The Curator: SG Trilogy Book 2 (Abby Kane FBI Thriller 8)

by Ty Hutchinson

  “Don’t bother. I believe you’re with the FBI.” She winked. “We don’t get many visitors dressed in suits.”

  “Oh, okay,” Kang mumbled. They shook hands.

  “You were expecting a man, weren’t you?” Sammy said. “My real name is Samantha Hill, but everyone calls me Sammy. Have a seat, please.”

  She sat behind the desk with her legs crossed. She was wearing black leggings, a black top, and a gray blazer. A gold pendant on a gold chain hung down between her breasts. Her bleached-blond hair was straight and cut into a bob that met perfectly with the bottom of her slender jawline. The only makeup Kang noticed was a warm-brown lipstick covering her plump lips.

  “Thanks for taking time to speak with me, Ms. Hill.”

  “Please call me Sammy. Hill is my ex’s name, and I detest him, but I’m too lazy to do the necessary paperwork to revert back to my maiden name. So, how can I be of help?”

  “I have a few questions for you and for some of your students as well,” Kang said.

  “Oh, what a letdown. I thought you were here just to see me.” She slouched and let out a huff through pouty lips.

  “Well, I do need your help,” he added.

  She sat up straight, clasping her hands together. “I’m happy to help with your investigation. That is why you’re here, right?”

  “Yes. Last night Johnny Ellis had a speaking engagement here.”

  “Handsome devil, I must admit.”

  “We have reason to believe that he was abducted last night and held captive before being released early this morning.”

  “Oh my. Who on earth would want to hurt a gorgeous man like that?”

  “Uh, that’s what we’re trying to figure out. We know Mr. Ellis left here shortly after his speech and headed over to Playtime to have drinks with a few of your students.”

  Sammy’s eyes shot open. “He did? That son-of-a-bitch told me he had to hurry home—he whined about having an early meeting the next day.”

  “You do know he’s married, right?”

  She shrugged. “I heard some rumblings about that.”

  “Do you know if he arrived here with anyone, or had invited someone to the engagement?”

  “Not that I know of, but I suppose he could have.”

  “What about a parking lot? He said he had driven and that he had parked here.”

  “We have limited parking behind the building, but we provided him with a parking pass.”

  “Could you check to see if his car is still parked there?”

  Sammy made a quick call. “One of the students will look. Are there any other questions I can answer?”

  “That’s all I have at the moment. I’d like to speak to these students in particular. He showed her the list. “If that’s okay.”

  The phone rang, and Sammy answered. “I see. Thank you, dear.” She returned the handset to its cradle. “His car is still parked back there. So I guess he never made it back… which means if he left the bar alone and never made it back to his car, he was abducted somewhere between the bar and here, unless he made a detour to another bar or met a lady on the way or whatever.”

  “Do you have cameras in the parking lot behind the building?”

  “We don’t. I suppose someone could have been waiting for him back there. There’s no lighting at night.” Sammy looked at the notepad Kang had produced with the three names written on it. “It might take me a while to track them down in their classes. You can wait?”

  “It’s fine. Why don’t you show me the parking lot in the meantime? I’d like to take a look at his vehicle.”

  Kang exited the building after Sammy and squinted as the sun beat down on them. Sammy hadn’t been exaggerating earlier. There was room enough for only eight vehicles in the gravel lot.

  “That’s his car.” She pointed at a black BMW sedan.

  Kang grabbed Sammy’s arm. “Until I can get a forensic team here, I need to keep everyone away from the car. Is that something you can arrange?”

  “Sure.” Sammy made a call from her cell phone.

  Kang approached the car slowly, carefully scanning the gravel. He walked completely around the vehicle, looking for signs of a scuffle, but the gravel wasn’t that forgiving—it barely registered footsteps.

  The windows were tinted, and Kang looked for odd prints, like an entire hand, on the window. He didn’t notice any. He removed a pair of latex gloves from his jacket, snapped them on, and checked if the car was locked. It was.

  “Anything suspicious?” Sammy called out from the spot where she was waiting.

  Kang ignored her and peered into the vehicle through the front windshield. The interior was clean. A thermos cup was sitting in the middle console. In the back seat, Kang spotted a shoulder bag. He straightened up and walked back to where Sammy stood.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “I think I’ll hold my observations until after the vehicle is processed.”

  Upon their return to Sammy’s office, they found three students milling about—two young men and a woman. They all looked to be in their early twenties.

  “Agent Kang, I’d like you to meet Evan Guzman, Nick Hunter, and Lydia Murphy.”

  “So you’re, like, a real FBI agent?” Guzman asked.

  “I am.”

  “Wow, that’s so cool.”

  “Why don’t you four continue this conversation under the circus tent?” Sammy suggested as she pointed to the conference table. “I have calls I need to make.”

  Guzman led the group over to the tent, his excitement over meeting Kang still obvious.

  “Are we in trouble?” Lydia asked as she pulled out a chair and took a seat.

  “Not at all, but I’m hoping you can help me.”

  Kang briefly explained to them what had happened to Ellis without getting into too much detail about the investigation.

  “Oh my God.” Lydia clasped her hand over her mouth.

  “Shit, man, that sucks,” Hunter said. “Mr. Ellis is such a cool dude. Why would someone do that?”

  “Yeah, man,” Guzman followed up. “Everything seemed fine too. We had a great time at the bar with him.”

  “Did he mention where he was heading?” Kang asked.

  “He said he had to go home because he had an early start the next day,” Guzman said. “He bought us one last round of drinks and left.”

  “I feel so guilty,” Lydia said. “I thought of asking him if I could help him get back to his car, but I didn’t.”

  “Why? Did he look drunk or incapable of finding it?”

  “No, but you know… he was the guest speaker for the evening, plus he paid for all the drinks. We should have walked him back to his car. If we had, he wouldn’t have gotten abducted.”

  “Oh shit. Now I feel guilty,” Hunter said.

  “Me too,” said Guzman.

  The three students had all resorted to staring at the conference table.

  “Hey, you couldn’t have known,” Kang said. “This isn’t your fault. Put that thought out of your heads. Now, it’s my understanding that you three stayed until the bar closed. That was two a.m., right?”

  All three nodded.

  “And after that, where did you guys go?”

  “Well, I went home,” Lydia said. “I caught a cab right outside.”

  “Nick and I live together,” Guzman said. “But we walked to a donut shop up the street to get something to eat and then took a cab from there.”

  “I see,” Kang said. It was clear to him the three students were a dead-end. He gave each one a business card. “If you remember anything else, please call me.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Kang waited at the school until CSI arrived and had the car and the area around it secured. He hoped their investigation would shed some light on this. He even briefly wondered if spending all this time on an unofficial investigation was worth it. He hoped so.

  By the time he returned to his SUV, he found a parking ticket on his windshield. He shook his
head and grabbed the paper before getting into his vehicle. His stomach grumbled as he turned the key in the ignition, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten all morning. He glanced at his watch. Lunchtime. He debated stopping off for a bite before meeting up with Abby. Of course, he knew Po Po would be there, and most likely, she would insist that he sit and she feed him. The decision was a no-brainer.

  When he reached Abby’s home, he parked his vehicle behind her Charger in the driveway. He knocked on the door, and Po Po answered.

  “Kyle, come inside. You eat? I fix you something.” She closed the door and pointed toward the dining room. “Sit, sit. You look hungry.”

  Who was he to refuse the sage advice of his elders?

  “Where’s Abby?” he called out.

  “She go out,” Po Po shouted back from the kitchen.

  This surprised him. “With Xiaolian?”

  “Yes.”

  “But her car is outside.”

  There was no response from the kitchen. Kang’s stomach growled in anticipation—she wasn’t one to keep serving the same dishes. It was always a culinary delight every time he stopped by.

  As he waited, his thoughts turned from eating back to the abduction investigation. He had spent the entire morning following up on the Ellis lead. There were dots that connected Ellis and the other three men, but nothing substantial. Am I drinking the Kool-Aid, or is Abby really on to something?

  The roadblock for Kang was Abby’s end goal—connecting the abductions to Xiaolian.

  He decided then he would not question whether she was right or wrong. He would continue to gather information and let that be the deciding factor. Either there would be enough to support her theory, or there wouldn’t be. Worst-case scenario, they would actually discover something criminal about the abductions. That’s not a bad thing.

  Kang was in the middle of demolishing his meal when Abby and Xiaolian returned. Po Po had whipped up fried rice, fried pork with green beans and bitter melon, and a healthy bowl of scallop soup. The soup was left over from the day before.

  “So is this what you do when I’m not around?” I asked.

  Kang mumbled something, as he had just scooped a large portion of rice into his mouth.

  “I’m taking a shower. I’ll catch up with you in a bit.”

  I stopped by the kitchen. Po Po was already preparing plates for me and Xiaolian. “Smells great. We’ll be back in a jiffy.”

  When I returned downstairs, fresh and clean, Xiaolian was sitting at the dining room table, shoveling food into her mouth. Kang had already finished eating. An overly stuffed plate sat waiting for me. I was a little embarrassed, but it was no more or less than the amount Po Po always served me. I’m such a pig.

  “Xiaolian said you guys went for a run.” Kang leaned back in his chair and sipped his tea.

  “We did. She’s in great physical shape.” I filled him in on the route we’d run and her workout at the park.

  “Forty-five sit-ups in a minute?” He reached over and poked Xiaolian’s belly. “Abs of steel, this one.”

  She giggled as she chewed her food.

  “That’s impressive. How many did you do in a minute?” he asked me.

  “I wasn’t the one being tested,” I said in between chews.

  After lunch, Xiaolian headed up to the third floor to watch television while Kang and I sat on the back porch so he could fill me in on his day.

  “Everything was the same? The memory loss, the waking up in a weird location, a missing-persons report?” I asked.

  “No missing-persons report, but everything else matched. What little he could remember was definitely outside of that block of time where he was ‘missing,’ if we have to call it something.”

  “If he left the bar after midnight and was discovered the next morning around seven, that’s definitely a shorter amount of time than the others,” I said.

  “Yeah, maybe whatever is happening during this time is taking place faster now.”

  “CCTV footage wasn’t much help?”

  Kang pulled up the video on his cell phone and handed it to me. I watched it multiple times. On the last pass, I noticed something just as Ellis apparently disappeared from the frame. “It looks like he doesn’t actually leave the frame.” I turned the phone around so Kang could see the screen. “Look, you can barely see his feet.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “It looks like he stopped.”

  “Waiting for the light?” I asked.

  “I doubt it. There are no streetlights at the next intersection. So if he’s waiting at the curb, it’s not for a walk signal.”

  We watched the video over and over.

  “What happens at the end? Is that another foot right there?” I asked.

  We advanced the footage frame by frame, and it looked like another pair of shoes appeared next to Ellis’s. We couldn’t be absolute, as the footage had been cut off right at that point.

  “It could just be a blip in the video,” Kang said.

  “See if the owner can send you another video that plays out longer. If that’s another foot next to him, then someone was with him that night. What about the students?”

  “They were able to confirm that he was at the bar until the time Ellis said he left. That’s it.”

  I glanced at my watch. “You haven’t heard back from the lab?”

  “Not yet. I’ll follow up with them. They should be done processing his vehicle. But this foot seems like something.” Kang took his phone back from me. “I should talk to Ellis again, see if his memory has sharpened.”

  Just then, Kang’s phone chimed. “The bloodwork is back from Ellis.” He stared at his phone’s screen, reading the message. “Propofol was present in his blood.” He looked up from his phone.

  “This is a connection to Xiaolian,” I said.

  “She wasn’t abducted.”

  “Maybe not here, but where she came from… she might have been. It can’t be coincidental. Xiaolian exhibited the same memory loss as these men. She recovered the same way, and propofol was found in her system.”

  I filled Kang in on the conversations I’d had with Xiaolian since bringing her home.

  “If what she’s saying is true, then yes, it sounds like an orphanage, though it’s a strange one.”

  “I don’t think it’s an orphanage,” I said. “It’s run like a school, a really organized school.”

  “So maybe she was sent to a special school—you know, one for gifted children.” Just then Kang snapped his fingers. “Wait a minute. You know what this really could be—a sports school, the ones that crank out Olympic athletes. In China, children as young as two are sent to these schools to be raised as Olympic champions. It becomes their life. It’s all they know. They live, train, and are educated there at the school. I think they see their parents only once a year, if they’re lucky.”

  “Hmmm, it certainly fits the mold better. And it explains why Xiaolian is so book smart but knows nothing of the real world.”

  “With her training, maybe she was being groomed to be a wrestler. It would make sense,” Kang said.

  “You’re right. Her grappling skills are highly advanced. Add her top-notch conditioning, considering she probably hasn’t had a proper workout for at least a month to a month and a half. Okay, say it is one of those sports schools. Why and how did she end up on the doorsteps of our FBI office? And more importantly, why does she have my DNA?”

  “I still don’t know the answer to your first question, but the second one might be because someone noticed you at the police academy. You did graduate at age nineteen, right?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s not common for men, let alone a woman. It could also be when you were a child. Were you good at sports?”

  I shrugged. “My father taught me everything I know. It’s not like I could jump into a boxing ring with one of the boys. And I wasn’t into team sports, since I would have to be competing with women. I was a tomboy growing up. Look, I’m not discounting
what you’re suggesting. It’s totally possible.”

  “Whether you want to believe it or not, you probably impressed some parent or coach, and they stole your DNA. The pressure to have successful children is intense in China. A lot of parents rely on their children to take care of them in their old age.”

  Kang tilted his head as he looked at me, his brow crinkled.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You seem disappointed by what I’m saying.”

  I didn’t respond. I thought my connection with Xiaolian was something bigger, but everything Kang said could easily explain a lot about her.

  “Did you think it was more than that?” he asked.

  I huffed out a breath. “Yeah, I did, but maybe it is what you’re saying. It makes complete sense. Some overzealous parent or coach hired a scientist to steal my DNA in hopes of producing offspring that would have my physical abilities.”

  “Not to mention your problem-solving skills. Not everyone can look at a problem the way you do. It’s why you’re such a damn good detective. And I mean it when I say that.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate the pat on the back. But last time I checked, I didn’t see detectives competing in the Olympics.”

  Kang shrugged. “Just saying.”

  “Maybe it’s all in my head,” I said. “Hearing the spy angle had me thinking that perhaps our connection was something bigger. I don’t know what it could be or why I would wish that—it just seemed like it was possible. You know what I mean?”

  “I do.” Kang leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out. “There is something X-Files-ish about it.”

  “Let’s talk to Xiaolian,” I said.

  We both headed up to the third floor. She was on the sofa, lying on her side, watching a program about strangers living together in a house and having their every move and conversation filmed and broadcasted.

  “What do you think of that show you’re watching?” I asked. “Is it like the place where you lived?”

  She shook her head. “These people aren’t doing anything except lying around and complaining.”

  Kang and I both got a laugh out of her response.

  “But we had cameras like they do.”