KOWLOON BAY
Abby Kane FBI Thriller
Ty Hutchinson
Kowloon Bay
Every family has a secret that’s best left alone.
After the murder of her husband in Hong Kong, FBI Agent Abby Kane moved her family to San Francisco as a way to start over. Nearly three years have passed and now she’s returning to her homeland for a family holiday.
In an effort to help her children learn more about their Chinese heritage and remember their father, Abby discovers an unthinkable secret that has her questioning the entire family she married into.
Kowloon Bay explores the well-established practice associated with Asian culture: saving face. To what lengths is perpetuating a lie better than acknowledging the truth?
Chapter 1
Lester Wang muttered a slew of possible excuses before inhaling on the cigarette he held between his stubby fingers. The building demolition he was overseeing was two days behind schedule. On another job it might not have been a big deal, but the profit margins on this project were so thin that any sort of delay would easily affect the bottom line. As the foreman, he and he alone was responsible for keeping to the schedule.
The salty breeze that day kept most of Hong Kong at a steady seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit, even with the noon sun beating down on Victoria Harbor, creating a bed of glistening shingles on its surface. Wang stood alone on the most eastern end of the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront promenade, his eyes scanning the calm waters.
He took another pull on his cigarette, cheeks caving inward, as he struggled to think of a creative way to make up the lost time. The puttering sound from the diesel-driven junks that shuttled passengers between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island filled the air. Add the squawking of gulls and the occasional shouting from fishermen on nearby boats, and Wang had a hard time concentrating on a solution. He gave his bald head a quick wipe with his hand and headed back to the job site.
Until then, demolition had moved steadily on the project, with the top five floors already having been leveled. No heavy machinery or swinging wrecking balls were used. Instead the building was being dismantled with the help of jackhammers, sledgehammers, and good old-fashioned manpower. The rhythmic thumping of the hammers against the slabs of concrete was reminiscent of chain gangs on train tracks.
The developer of the project was due to arrive for an update, which is what had Wang on edge that day. Delivering bad news to the boss was never fun. He shouted at his men to keep up the pace, hoping somehow they would make up at least a day’s worth of work within the next few hours. Wishful thinking.
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A construction worker on the fifth floor dragged a jackhammer over to one of the few remaining load-bearing walls on that level. He lowered his noise-reduction earmuffs and angled the chisel point of the hammer into the seam where the wall met the floor. He widened his stance and braced himself before pushing down firmly against the machine’s handles. The steel tip chewed steadily, sending debris splintering in all directions until a portion of the wall collapsed. A large chunk, the size of a carry-on suitcase, broke free and tumbled off the edge of the building. It fell fifty feet and hit the soft dirt with a dull thump, nearly flattening another worker in the process.
The thin man yelped as he jumped back. Dressed in a blue long-sleeve T-shirt, faded jeans, black sneakers, and a yellow hard hat, he shook his fist at the man and shouted in Cantonese, “You trying to kill me?”
As he turned to walk away, something about the concrete chunk caught his eye. He bent down for a closer look and instantly fell back onto his hands, scurrying backward and nearly twisting his ankle in the process. Embedded in the concrete and staring back at him were two blackened eye sockets of a skull.
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What is it now? Wang thought as he made his way over to the distraught worker, his small potbelly bouncing as he walked over the uneven ground. His cigarette still dangled from the corner of his mouth. “What’s going on? We have a schedule to meet,” he said, tapping at his bare wrist as if he were wearing a watch.
“Look for yourself. That’s a skeleton,” the young worker said defensively.
Wang let out a dismissive breath. He was used to the men coming up with asinine excuses to avoid working harder or longer hours. “What are you talking about? Huh? There’s nothing here.”
“Look closer,” the worker said, jabbing his forefinger.
Wang took a last pull on his cigarette before burying the butt into the dirt with the heel of his boot. He bent down and peered at the concrete chunk, lifting it slightly. His eyes squinted into thin slits. “No way. This is an animal. A dog. Get back to work.” He stood and brushed the concrete dust off his palms.
“Are you kidding? That’s someone’s head,” the confused worker said.
By then, other men on the site had gathered around the questionable chunk of concrete, each one voicing his own opinion of whether the skull was human or animal. It wasn’t until the jackhammer operator who had separated the piece of concrete from the building’s structure yelled from his perch above them that everyone fell silent.
“He’s right!”
“You have an eagle eye?” Wang called out, clearly irritated with this unnecessary delay. Do they plan this crap or just make it up as they go? “You can’t see anything from there.”
“I don’t have to, because the rest of the body is up here in the wall.”
Chapter 2
My eyes shot open from a deep sleep as violent shaking bounced the wooden legs of my bedframe against the hardwood floors. Perfume bottles, facial creams, and cosmetic containers on top of my dresser clanked against each other before toppling over. A framed picture of my family shook off its hook and fell to floor. The pop of glass shattering followed. But what had me frozen in bed, unable to move at the moment, was the indescribable rumbling that seemed to ring out from all directions. The dozen of little rumblings I’d felt since moving to San Francisco did nothing to prepare me for this.
It felt like minutes, but only a few seconds had passed before I came to my senses and my instincts kicked in. The kids. I jumped out of bed, hands outstretched for balance as I worked to cover my nakedness with my robe. Our old Victorian home rocked violently, more than I could have ever imagined it would. Thoughts of the house collapsing, the ground rupturing and swallowing us whole, filled my thoughts. I’m gonna die just like they do in the movies.
This was the big one. The one every expert had been talking about for decades—the earthquake responsible for leveling the entire Bay Area. It would dwarf the one that had destroyed San Francisco in 1906. I had to get to the kids. And in the meantime, I was praying the city’s stringent building codes would keep the house from collapsing.
I grabbed hold of the door handle and pulled my bedroom door open. Once in the hall, I heard my seven-year-old, Lucy, screaming from her room. Before I could take a step in that direction, the bedroom door next to mine burst open and my ten-year-old, Ryan, appeared. Bug-eyed and yelling, he skirted past me for the stairs. “It’s the end of the world. We’re going to die!”
I grabbed him by the back of his shirt and jerked him to a stop. “No, we’re not. Come with me!”
“We have to get out!” he shouted. “The house is going to fall on us.”
“We need to get your sister.”
Ryan wrapped both arms around me as we headed down the hall to Lucy’s room. I kept a hand on the wall for balance as the house continued to thrash us about. When we reached her room, she lay frozen in bed, squeezing Dim Sum, her stuffed panda, tightly against her chest. Tears flowed down her face as she wailed hysterically. “Mommy! Mommy!”
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nbsp; I had anchored her dresser to the wall, but it still jerked enough to cause a few of the plastic snow globes on top of it to fly off and bounce across the floor. This only further ignited Ryan’s screaming, which hadn’t stopped since I grabbed him in the hallway. He continued his prophecy: “We’re going to die!”
I forced him down onto the ground next to Lucy’s bed. “Lie here!”
I grabbed Lucy’s arm and dragged her off her bed and onto the floor next to her brother. “Lucy, everything will be okay. Mommy’s here.”
“Aren’t we supposed to get inside a doorway in an earthquake? We’re going to die here,” Ryan said as his eyes locked onto mine. His face was pure panic.
“We’re safe here.” I lay next to Lucy and wrapped my arms around both of them. “We’re riding this out. It’s like a rollercoaster.”
I had read a lot about earthquake preparedness and survival since our move to the city that was famous for rocking and rolling. One of the first things I did upon our arrival was to pack two duffle bags with the essentials: dry food, batteries, flashlights, and first aid kits. I also stored four cases of bottled water. And as soon as we were fully unpacked, I anchored all of the furniture.
The one piece of information I’d found invaluable had to do with a theory called the Triangle of Life. It was controversial because not everyone agreed on it or accepted it like they did the notion of standing in a doorway or getting under a table. Supposedly it could make survival possible in the event of major structural failure—a pancake collapse. Testing had shown the survival rate for those who sought duck-and-cover positions was nil. However, those who sought an area next to a support structure survived every time.
As we huddled next to the bed, I imagined the pictures in the articles I’d read where people survived in the triangle formed when a structure collapsed over some solid item. The way I figured it, if the house collapsed, the bed would compact, and a survivable space would be created. At least, I hoped so.
None of us said anything as the rumbling magnified, along with the sounds of objects falling throughout the house. A large boom sounded from downstairs. Is that the hutch in the corner of the living room? It was a recent purchase, and I hadn’t gotten around to anchoring it to the wall.
Lucy hadn’t stopped trembling against my chest. She was sandwiched between me and Ryan, who had his back flush against the bed. It seemed like the shaking would never stop. The rumbling was worse though. I had never heard anything quite like it. If I had to describe the sound, I would say standing near railroad tracks while a train passes by would give you an idea of what it sounded like. That, or you could imagine planet Earth shaking a raised fist.
And just when I thought it would never end, it did.
The house stopped moving, and an eerie calm fell over the room. A beat later, I recognized the obnoxious alarms from multiple cars wailing in the distance. This was the first earthquake our family had experienced. Sure, we’d felt small trembles and a little rolling—that sort of seismic activity happened on a daily basis. We would always laugh and say, “Hey, it’s another earthquake.” We had just experienced a rude and extremely terrifying awakening about what an earthquake could really feel like.
I pulled my head back and looked into Lucy’s eyes. Still alive. I looked over at her brother. Still alive. But before I could breathe a sigh of relief, a prickly chill erupted along my spine. There was still one other person in the house who hadn’t been accounted for. My mother-in-law. Po Po!
Chapter 3
“Come, on,” I said, prompting the kids to stand up. The three of us hurried down the stairs. I thought the worst.
Po Po lived in one of the two bedrooms on the first floor of our three-story Victorian. The other ground-floor bedroom was reserved for guests.
“Po Po!” I called out as my foot hit the ground floor, and I pivoted into the long hallway that led to the rear of the house. As we passed the kitchen, I briefly saw that the cabinet doors were open and broken glassware and dishes were scattered across the floor. Dry goods had also found their way out of the cabinets and onto the counters and the floor.
We continued through the hall that led to the rear of the house. Po Po’s room was the first one, just past the kitchen. I crashed into her door with my shoulder, as I wasn’t able to turn the knob quick enough to open it. The second try had me standing in an open doorway looking at her lying still under the covers of her bed. Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead. Please not a heart attack.
Both children were right behind me, each with a hand gripping a part of my clothing. I thought briefly about having them wait outside, but there wasn’t a chance I would be able to pry them off of me. I took a deep breath before approaching her bedside, prepared for the worst.
“Po Po?” She didn’t answer. “Are you okay?” I stood over her and saw no movement in her chest. Shit! I pressed two fingers against the side of her neck. That was when she opened her eyes.
“I not dead,” she said calmly in her broken English.
“Oh, sheesh. I thought you had— Why didn’t you answer me?”
“I was thanking whoever in charge.”
Po Po wasn’t a religious person, but she was quick to acknowledge when a “thank you” was in order. “Are you hurt anywhere?” I asked as I gently pressed the blanket covering her.
“I’m fine,” she said, batting my hand away.
“I was so scared, Po Po,” Lucy said, looking at her grandmother.
“Me too,” Po Po responded.
“I’m glad you’re okay, Po Po.” Ryan leaned over the bed and hugged her.
I gave Po Po’s room a quick once-over. There were a couple of fallen items on the carpet, none of them broken. She had the only carpeted room in the house. She insisted on it.
“Come on, Po Po. Let’s survey the damage. Wait until you see the kitchen.”
I helped her out of bed. She wore a blue nightgown. “It’s bad?” she asked as she slipped her feet into a pair of white house slippers and eased herself off the bed.
“Nothing major, from what I could see. Just a mess. I don’t know about the rest of the house. I think I heard the hutch topple over.”
Before we went any farther, I insisted we all put shoes on. I didn’t need anyone cutting their feet on broken glass. The kids each had sneakers in the shoe holder next to the backdoor. I slid my feet into a pair of running shoes.
Po Po tsked as she stood in front of the open kitchen. She had both hands resting on her waist as she surveyed the room. I flipped the light switch. The power was out, though by then the sun had already risen, spilling enough natural light to see. I picked up a large plastic clock that used to hang on the kitchen wall; it was nearing seven a.m.
“I need to check the gas line and make sure it isn’t ruptured. Lucy, Ryan, stay here with Po Po.”
As I reached the sitting room at the front of the house, my earlier thoughts were confirmed. The hutch had toppled over. The side facing me had splintered open, and there were shards of glass surrounding it, which told me the glass cabinet covers were no more. I had bought the hutch so that Po Po had a place to house her Chinese knick-knacks: porcelain vases, jade sculptures, a few paintings, olive wood and ivory carvings. Nothing of immense value, more sentimental. She had brought them with her when we moved from Hong Kong.
“Holy moly!”
I turned around to find Ryan standing behind me. Considering the situation, he looked a bit ridiculous dressed in his tighty-whities and a light blue t-shirt.
“Man, Po Po is going to be mad,” he said as he approached the hutch.
“Watch out. There’s broken glass in here.”
“Don’t worry, Abby. I know where to step.”
I didn’t mind that Ryan called me by my name and not mom. He was only three when his biological mother passed, old enough to remember her. “I thought I told you to stay with Po Po.”
“No way! I want to see the damage.”
A few seconds later, Lucy and Po Po ap
peared. Lucy clamped her hand over her mouth as she saw the hutch. Po Po tsked even more loudly when she saw the mess.
The large, twenty-by-twenty-inch family portrait that hung next to the hutch had also fallen during the quake. The large wooden frame that encased the photo had cracked open at one of the corners. I could probably fix that sucker with Krazy Glue. That fricking frame had cost me an arm and a leg—more than the photo session. I wasn’t about to dole out cash for another custom job: Note to self: Only order prints in standard frame sizes.
A glass vase that held a week-old bouquet of flowers had fallen off a small table near the front door. The glass was thick so it survived the fall. A few of Ryan’s judo trophies had fallen off the shelves above the fireplace.
He picked one up. “No damage. Tough like me,” he said with a large grin before placing it back on the shelf.
From what I could tell, the first floor was not too damaged, considering the amount of shaking the house had endured. I wondered briefly about my office on the third floor. I headed toward the front door, Po Po and the kids right behind me. Apparently we would all be checking the gas line.
Chapter 4
The four of us exited the house in a huddle. A few of Po Po’s potted plants on the front porch had toppled, and one of the ceramic pots with a jade plant had cracked and spewed black soil. More tsking from Po Po as we walked passed the porch damage and down the front steps.
Our home was a fixer-upper. Over the years, I had completed a bunch of renovations that included replacing the rotted décor pieces on the facade, giving it a new paint job, and treating the termite-infested areas. Most of the work needed was cosmetic. The house had good bones. The previous owners had just let it go. Thankfully, they’d had the foresight to have the house retrofitted to the latest seismic-resistant specifications, which intended for the home to sway horizontally with the rolling of the quake. And boy, did our house roll with it earlier. The seismic retrofitting seemed to have done its job.
Kowloon Bay (Abby Kane FBI Thriller Book 3) Page 1
