“We don't know what you're talking about,” said Gao.
“Did she have any computer-related belongings?” I asked.
“We've been through her laptop bag and her dresser, but maybe you should go look through her things, too,” Whistle said. They escorted me to the bedroom and kept a close eye on my movement in general and my hands in particular. Big Eye apparently didn't trust me to tell him everything. He probably wanted to know exactly what I did and what I discovered.
The locked drawers, originally installed by Big Eye, had been pried open and all the contents had been dumped out on the floor. I exhaled.
“Looks like you guys were pretty thorough,” I said.
“You know Big Eye wants a thorough job done,” said Gao. “It's his daughter, so this situation is no joke.”
I got down on my hands and knees and went through the detritus of a teenage girl. I had to give her credit for not being a typical schoolgirl. There were signs that she possessed depth. She had books of poetry by Tang Dynasty writers and by e.e. cummings. Small ribbons that congratulated her for wins in math and Chinese competitions were stuck in as bookmarks. Such accolades didn't mean much to her, but it was interesting that someone who was apparently academically gifted was also so poorly behaved. I was also intrigued by a small medal for excellence in computer programming stashed among the coins in a change purse.
I picked up a folded piece of paper that looked like a secret note and opened it up to reveal a cutout chain of women holding hands.
There was nothing here that would serve as a startup drive. There were no DVD-ROMs or even CD-ROMs. No external drives. Not even a crappy little flash drive. Dammit, maybe she had it with her, or had chucked it down the garbage chute. You can't test out password combinations when you can't even boot up the computer.
There had to be a way around this. Maybe I could put the laptop into dummy mode and access its drive by linking it to another computer.
I stood up and spied the round base of her desk lamp. I seized it and lifted it up. Nothing there. Whistle cracked up.
“We looked under there, too! Looks suspicious, right?” It was a little dim in the corner so I flicked the light on. Nothing happened.
“We unplugged it,” said Whistle. “Just go under the desk.” I dropped back down and picked up the cord and plugged it in. I fumbled a little bit and hit my head against the desk drawer.
“Dammit!” I yelled, maybe too loud.
Both Whistle and Gao chuckled.
“Jing-nan, you're no good at this,” said Whistle. “It's a good thing you're self-employed.”
I turned on the light and ran my fingers along the baseboard of the wall. “I'm trying to see if she stashed something here,” I said. Both Gao and Whistle closed in on me. The wall was clean. I then searched the door casing without any luck. “Looks like there's nothing here,” I said.
“We've already been through the entire house, every square centimeter,” said Whistle. “If there was a secret compartment in the furniture or the walls, we would have found it.”
I shrugged. “It might be a lost cause. She might be carrying the missing drive in her purse. But would you guys mind if I took the laptop with me to hook up to another computer and work on it a little? I have some ideas.”
Whistle and Gao glanced at each other.
“If it's all the same to you, Jing-nan,” said Whistle, “how about we keep the laptop. If you want to try something, bring the other computer here and we'll try together.”
Together. C'mon, I thought, these guys don't know the difference between an Ethernet and a Thunderbolt cable. “All right,” I said. “Well, I'll be going for now.”
“Bye, Jing-nan,” said Whistle. Gao looked directly at me and nodded gravely.
“We'll find her,” I said.
I waited until I was on the MRT before I checked my right pants pocket. I had found a little flash drive wristband that had been tied to the lamp's power cord. To your average older gangster it looked like a tie to loop up the extra slack in the line. I'll bet it held a bunch of Mei-ling's secrets.
I wasn't too worried about not getting the laptop. Most of her stuff was probably stored in the cloud, anyway.
Why did I hide my discovery from Gao, Whistle, and ultimately Big Eye? I felt protective of my little cousin. Yes, she was doing something incredibly stupid, but she didn't deserve to be extradited into Big Eye's custody.
It was a good thing she was free. I mainly wanted to find her to make sure she was all right and to stay in touch with my little cousin. It's an awful thing not to have a sense of family in your life.
I toyed with the
wristband and eyed an open USB port on my PC.
Maybe Mei-ling had a final surprise for me and this device would deliver a virus or two to my hard drive. It was also possible that it was blank. According to factory markings on the wristband's port, it had a capacity of only four gigabytes.
I fired up my PC, opened the wristband and plugged it into the USB port.
A folder appeared on my desktop. Even before I opened it, I copied the folder to my hard drive, just in case the original deleted itself with unauthorized use.
I was a little nervous so I triple-clicked the folder to open it when a simple double-click would have done the job. What was I going to find? Nude pictures of my cousin? Viruses galore to destroy my computer?
A window opened and I examined the icons in it. Ah, Mei-ling, you maniac! You were using a Linux operating system. No wonder you could fit it on a wristband.
Unlike conventional operating systems, Linux is maintained by volunteers and free to download and use. Conventional operating systems cost money to update and have a lot more bells and whistles that require more memory.
Most people have never heard of these so-called open-source applications like Linux but most are compatible with the corresponding product put out by Microsoft and Google. For example, I was able to open a document that Mei-ling had created using Linux-based OpenOffice by using Microsoft Word. The document popped up and I shook my head. What an amateur move. She'd listed her various logins and passwords for a number of sites. Every guideline in identity security says not to write such a list. Now I held the keys to the kingdom. I could change Mei-ling's passwords to everything and lock her out of her own life. No. It would be better for me to log in and keep track of what Mei-ling was doing.
I logged in as Mei-ling in an aspiring musicians' forum and checked in on the latest topics she commented in. Obviously it was not her favorite site as she hadn't commented there regularly in about a year. It was easy to see why. The comments were rife with spam ads for cheap music equipment and studios.
Another forum she used was Students Helping Students. People posted their math problems and other users solved them. I wasn't surprised that Mei-ling was good at math but I didn't know she felt compelled to help others. It looked like she started commenting a few months ago, after she was kicked out of her latest high school in Taichung. Maybe posting in this forum helped make her feel secure about her academic ability.
Then there was the lesbian forum. Mei-ling had a few tentative questions in the last month.
“How do you know if you're a lesbian?” she had naïvely asked in her first post.
“Only you would know if you're attracted to girls,” replied one user.
“It's like ice cream,” said someone else. “Just start licking. Want to try some? You'll like it.”
I ran my hands through my hair. How could I have been so stupid and callous? Anybody could have seen that Mei-ling was a lesbian. How could I not even detect the edge in her voice when she was calling out my homophobia? I think I was blinded because I just wanted her to be my little cousin. Something uncomplicated.
My hand shot to my mouth. Maybe the motorcycle driver was a woman who had seduced her online!
Nearly all of Mei-ling's comments had multiple replies from users soliciting sex. To be fair, that seemed to be the standard reply to all comments, particularly to the angry, homophobic posts that popped up once in a while.
“Dykes suck cock in hell!” Mao888 had written.
AnyBayBee had replied with, “You can suck my pussy here!”
I sorted the forum so that I only saw Mei-ling's posts or replies. Then I sorted by date. She hadn't logged in since the night before she'd disappeared. That made sense if she were already hooked up with someone from the forum.
However, her last few posts had seemed innocuous, relatively speaking.
Her very last note was, “What is the difference between a clitoral orgasm and a vaginal orgasm? I was with a boy for a while and I don't think I ever felt either LOL!”
Her second-to-last post was, “Is it true that A-mei was forbidden by Singapore to perform a song about lesbian love? I would never compromise my art for money. #ameisellout”
Most intriguing was a post from a week ago, even before she had reached Taipei. “Should I stay at home with a fucking homophobic father or run away and try to make it on my own?”
My throat ran dry after I read that. That called for a bottle of Kirin. As I sucked down the beer, I wondered what Big Eye would do if he knew about this post. Shit. Maybe he'd be so mad, he'd tell everybody in his search party to shoot her on sight.
I thumped the bottom of the bottle on my desk. Damn you, Mei-ling! Why didn't you tell me you wanted to run away? Well, maybe you knew I'd go to your dad. I'm sorry that I didn't prove myself to be trustworthy.
All I could do now was keep this new information away from Big Eye and hope that I'd be able to get in contact with her somehow and make sure she was safeâand maybe happier than before.
On Monday morning I
went to see Peggy Lee at her office in Taipei 101 to update her about the situation and see if she had any ideas. Mei-ling's disappearance was something I had to tell Peggy in person, otherwise it would sound like bullshit.
Peggy looked a bit like a business-casual Catwoman in her grey pantsuit. She stood before one of her giant office windows, leaning her right shoulder directly against the glass.
I sat in an awful ergonomic chair that she had placed next to her desk. I think the chair choice was strategic. Both clients and peers would always feel off-balance and vulnerable.
“You realize,” said Peggy, “that Mei-ling was here for only a few days. I'll admit she was good but now she's left me in a lurch.” She paused to crack the bones in her right wrist. “What is up with you Chens leaving me in the lurch?”
“Peggy, please be serious,” I said. “My cousin is missing and could be in danger.”
She pulled herself away from the window and sat against the edge of her desk. “Mei-ling is probably just fine. She's smart as a whip. From what you told me about her escape, I can only express admiration. I mean, seriously, who else could plan out something like that and execute it? She was wrong about what level the temple was at and she improvised a real-time fix. That took balls and brains!”
“I'll admit that it was pretty daring,” I said. “I think, though, she was seduced by an older lesbian, someone she only knew from the Internet.”
Peggy slipped around her desk, dropped into her chair and dramatically dropped her jaw. “Mei-ling is a lesbian?”
“Yes.”
She put her hands flat against her chest. “Wow, I had no idea. You see, usually lesbians are really into me. I could have done it with another woman at this convention a few months ago.”
I shifted in my seat. “Why didn't you, Peggy?”
She laughed out loud. “Honestly, I didn't know what we could do together. Drinking and talking with her already felt like as far as we could go. Jing-nan, did you ever . . .”
“No!” I said.
“Two guys makes more sense to me than two girls. At least you can stick each other, y'know?”
“Peggy, let's get back on track here. Do you remember anyone coming to see Mei-ling, or any phone calls she might have had?”
“Nobody came to see her, that's for sure. Especially not that guy that Big Eye was totally hating on, Mei-ling's ex-boyfriend. Did he ever turn up?”
“I think it's still an active case.”
“Well, anyway, Mei-ling didn't have any phone calls, either, not from her cell. I purposely put the interns in a room where it's impossible to get reception. The intern office phone is directly connected to my headset so I can hear everything that's said. Mei-ling only made business calls.”
“She meet anyone for lunch?”
“My intern's lunch break is with me. I order out and she gets to eat with me in my office. Isn't that a treat?”
“Free lunch with the boss, wow, what a deal,” I said, unable to wring out the sarcasm in my voice.
“I'm not that bad to hang out with, Jing-nan! A lot of people find me to be great company.”
Her desk emitted a soft tone. She picked up a wishbone-thin headset and with one hand slipped it over her ears.
“Yes,” said Peggy. “Gimme a minute.” She set the headset aside. “Jing-nan, you'll have to excuse me. I have an interview with someone looking for a trader position.”
I struggled my way out of the seat. “Thanks for taking the time to see me.”
“Hey, Jing-nan! Let's play a trick. On your way to the lobby, put on a face like I just chewed you out. I want to see if I can shatter her confidence before we even start.”
“That's mean, Peggy.”
She shrugged. “If that's enough to rattle them, then they can take a hike,” she said. “Let them go work in the night market.” She caught herself. “I'm sorry, I don't mean that what you do is completely worthless.”
“That's all right,” I said. “I know what you mean.” Her apology was more hurtful than the actual insult. I didn't have to fake a hurt look on the way out.