The Red Lotus

by Chris Bohjalian

  “She’s on to something?”

  “She might be. I spoke to Oscar Bolton,” he told her.

  “He didn’t tell me.”

  “He probably meant to. He probably will. I’ve actually spoken to a lot of folks.”

  “And now me,” she said.

  “Yup.”

  “And that’s ethical?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be? Because you’re the daughter of one of my friends?”

  “I guess. And because I was the referral.”

  “It’s fine,” he said. “It really is.” And then he told her about the rats, and even in their back-and-forth over the phone, he heard what he believed was discomfort in her voice. She was clear that rats repulsed her, which was fine. They repulsed a lot of people.

  “I’m obviously not indifferent to what they do in the labs. It’s important medically, and it’s an important fund-raising tool. I know that. I’m fine with the briefings I get once or twice a year or the news releases that public affairs sends me. But I don’t go there,” she told him.

  “Did Austin?”

  “He certainly went at least once. When you start work in advancement, you get a tour. You get shown around and taught a bit about our research. It’s part of fund-raising, so it’s part of training.”

  “Could he have gone back?”

  “Sure,” she answered. “Sometimes there’s something they want us to see. But it really is a separate universe.”

  “Same wing.”

  “Other than an elevator bank, we don’t share much.”

  “He have any friends there?”

  “In the labs? He might have. But none that I know of.”

  Ken switched gears. “What did Austin tell you about the Vietnam trip?”

  “What he told everyone. It was a bike tour.”

  “His second one.”

  “Ah, but his first with Alexis.”

  “What else?”

  “He told me that it was another attempt to visit the places where his uncle died and his father was wounded.”

  “Which we know now was a lie.”

  “Yes,” Sally agreed. “Sadly, we do.”

  “So why do you think he was there? Did he say anything else about the place? Anything else he wanted to do? Did he just want a new suit from Hoi An that badly? Does he have a thing for dragon fruit?”

  “You can get dragon fruit here. You just have to know where to shop.”

  “Then what?”

  “I wish I had any ideas. I have none.”

  “And he never brought up the labs?”

  “No, he did. But always in the context of fund-raising. You know, we’d get a news release that we’d had some breakthrough on hantavirus,” she told him. “Or there was progress toward a new treatment for MS. Or some antibiotic showed promise. But most of their money comes from grants, not from us. We use them—the labs—to remind people that this is a university hospital: a great place that does great things.” Then she asked him, “Are you going to try and talk to them next? The lab rats?”

  “I’ll stick to the humans,” he teased her.

  “I have a meeting that’s about to begin. You’ll give my best to Taleen and the boys?”

  “I will. And you say hi to your mom.”

  He hadn’t forgotten her pique when he’d told her he’d taken the case, but he was still smiling when he hung up. He missed her dad. One time he’d shown Ken a photo of himself in an antiwar protest in 1971. The massive bell bottoms, the love beads, the crazy long hair and a beard that made him look like a caveman. He was one of two guys holding a sign that read, CHILDREN ARE NOT FOR BURNING. He hadn’t meant to make Ken feel bad. He wanted to show it to him because of the outfit and what he looked like back then. He’d wound up a lawyer at a prestigious firm on Park Avenue, but he’d continued to live on Long Island and still played golf on the public course near his house right up until the day he died. He moved seamlessly between opening-night receptions at the Met and Sunday-afternoon golf with a cop like Ken.

  He shook off the memory and the protest sign and put his phone in his pocket. Then he went uptown to meet Austin Harper’s parents at the dead guy’s apartment.

  * * *

  . . .

  The detective had just finished interviewing Austin Harper’s parents after they had assessed what it would entail to pack up his place on the Upper East Side, and he was thinking to himself that this was the worst time of the day to grab a cab. How had he done this to himself yet again? It was a little after four p.m., the period between shifts and the start of rush hour, and he was standing on the street watching the traffic inch forward, the rare yellow cab he saw in the stream invariably with its roof light dark. He dialed down his frustration and opened the app on his phone for a taxi service, and found there was a shared car three blocks distant and a private car ten. He picked the private and saw it was at least five minutes away. Five probably meant eight. But that was fine.

  Austin’s parents, as he had expected, were defensive when he had finally gotten around to bringing up the peculiar lies their son had told about their family history: the idea that his father had been shot in Vietnam and precisely where his uncle had died. They only grew more receptive to his questions when he told them he had found three of Austin’s acquaintances—in addition to Alexis Remnick—to whom he had told these same strange stories. They all were new friends. Two worked at the hospital, and the third was the son of philanthropists who were big donors to the pediatric wing.

  Eventually, they gave Ken a list of four of their son’s friends from childhood and college he could speak with, all of whom obviously knew the truth because they had known Austin for years and been to the home outside of Boston where he’d grown up. They insisted that their son had never evidenced or been treated for the sort of mental illness that might compel him to fabricate a new family history. Ken had done his homework before meeting the Harpers, and had pinpointed three psychological causes for compulsive lying. The first was antisocial personality disorder, but Austin didn’t fit the profile—he was pretty damn prosocial, if that was even a thing—and that also seemed to be a behavior learned from parents. And this pair? They seemed levelheaded and straightforward. The second was interdependence, or mutual lying, but it didn’t appear as if Austin Harper had a codependent relationship with the ER doc. And why would lying about his father and uncle draw Alexis closer to him? Why would she feel the need to enable the lie? The third was something called conduct disorder, and that was the one that made the most sense to Ken. Patients who had this were usually lying to cover up an addiction—gambling, shoplifting, drugs, sex—or they were involved in something seriously shady, and they just kept entrenching themselves ever deeper with their fabrications. This certainly jibed with Harper’s behavior in high school and college.

  In this scenario, Harper needed a pretext to go to Vietnam. He’d gone there twice: once on a bike tour alone and once on a bike tour with Alexis. As far as Ken could tell, he’d told the lie first a year ago, the first time he’d announced he was traveling there. Then, when he’d returned, he had to be consistent and so he told it again. And again. He told it some more.

  But the detective didn’t know exactly what Harper was up to. If he had to guess, he would conjecture that the first time he had gone to Vietnam, he’d visited the university in Ho Chi Minh City and he’d met with a scientist who was now dead. He thought it possible that there was some extreme monetary value to this rat research, but there was nothing in the guy’s apartment that suggested he was living beyond his means. In the lobby, before leaving, he had researched what those cartoon cells on the walls might have cost, and most had probably set him back five or six hundred dollars. Maybe the Grinch was worth more, but not much. The bike tour wasn’t cheap, but he had split the cost with Alexis and they’d flown there in coach. He didn’t have oligarchi
c silk suits or racks of leather or ostrich jackets in his closet. Good Lord, he’d bought that suit in Hoi An because it was so bloody cheap. His watch was a Movado that cost five hundred and change, and his furniture was nice, but about what one would expect from a single thirtysomething executive in Manhattan. The only thing he spent big money on was a damn good bike and nice biking accessories.

  But maybe he had simply not yet been paid. He’d died—or been killed—before the big score.

  His parents didn’t believe he had any debts and showed him their son’s checkbook, which, Ken had to admit, suggested a pretty modest lifestyle if you subtracted out two trips to Vietnam in one year.

  “Why do you think he went there?” he had asked Peter Harper.

  “You know the answer to that: it was a bike tour,” his father had answered, echoing Austin’s boss earlier that afternoon.

  “The first time?” Ken had pressed. “Yes, it was a bike tour, too, but he went alone.”

  “He went to bike and I’m sure he made friends,” his father said. “And single people go on bike tours all the time. I see nothing suspicious in that. Do you?”

  “He didn’t post any pictures,” Ken observed. “I mean, he’s not even on Facebook.”

  “And why is that a crime?”

  “It isn’t.” He knew that Alexis Remnick still had Harper’s laptop and tablet. He’d suggested she not return them when she returned the suit and the Speed Racer jersey, so he could have a tech pal see if he could use one of the devices to explore what—if anything—might be left of Harper’s life in the Cloud. “Did he show you any pictures?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Was anyone in any of them?”

  “People he met there, I guess. A chef with some double-edged paring knife was in one. Austin thought the knife was interesting. A guy on a motorbike was in another. Great smile. He showed us one with a beautiful woman in one of those very tight silk tunics. Practically a sheath.”

  “And they were Vietnamese?”

  “Yes.”

  “He give you their names?”

  “No.”

  He thought of the dress that Alexis had told him about. “And the woman. Was she tall? Short? Heavy? Slender?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “But you recall she was beautiful?”

  Austin’s mother jumped in: “Oh, she was tiny. Petite.”

  “I assume you don’t have a copy of the photo.”

  “Nope,” Peter said.

  “Recall the background?”

  Again, it was Austin’s mother who added a detail. “I know a little. There was a fountain and some flags. A nice enough building behind them.”

  “Fountains and flags? Like a museum?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “But if so, it was part of a campus. When I asked, Austin said one of the words on the building behind them was university.”

  Ken was careful to keep his face utterly impassive. But he knew he’d just connected another pair of dots. “Why was he at a university?”

  “The school wasn’t the destination,” Austin’s mother told him. “I don’t think he was interested in the school at all.”

  “No?”

  Peter shook his head. “Nope. Austin had two serious interests. Bikes and girls.”

  “Women,” Catherine corrected her husband. “You’re showing your age calling that woman a ‘girl.’ ”

  “Your son had a relationship with her?” Ken asked.

  “I don’t know that for a fact,” Peter said. “But I knew my son. I wouldn’t have been surprised at all if they had a fling when he was in Vietnam.”

  “That first time.”

  “Yes. Obviously. That second time he was there, he was with the ER doctor.”

  “So, he’d moved on.”

  “Seems so.”

  “In that case, why do you think he went back?” Ken pressed.

  “Why is that such a mystery to everyone?” Peter snapped. “He liked the country. He had fun the first time. It’s a beautiful place. Even I could see that as an idiot kid in a go-cart on a military base fifty years ago. Maybe he wanted to share the place’s beauty with his new girlfriend. Why is it such a stretch to believe that’s all there is to it?”

  Maybe, Ken thought, because he’d lied to so many people about why he was there. But he kept that idea to himself.

  He saw a cayenne-colored Santa Fe Sport, a small Hyundai SUV, pulling up beside him. The driver rolled down the passenger’s-side window. He was a young guy with short black hair and hipster scruff on his cheeks and chin, and a button-down shirt.

  “You needed a car?” he asked.

  Ken checked the license plate and saw that this was his ride. He climbed into the back seat, and the vehicle started off. It reached an avenue and turned left, moving south, moving quickly because they were going against the rush-hour traffic that here was headed north. He gazed out the window, his mind lost in the crowds on the sidewalk and the shops, the streaks of yellow and red in the sky to the west when they were passing through an intersection, when his phone vibrated in his pocket and he saw that it was Alexis. He owed her a phone call. She’d actually called a couple of times, but he’d always been with someone or doing something. He took the call this time and was about to apologize for not getting back to her, but she cut him off.

  “It was a dart,” she said, her voice animated and excited.

  “What was?” he asked.

  “The injury on the back of Austin’s hand. The wound.”

  “And you know this…how?”

  “I don’t know it for a fact,” she admitted. “But I was staring at the image on my phone at the gym, and I was staring at it again just now before I called you. And in between, I found a sporting goods store on Broadway that sells darts. I lined up the tip on the back of my own hand. I’m telling you, it’s about as close a match as you can imagine. It’s crazy.”

  He almost agreed with her: it was crazy. But he had been to Douglas Webber’s apartment. He had a feeling she was right and would have made a hell of a cop if she hadn’t chosen medicine. “Tell me something,” he said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “You’re not just thinking that because you first met Austin after he’d spent a night drinking and tossing darts? This isn’t a power of suggestion sort of thing, is it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, then. I think we have a match.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’ve found the mysterious Douglas,” he told her. “Last name is Webber. Lives on Third Street and is clearly one hell of a dart player. When Austin was missing last week? Before he died? Don’t be surprised if we find out he was with Webber—yup, in Vietnam. I also don’t think they met for the first time that night in March when Austin was shot. I have a bartender who is pretty damn sure they came into the bar together, and were downright chummy when they arrived. Now, I don’t know what the two of them were doing last week in Vietnam. But I don’t think they went all the way there to play darts. For all I know, they didn’t even go there together. But Webber is not exactly what I would call a gentle soul. That injury to your guy’s hand? Clearly an extracurricular Austin wasn’t expecting.”

  “Third Street,” she murmured, and for a moment Ken was unsure why this was the element she had focused on. But then he understood: as a physician, she had already envisioned the details of the pain someone had inflicted on Austin Harper. What she hadn’t imagined was that this someone lived so very close by. So very close to her.

  “Yes, Third Street,” he said. “One more thing.”

  “Keep my head down?”

  “I wasn’t going to say that, but that wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t have a name, but I think I may know who Austin bought that othe
r dress for,” he told her, and then he described for her the picture. As he spoke, he realized he actually felt worse telling her about this possible other woman than he had telling her about a creep willing to plunge a dart into another man’s hand.

  * * *

  . . .

  Ken knew that he himself couldn’t find out if Webber had been in Vietnam last week. He had an acquaintance at Interpol who could, however, and he called her from the back seat of the car as soon as he got off the phone with Alexis, but she’d already gone home for the day. And so he left a message on her work voice mail in Washington asking for the favor and another one on her cell. She could see if—and when—Webber had entered the country from their passport control.

  When he got home, Taleen was still out, and an idea came to him. He should get the number for that CSCD captain Alexis had met. That fellow could also determine whether Webber had been in Vietnam. For all he knew, he might even have some insight into the woman Austin might have been seeing. He looked at his watch. It was nearing six o’clock in Manhattan. The guy might be in his office in Vietnam in a couple of hours if he worked on a Saturday. But, even if he didn’t, he’d be awake pretty soon.

  * * *

  . . .

  When Alexis had come to Ken’s office that week, she’d mentioned how she had listened to the voice mails of Austin Harper that she still had on her phone. They were inconsequential, she said, but she listened to them to hear his voice. She said she had read and reread his texts over and over. Because her late boyfriend had ignored the social networks, this was the extent of her digital grieving, and his lack of a presence on such places as Facebook and Instagram was, Ken decided, affecting her ability to mourn the man and move on. He told Taleen this when they were finishing dinner that night. They both had voice mails from Kathleen on their phones. Their devices were rich with pictures of the girl.

  Taleen was in the mood to listen to this fatherly—grandfatherly, she had teased him—monologue because earlier that week she had spent the day at an allegedly haunted New York City mansion, and today she had been at a funeral for a friend at St. Vartan’s and then the woman’s burial on Long Island. It was not the same cemetery where their daughter was buried, but Taleen had gone there, too, after the graveside ceremony for her friend.