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Published by: Library Tales Publishing, Inc. www.LibraryTalesPublishing.com www.Facebook.com/LibraryTalesPublishing Copyright Š 2014 by Joe Henley www.facebook.com/jwhenley No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Trademarks: Library Tales Publishing, Library Tales, the Library Tales Publishing logo, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of Library Tales Publishing, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. For general information on our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department at 1-800-754-5016, or fax 917-4630892. For technical support, please e-mail Office@LibraryTales.com Library Tales Publishing also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Every content that appears in print is available in electronic books. ISBN-13: 978-0692274637 ISBN-10: 0692274634 Printed in the United States of America
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“For my family and friends in Canada, around the world, and in Taiwan, my second home.�
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CHAPTER ONE
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eaman Apprentice Fu stared down at the dark, gently heaving water, watching the languid corpse bob gently up and down with the swell. He was assigned to early morning maintenance duties, punishment for bringing aboard a small bottle of potent kaoliung sorghum liquor. Fu was one of only a few men on deck at this hour, but more would shortly follow, going about the daily business of keeping the Falcon, an MHC-59 Osprey class coastal minehunter, in working order. Docked in the Greater Kinmen naval base port, the ship was due to head out on a training mission in just a few hours’ time. Its crew had reported for duty the previous morning. Fu was once again off to a blazing start, having drawn the ire of his superiors in record time. He shifted his gaze from the body to the gun metal gray deck he was currently tasked with swabbing, trying to convince himself that his severe hangover was causing him to hallucinate. But when he looked back, there it was, bloated, with strange blackened eyeballs and sickening pale skin. The islands of Kinmen belonged to Taiwan, also known by its official title of the Republic of China, so named by the Kuomintang, or KMT. However, they were located just a few kilometers from the shores of China’s Fujian Province.
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The Falcon, a near 200-foot vessel, had come across bodies before in the course of its patrols around the Kinmen archipelago. They were usually drowned fishermen or poor asylum seekers pitched overboard by greedy and unscrupulous snakeheads. Yet this was the first time a body had simply turned up beside the ship while docked. All Fu knew was that bodies brought trouble. Bodies brought questions, and it was better to be the one asking the questions than the one asked. If he reported the body, he would have many questions to answer, and he wasn’t on good terms with his commanding officer this morning, if ever . Fu went through all the possible scenarios in his clouded mind, trying to keep his thoughts straight. He could report the body directly to the top, Master Chief Petty Officer Chang. But that might anger the man Fu was under the direct command of, Petty Officer 3rd Class Lee. Chang was a hard man, as anyone who rose to his rank had to be. He was a lifelong soldier bred by a proud family of lifelong soldiers, and had no time or respect for men like Fu, whom he believed brought shame to a rapidly softening fighting force. Going to Lee hardly seemed a better option. He had been the one to find Fu with his contraband this time, just an hour before. Lee was also a drinker, but his rank afforded him certain privileges not available to men like Fu, too low down in the pecking order to escape discipline. On his way back to his private quarters, Lee had stumbled into the bunks of his men, and flew into an alcohol-fueled rage when he saw Fu had once again been in breach of his duties. Lee may have been a drinker, but he was a functional alcoholic. Fu, he believed, was the worst kind of drinker—the unreliable drunk. There was no room for unreliable men on the Falcon. Deciding his best option would be to have someone else report the body, somebody in better favor with those higher up, Fu pushed his mop and wheeled bucket from the port to the starboard side of the vessel. There, leaning against the 6
rail, was Seaman Sung Jiang-Feng, a young man of 21 who had come through basic training with Fu. They shared the same boyish disposition, both in looks and maturity. Sung saw Fu coming, and knew he must have been punished again. “What was it this time?” he asked half playfully, though with the schoolyard mentality on the ship, he could never bring himself to show total kindness to Fu. Do that, he thought, and I’ll be tormented just as badly as he is. “Who are you talking to?” Fu replied shyly, unable to look directly at Sung’s face for more than a fraction of a second, even if he was nice to him from time to time. “Drinking again,” Sung said knowingly. “I guess Lee has you shining the deck again then. You’ve already finished with the other side?” “No,” said Fu, struggling to find the right way to go about telling Sung about what he had seen. His eyes studied the deck as he searched for the combination of words that might see the burden off his shoulders. “I saw something in the water,” he finally blurted out clumsily to break the long, awkward silence that had settled uncomfortably between them. “If it was the princess of Tung Lake, tell her to send some of that gold my way,” Sung jested, referring to the legend of a mermaid who bestowed riches on an ordinary man who showed her kindness when she was gravely injured by a general’s arrow. The withering chuckle that toppled out of Fu’s mouth instantly let Sung know something was up. “What did you see?” he inquired, turning instantly serious. “There’s a body in the water beside the ship. A man I think. He’s just floating there. I was hoping you could tell Lee about it.” “Why don’t you tell him?” Sung shot back. “You’re the one who found him. If Lee finds out we lied about this I’ll be in as much shit as you’re always in. And if someone else 7
finds the body and Lee finds out you saw it and didn’t tell him, that will be even worse. He’s probably in his quarters right now. You can go tell him, he’ll take it to Chang, and then it’s out of your hands,” Sung counted off the steps on his fingers. Knowing Sung was right, Fu nodded, raising his head just enough to show that he agreed. Stowing his mop and bucket he made his way below deck to Lee’s private quarters, a small, cramped room he had to himself amidst the cold metallic maze of corridors and steps that made up the impersonal and, as far as Fu was concerned, maddeningly sterile interior of the ship. He knew he wasn’t welcome at Lee’s door now, or at any other time of day. With a hard swallow he knocked meekly on the metal surface, quickly giving his gig line a once over as he heard footsteps stir immediately within. Just as Fu was ensuring that his shirt was properly tucked in, Petty Officer 3rd Class Lee appeared in his doorway, shirtless with a cigarette dangling from his lips. His eyes were glazed and bloodshot, his face and head shorn clean as always. A large scar ran from just above his left eye down toward his prominent cheekbones. These jutting features gave his eyes a permanently sunken look. His face seemed to be forever frozen in a menacing scowl, except when drinking with his follow officers. In his eyes the men below him were inexperienced and a nuisance merely to be tolerated at best, and a danger to the safety of all those aboard the Falcon during his most sinister moods. “What the fuck do you want, seaman?” he barked, still clenching the cigarette precariously between his lips. “If you’ve finished swabbing the deck already there are potatoes that need peeling in the canteen.” “Sir,” Fu stammered, “it’s not that. I mean, I’m not finished with the deck yet.” “You mean you got me out of bed to tell me you’re not 8
done carrying out the specific orders I gave you not more than an hour ago?” Lee’s rage seemed to grow hotter with every word. “You truly are a new breed of stupid, Seaman Fu. Not only do you fail to carry out orders, but you take the infinitely fucking stupid risk of disturbing me at this ungodly hour to tell me you’ve failed to carry out my orders. If I wasn’t so sure it would make you happy, I’d have you court-martialed.” “Sir, I…” Fu tried to continue, but Lee was having none of it. “Did you hear me tell you to speak, Seaman Apprentice Fu?” The shorter commanding officer stepped purposefully toward him, moving fluidly even in his hung over state. Fu noticed that he had put even more emphasis on the word apprentice than usual. But somehow he found it within himself to manage a response, sputtering it out if only to rid himself of the responsibility and gratefully send it shooting up the chain of command. “Sir, there’s a body in the water off the port bow.” “A body? Are you sure? Is it one of ours? This had better not be your idea of a sick joke, seaman, or I’ll have the men shine up the deck with your fucking guts.” “I don’t think it’s one of ours, sir,” Fu replied, his hands beginning to shake. “He’s wearing civilian clothing, floating face up. He looks to have been in the water for a while.” Lee went uncharacteristically quiet. Usually his voice never registered below a roar. He liked to hear his own booming sound bouncing off the metal sheets below deck and watch the enlisted men cringe at his trademark baritone. “You did the right thing, bringing this to me. Your part in this is over. Get some supplies and start cleaning the head. I’ll inform Master Chief Petty Officer Chang that it was I who discovered the corpse, then we can proceed with the recovery.” “But, sir,” Fu began, only to welcome back the wrath of 9
the little man with the barrel chest and fiery gaze. “Question me again Seaman Apprentice Fu and cleaning the head will be the least of your worries,” he hissed, feeling the need to keep his voice down. “Now, if anyone asks you about the body, you don’t know anything about it. Tell me you understand.” Lee moved even closer, the shorter man putting his forehead just below Fu’s chin. “I...I understand,” Fu stammered nervously, keeping his eyes up to avoid the mistake of looking downward at Lee. “Good, now do as I’ve ordered. Mention this, or anything about this morning, to no one. You awoke with the rest of the men at reveille and were assigned to maintenance duties. For all we know this body is just another local drunk who went out for a midnight swim and never came back. We don’t need anyone jumping to conclusions. That will be all, seaman. Dismissed.” Fu nodded, saluted his commanding officer, turned at attention, and walked slowly in a daze to the head where he promptly vomited in the sink. None of the enlisted men on the Falcon had ever seen a body before, nor had most of the officers. Though China regarded Taiwan as a renegade state, to be brought back into the embrace of the Motherland by brute force if necessary, there had been few serious military incidents resulting in significant casualties between the two since two million KMT soldiers and refugees fled across the Taiwan Strait in 1949. The KMT had been forced to take up residence on Taiwan after their defeat in the Chinese Civil War, widely regarded as the largest war in history behind only the two world wars. Spanning 23 years, the war was the bloody culmination of the ideological imbalance between the Communist Party of China and the Chinese Nationalist Party. Each side led a de-facto state, the Communists the People’s Republic of China and the Nationalists the Republic of China. In 1927, skirmishes began in which each side fought bitterly 10
to gain control of the other’s territory. Save for a period between 1937 and 1946 when the two sides formed the Second United Front against the Japanese invasion, the fierce battles would not see an end until 1950, when the KMT and its leadership was forced into geographical isolation from its enemy on the islands of Taiwan. Ever since, the war had mainly been one of words and economics, but words of fire and anger and policies enacted to punish were beginning to be replaced by those of another, far kinder variety. Now the news stories dealing with relations between China and Taiwan spoke mostly of warming ties and business relations, despite the fact that China aimed an everincreasing number of intercontinental ballistic missiles at the island every year, and in spite of Taiwan’s firebrand President Bao Man-Chiu, a stalwart advocate of Taiwanese independence and a man known for his outright love of agitating the Chinese. Still, for most of the men aboard the ship, save for Petty Officer 3rd Class Lee, Master Chief Petty Officer Chang, and perhaps a couple of other officers who may have seen men killed in training accidents, this was their first corpse. Lee and Chang tried to go about the retrieval as quietly as possible, but word quickly spread amongst the men. Davits were used to lower a small lifeboat into the water beside the Falcon, manned by a couple of Seamen First Class who were told nothing except that there was a body in the water that they were to haul up to the deck. The men nervously descended to the water in silence, having also been instructed to say absolutely nothing to each other as they carried out the orders. Worried glances were all that passed between them. The sun’s first rays were just breaking the horizon, adding bits of color to the water’s slight ripples moved by the remnants of a light summer squall. The two men didn’t need to maneuver the lifeboat far, no more than a few meters down the boat’s hull toward the 11
bow. There the body was gently bumping up against the ship so softly that it barely made a sound. The deceased’s black head of hair waved listlessly in the salt water, and his skin had open blotches where tiny sea organisms had begun to feast on the rotting flesh. The blackened eyes, frozen open, stared upward, reflecting none of the light that shone into them. With neither man wanting to take the head, the seamen surreptitiously held a single round of rock, paper, scissors to decide which end of the corpse each would have to lift, knowing the watchful eyes of their commanders were carefully observing their every move from above. Silently the body was brought aboard the lifeboat, which was then winched back aboard the Falcon. On the deck beside the rail General Medical Officer Chao stood beside Master Chief Petty Officer Chang, both men grimly watching the proceedings. Chang dismissed the seamen who had retrieved the body the moment the lifeboat touched the deck. Then, he turned to his medical officer. Autopsies were not normally conducted aboard the ship. That was a matter for the Medical Examiner. But Chang needed to know exactly what sort of trouble had washed up alongside the vessel he commanded, and he needed to know quickly, before any more trouble came his way. “You will report your findings directly to me, and no one else,” He said sternly. “Understood, sir,” Chao replied with the strict obedience of the perfect subordinate. Chang had two other seamen transport the corpse down to Dr. Chao’s medical facilities, a Spartan set of adjoining rooms consisting of an examination area and a never-beforeused morgue that was about to receive its first tenant. Chao had never conducted an autopsy before, and protested as much to Chang, but his words went unheeded. “Find out what you can,” said Chang calmly. “The rest… we shall see. Probably just a Chinese tourist caught in a 12
riptide at Xiamen, or an asylum seeker.” And so Chao went about the grisly business of performing his first autopsy, nearly retching at the sharp crack the rib spreader made when he opened the man’s chest. His lungs were filled with water, suggesting death by drowning. But Chao also took note of the blackened eyes—eight ball hemorrhages usually found in victims who were shot in the head. Sure enough, when he turned over the body, he found two entry wounds in the base of the skull. Whoever wanted the man dead had made sure. Certain he had determined the cause of death, Chao went to report his findings to Chang alone, as ordered. Exiting the morgue, he was startled to find the elderly commanding officer, gray and completely bald on top, with the hair at the sides and back of his head shaved close to the bone, sitting alone. He rose to his feet as quickly as his aching joints would allow as soon as Chao entered the exam area. “Tell me everything you have found,” Chang said authoritatively. “Spare me no details.” “The deceased is a male, early fifties. Asian, though the bloating has made it difficult to ascertain exactly where he might be from; possibly Chinese. No identification on him, unfortunately. Probable cause of death two bullet wounds to the base of the skull, one right beside the other, just a few centimeters apart. There are no exit wounds, so presumably the bullets are still lodged somewhere in the skull. I lack the proper equipment to run a toxicology screen, but with the bullet wounds I’m certain it’s a moot point anyway. I’m sure the police will be able to handle that once we transfer the corpse to them.” “Yes,” Chang said thoughtfully, “the police.” He paused long enough for Chao to begin to feel uneasy. Chao hesitantly spoke up again only when he was sure he would not interrupt his superior in mid-thought.
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“Yes, sir, the police. Judging by the man’s dress and his physical condition, it’s quite obvious he is a civilian. This makes the case a police matter, not a military concern.” “Perhaps it would be easier if we just tossed him back over the side, eh?” the old man chuckled in a rare display of dark humor. “Sir?” “Relax, Doctor Chao, relax. Of course you are right. I will notify the police in Kinmen, and they will handle things accordingly. If the man is Chinese, the body will be posthumously repatriated to China, and if Taiwanese next of kin will be notified. Either way, that’s the last we’ll hear of it.” “That’s a relief, sir.” “Your work is done, Chao,” Chang reassured him. “But I must remind you not to share what you’ve learned with the other men.” “Of course, sir,” Chao affirmed. “Excellent. Then go about your day. The Kinmen County Police will handle things from here. I’ll see that they are properly informed of this morning’s tragic find.” Chao nodded and silently returned to the morgue to dress the body, stitching up the chest cavity, zipping up the corpse inside a body bag, and laying the head down as gently as he would his own son’s. He then solemnly placed the body in one of two cold storage compartments where it would await its next move to Jincheng Township, Golden City, at the southwestern corner of Greater Kinmen Island. It was getting toward mid-morning as he walked back into his now empty examination room to await his first patients of the day. It was another two hours before a couple of unkempt officers from the Kinmen County Police Department came aboard the Falcon to take possession of the body, accompanied by a nervous tandem of paramedics. One of the officers, overweight with patchy facial hair, one corner of his 14
shirt untucked, looked as though he had just rolled out of bed. His thinner companion was wide-eyed with an apparent case of bad nerves. They, like the men of the Falcon, hadn’t seen many bodies before. After a brief discussion with Chang, it was determined that taking the body to the Kinmen County Hospital to await the coroner would prove futile. Kinmen had found itself temporarily without a coroner since the death of the elderly man who had held the position for the past 40 years the week before. Instead, the body would be sent to the Forensic Medical Examiner Office in Taipei. Later that afternoon, just a few hours removed from the waters of the strait, the unknown victim was airborne, bound for the capital. By that time everyone on the Falcon had heard a body had been plucked from the sea. But only a handful knew foul play was involved, and no one knew where the mystery man had come from. Not long after the body was taken from the ship, Master Chief Petty Officer Chang gathered everyone on the ship in the mission briefing hall, where he addressed the men. “By now,” he began, “many or most of you are aware that we recovered a body from the sea this morning. Let me assure you that the man we took from the water was not one of our own. He was a civilian, likely Chinese or a Kinmen local. This is all we know, and this is all you need to know. Anything else you hear is unsubstantiated rumor, and nothing more. Any man who is caught speaking of this morning’s little incident again will be joining Apprentice Seaman Fu in his early morning maintenance duties. That will be all, gentlemen. Dismissed.”
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CHAPTER TWO Jason Su’s eyelids reluctantly wrestled themselves from his dry eyes as he woke to find the infuriating light of the late morning sun streaming into his penthouse apartment in the Xinyi District of Taipei City. His head was pounding, his mouth completely parched. He smacked his lips and ran his tongue along his palate in a vain attempt to coax some moisture back into his mouth. He then placed a shaking hand to his forehead, brushing away a few wayward strands of his thick jet-black hair. White hot bursts of pain convulsed behind his ocular cavities. Irregular waves of nausea gripped his stomach. The ringing of his home phone had woken him. Strange, he thought, as everyone he knew, and he knew a lot of people in Taipei, always called him on his cell phone. No one ever called his house. Must be a wrong number, he thought, as he debated whether or not to take the long walk to the kitchen for a glass of water. Rolling over, tangling his legs in his 1,500 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets, he spied a half-empty can of Taiwan Beer on the nightstand beside the phone—an unfinished nightcap from the night before. A glance around the room confirmed that he was indeed alone in the apartment. No luck with the ladies last night. The phone rang a few more times and finally went quiet.
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Opting for the beer instead of water, he groped for the can behind his head before bringing its metallic surface to his lips and draining the whole of its piss warm contents, grimacing and letting out a low belch as he finished. Jason should have been at work. He had an office he could go to. But whether or not he actually went there was entirely up to him. Such was the freedom of being self-employed. He couldn’t recall if he had any important meetings this morning, and if he did his secretary Ms. Huang would have called him on his cell phone like everyone was supposed to. The beer had given his system a momentary reprieve, but the hangover would be back with an all-consuming cruelty if he didn’t get some grease into his system. Once again his land line rang, and for the second time Jason chose to ignore it. He felt around under his throw pillows for his unlisted cell phone. He fumbled around and found it and checked for messages. There were no texts from friends or new acquaintances. There were no messages from Ms. Haung either. She was probably at the office taking calls, saying Jason was in a meeting as she did on so many similar mornings. Jason again thought about going out to get something to eat to settle his stomach, which was already experiencing heaves of nausea once more. Then he remembered a slice of cold pizza he had in the fridge. Despite being Taiwanese, his years in America had moved his culinary tastes from east to west. His cell phone rang. “Caller ID Blocked” appeared on the screen. Jason decided to pick up anyway, if only to stop the incessant ringing of both his phones from boring further into his skull. “Wrong number,” he said immediately, and was about to hang up when the voice on the other end of the line, a man, spoke up hastily. “Su Wen-Hao?” the man asked. No one ever used Jason’s 17
Mandarin name. To everyone who knew him, he was simply Jason. “This is Ja... This is Su Wen-Hao,” Jason replied apprehensively. “Who is this? How did you get this number?” “This is Doctor Wu at the Forensic Medical Examiner Office. I’m afraid I have some bad news.” ”You see, the body of a man was brought in late yesterday...” Jason’s stomach sank and his blood seemed to thin. His head fell into the pillows. His mind raced back to the previous evening out with his friends. Round after round of Patron tequila and chasers, drinks being sent over from other tables. Jagermeister, Finlandia vodka, draft beer, single malt scotch. He and his friends had been a mess. Jason called them friends, but there wasn’t one of them that he had actually spent time with one on one. Whenever he put in a call to reserve a back table at a club, there they were, ready to drink the bar dry and take the fast and easy path to debauchery no matter what night of the week it was. The thought of who didn’t make it home reared up. “Mr. Su?” the voice inquired tentatively. “Yes, I’m here,” he breathed deeply. Blood vessels pounded in his temples. “Your father is Su Yao-Chung?” Jason hadn’t heard from his father in weeks. He lived in China, in the sprawling southern mega-city of Guangzhou where he ran a furniture factory. Jason’s lucrative business was assisting Chinese investors in getting their cash into the Taiwanese market, whether their money was welcome or legal in any particular segment of the market or not. These days, Jason’s father only called when he had an inside line on the latest Chinese millionaire looking to make some money in Taiwan. His high-end products, solid oak dining sets, rare mahogany bookcases and the like brought in such whales all the time. 18
“Are you there, Mr. Su?” “Yes…I mean, yes, that is my father’s name. But are you saying the man you have is my father? There must be some mistake. He’s in China, not Taiwan. You must have a man with the same name,” Jason reasoned. “Mr. Su, I know this must be a shock, but I’m sorry to say the man’s dental records match those of Su Yao-Chung, born October 9th, 1961. “ Jason felt his chest clench. He may have forgotten much about his father, by choice or by necessity. But he still remembered his birthday, the day before the R.O.C.’s annual celebration of its founding, Double Ten Day. “We’d appreciate it if you could come to our office when you’re ready. To identify the body. The sooner the better.” Jason felt numb. Though no longer close to his father, the thought of losing him still hit hard. He remembered their last cold, impersonal conversation a few weeks prior, about a tycoon from Shanghai who was looking to invest in a newspaper, the Taipei Standard. The previous president, Lee Ma-Ying of the pro-unification KMT, had made it legal for Chinese to invest in limited quantities in Taiwanese media. But the new president, Bao Man-Chiu, a scholarly, bespectacled man of 60, representing the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, had made it his first order of business to ban Chinese investment in media outright, saying it was a direct threat to the nation’s hard-won sovereignty. It was all part of the usual tit-for-tat that the KMT and DPP engaged in, with one undoing the legislation of the other as soon as power shifted. As Jason knew, though, there were always ways around the laws of Taiwan no matter who was in charge. His mind quickly snapped back to the grim reality. “Yes, I’ll be down as soon as I can.” Any reminders of physical pain were quickly forgotten as Jason sat up in bed and walked to the warming light 19
coming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows that wrapped around the eastern side of the apartment. He closed his eyes and felt the hot sunlight instantly flush his cheeks. Sweat began to bead along the curvature of his spine. He leaned a forearm on the hot glass and placed his forehead directly on the clear pane. He thought back to his early teens, the last time he and his father had been truly close. I won’t know anyone in America. You’ll make many friends there, son. They’ll make fun of my poor English. You’re young. You’ll pick it up in no time. Trust me; you’ll do great things there. Why can’t you go with me? I don’t want to go alone. I have to tend to my business here. Those schools in L.A. aren’t cheap, you know. You can come back to Taiwan to visit every summer, or I can go there to see you. It won’t be so bad. You’ll see. But there had been no summer visits between the two. No return trips to Taiwan. Every spring, just before school let out for the summer, came a familiar phone call. Jason’s father would apologize, saying he could not leave his business behind even for a minute, nor could he afford to buy a plane ticket home for his son. He had just enough money for next year’s living expenses and boarding school tuition. I’m sorry son, but one day you’ll understand I did this for your own good. When you return from your studies, we’ll have plenty of time to spend together. Jason’s eyes slammed shut and he could feel hot tears welling up at the corners. He wiped what little moisture there was away and took a couple of deep breaths, moving between sadness, anger, and regret second by second. “Plenty of time,” he said aloud to himself. “Plenty of fucking time.” Why, he wondered, did you move to China a fucking week after I got back from the states? He was 21 at the time, just out of school at UCLA, having graduated with honors, 20
majoring in economics. He had flown back to Taiwan right after his graduation ceremony, another milestone his father had missed out on. Jason knew something was up when his dad failed to meet him at the airport. Instead of a joyful reunion, he received a text message after turning on his phone while going through passport control at Taoyuan International. The message instructed him to wait for his father at an unfamiliar address in Taipei. He later found out that the old family home, a three-story standalone in the affluent and international area of Tienmu, had been sold, and his father was renting a modest apartment in a neighborhood Jason had never heard of. Son, we won’t have as much time together as I would have liked. Times have not been easy for me. Many of the factories are moving their operations to China, and I must go too if I want to keep my business alive. You understand, don’t you? Jason did understand, all too well. Lower labor costs in China had sent Taiwanese factory owners scrambling to the mainland, drawn by the prospect of higher profits. He had known his father’s business was struggling in Taiwan. He had hinted at it in their sporadic phone calls in the preceding months. But he hadn’t mentioned anything about relocating so soon. It seemed very spur of the moment, unplanned. Later, when Jason’s anger faded into ambivalence, about a year after he had been back in Taiwan, he thought that at least the move would make his dad happy. Jason’s paternal grandfather, whom he had never met, was a KMT general from Fujian Province. He had come over with the Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek and the rest of the remaining Nationalists in ’49. Jason’s dad told him about how his own father spent his entire childhood telling him stories about how China and Taiwan were destined to be reunited, and how the National Revolutionary Army would one day return to take back the mainland. Jason’s dad often told him that the only time he saw his father cry was the day Chiang Kai-Shek died, and he knew there would be no going back. 21
He passed away not long after Chiang did, never having laid eyes on his homeland again after he left. Now, at least, Jason had thought, Dad can go back for him. Slowly Jason had let go of his anger, and he and his father developed a businesslike relationship. They talked, even less frequently than they had when he was in L.A., and most of the time it involved his father hooking him up with some businessman or another looking for a back door into Taiwan. Though Jason was relatively young and inexperienced, he was better at networking than his peers. His years abroad, his western style and attitude, gave him an exotic appeal to the people in Taiwan and China that he did business with. His ideas were different. His mentality was different. His love for money, though, was very much the same. It didn’t take long for him to make his fortune, with every night out at a swanky club garnering him new connections and a stack of business cards. Those connections allowed Jason to facilitate introductions between parties from Taiwan and China, after meeting with each separately. Both sides might not trust each other, but they trusted the slick, young go-getter. Vouching for each side and putting them together in the same room was worth an impressive commission, as long as he did things right. Guiding them around certain loopholes in business regulations was worth even more, and that was the one legacy Jason was glad he inherited from his father. The old man definitely knew his way around the rules. He had to give him that. Now a voice on the phone said he was gone—a man calling himself Doctor Wu. But that’s all it was, a voice. He doesn’t know my father. He could be anyone. I’ll call Dad in China. He’ll answer. Maybe we’ll even laugh about it. The calls between father and son had always gone one way. The phone rang on and on. He must have let it ring a hundred times, believing each one would bring that familiar, somewhat gruff voice on the other end, before he finally 22
relented and hung up. Only then did a single tear find its way down his cheek. He turned away from the cloudless blue sky outside. The painfully bright reflections shone off the glass and steel metropolis around him. “I need a fucking shower,” he said softly to himself, noticing the stench of booze and cigarettes that clung like a toxic film to his skin. He stumbled from his room down the main hallway of the spacious penthouse to the bathroom. Turning the shower faucet, he let the water’s warm sense of comfort hold him for a while. Jason stayed there, under the falling water, until the grief divided itself into smaller, more manageable portions, and he was ready to face the outside world. Though at home Jason wasn’t above being a slob, he never presented anything but his best face to the outside world. His walk-in closet was filled with the finest in business casual—Gucci and Ralph Lauren mostly. Slacks, a sport coat, a light-color dress shirt and shined patent leather shoes were the norm. Jason’s business was as much about image as anything else, and to go out looking anything less than the hot-shot power broker was simply unacceptable. Never let them see you weak, his dad always said. This memory actually made him smile for a second as he checked to see that his shirt collar was properly folded and his pant creases crisp. He had all his clothes custom tailored in light fabrics, breathable for the unbearable Taipei summer heat. Once he had the whole ensemble on, he took one last look in the mirror on the outside of the sliding door of the closet to make sure everything was where it should be. Then it was back to the bathroom to tease up his hair a little bit, putting some youthful spikes here and there to give its middling length a bit of an edge. “Never let them see you weak,” he said to his reflection. With that, he was out the door, grabbing his Ray Bans off the kitchen counter on the way. His private elevator took him down one floor to the private lobby of the penthouse. He then transferred to the 23
elevator used by the rest of the building’s tenants and was soon striding across the marble floors of the ground level lobby of the Lion’s Gate Building, just a stone’s throw from the landmark Taipei 101, the former titleholder in the world’s tallest building rankings. Jason’s yearly New Year’s Eve fireworks viewing parties had become a highlight for the city’s young upper crust and old money trust fund set. His two-tiered terrace served as the perfect vantage point to watch the splendor of fireworks being shot from the outside of the upper floors of the nearly 1,700 foot structure, designed to look like a giant serrated stalk of bamboo growing up towards the sky. From early December on, his phone never stopped ringing, the calls often being from people he hadn’t talked to since the previous December. The doorman, Mr. Zhao, was an older gentleman who wore a knee-length fog coat and the type of hat usually reserved for police officers or ship captains. He dutifully opened the door for Jason, saying good morning to him in English. He hardly spoke more than those two words of the language, but knew Jason was basically a foreigner, a waiguoren, in Taiwan. The kindly old man wanted him to feel at home. Jason forced a slight cornerwise smile, his sunglasses hiding his deadened emotions, and stepped out into the blinding sun and stifling heat of the city. Jason’s building fronted onto Xinyi Road in the upscale southeastern portion of the city. All around him the elites, or those just passing through their portion of the city, walked by shoulder to shoulder during the mid-day rush. Bankers and C.E.O.s in three thousand dollar suits and designer glasses headed to lunch meetings at western restaurant chains. Office workers hurried to fill their one-hour reprieve from a twelve-hour workday with a quick bian dang, a takeaway rice-based lunch served in a compartmentalized cardboard box. Junk men, farmers bringing fruits and 24
vegetables into the city, and repairmen drove their ubiquitous four-cylinder Veryca blue trucks at breakneck speed, expertly weaving in and out of traffic with mouths full of betel nut, or bin lang. The orange-red juice of the stimulant carcinogen stained their teeth, mouths, and white tank top shirts. Such was the juxtaposition of Taipei—rich and working poor, blue collar and businessman, side by side. Much of the city was a mix of old and new, with temples over a hundred years old sitting beside apartment buildings that went up just recently. But not in this uptown little corner of Xinyi. Here it was all new. New apartment buildings, new nightclubs, new shopping centers, new attitude. These surroundings suited Jason just fine. He felt no compelling need to reconnect with his lost culture and adapt to the Taiwanese way of doing things again. This little enclave where western fashions and sensibilities had crept into the local ways was where he felt most comfortable. He walked down the wide concrete path in front of his building. Tall areca palm trees on either side towered over carefully cultivated lotus flowers, calla lilies and scarlet rhododendrons growing out of plots of soil, artistically arranged to form the Chinese characters for prosperity or luck. The path led to the sidewalk running along Xinyi Road, where he hailed a yellow taxi cab and got in, giving the elderly driver the address for the Forensic Medical Examiner Office. “Huh?” the driver replied. Jason sometimes forgot that his Mandarin was still tinged with an American accent, and that he misused the four tones of the language from time to time. He repeated the address again, taking his time with the words and speaking deliberately. “Hao,” the driver said this time, repeating the address slowly to himself, drawing it out so Jason could hear the proper pronunciation without being made to feel as though he was being corrected. The driver nodded slowly as he put the car in gear and sped 25
down the road with the same abandon as the wild blue truck drivers. Jason buckled his seatbelt and gripped the plastic handle above the rear passenger side window. As the car made its way west, Jason closed his eyes and tried to rest his head against the window. Suddenly, he felt exhausted, as though he could fall asleep in an instant right then and there. He shut his eyes and saw his father, sitting alone at his desk, a photo of his beloved wife, a sweet woman who had fallen victim to breast cancer when Jason was just a toddler, to his right. He pored over papers scattered in front of him, his brow furrowed and his mouth curled into a frown. From the time Jason was old enough to notice, he found his father like this most nights, right up until he was sent off to America to begin his high school years. A jolt brought Jason back to the present as the driver was forced to slam on the brakes, having been cut off by another taxi driver in front of him. “Gan nin nyang,” he muttered under his breath, speaking the Taiwanese dialect, “Fuck your mother.” Those were about the only three Taiwanese words Jason could understand. With his family having immigrated from Mainland China, learning Taiwanese was never a priority in the Su household. His father had always told him they were Chinese, not Taiwanese, and not Chinese-Taiwanese. Just Chinese. This wasn’t an issue until Jason went to school, where the majority of his classmates came from local families, those that had been in Taiwan long before 1949. Their identity was Taiwanese. Not Chinese. Not Taiwanese-Chinese. Just Taiwanese. Jason had gotten into more than a few schoolyard fights because of this, and came home with his share of cuts and bruises after taking a beating at the hands of a large group of boys. It was after one of those beatings that his father told him of his family’s military past. Son, you know we come from a family of very brave, honorable men. Su men never break, no matter what lies in front of them. 26
I’m going to tell you a story about my father, your grandfather. My grandfather? Yes, he was a great man. A KMT soldier, courageous and strong. Do you know who the father of modern Taiwan is?I’ve told you this many times before. Chiang Kai-Shek. Yes, very good son. He was the commander of the National Revolutionary Army that fought the communist bandits of the People’s Liberation Army. They were both fighting to control all of China. Chiang and his men were chased all the way to Kinmen Island, just off the coast of Fujian Province. The KMT soldiers were tired and beaten. The PLA had driven them back further and further, until there was no place left to run. If the PLA took Kinmen, they would likely have taken Taiwan, and we would all be damned communists now. What happened, baba? We made a stand, that’s what happened. The KMT soldiers beat them back at the Battle of Kinmen, and your grandfather put many of those bastards in the ground with his rifle, fighting alongside his men even though his duty was only to command, not to fight. He said that Chiang himself congratulated him on his bravery and fighting skills. Really? Yes, and that’s what inspired me to become a soldier as well, when I was younger. I joined the R.O.C. Army, and served my country too. I never had to fight, but I was always ready to defend the R.O.C., the true guardian of the real China. So you see, we Su men are never afraid to fight, even when we are threatened by a much larger force. The PLA is much bigger than our army, but still we are ready to fight them to the last man. Do you understand? Yes, baba. The last thing Jason had wanted to do was follow his family’s military tradition, though. The dream of the KMT taking control of China was farcical now, given the mainland’s 27
massive military strength. The R.O.C. Army was merely a defensive force, and Jason felt no loyalty to his homeland anyway. Even his father, when he was in his darker moments, seemed to hint that he was losing faith in his beloved KMT in recent years. After the death of his own father, Su Yao-Chung still clung fiercely to the ideal that R.O.C. forces could return to China and retake the mainland one day, even though Chiang Kai-Shek, the man behind the propagandist viewpoint, was cold and dead. Such was the power of Chiang’s cult of personality. Su Yao-Chung held to Chiang’s ideals even as everyone around him who may have once felt the same way gradually dropped the illusion. He refused to believe that the stories which had been hammered into him over and over again during his youth could become nothing more than a lost dream. Eventually, though, he seemed to become embittered, and soured greatly on the KMT and its new leaders. “A pack of thieves and liars. That’s what they are,” Jason recalled him saying during another of their last meaningful conversations. “The KMT will never return to China. It’s the communists who will be coming for us.” Let them come, Jason often thought. It makes no difference. Whether communist or democratic, money was the only real ideology anymore, even in China. With his Taiwanese citizenship, Jason was still obliged to fulfill a yearlong term of compulsory military service, but with his dual American citizenship a legal loophole exempted him from serving so long as he left the country once every four months until the age of 35. So, three times a year Jason jetted off to Koh Tao, Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, or Tokyo, partied for a weekend, and returned. His local acquaintances who had already served chided him for his lack of patriotism, but he brushed them aside as idealistic fools. If China really wanted to take Taiwan, he told them, there would be no stopping them anyway. No matter how hard he tried to fight it, though, Jason 28
couldn’t help but develop an affinity for his fellow Taiwanese, and begrudgingly he occasionally admitted he was one of them. He had spent his earliest, most formative years among them. He respected their culture, unique to the relative brusqueness of the Chinese ways, and had no particular desire to see the democratic freedoms Taiwan had won disappear under the virtual dictatorship of the Communist Party of China. As much as he had been raised by his father to be Chinese, some part of him wanted to keep the Taiwanese within himself alive. Money, though, had remained a motivating factor beyond any notion of patriotism. There was no profit in love of country. He would make his fortune, he had decided, and leave the politics to the politicians. If it came to war, he would simply flee to America. If that wasn’t possible, well, then he would be forced to choose a side, whichever paid better. The taxi stopped in front of a tall government building, the department’s name spelled out in large, metallic gold lettering both in English and Chinese above the gate. The driver dropped Jason off out front. He walked to the security kiosk to the left of the gate and handed the uniformed guard his I.D. card. “Basement,” the guard said to him, handing him a laminated pass after checking the name on the card against the list of the day’s expected visitors. From the gate Jason walked into the building. It had that disinfectant smell of a hospital. Directly to the left of the door was a single elevator, which he rode alone to the basement morgue, looking up at the ceiling. The doors crept open slowly, seemingly in need of a tune-up, revealing a bright room staffed by a single, balding man in his mid forties wearing a white lab coat. His face was framed by wire rim glasses with thick lenses. In his hand was a clipboard, and below him was a closed body bag on a shiny metal table. Beside the table was a movable tray on wheels stocked with medical instruments. Jason removed his sunglasses 29
and stepped in hesitantly, still managing to startle the little man who spent nearly every waking moment around dead people. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you come in. Usually the elevator dings when the doors open. I guess it’s broken. You are?” “Jason Su. I’m here to identify a man. Someone called and told my father is dead,” he answered in a robotic tone, his eyes still adjusting to the unnaturally bright artificial lighting. “But he’s in China, so…” “Ah, yes, I’m Dr. Wu. It was I who spoke to you on the phone. I’m the Chief Medical Examiner here.” “Right, so can we get this over with? Where’s the man?” “Certainly, Mr. Su, right this way. I must apologize for these circumstances,” he said, hobbling over to a set of refrigerated compartments just large enough to house a laid out corpse with its arms at its sides. “Are you ready? Sometimes people need to take a moment to prepare.” “I’m ready,” Jason said, swallowing hard, still convincing himself that this was all just a misunderstanding. His father was away on a business trip. Cell phone coverage was still spotty in some parts of China. He would be able to get a hold of him sooner or later. This was all a mistake. Dr. Wu slid open the third compartment from the bottom, and the horrible realization hit Jason all at once, sucking the air from his lungs, causing him to steady himself on the table where his father lay cold and blue. “It’s him,” he managed, unable to take his eyes from his father’s expressionless face. “It’s my father.” “I’m deeply sorry, Mr. Su. He was sent to us late last night, from Kinmen.” “Kinmen?” Jason repeated, his mind moving in so many different directions that he began to feel lightheaded. He closed his eyes and raised his hands to his head, cold from resting on the chilled table. “My father never said anything 30
about going to Kinmen. He would have told me about going there. It’s an important place for him.” “The police report says that’s where he was discovered, by the commander of a docked military ship. They pulled him from the water. There’s nothing about how he got to Kinmen.” Jason backed away from the table, his hands still at the sides of his head. He dug his fingers into his scalp. He needed to think. His subconscious kept trying to take him away to a place where answers came easily and were accepted without question. But he knew this wasn’t one of those times. “Would you like to know the cause of death?” Dr. Wu asked, his eyes unblinking but kind. Jason’s hands dropped to his sides once more. He stood silent. If the cause had been something simple, something straightforward, he wouldn’t have asked. “How did he die?” “The cause of death was a gunshot to the back of the head. Two shots, actually, fired from a .22 caliber handgun by the look of the bullets I was able to remove. If it is of any consolation, death was instantaneous.” Here Dr. Wu paused, suddenly reminded that he was speaking to the victim’s son, and not an assistant pathologist, a visiting class of students from medical school, or a homicide detective. He wiped his brow and continued, trying to add a touch of kindness to words that were anything but kind. Dealing with the living had never been his strong suit, a fact the current exchange was only serving to confirm in his own muddled mind. “There were also flash suppressor burns around the entry wounds, meaning whomever pulled the trigger wanted to keep things quiet. This is all quite normal, as far as murders go. But the toxicology tests found something peculiar.” Gunshots, Jason ran the words around in his mind over 31
and over again. Though he had been in the army for a time, he had never heard his father speak of guns, and he had certainly never known him to own one. Gun ownership, be it rifle or handgun, was illegal for civilians in Taiwan, and Su Yao-Chung didn’t even like Jason watching violent movies when he was a child. For his father, a peaceful man despite his military pedigree, to die at the barrel of a gun, was too much for Jason to comprehend. He went over the various possibilities. A robbery? In Kinmen? It was a peaceful place, in spite of its tumultuous past, and still no situation he could conjure offered any clue as to what he could have been doing in Kinmen. But that’s just where Dr. Wu said his body was discovered. It was only a couple of kilometers from China. Had he been visiting Kinmen or nearby Fujian? Who would want to kill him? He was just a businessman. He would have told me if he was going to Kinmen, Jason thought to himself again. He might have even invited me along. He always wanted me to see it. “Mr. Su,” Dr. Wu cleared his throat, “would you like to know what I found with the toxicology tests?” “Tell me,” Jason found himself saying without thinking. He wanted answers. “Your father had a high level of arsenic in his system that appears to have accumulated over a matter of months. He could have been exposed through drinking tainted water, or even his job. What did your father do?” “He owned a furniture factory.” “Curious, then it’s doubtful that was the cause,” said Dr. Wu, furrowing his brow as he pushed his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose. “Where did he live?” “Guangzhuo.” “I’ve not heard of any cases of arsenic poisoning in Guangzhuo recently, but sometimes these sorts of things don’t make the news in China, swept under the rug by the government, you see. Nevertheless, any trip to a doctor for 32
a checkup would have found the arsenic in his system, and he definitely would have been experiencing symptoms before he passed—headaches, diarrhea, drowsiness.” Jason almost laughed. His father had a legendary fear of doctors. “People are fine their whole lives,” he was fond of saying, “then they go see a doctor, and the doctor tells them all these things that are wrong with them. Before long, they’re in the ground.” “My father had a thing about doctors.” “How unfortunate. Again I’m deeply sorry. But at the rate of accumulation, it’s doubtful he would have lasted much longer. As I said, it seems to have built up quite quickly, over just a few months, as if he was being poisoned. A very unfortunate man.” “What happens now?” Jason asked, looking Dr. Wu in the eye for the first time. “My report is complete, so the body will be released to you so you can make funeral arrangements. All the information has been forwarded to the Taipei Metro Police Homicide Division.” “Who is in charge of the case? Who do I contact?” Dr. Wu narrowed his eyes, studying the clipboard as he brought it closer to his face, his free hand tucked in the front pocket of his lab coat. “Ask for Detective Kieng-Guo Mu. He’ll be overseeing your father’s case.”
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CHAPTER THREE “What’s that in his hand?” Detective Mu shifted his gaze from the mud-caked corpse lying face down in a dried out storm sewer to the man who broke his concentration, his partner, Detective Sun-Lai Zhou, 29-years-old. Not that Detective Mu knew or cared to know his age. He fixed his eyes on his partner’s pupils, setting his jaw so that chin jutted out almost in an under-bite. “Black coffee. I saw a café about a kilometer back, near Yuanshan Station.” Zhou knew he had messed up. He had only been paired with Detective Mu a month, but he already knew better than to interrupt his thought process when he was going through a murder scene. Mu was an intimidating man, never without three days worth of stubble on his face, the only man in the department who could grow a half-decent crop of facial hair if he wanted to, and he had a knack for letting questions or statements thrown in his direction linger just long enough for the moment to become unbearably tense. His graying temples, protruding just below the edge of the banded black hat he never seemed to take off, gave him the look of a knowledgeable sage, and in many ways he was, so long as the drink wasn’t robbing him of his faculties.
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Detective Mu’s love of kaoliung and spirits was a wellknown piece of department lore, overlooked for the sake of face. So long as he was closing cases, he was free to drink his fill. Mu was old school murder police, and would have worked alone if he could, but department regulations demanded a partner. He had a green one, fresh from acing his detective’s exam with hardly a minute of practical murder investigation experience to his name. Detective Mu despised everything about Detective Zhou. He could barely even bring himself to call Zhou detective. He even hated the way he dressed. For Mu, looking the part was important. His banded hat, long overcoat, immaculately pressed black three-piece suit paired with a black dress shirt and silver tie made people take him seriously. When he asked questions from below the brim of that hat, the upper half of his eyes shielded, suspects, colleagues, and reluctant witnesses alike shrank to half their size. They told him what he needed to know because he looked like a man who needed to know things now. Right now. Zhou took a more modern approach. Clip-on tie, short sleeved white dress shirt, no hat, jeans and tennis shoes. Mu thought he looked like a census worker, and no one gave answers willingly to a census worker. He was a liability dressed like that, but Mu felt no pressing need to mend his ways. Young cops today couldn’t be taught anything, he often thought. They were space fillers, desk warmers, slackers. Detective Mu had no time for any of them. Just having Zhou along on an investigation was enough to put him into a foul mood, and he found less and less subtle ways to keep him out of the way. “Yes, sir, black coffee,” Zhou said, slinking back to his car. Detective Mu always insisted that they take separate vehicles, a trait Zhou dismissed as a quirk at first. But he soon got the message. He had already decided to take a longer 35
route to the café to give his partner more time alone. Mu watched him go, only turning back to the body after he saw the rookie nuisance get in his car and drive away. Male, likely mid-thirties, apparent stab wounds to the lower abdomen, defensive wounds on the hands, possible blunt force trauma to the back of the head. Slipping on a pair of disposable plastic gloves he tugged the sleeve of the victim’s blue windbreaker back to reveal a full sleeve tattoo, the kind favored by the Four Seas triad. Another case of gangsters sorting themselves out, he thought ruefully. Why bother? Detective Mu was 48 years old with twenty years in the First Brigade, the homicide division of the Criminal Investigation Bureau. He had graduated at the top of his academy class following a year abroad in the U.S. where he got a master’s degree in criminology at Penn State. Due to his schooling and his knack for following orders and closing cases, he shot through the ranks quickly at first, making detective before he hit 30. Then he caught the Cindy Lee pop star murder case on just his second rotation, bringing more attention on himself than he ever wanted. Even the international media got a hold of that one, and the department was only too happy to make a star of its young, slick, English-speaking detective after a string of police corruption scandals had dominated the headlines. Now, he just wanted to be left alone, to work alone. But rarely a week went by without someone bringing up that case from almost two decades ago. Detective Mu was tired, just damn tired. Too exhausted to play the games anymore. After his initial ascent had petered out, those at the top began looking at him more harshly, trying to determine if they should groom him for bigger things, maybe a captaincy or a superintendent position. But although Mu was old school in his police work, he wasn’t one for the ostentatious displays of giving face that went along with paying tribute to those who ranked above him. When his fellow detectives went 36
out drinking with the captain, he made a special point of finding out where they were going so he knew which pub to avoid. He never congratulated his fellow officers when their kids did well on their junior high school entrance exams or got engaged. He was a cop because he liked being a cop, or at least he used to. He was that special kind of intelligent that made those above him nervous. Mu could see how everything worked with that long stare and quiet intensity, the tie-ins with elements of organized crime, the under-thetable exchange of hong baos, red envelopes filled with cash. What made those around him even more nervous was the fact that Detective Mu never took a red envelope himself. Nothing makes a dirty cop more nervous than a clean one. That was why detective was as high as Kieng-Guo Mu would ever rise; as high as he ever wanted to rise. A few more years for a full pension and he would be out, maybe into some private investigation work somewhere down south where it didn’t rain so damn much. The Taipei combination of suffocating heat in the summer and grim, damp cold in the winter had fused his bones into calcified painful knots that took hours every morning to unfurl, hunching him ever so slightly until a slug or two of liquor from his hip flask straightened him out again. What else could a good man do when the world around him slowly went to shit? Mu put the sleeve back as it was, noting that the body had obviously been moved. The man hadn’t been dead twelve hours and was caked in mud. There wasn’t a whole lot of mud in the dried up storm drain, and it hadn’t rained in the past two days, not since the last tropical depression rolled through. He had been killed somewhere wet and muddy, likely on some isolated road on one of the nearby hillsides, where cool streams ran and changed course all the time with rises and dips in rainfall. Then the killer, or likely killers, had transported the body and dumped it here, in plain view of an adjacent footpath. This was a message. 37
Detective Mu’s attention was diverted from the crime scene by the ringing of his cell phone. This was another modern part of the job he hated. He conveniently forgot to recharge his cell phone as often as he could without risking plausibility, and left his walkie talkie in his car whenever he analyzed the scene of a murder. But a vicious hangover this morning caused him to forget leaving his cell phone in his front overcoat pocket. Seeing it was the C.I.B., he knew he couldn’t ignore it. God damn it, he cursed silently before picking up. “Detective Mu.” “This is Police General Jiang,” said the voice at the other end. He never failed to give his full rank, even in cases where just giving his name would suffice. “That body that came in from Kinmen, it’s been positively identified by the victim’s son.” “Thank your for passing that on personally, sir,” Mu answered, trying not to sound quizzical. “You could have simply had the medical examiner tell me.” “I wanted to talk to you personally. This one isn’t going to be simple.” “Are they ever?” Mu scoffed. “The media is already on this one. I don’t know who tipped them off, but the president has scheduled a press conference for four o’clock so he can make the news broadcasts tonight. A Taiwanese national working in China and washing up in Kinmen. People are going to want answers fast. And the son wants to meet with you. Maybe he’ll be able to shed some fresh light on things. I told him you’d be at your desk to meet him at two this afternoon. Oh, and one more thing. As the senior investigator on this case, you’re expected to appear at the press conference alongside the president.” “But, sir...” Mu got only a dial tone for a response. He hung up the phone and placed it back in his pocket, taking 38
in his surroundings once more. He was just east of Taipei Expo Park, a high-traffic area ever since the city government chose it as the site for an international floral exhibition. The park filled up every weekend with tourists flooding the area. There was no doubt about it; the body was meant to be found, dumped during the night and discovered by a hysterical English couple. Naturally, as the sole fluent English speaker in homicide division, Detective Mu drew the case. There was nothing more embarrassing than losing face in front of waiguoren. Though it had been years since Detective Mu had been forced to speak English on a daily basis, he had lost little, if anything, of his fluency or pronunciation, which he kept up by reading English biographies of historical figures aloud. It always threw native English speakers off when he first opened his mouth to speak to them, including the young couple from England, now deeply worried that their stay in Taipei was to be extended indefinitely. “We’ll not have to stick around and testify, will we?” the man asked with genuine fear in his voice. “We’re both back to work next week.” “Not to worry,” Detective Mu assured them. “All we need is your signed statement and you’ll be free to leave the country.” With that he handed them a form, rife with Chinese characters incomprehensible to them. There was no English translation. “Just tell me how you found the victim, I’ll write it down in Mandarin, and then you sign at the bottom. Then you can be on your way.” His wife expressed her concern in a harsh but hushed tone, making the common mistake amongst the few foreigners Detective Mu had dealt with that he couldn’t understand every word she said, despite the fact that he had just spoken to them in flawless English. “I don’t think you should sign that. You don’t know what it says. For all you know it’s a confession,” she hissed 39