deserve to die. But I never wanted anyone else to get hurt.”
