As she grew older, her form became even more exquisite. Her body lengthened and became lithe and hard. Her fingers could flutter like graceful butterflies, her hair was thick and dark and seemed alive in its own movements. Her skin was smooth and unblemished. Her eyes—light brown—were captivating, capable of overwhelming and luring others into her lair as irresistibly as any siren, capable, too, of cruelly dismissing anyone who dared to venture, unwanted, into that same lair. As she went through her teens, her expertise in shin yi became even greater. She exalted in the most difficult moves: The Pouncing Lion, The Twisting Grasshopper, The Stinging Wasp. She mastered it all. Everything she touched, everything she tried, she mastered. And when her own master decided that she had become arrogant, that she was not in proper control of her pride and her emotions, she mastered him, too. She remembered the movement she used to break his spine: it was her own creation, her first work of original art, and she named it Shattering Glass. She could still see the look of surprise on his face. And she could still conjure up the enormous feeling of pleasure it gave her when he pleaded silently for her to end his pain by ending his life. She obeyed him one final time. A quick jab: The Kiss of the Scorpion.
No, Silent Oak was not difficult at all. Not for her.
She was Li Ling.
She could do anything.
Several hours before dawn was due to break, she felt the breeze rustle past her. She smiled—and only her lips moved; even her forehead did not crease—because she knew it was not the breeze. It was another perfect and beautiful form of nature. It was Togo.
Ling had not seen him, but she had felt his presence. He would not be seen unless he wanted to be seen. Togo lived in the shadows. He moved as if carried by air. So she waited, knowingly, confidently, to see how he would reveal himself. And then the shadows moved and he appeared before her, as if created from a sliver of smoke.
She looked into his eyes. There was no need for words. They did not communicate with words. They communicated with their souls. Sometimes with their bodies. Always with love. But rarely with words.
They had been trained together. Neither ever knew their parents or where they had come from or why they had been picked for such an honor. They were taught that the past did not matter. Nor did the future. All that mattered was the present and their training and their obedience. When she was a child, she thought of Togo as her brother, but when she turned fourteen, she looked at him as if seeing him for the first time and realized he was as beautiful as she was and as well trained. Their minds had been as one for many years, and then one day she no longer thought of him as a brother and their bodies joined together as well. She loved Togo fully and completely; he was the only person in the world to whom she was truly attached. Sometimes the mere thought of him caused an onrush of desire that could make her dizzy. At night they would lie together naked, entwined, and he would whisper how great their power was, how magnificent their strength was now that it was combined. He would tell her that the two of them made one whole being. That they were equal halves forming something perfect.
She knew that what he said was, in part, true.
But she knew one other thing, too: They were not equals. She had no equal.
She knew well that she would never love anyone the way she loved Togo.
And she knew even better that one day she would destroy that love when she revealed her superiority. The time would come when she would kill her other half to prove that she was indeed a whole all by herself.
Ling saw Togo’s eyes move now, just a shift—no one else would have even noticed—and then he was gone again. For a moment she thought she had only imagined his presence, that he hadn’t ever appeared, but she could sniff his fragrance lingering in the wind, and she knew that he had not been an apparition. He had been real.
The smile was gone from her face now and she was all but invisible again in the shadows. Time was once more standing as still as her rigid body.
And then she knew she had to move.
The door to the house was opening, just as they had been told it would. It was hours before the break of dawn and the only brightness on the street came from the stars above. When the man stepped out of the house, a crack of light escaped from inside. She saw his features for a moment, the pale skin, the glint of rust in his brown hair. She saw the fear in his eyes and the weakness he wore like a mask.
He had an overnight bag strapped over his right shoulder and as he stepped toward the street, he looked left and then right, as if this cursory search would somehow guarantee his safety. It was safe to smile again, silently, so she did, knowing that he would see nothing and that his safety was far from guaranteed.
He crossed over onto her side of the street, was only a few feet away from her. He stopped, as if sensing something. But still he saw nothing. She willed herself to be invisible and her will was strong because he looked right at her, shrugged as if taking himself to task for imagining things, took one more step forward . . .
And that was when his world melted.
Pain did that to people, she knew. Although she couldn’t imagine the kind of pain he was experiencing so rapidly and unexpectedly.
Togo came up behind him, unheard and unseen, and his right leg kicked out in an exquisite variation of The Hissing Cat. His heel connected just above the man’s right heel and Ling knew bone and tendons were immediately shattered. The man had enough strength left to scream and he began to, but that’s when she moved, one elegant, long finger jabbing down into his carotid artery. It was a graceful movement, and she allowed herself to feel pleasure from its perfect execution. She took satisfaction, too, in his immediate silence. The scream that was going to force its way through his lips was strangled in his throat, unable to escape. His eyes bulged, and for a moment she felt like giggling because he looked like a frog about to explode. Ling whirled and her foot snaked out, a foot as sculptured and lovely and smooth as her perfectly shaped hands. And just as deadly. It was a wondrous quick jab the foot made, clipping the man’s back. If she had kicked harder, he would be paralyzed. Instead, he was just filled with white-hot flashes of extraordinary pain. She could render men helpless with her beauty, she knew. But she much preferred doing it with pain. She gloried in his agony.
It didn’t take long for Togo to pull the van alongside the man’s prone body. She was able to lift him effortlessly into the back. Togo questioned her with his eyes: Is he still alive? The wordless question hurt her. And made her angry. Of course he is still alive, her eyes answered back. I do not make mistakes.
They’d been told to take him alive.
There were questions he needed to answer.
So she would make sure he lived until he answered them.
Then there were no more instructions. Then she could do whatever she wanted.
Then she could smile and giggle and laugh and let her body experience all the pleasure she allowed it to have.
Once the questions were answered, the fun could begin.
If there was one thing Li Ling loved more than her lifelong companion, Togo, it was when she could stop standing still and start having fun.
7
Justin was surprised to hear his father’s voice on the other end of the telephone. He looked at his watch, but his eyes weren’t focused yet. He rubbed them with his thumb and forefinger. It didn’t help. The room looked as if it were swaddled in gauze. When he spoke, it sounded as if his vocal cords had rusted.
“Are you hungover?” Jonathan Westwood asked.
“No,” Justin said. His sight was coming back. He could make out the numbers on the telephone. He glanced at his watch, and a faint groan escaped through his lips. He hadn’t even slept half an hour. “I was working all night.”
He could feel his father’s hesitation. To ask about his job might somehow signal that he approved of it, which Jonathan Westwood most certainly did not. But because their relationship had relatively recently been repaired—after having been strained, even nonexistent for quite a f
ew years—to avoid any comment at all might be perceived as too hostile. In the end Jonathan went for civility. “I hope things are all right. With your work, I mean.”
Justin couldn’t help but grin just a little bit. Times had certainly changed. “There was a murder here last night,” he said. “The investigation’s going to start this morning.”
“So what were you doing last night?”
“Thinking. You know that’s the tough part for me.”
Jonathan Westwood didn’t respond. He certainly didn’t argue the point.
“Big family reunion coming up?” Justin said. “A Westwood outing to Disney World?”
“Excuse me?”
“I was just wondering why you called, Dad.”
There was another pause from the Rhode Island end of the phone. For a moment, Justin thought he was going to receive bad news. Then he realized that couldn’t be it. His father would not have hesitated giving bad news. He wouldn’t have liked it, but he wouldn’t have shrunk from it. Justin wondered what in the world would make his father hesitate. And he realized immediately. The elder Westwood needed his son’s help.
“Is something wrong?” Justin asked.
“There might be.”
Again the long silence. Then Jonathan broke it with the words “Victoria needs your help.”
Justin’s head was suddenly clear. But his chest was just as suddenly so full he could barely breathe. “She asked for my help?” he said.
“No. She has no idea I’m calling you.”
“What would she say if she knew?”
“What do you think she’d say, Jay?”
Justin decided it was better not to answer that question. He knew what her response would be: She wouldn’t say anything. She would just stare at him accusingly. Bitterly. “What is it she needs my help for?” is what he said instead.
“Ronald’s missing.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean he’s missing. When Victoria woke up this morning, he was gone.”
“Maybe he went to the office.”
“She woke up at six o’clock.”
“Did he come home last night?”
“Yes.”
Justin gave a half laugh. “So he left early. Maybe he went to the gym. Why do you think something’s actually wrong?”
“Because Victoria says something’s wrong.”
Now it was Justin’s turn to be silent. When he spoke, all he said was “Yeah. Okay.” After the next silence he said, “Look, there’s nothing I can do yet. You have to give this twenty-four hours. People just don’t go missing from six to seven in the morning. You can’t send up a flare when he’s been gone for an hour.”
“He was gone before six.”
“Okay, two hours. Or three. It’s crazy.”
Jonathan Westwood didn’t have to say anything for his son to tell the deep level of his disapproval. Justin sighed.
“What would you like me to do, Dad?”
“I don’t know. This is what you do for a living.”
“No. What I do for a living is get involved when a crime is committed. There’s no crime here. There’s nothing here.”
More silence. Justin was beginning to understand where he got his own poor communication skills from.
“Have you called Billy?” he asked. Billy DiPezio was the chief of the Providence police force. He’d been Justin’s rabbi when Justin was a young cop. Billy was, in fact, the reason Justin became a cop. He’d watched Billy in action—a friend of Justin’s had been murdered and he saw Billy hunt down the killer, refuse to give up until he’d brought the man to justice. It had been amazing to watch—someone who did exactly what he set out to do, who let nothing interfere with his ultimate goal. As Justin got to know him better over the years, he discovered that Billy DiPezio never let anything interfere with his goals. The complications came because Chief DiPezio’s goals were often a tad hazy. “Hazy” being the nicest possible interpretation. Justin always described his mentor as either the most honest crook in the world or the most crooked honest man there was. Billy was a great cop. He just didn’t see any reason why, whenever he did a good job, he shouldn’t get something out of it, too. Which he almost always did.
“No,” Jonathan Westwood said into the phone. “You’re the first person I’ve called.”
“Here’s what I can do. Billy would laugh if you called him about this. But he won’t laugh at me. Well, he wouldn’t laugh at you either, come to think of it—you’re too rich. But he wouldn’t do anything after he hung up on you. I’ll get him to do something.”
“What?”
“Whatever he can. Talk to Vicky for one thing.”
“I don’t think Victoria will have anything to say.”
“Well, it’s going to be very difficult to find out anything if the only person who thinks there’s something wrong won’t talk about it.”
Another moment of silence. Jonathan was not used to being chastised. But Justin’s words had their desired effect. “I understand,” Jonathan said. “I’ll tell her to talk to Billy. Thank you.”
“Dad,” Justin said. And before his father could say a word, he finished with, “I’m glad you called me. I know it wasn’t easy. I know what you think of what I do.”
“I hate what you do.”
“Yes, I know.”
“But you’re very good at it, aren’t you?”
“Depends who you talk to,” Justin said.
Father and son hung up the phone at almost precisely the same moment. Justin held the cordless receiver in his hand. He thought about the relationship he had with his father, the years they hadn’t spoken to each other, the pain they’d caused each other, the pleasures they’d each received from their rapprochement. He thought about his mother, how thrilled she’d been when he showed up on their Providence doorstep three years ago, Deena and her young daughter in tow. He thought about how helpful his father had been the year before, when Justin had been in the midst of searching for the solution to the mystery of Midas. He thought about how strange families were, how tenuous their ties, how mutually destructive and supportive. Mostly Justin thought about Victoria LaSalle. His wife’s younger sister. He closed his eyes and pictured the expression on Vicky’s face at Alicia’s funeral. He saw the look of scorn that burned in his direction. A look that, over the course of the service, turned to cold fury and then to deep hatred. It was a look that made it very clear the younger sister blamed Justin for the death of the older sister. Blamed him and would never forgive him.
Justin understood the look very well.
It was the same look he saw on his own face when he looked in the mirror.
He’d spent years running away from that look. He knew he would never truly forgive himself. But he’d learned to live with the guilt and the loneliness. To compartmentalize it so it no longer took up the biggest share of his emotions and his life.
He wanted to help Victoria. After all these years, he wanted to change the expression in her eyes and on her lips.
But Justin knew he couldn’t help her. At least not right now.
He had a job to do first.
So he put the phone back in its base and prepared a pot of coffee. Then he went upstairs to wake up the woman in his bed, gently kiss her good morning, and begin to make his plans to find out who had murdered her husband.
8
Larry Silverbush, Mayor Leona Krill, Justin, and Abigail Harmon met in Justin’s office at the East End Harbor police station. Silverbush went to the chair behind Justin’s desk as if it were his own and waved at the others to sit down. Justin decided to let the slight go unmentioned. He also decided not to bring up the subject of the DA’s comb-over. When it came to hairstyles, Justin had not seen too many even remotely in the same league. It looked as if Silverbush had been walking down the street and a dead squirrel had been dropped from a twelfth-floor window onto his head.
As oblivious as he was to Justin’s displacement, that’s how solicitous the DA was of A
bby. He was a politician after all. And dead husband or no dead husband, she was still an important member of a rich political family, so she was going to see law enforcement at its absolute best. Or, at the very least, at its absolute politest. Silverbush began by thanking her for coming in and offering his condolences, which she accepted passively but graciously.
“I spoke to your father-in-law a little while ago,” he said, after her quiet murmuring of thanks.
“I spoke to him this morning, too,” Abby told him.
She had. She hadn’t wanted to but Justin insisted. She did her best to explain that Herbert Harmon would not want to hear from her, had never in his life wanted to hear from her, but Justin said very quietly that Herbert Harmon had also never lost a son before. He said that it was her responsibility to call him. She was as close to a child as he had left. So she called, reached him at his apartment in the city. She spoke to him from Justin’s bedroom while he remained downstairs to give her some privacy. When she came down the steps, she was crying. Justin had never seen Abby cry before. He’d seen her angry and peaceful and bitchy and happy, but he’d never seen anyone come close to wounding her the way H. R. Harmon had in a five-minute phone call.
“He’s very concerned about you,” Silverbush said. “I assured him we’d do everything we could to help you get through this . . . situation. And I assured him, as I will now assure you, we will find the person who did this to your husband. You have my word on that.”
“Did my father-in-law tell you that he already knows who’s responsible for my husband’s murder?” Abby asked.
This threw Silverbush. Justin tucked away in his mind the fact that this man didn’t have much of a poker face. The best the DA could come up with in response to Abby’s information was, “Um . . . no, he . . . um . . . didn’t say anything like that.”
“I’m surprised. He’s convinced I did it.”
“I’m sure you’re incorrect about that, Mrs. Harmon.”
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