Doc Ford 19 - Chasing Midnight (18 page)

I said, “I don’t get it. Why would your sister inherit more than you?”

Umeko ignored the question by replying, “Excuse me, this dress is filthy,” and walked toward what was probably a bedroom, carrying the gun. She paused only to take one of the candles. I didn’t know what to do. Was she going to slip out a window? Or slam the bedroom door and lock it?

No, because a moment later Bohai’s daughter raised her voice so I could hear. “Sakura is much too beautiful to be my sister. The parts of her that are real, anyway. She’s my stepmother.”

The woman with the Anglo-Malaysian eyes, I realized.

“Not many men make that mistake, even though we’re the same age. I guess I should be flattered. And maybe I shall be—but later. Right now, I feel numb.”

I was wondering if Umeko knew that her stepmother had been spending private time with Kazlov. But asking her now had the flavor of cruelty, so I raised my voice to ask, “Did she ever carry your father’s phone? Some wives do.”

“You have a very orderly mind, Dr. Ford. I admire that. You’re thinking that Viktor’s bodyguard would have a reason to conceal Sakura’s name if she’d supplied Viktor with information. Particularly a secret transmission intended for her husband. I don’t like the woman. No—I despise the woman. But my father would have never trusted her with his phone or anything else of importance. Once again, I’m afraid you’re worrying needlessly.”

I had turned my attention to Lien Bohai’s body as she spoke, suddenly aware of a detail I had missed earlier. Or… maybe a detail that hadn’t appeared until now. On the man’s rib cage, beneath the left nipple and several inches from where I’d injected the epinephrine, was a thread of blood. Fresh blood, it looked like, brief drainage from an unseen wound. I couldn’t figure it out. I cleaned my glasses, grabbed the lone candle and took a closer look as Umeko continued talking.

“In Chinese, ‘sakura’ means ‘wild cherry blossom.’ My father believed it a sign of great fortune that his beautiful new bride, and his unattractive daughter, were both named for flowers. I thought I would never understand the stupidity of men, but now I do. Rich men marry their mistresses because they have so much in common. They are both ruthless and both are whores.”

Umeko reappeared, wearing slacks, running shoes and a baggy colorless blouse, the pistol in her right hand. Eyes avoiding her father’s corpse, she began opening drawers, looking for something. She appeared to be in a hurry.

“Where’s his shirt?” I asked.

The woman was preoccupied. She opened one last drawer and then turned her attention to a leather suitcase, probably her father’s.

“I can’t stay here tonight. Not with… with his body in the same house. You’re right, though, when you say it’s dangerous to go
outside. Would you be willing to help me move his body to the courtyard?”

Behind the couch, I had spotted Bohai’s dinner jacket. I retrieved it, then held up the man’s white dress shirt. After inspecting it for a moment, I asked, “Did you notice this bloodstain? It’s dried blood. Not much. It would be easy to miss.”

Umeko looked up from the suitcase and shook her head. “He hit his forehead when he fell, I think. Maybe it came from there.”

“No. It came from the left side of his rib cage”—I used a finger to point—“from what looks like a small hole. A puncture wound the size of a needle. Or an ice pick. When I injected the adrenaline, the pressure must have reopened the wound for a second or two.”

A few seconds later, I was holding the shirt close to a candle. “There’s a tiny little hole, too. It’s tough to see because of the bloodstain. But it’s there.”

I was picturing Sakura, the exquisite beauty, in the swimming pool, reaching to untether her hair, as I watched the stepdaughter’s expression. “Umeko, do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“No, I don’t. He had a heart attack. I was with him when it happened.”

“You’re wrong. I think your father was murdered. The blood, and a puncture wound in his chest that matches the hole in this shirt. I can’t explain it any other way. When the lights went out, I think someone stuck him and kept going. The police can help us figure out later who did it.”

The expression of shock on Umeko’s face was real. She seemed more overwhelmed by this than the fact that her father was dead. I turned toward the door. “Listen. We have to deal with what’s happening now. I’ve still got about twenty-five minutes, and there could be a dozen people in that building. Why take the chance?”

The woman’s thoughts had turned inward, as if reconsidering. My guess was, she was going over the night’s events, trying to remember if Sakura had left the dining room long enough to be alone with Viktor Kazlov or had an opportunity to pocket Bohai’s phone. But then my attention shifted abruptly to a distinctive sound from outside. A metallic sound that found its way through the broken doorway: the clack of a rifle bolt, then footsteps.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered. “Do you hear something?”

I held a finger to my lips, nodded and pointed to the door as I moved to her side. “Give me the pistol.”

Umeko pushed my arm away, shaking her head. “Is someone coming?”

“Give me the pistol. A guy took a shot at me ten minutes ago. I think he’s still after me.”

The woman snapped, “And you led him
here
!” but then softened and said, “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”

“I’m familiar with weapons,” I told her. “If you know anything about me, you know it’s true.”

As I watched the doorway, I felt a flicker of hope as her resolve appeared to waver. But then Umeko made a sound of exasperation and confessed, “The bloody gun’s not loaded. That’s what I was looking for. It’s Father’s pistol and he always hides the magazines when he’s not carrying the thing.”

I hurried to blow out the candles, then took the woman’s arm. “Is there a back door to this place?”

Yes, there was. When I opened it, though, a man blinded me with a tactical light that was clamped to the underside of a pistol. A moment later, behind us, someone else suddenly kicked the broken door off its chain.

As I tried to shield my eyes, the man gave a simian howl that
transitioned into panic when he saw what Umeko was still carrying in her hand. “Drop the goddamn gun!” he screamed. “Do it
now
!”

The voice was manic fueled, an octave higher but recognizable. It was Markus Kahn.

The video game wizard, apparently, was now lost in a new vortex. It was the fantasy that he had turned pro.

B
efore Kahn nearly maimed us all by taking a jar from my vest and shaking it, he painted Lien Bohai’s corpse with the gun-mounted flashlight and said to his partner, “Damn it! Wish I’d found him first.”

The old man was lucky to die a natural death,
Kahn meant. He was a nervous, sullen introvert unused to bragging or making threats, which added to the impression he was trying hard to be something he was not. But being in the presence of an actual corpse had energized him in some strange way and he couldn’t hide his excitement. Death. It was right there, within arm’s reach. And real. Not like on a video screen.

“One of the Big Four is definitely DOA,” he said through a black ski mask as if transmitting on a radio. “One down, three to go.”

The theatrics struck me as bizarre until I realized both men wore pin-sized cameras strapped to their heads. They were recording it all on their cell phones.

Talas, Armanie, Bohai and Kazlov were the Big Four, of course.
Kahn was talkative, frenetic, like he was amped up on Adderall. More surprisingly, he seemed eager to impress me.

I didn’t tell Kahn that videoing their “assault” was adolescent, pretentious and tasteless. What I did tell him was that some sort of device might be detonated at midnight, which meant that he might have less than twenty minutes to live unless they stopped playing games and did something about it.

As I studied the reactions of the two men, I saw nothing to indicate they knew anything about a bomb. Just the opposite. The possibility that it was true seemed to scare Kahn, although he forced brittle laughter. He was visibly agitated as he panned his gun-mounted flashlight around the room, then stopped when it was pointed at Umeko’s face.

“Do you know anything about this bomb bullshit?”

“I wouldn’t be on the island if I believed it,” the woman replied, staying cool.

“She doesn’t know that for sure.” I interrupted. It was 11:42 p.m., and I wasn’t going to stand here listening to any more talk. To the woman I said, “Tell them the truth. You’re not a hundred percent sure.”

Umeko said to Kahn, “You’re blinding me with that light. Do you mind?” then took a moment to rub her eyes. “There is a small possibility that Dr. Ford is right. But it’s unlikely.”

Kahn scratched at the ski mask, muttering, “The caviar leeches, they’re all rich. They’ve got no reason to do something so crazy. And nobody in our group has anything like that planned. So it’s bullshit. Don’t you think, Trapper?”

His partner was even jumpier than Kahn. “Yeah, Rez. Sure,” he said. “Rez”—Kahn’s nickname. But Trapper sounded worried. He was the skinny guy I’d seen earlier in the fishing lodge, standing at
the door, playing with his cell phone. Neither of them were actors and their reactions convinced me they didn’t know a damn thing about a bomb threat. It meshed with the probability that his group’s e-mails had been monitored by Umeko and her people. But if Lien Bohai’s intelligence team was so good, why were these two jerks running around with weapons, wearing masks and holding us at gunpoint?

Kahn put the light on me. “You trying to scare us? Because it’s not going to work.”

I said, “Why not evacuate the lodge, just to be on the safe side? If there’s even that small possibility—”

He snapped, “Kiss my ass!” then gestured toward the dead man. “People like him are bloodsuckers who get what they deserve. Besides, after what happens to the world tonight”—nervous laughter again—“who really gives a damn?”

He meant something a lot bigger than a bomb, apparently, and it was spooky the way he said it. Then it got spookier when Kahn stared at the old man’s body, then leveled his pistol at Umeko.

“How many humpback whales you think your boss killed? How many dolphins you think he caught and sold to freak shows like that hotel across the bay?”

I saw Kahn’s index finger move from the trigger guard to the trigger and I stepped closer to Umeko. “Take it easy. She worked for the guy, that’s all. She was Bohai’s aquaculture expert, for Christ’s sake. She hates the factory ships as much as any of us. She wanted to take his company in a different direction.”

The woman pulled her arm free as if to say she didn’t need my help. I liked that. It asserted her independence. The move also confirmed she was smart enough to understand why I had lied and cool enough to play whatever role was required. I was trying to steer Kahn away from the fact that Umeko was Bohai’s daughter. He
was already eager to pull the trigger. Why give him a powerful reason to do it?

Kahn stopped blinding Umeko by lowering the pistol to her chest. But he wasn’t done with her. “You live in China? I’ve read that Bohai owns a huge mansion on the sea. I bet you live in the same house.”

Umeko replied, “I live in Singapore because that’s where most of my research is done. I commute to Beijing when needed. Check my passport. Or my driver’s license—it’s in my purse. My name’s Umeko Tao-Lien and I was born in Singapore.”

Very smooth. She had added another tier to my lie and then distanced herself from her father by offering proof of her legal name.

Kahn, though, seemed determined to make his bones, and I got a tight feeling in my stomach when he turned to me and said, “You don’t think I can do it, do you?”

Pull the trigger, he meant.

I shrugged. “Of course you can—if you had a reason. But you don’t. Even if you did, it would be smarter to evacuate the lodge first.” My watch read 11:50 p.m.

“Don’t be so goddamn sure, man!”

Weird, but for the first time I got the impression
he
didn’t believe he could do it—a lot of men can’t—and now he was wrestling with his own doubt. But why did my opinion matter? I hadn’t exactly hit it off with him and Densler earlier.

The guy was irrational, but irrational people can be manipulated. “What’s the difference between killing a whale and an innocent woman? You approve of that?” Touching my head to remind Kahn the camera was getting all this, I added, “It’s cold-blooded murder. The same with the people you’re putting at risk by not evacuating the goddamn fishing lodge!”

I raised my voice to make the point because it was 11:51.

“This woman works for one of the world’s most ruthless eco-criminals,” Kahn argued, oblivious. “You expect me to actually believe she disapproved? That’s like Göring saying he disapproved of Hitler. What do you think, Trap?”

Kahn’s partner was behind us, exiting the bedroom, already pawing through what was probably Umeko’s purse. Like Kahn, he had added a black ski mask and mini-camera to his ensemble of jeans and black crewneck with the Third Planet Peace Force skull in yellow.

Unlike Kahn, he was carrying a scoped rifle and wearing what looked like Soviet surplus night vision monocular. Mounted on the barrel of the rifle was a homemade sound suppressor—the sort of thing amateur anarchists learn to make when they’re not building homemade bombs. The equipment was cheap, like the semiauto pistol Kahn was holding.