The warehouse loomed before me like a giant coffin in the night.
Shade or Melice was probably waiting for me. Maybe both of them. But I can do pretty well fending for myself when I have to, and I knew that if they were here, this would be my best chance at catching them.
Watchful, cautious, I stepped from my car and leaned beneath the crime scene tape. Then I pulled out my SIG and my Maglite and approached the great black coffin.
The criminalists had chained the door to the warehouse shut, but it didn’t take me long to pick the lock. I creaked the door open, entered the dusty stillness, and took in the scene. High above me, the jagged windows let only slivers of city light into the building.
No sign of Shade of Melice.
With my flashlight, I located the window I’d climbed through after scaling the outside wall. Then I swept the light along the wall to find the staircase I’d descended.
Missing… what was I missing?
I moved the light toward the area where I’d first seen Melice.
Ralph was to your left… the tank with Cassandra was at the far end of the warehouse.
Swinging the light like a giant saber, I walked warily forward. I could hear the faint sound of dripping water from somewhere. The lonely air around me took the sound and toyed with it, magnified it, making the innocent drops of water sound like the soft, wet heartbeat of the building. Other than that, complete silence. No sign of Shade or Melice.
After a few moments, I found the remnants of the tank where Cassandra had been imprisoned for over twelve hours. I stepped inside the tank’s remains and stood where she stood. This is where she screamed. Where she wept.
The rusty ring beside my feet.
Gently dripping water.
The camcorders used to record the women had been hidden in the wall about four meters away. I shone my flashlight on the area.
The camera angles in all eight videos were consistent, so the cameras had been mounted in the same place for all the shots. I’d read in the criminalists’ report that Melice had used two cameras, one of which he’d moved subsequent to filming Cassandra’s video.
I walked to the room where the cameras had been located, made sure no one was waiting in ambush for me, then found the cameras’ original positions. After checking the sight lines, I returned to the tank and saw that Melice had done an amazing job of concealing the cameras’ locations. Both were set in shadowed recesses in the wall and wouldn’t have been visible from inside the tank.
Just two tiny holes in a wall full of shadows.
Four meters away.
I tuned my ears to listen for any hint of movement, but heard nothing. If Shade or Melice were here, so far they’d been deathly still.
Windows, high and off to the left… the glint off the windows
…
You’re still missing something, Pat. Think.
The chain lay beside my foot, still attached to the metal ring. The last link of the chain was bent, opened, scratched. I guessed Ralph had used a tool of some kind to wrench it open. I studied the chain, counted the number of links. I bent low, aimed the beam of my light at the place where the metal ring was attached to the bottom of the tank. Then turned and looked up at the writing on the wall. Remembering the water fingering away from the tank and into the room, I let my light follow the cracks in the uneven floor as they spread away from the tank.
What was I missing?
I thought of John Doe’s suicide, the fires, the abduction, the death of Austin Hunter.
Once again, I wondered what I would have done if someone had been threatening to hurt Lien-hua. Even before having her hand on mine, even before feeling our fingers intertwine or receiving her gentle kiss, I would have done anything to save her.
Anything.
As I let myself think of her, the last couple days became more vivid to me, colored richer by my feelings. I pointed the light at the place on the floor where she had leaned over to help Cassandra.
As far as we knew, Cassandra was the only one to survive this tank. Seven other women had died right where I was standing-all within the last four months; beginning about the same time the Illusionist attacked Tessa, the same time Sebastian Taylor disappeared. The same time Lien-hua first flew to San Diego to profile the arsonist.
Motives. Dripping water. Echoing.
Thorough. Professional.
Lien-hua found the exit door at the aquarium.
She was also the one who found the gloves at the site of Monday night’s fire.
I aimed my light at the now-broken chain once again.
Melice asked for Lien-hua by name. She was the one who tried to make the case for Dunn being Shade.
Fact. Fiction.
Fiction. Fact.
Someone had to tell Melice about the device. You told Lien-hua the device was in the evidence room. She whispered something to Melice during the interrogation. The note from Shade said, “You missed something, Dr. Bowers.”
I missed something.
No, no, no.
Lien-hua was the one who offered to tell Cassandra about Hunter’s death. She held Cassandra. Let her weep against her shoulder.
Psychopaths just look at other people as objects to be used and then discarded…
Everything I knew about the case was beginning to split apart.
Lien-hua was the one who quickly bandaged Melice’s hand with her sock. So quickly. That’s where he’d hidden the pick-in the hand she wrapped…
There was no robbery, no murder, no crime, no motive, the room wasn’t locked.
I grabbed the chain. Yanked it.
The room wasn’t locked.
The eyewitness to Melice’s trial in DC was killed… Lien-hua knows DC. She used to be a detective there… What had Osbourne said? The government was worried about the Chinese… She’s Chinese. She’s planning a trip to Beijing.
Defeating him in his own castle.
Every thought was a betrayal to my feelings, to my world, to all I’d come to believe about the woman who told me she needed me.
Semantic aphasia… using the words that your listeners want to hear. It’s a way of manipulating people.
Lien-hua was the one who led us to the warehouse, and both times Shade had called me, Lien-hua wasn’t beside me, wasn’t in view. Reality began to splinter apart.
No, it couldn’t be.
Yes, it could.
Nothing was as it seemed.
I bolted for the door with one thought ripping through my mind: Lien-hua was Shade and I’d just left her alone with the device. Creighton Melice set the garment bag on the edge of the reception desk at the Surfside Inn. “Excuse me,” he said to the man working behind the counter. After he had his attention, Creighton flashed the FBI badge Shade had given him at the Blue Lizard Lounge in November. “I’m looking for two people who checked in here earlier today. They’re suspects in the terrorist bombing yesterday at the naval base. I assume you’ve heard about it?”
The man’s nervous nod said it all.
“All right, then. You’d recognize them. A very attractive Asian woman and a man who-”
“Yeah. I know ‘em. They’re in room 524. The guy nearly wrenched my arm out of its socket.”
“That would be him. Room 524, got it. We’ll bring in one of our men to watch the front desk while I go up there. I need you to wait in the back room and lock the door. Give us at least thirty minutes. Am I clear?”
More nods, then the man backed away from the desk and, rubbing his wrist, disappeared into the back room while Creighton picked up the garment bag, entered the elevator, and pressed 5.
Lien-hua pulled the curtains shut and took the device to the far room of the suite.
She let her mind walk slowly through all that had happened over the last couple days. Every moment became another flower, and in her heart she placed them in a vase and began to arrange them in a way that caught all the light she’d ever known.
She untied the laundry bag.
This is what she’d wanted, wasn’t it?
A new beginning? A chance to fall in love again?
She slid the device out. Just to see it. Just to look at it.
In Pat’s arms she felt stronger and weaker than she had in years. Was that a good thing or a bad one? Who could tell? Feelings do that, twist and change our motives, our dreams. She heard the door to the hotel room creak open.
A flicker of excitement and apprehension caught hold of her. She reached for her gun just in case it wasn’t who she expected.
“Hello?” she called. “Is that you?”