“I know, but let’s just see if they’re open to the idea first.”
“Will there be any other agencies involved? CIA?”
“Not yet. We have one of our own embedded in the American embassy. He’ll be your liaison.”
“You mean the guy who’s supposed to keep an eye on me.”
“If you want to call it that, yes.”
“I don’t need a babysitter.”
“Then don’t make a lot of noise while you’re there.”
I spent the rest of the day and most of the following putting together a presentation deck with all the information we had collected, along with a few helpful tips for catching the killers. Our hope was that the respective law enforcement would catch the game’s participants in their city before they completed their Attractions and moved on.
Chapter 8
Songwut Soppipat, known since birth as Artie, weaved his way through the crowded sidewalk along Sukhumvit Road. With a bevy of food carts and merchants occupying the majority of the concrete path, foot traffic had been relegated to a narrow middle lane where Thais bumped shoulders and shuffled along, avoiding the occasional motorbike and stray dog. The sidewalks of Thailand were storefronts for the many entrepreneurs who rolled their portable businesses on and off the highly sought-after real estate on a daily basis. Only tourists found the lack of walking space annoying.
Artie had developed a daily routine that he worked hard to maintain, even in a job as unpredictable as his: a detective for the Royal Thai Police where he had worked for almost eleven years and showed no signs of slowing down.
He was assigned to the Thong Lo station that oversaw the Watthana district. That meant the station was responsible for policing the popular Sukhumvit strip of road that included the famous Nana Plaza and Soi Cowboy attractions, as well as numerous massage parlors. Artie rarely bothered with the petty crime and disorder that took place in those areas, preferring to focus on homicides.
He was light on his feet and looking forward to celebrating a case that he had closed that morning. A woman’s body had been discovered inside a large suitcase floating in one of the many canals that snaked its way through the city. It was a case of a jealous boyfriend who had taken an argument too far.
His destination was a tiny street-side food cart near the entrance of soi thirty-eight. Artie had been eating at the makeshift restaurant almost daily for the last three or four years. As far as he was concerned, the owner, Pik, made the best food on the block.
“Sawadee ka,” the elderly woman called out as she saw Artie’s familiar face appear in the distance. She maneuvered her stout frame around the food cart that also doubled as her kitchen to quickly clear one of the four tables of its dirty dishes. She motioned for Artie to take a seat on a semi-sturdy plastic stool whose legs had been worn down at least an inch and which had never met a wet cloth, much less disinfectant.
“Sawadee kup,” he replied with a smile that seemed to stretch for days.
“The usual?” Pik asked before returning to her spot behind the cart.
Artie nodded and reached for an unopened bottle of water that sat on the table. A few seconds later, one of Pik’s helpers placed a metal cup filled with ice next to him. Artie poured the water into the cup and gulped it down faster than it could cool.
Midway through his two favorite dishes—som tam and grilled pork—Artie got the call, the one that would ruin his mood and his lunch.
Chapter 9
“Human som tam,” the woman in the lab coat said without emotion.
Artie thought he must have heard her wrong. “Tip, are you saying someone made som tam out of human flesh?”
“Not my choice of ingredient, but yes,” Dr. Tippawan Pradchaphet said, pressing more modeling clay into the partial human skull she was rebuilding at the black table against the wall. The platinum bangles on her left wrist jingled softly as she smoothed the transition from bone to clay. Reconstruction was one of her specialties.
Artie and Tip had history. They had dated briefly before realizing they were better off as friends. She was a forensic scientist and worked for the Ministry of Justice. Despite her departments chronic underfunding and the obvious age of her equipment, she was deadly accurate in her findings.
Between her skill and her unconventional appearance, she was a favorite with the media and the public. No other medical examiner in Thailand dressed in haute couture under their white lab coats or sported smoky-eye makeup.
Artie looked again at the bloody contents in the see-through bag that Tip had placed in a metal bowl on the lab table. Her familiar perfume teased his nose—she must have given herself a fresh spray before he arrived—but he tried to ignore the scent and maintain a professional front. She had a habit of trying to tempt him back into her arms, even though she was fully aware that as a couple, they were terrible. But it was a game she enjoyed playing with him.
She pointed at the sealed bag with her Swarovski-studded fingernail. “Take a closer look.”
Artie picked up a metal tweezers and poked at the bag. “You sure about this?”
Tip let out a loud breath of air and tilted her head. Her crinkled brow conveyed all Artie needed to know: She was finished repeating herself. If she said it was human, it was human. But the real question was burning in his mind: Who got turned into som tam?
“You think there’s a body lying around someplace?” he asked.
“Hard to tell. A few shavings off a limb wouldn’t kill a person. Maim? Perhaps. Unless there’s more of this special recipe elsewhere, the owner could still be alive.” She looked at Artie flatly and shrugged her shoulders.
He rested both hands on his hips. “Tip, why is your department involved in something like this? Determining whether the flesh was human or not could have been done by a number of labs across Bangkok. It doesn’t seem like the usual Tip case.” Artie emphasized her name with air quotes.
“It’s human som tam,” she said, setting the cranium reconstruction aside. “It’ll look good on the resume.”
“You never let up on the blatant self-promotion do you?”
“Nope. And you could be a lot further in your career had you learned to toot your own horn a little.” Tip followed her remark with a smile to let Artie know it was the truth, but a constructive truth. She had always been Artie’s biggest supporter and had constantly bugged him—she described it as encouraging—to champion his own achievements, but that wasn’t Artie’s style.
“So is this officially your case?” she asked before tossing the bag of remains back into a refrigerated storage unit and padlocking it.
“It is now. The station chief called me personally to ask me to take over the investigation when the officer at the scene saw that it wasn’t green papaya but some sort of raw meat. Is that why it was sent to you, for analysis?”
“No, it was already identified as human flesh by another lab, but I was brought on to confirm the results.”
“Ah, the Tip stamp of approval.”
“You got that right. Any leads yet?”
“You were my first stop after being briefed. The only other thing that was made clear to me was that the Ministry of Tourism wants to keep the case under the radar. If they had their way, it would be buried. Their biggest nightmare is that someone turned a tourist into som tam. Not exactly a selling point for coming to Thailand.”
“Typical bullshit.” Tip turned on her heel and headed toward the exit.
Artie followed. “Anything else you can tell me?”
She pulled the door open for him. “Not at the moment. I’ll let you know if I discover anything else.” She paused. “Drinks later tonight?”
Another temptation. Artie politely declined. He had an impossible case to solve, and drinking cocktails with his ex wasn’t exactly the best way to start.
Chapter 10
Later that evening, Artie paid the crime scene a visit. He was intent on questioning the young lady who had made the grisly discovery. She was the manager of a
massage shop located on soi twenty-two, just off Sukhumvit. He hoped she had something helpful to add to what he already knew.
“I came to work early on Wednesday morning to prepare an offering for Buddha,” she said.
“And that’s when you saw the dish?”
“Yes. I saw a plate of food and wondered who’d left it. When I took a closer look, I realized it was raw, shredded meat. At first, I got angry thinking someone had played a joke on me. But then I noticed the blood, and I realized something wasn’t right.”
“And that’s when you called the police?”
She nodded. Artie prodded her a bit more, but she had no other information to offer up. He thanked her for her time and exited the shop. He stood on the sidewalk and looked around. Across the street was the Queens Park Plaza, an area made up of fifteen or twenty small bars. It was also home to a number of bar girls plying their wares. He had built a trusting relationship with one girl in particular.
Lucky had worked at the open-air bar near the entrance of the plaza for the last three years and was considered a veteran amid the constant churn of women trying their luck in the profession. Though most of the women in the plaza had seen better days, Lucky was a bright spot: only thirty years old with a flat stomach and a reasonable command of the English language.
Artie spied her sitting at the front of the bar, her eyes following the action up and down the soi. She wore a black dress with matching heels.
Lucky noticed Artie right about the same time. She knew what a visit by the detective meant. She moved nonchalantly away from her bar stool to the edge of the bar, away from prying ears.
“Hi, Lucky. How’s business?”
“Quiet now. Low season. I think next month it will pick up. Why? You want to go short time with me?” She giggled and playfully poked Artie in the chest.
“I don’t think I could handle you,” he joked back.
Lucky lowered her voice and relaxed her smile. “Artie, why you visit me? What do you need?”
“Did you hear about what happened across the street, outside the massage shop?” He motioned with his head while he waited for a response.
“I hear. What type of person does that?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out. Did you see anything unusual last night?”
“Like what? I see many unusual things every night.”
“Did you see anyone hanging around the Buddha shrine?”
Lucky looked off to the side as she thought about Artie’s question. “You know, I saw a farang looking at it last night. But what is strange about that? Many farangs like to look and take picture of the little shrines around the city.”
“Can you tell me what he looked like?”
“He looked like a farang.” Lucky’s eyebrows dipped. “A white man,” she continued. “Brown hair. Not tall. Normal size. No belly.”
Artie knew he would need more to even begin to know whom he was looking for. “What was he wearing?”
Lucky pondered for a moment. “Jeans… a dark shirt. That’s all I remember. I wasn’t paying attention. I had a customer talking to me.”
Artie wasn’t making much progress. His leads were few. If Lucky couldn’t give him anything substantial, he could see the case turning cold fast. Not an option. “Thanks for your time, my friend.” He slipped her two hundred baht, as he always did after their conversations.
Just as he turned to leave, she grabbed him by his arm and squeezed. “Wait, I remember something.”
“What? Tell me.”
“The man had a handicap.”
“You mean he was in a wheelchair?”
“No, he had a limp.”
Chapter 11
It had been a few days since I had started briefing law enforcement in the cities that appeared on the Chasing Chinatown leaderboard. I had just wrapped up a teleconference call with Interpol and the Italian State Police in Milan. The ISP had been able to connect two murders that had taken place in the last three weeks with the game. Both of the victims were children—already disturbing—but when they described the crime scene, it got worse.
A small boy had been discovered in a storefront window of an empty retail space. He had been dressed in Versace and had been skewered on a metal rod to prop him up like a mannequin. My stomach had tightened as the inspector rattled off the details. I couldn’t help but think of my own two children. What would I have done had that happened to Lucy or Ryan?
I thought of the parents and what they must have felt when they heard the news of their son’s death. At first, it made me sick. Then anger set in. I wanted to catch the next flight to Milan and work the case. I wanted to catch the son of a bitch who had done that. I wanted to take a metal rod, shove it up his ass and ask him how he liked it. While I was busy fuming and plotting revenge for the little boy, Reilly stuck his head into the conference room.
“Got a minute?”
“Sure,” I said as I shut my laptop and spun around in my chair, my face still tight.
He took a seat opposite me. “How are the briefings coming along?”
“Fine. It’s a struggle in the beginning when I mention the game, but once I walk them through our case and the connection to the game, it gets easier.”
Reilly clasped his hands together. “Abby, I’m having Tracy House finish the briefings. She’s familiar with the details and can take over.”
“Why?” I demanded, wondering what I had done wrong. House was the agent who had initially started the investigation that led to the capture of the Carlsons. She was also a friend.
“I just heard back from our agent in Bangkok. You and your detective friend are a go. I want you out there ASAP. Catch the a-hole behind this game, Abby.”
<><><>
The news about Bangkok, while great, had caught me off guard. My emotions were still in a twist from the Milan briefing. I had been so focused on the death of the Italian boy that I had lost sight of the big picture: To prevent more unnecessary deaths, the mastermind had to be caught and the game shut down. It was time to get my feelings under control and refocus on my mission. Reilly had pulled the trigger on the starting gun, and I exploded out of the blocks.
I put a call into Kang right away and told him we were a go. I wanted to leave for Bangkok as soon as possible, which meant he needed to get his affairs in order. I had my own responsibilities I needed to square away before leaving. Mainly, I had to tell my family that I would need to head out of town for a case. That meant my mother-in-law, Po Po, would be taking on the head-of-the-household duties. I wasn’t looking forward to that conversation.
Lucy, my youngest at age six, always took my absence the hardest. “Why, Mommy?” she asked over dinner later that day. I always tried to break bad news to the family while we were eating. Somehow I thought food lessened the impact, though I wasn’t sure how much it helped.
“There’s a bad man in Bangkok who is hurting people. Mommy is going there to make him stop.”
“When are you going to come home?”
“I don’t know yet, but I’ll call you every day, okay?”
“You come home soon, okay?”
She got out of her chair and walked over to where I sat. I lifted her onto my lap. “I will, sweetie. I promise.”
“What did this guy do?” Ryan had grown increasingly interested in my work. Sharing the details was something I struggled with. Withhold information to protect him, or tell him the truth? More and more, I sided with the latter, and not just with him, but with all of them—though I tended to sterilize my feedback when Po Po and Lucy were present.
“Well, this guy created a game that encourages the players to hurt other people.”
“Why did he do that?” Ryan had lowered his fork and stopped chewing for a second.
“Well, he’s a bad guy. They do bad things.”
“Why Bangkok police don’t catch this guy?” Po Po chimed in.
“I’ll be working alongside them.”
Po Po shook her head as she stood t
o clear the table, starting with her and Lucy’s plate. Ryan and I had taken seconds, as usual.
“Still not make any sense for you to go.”
Po Po never shied from letting me know how much she disapproved of my out-of-town work. Her remarks made it perfectly clear. The responsibility of looking after Ryan and Lucy completely fell on her hands—something that ratcheted up my guilt meter to no end. It’s not that she minded, but as she had pointed out in the past, I was their mother. I had signed up for the responsibility when I married my late husband and adopted the kids as my own.
“Up to you,” Po Po muttered as she headed to the kitchen.
Recently, she had taken to stating that phrase when she didn’t like something I did or if I disagreed with her. I wasn’t quite sure what she meant by it. Was she saying the trip out of town had been my decision? Was she insinuating that if I somehow went ahead with this trip that I only thought of her as the in-house babysitter? I didn’t. We’d had many discussions over that matter, but my actions always seemed to end up contradicting what I said.
I’m sure I read into it way more than I needed to. For all I know, she probably didn’t even understand what she had said but liked the way it sounded. I’d like to think her comment was innocent, but I knew my mother-in-law and her passive-aggressive ways better than she liked to admit.
A few hours later, I had tucked both children into bed and said goodnight to Po Po before retiring to my room. I had just started my nightly bedtime routine of washing and moisturizing my face and brushing my shoulder-length black hair when I heard the opening introduction from the nightly news blare out from the small flat screen in my room. The anchorman made a big deal about welcoming a new anchorwoman to the show. With my head half in the sink, I wasn’t really paying attention to the fanfare until a familiar voice caught my attention.
My eyes shot up to the mirror. Half of my face remained covered in thick white goo. I switched off the faucet and hurried out of the bathroom so I could see the TV screen, and I kid you not, staring straight at me was the dreaded dragon woman—Suzi Zhang. Her plastic smile, wider than a nose of a hammerhead shark, gave way to her perfectly paid-for row of veneers.
Lumpini Park (Abby Kane FBI Thriller - Chasing Chinatown Trilogy Book 2) Page 3
