Kowloon Bay (Abby Kane FBI Thriller Book 3)

by Ty Hutchinson

  The Chans sat quietly sipping tea and munching on cookies until the doorbell interrupted them.

  “Don’t tell me that inspector is back,” he moaned.

  “Calm down.” She stood up to answer the door.

  Mr. Chan motioned for his wife to remain seated. “Sit down, I’ll get it.”

  He trotted down the long hall through the kitchen and made his way to the foyer. The doorbell sounded again. “Hold on, I’m coming,” he called. I hope it isn’t that Inspector. I have no patience for her. He reached for the doorknob and pulled the door open.

  It wasn’t Inspector Choi standing outside. It was Po Po.

  Chapter 44

  By the time we took the ferry back from Macau and arrived at our hotel, it was seven p.m. and the kids were nodding off. We had spent most of the day exploring the historic center and a few of the casinos, which were more like entertainment centers. I had Ryan and Lucy bathe quickly and then got them both tucked into bed in Po Po’s suite.

  With that out of the way, it was Abby time. I drew a bath, intent on becoming a prune—a perfect primer for a good night’s sleep. No sooner had I sat down in the warm, sudsy bathwater and leaned back than my cell phone rang. I’d had the foresight to take it with me into the bathroom, as I hadn’t heard from Po Po all day. She was still extremely active and able at her age, as was Liu, and they both knew Hong Kong so I wasn’t worried about them ending up in a dangerous situation. I just assumed they were two old friends making good use of their time together. I looked at the screen and recognized Leslie’s number. Good news, I hope.

  “Hi, Leslie.”

  “Hi, Abby. Are you back from Macau?”

  “I am. The kids are napping, and I just sat in a bath. I’m stewing myself.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “If you’re checking to see if I heard from Po Po, I haven’t. Have you?”

  “No, I haven’t, but that’s not the reason why I’m calling.”

  “Oh?”

  “Mind if I stop by?”

  “Tonight?”

  Leslie paused slightly before speaking. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m guessing you have a new development in your case?”

  Leslie promised to explain everything to me when she arrived. She had already left the office when she called. That meant I had about thirty minutes to enjoy my bath, which was sort of hard considering bad news was on the way.

  My thirty-minute bath ended up being more like twenty minutes. I still had a robe wrapped around me when Leslie told me what Lee had discovered.

  “A brother? Are you absolutely sure?” I whispered.

  “We got a positive match with the dental records.” She removed two pieces of paper from her purse and handed them to me. “Ethel Yee is listed as the birth mother on both birth records.”

  I saw her name. I saw Peng’s name. Yet I still found it hard to believe. How could so much have been kept from me, from the children? More and more, I felt like a stranger to Po Po and to Peng. They shouldn’t have kept those things from me—we were family. It didn’t need to be hashed over and discussed all the time but these secrets…What had happened that was so terrible they felt the need to keep this part of the past buried? More importantly, how did Rong end up dead and buried in Peng’s building?

  “This must all be very surreal to you because it is to me,” Leslie said. “I’ve known Po Po and Peng just as long as I’ve known you. Believe me when I say I’m just as dumbfounded. I imagine you feel duped, because I sure would.”

  “Duped? ‘Betrayed’ would be the word I would start with.” I threw the pieces of paper on the bed and rubbed my forehead. “This is so effed up.”

  “And it’s not just you. The kids are also part of it.”

  “Exactly,” I said, my frustration causing my voice to rise much louder than I had intended. Not wanting to wake the kids, I motioned for Leslie to follow me to the balcony and then closed the sliding door behind us. “That crap angers me the most. As far as they know, they had the perfect father.” I stood with my back against the balcony railing and my arms folded across my chest. I pressed my lips together in a hard line as I stared off to the side, away from Leslie. I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks.

  She came over to stand next to me and rested her arms on the balcony railing. “Po Po never hinted at having another child?”

  “Nope. She’s a woman of few words to begin with—well, at least with me—but I would have remembered if she said anything remotely close to conveying that she had another kid.” I turned around and stared into the moonlit bay.

  “Same with Peng?”

  “Absolutely. The name Rong Yee is foreign to me. I was under the impression that Peng was an only child.”

  “I wonder if Peng knew,” Leslie said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked while I adjusted the belt on my robe.

  “Well, maybe Po Po never told Peng that he had an older brother. According to the birth records, they were only a year apart. He could have been given up for adoption, or he could—”

  “Stop, Leslie.” I said firmly. “You found Rong’s body in a building that Peng built. I find it hard to believe that he didn’t know he had a brother, but yet somehow said brother ended up entombed in his building.” I squeezed my hands into balled fists over and over.

  “I’m sorry, Abby. I’m not trying to upset you. I’m trying to remain positive about everything.”

  “Too late. We need answers, and Po Po needs to come clean. She knows more than she’s letting on.” I looked at Leslie. “You don’t just give birth to a child and never talk about it.”

  I headed back inside the room and dialed Liu’s number on my cell phone. It rang ten times before I disconnected the call. “It’s after eight. It’s not that late, but I would have thought they would be home by now.”

  “She’s the next step, Abby. We need to find her, and we need to find her right away.”

  Chapter 45

  Earlier that afternoon, Po Po and Liu sat in armchairs opposite Gregory and Edith Chan in the same small sitting room Leslie had visited the day before. The Chans, of course, offered no tea.

  “I should have known this would come back to haunt us,” Mr. Chan said in his native language, making no attempt to hide the disdain in his voice.

  “What do you mean haunt you?” Liu demanded.

  “Knowing the both of you,” he shot back. “Your kind with your tentacles that never cease to stop grabbing. And what are you doing here anyway? This isn’t any of your business.”

  “You think you are so much better than everyone,” Liu spewed. “I still can’t believe you two produced a daughter that was nothing like the monsters you two are.”

  “Monsters?” Mrs. Chan responded with a sarcastic laugh. “We don’t have any bodies hidden in the walls of our home.”

  Mrs. Chan and Liu proceeded to lob a series of insults back and forth until it became a cackle of harsh tonal bells.

  “Stop it! Stop it now!” Mr. Chan shouted. He placed an arm against his wife’s chest; she had leaned forward in her chair, ready to pounce at Liu. “All of this shouting won’t solve the problem at hand.”

  Mrs. Chan sat back, but her piercing eyes said that she was nowhere near finished with her verbal assault.

  “He’s right,” Po Po agreed. “We have to figure out what to do.”

  “We?” Mr. Chan’s voice shot up an octave. “You need to figure out what to do.”

  “We aren’t even sure it’s Rong’s body. Nobody knows,” Liu said.

  Mr. Chan waved off Liu’s answer as he shook his head. “Come on, let’s not play stupid. Of course it’s Rong’s body.”

  “You don’t know that,” Po Po said sternly.

  “Where is he then? Huh? Have either of you seen him, perhaps had lunch with him?” His wide-eyed gaze moved back and forth between Po Po and Liu. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. No one has seen him for nearly fifteen years. It’s no coincidence that he disappeared the sam
e time that building was built.”

  “We didn’t put him there,” Po Po said.

  “Neither did we,” Mrs. Chan countered.

  “You see, that’s the point I’m trying to make,” Po Po said. “We all assumed that was his body in the building because of his disappearance but none of us knew for sure. Admit it. We all thought Rong simply left Hong Kong. No one here seriously thought his disappearance was the result of him being killed.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Chan remained quiet, sulking in the loveseat. The truth had been exactly what Po Po just said. All four of them assumed Rong had finally gotten fed up with both families and left them for good. It wasn’t until the body was discovered that any of them grew suspicious.

  “Ethel, this is all your fault,” Mr. Chan said with a low, throaty growl. “If your son hadn’t gotten our daughter pregnant, we wouldn’t be here right now.”

  “Oh, come on,” Liu said. “You act as if Peng took Mei by force.”

  “Maybe he did,” Mrs. Chan suggested.

  “This isn’t about placing blame,” Po Po interrupted. “It’s too late for that. The problem is that body.”

  “Well I don’t think Edith and I have anything to worry about,” Mr. Chan said with a dismissive shrug. “You, Ethel, are one to worry. Rong is your son.”

  “Why must we do anything?” Mrs. Chan questioned. “If they don’t identify the body, there’s nothing to worry about, and this all goes away eventually. Why help the police?”

  “And if they do identify that body, they’ll know right away that you two and Ethel were lying,” Liu said, throwing her arms up.

  “We weren’t.” Mrs. Chan pointed at her husband and then herself. “The body was in Peng’s building.”

  “He didn’t do it,” Po Po snapped.

  “How sure are you of that?” Mr. Chan leaned forward resting his arms on his thighs. “He said he would take care of Rong. I think his exact words were, ‘Don’t worry. I can make him go away.’”

  “Yes, yes. I recall him saying that,” Mrs. Chan followed with quick nods.

  Po Po shook her head slowly. There was no denying that Rong was her son, and Peng did say he would take care of him. At times she regretted telling her son to leave and wondered if she had made the right decision. Could Rong have been saved?

  For most of their childhood, Peng had followed the straight and narrow path, never following his older brother. When Rong was ten, he broke into a neighbor’s apartment and stole a few pieces of jade jewelry. He was caught in the act, and the residents of the building bullied Po Po into moving out. Rong had largely been the reason they moved around so much.

  Po Po tried everything she could think of to tame him, but it seemed nothing worked. He showed her no respect and did what he pleased. He was his father’s son.

  Eventually Po Po ordered Rong to leave and told him to never show his face to them again. Rong couldn’t have cared less. He left them with a smile, eager to do whatever he pleased without judgment.

  For a while, the situation remained that way—until Rong found out Peng had become engaged to a girl whose family had money. Being an opportunist, he took it upon himself to tell the Chans he would make it known to all their high-society friends about the black sheep that would join their family unless they paid him off. But the Chans didn’t play ball.

  “If you two would have only given him what he asked for, it could have been settled. You could afford it,” Liu said.

  “It never would have ended.” Mr. Chan’s dark stare settled on Liu. “As soon as he spent all that money, he would have come back with threats for more.”

  “Gregory’s right,” Po Po said begrudgingly to her friend. “Rong would have never stopped.”

  At the time, Peng hadn’t any idea of Rong’s devious plan, but when Po Po told him, it set him off like she had never seen. When she realized she might have done the wrong thing by telling Peng, it was too late. “No, Mother, you can’t stop me,” Peng had told her. “Rong has brought this family nothing but trouble and shame. I will inform the Chans that I will handle Rong. It’s been decided.”

  “Look, Ethel, you can’t blame us for thinking that Peng might have done this,” Mr. Chan said. “After he said he would take care of it, Rong disappeared. Can we all agree on that?” He looked around the room, and no one objected. “I’ll admit that Edith and I didn’t ask how because we honestly didn’t want to know. Why open Pandora’s Box when it’s not needed? We just wanted him out of our lives. And maybe that’s where we’re guilty.”

  Po Po kept her head down.

  “Ethel, do you know something the rest of us don’t?” Mr. Chan prompted. “Because now would be a good time to tell us.” He leaned forward in his chair. “Do you know what Peng did to make Rong disappear?”

  Chapter 46

  Dr. Jian Fang had been working around the clock on the mummy case since day one and had decided for once he would leave the office before ten p.m. It was a little after eight on a Friday night, and most of the staff had left the office already.

  Cho, the night security guard who manned the reception desk in the lobby, took a break from the report in his hand and looked up. “It’s good to see you get out and have a life,” he said to Fang with a smile. “You work too hard.”

  Fang smiled and gave him a friendly wave as he exited the building. He had parked his car on the ground level of the two-story parking structure next door. There weren’t too many cars or people left at this time of the night. Just as Fang reached his silver Toyota compact, two masked men dressed identically in black appeared from the shadows.

  It took Fang a moment to comprehend the situation. By then it was too late. One of the masked men struck him in the face with a hard right punch, snapping his head back. Fang’s knees buckled, and he fell onto all fours. He tried to get back to his feet, but the punch had him dazed, and he fell to his side. He raised an arm to shield his face, but another punch found its mark.

  “Take my wallet. It’s in my back pocket. Take everything,” he said, hoping the muggers would leave him alone if they got what they wanted.

  Instead, two strong hands gripped him by the front of his shirt and jerked him to standing. “Come on. Move it, old man,” the masked man growled

  The two men escorted Fang back to the building. He hoped that Cho would still be at the front desk and able to help him or at least notify the police. However, his hopes were dashed when he saw two more men, dressed the same, attacking Cho. The guard had no chance against them and fell to the tile floor unconscious.

  “Meet us in the lab when you’re finished here,” the man holding on to Fang said as they passed by the reception desk.

  Fang turned back and watched Cho’s body being dragged away. “What do you want? I told you to take everything in my wallet,” he pleaded as he touched the tender area above his eye. When he pulled his hand away, his fingers were covered in blood. “Why are you doing this? Tell me right—”

  The man slapped Fang in the back of the head. “Stop with the questions. Just keep moving.”

  They shoved Fang down the hall and into the elevator, riding it to the fourth floor.

  “Come on,” the man said, jerking Fang out of the elevator.

  The man dragged Fang down the hall by his arm until they reached a door with a security lock on it. The other man patted Fang’s pockets until he found a security card and swiped it through the reader, unlocking the door.

  Inside, the masked men scanned the stainless steel autopsy tables, finding what they were looking for at the far end of the room. Spread out on the last two tables were skeletal remains.

  The man holding on to Fang sat him down on a stool. “Watch him,” he said to his partner. He then walked over to the bones, picking one up with his gloved hand. “Are these the two bodies the police found in the building?”

  Fang said nothing, and the man next to him slapped his head. “Answer the question.”

  “Yes, those are the remains.”

  Right a
round then, the two masked men who Fang saw attacking Cho downstairs appeared. They were carrying two large duffle bags and a couple of plastic jugs.

  The one standing by the remains waved at them. “Over here. Take everything on these two tables.”

  The two men then proceeded to scoop up all the body parts into the bags. They weren’t too concerned about how they handled the bones, some of them crumbling onto the table and floor

  “Hey, what are you doing?” Fang cried out. “Don’t! You’re destroying the evidence.”

  The men ignored his pleas and continued until they had everything in the bags. One of them produced a small hand broom and did his best to sweep the remaining pieces into his bag.

  “Are there any more body parts from the building in here?” the leader of the group asked. He leaned down close to Fang. “Don’t lie. It’ll be painful if you do.”

  “That’s all of it. I swear.”

  The two men who gathered the bones then picked up the jug and poured the liquid contents over the table and then washed it down.

  The man holding Fang removed a knife and pressed it against Fang’s throat. “You’ve conducted tests on the DNA. Where are those kept?”

  “No, please don’t.”

  He pressed the knife a little harder against Fang’s neck until the doctor pointed to vials in a refrigerated storage unit. After the men finished washing down the tables, they removed all of the vials, dumped them open into a sink, and then doused them with the liquid from the jugs. Fang could do nothing but watch as the evidence was destroyed.

  Chapter 47

  Leslie and I were still talking on the balcony when her cell phone rang.

  “Choi speaking. You did? Where?” Leslie mouthed to me that her men had Po Po. “Yes, uh-huh. Hold on.” She covered her cell phone with the palm of her hand. “They’re at Liu’s apartment. I’ll have my men bring Po Po to headquarters.”