Bao, for instance, seemed to be following Chen in a mysterious way. Bao had been grumbling about Chen being in charge, but that could hardly account for him spying on Chen. Shasha, too, puzzled Chen with her inscrutable inquisitiveness. And Peng, with his baffling reticence. Indeed, why was he included in the group? He hardly wrote anymore, or even talked like a writer. Was his presence simply symbolic? As for Zhong, he made a point of calling back to China. Supposedly to his old wife in Nanjing, but once, when consulting Chen about the instructions on the back of the phone card, he let slip the area code, revealing that his call went to Beijing instead. Any one of them could have been entrusted with a secret mission unknown to Chen, the delegation head appointed at the last minute.
He didn’t discuss any of this with Detective Lenich, yet it made sense, Chen agreed, for the American to check the Chinese writers’ alibis-except Chen himself. Someone in the bookstore had already confirmed that Chen was reading and drinking coffee during that time period. He remembered Chen as being the only Chinese there, that he spoke “slightly quaint English with an accent.”
The other delegation members were not so lucky. Shasha was the one who followed Huang in the sequence of using Chen’s bathroom. She had only her own word that she hadn’t seen him since. Bao claimed that he went to the Chinese buffet restaurant, spending about two hours there because of “eating as much as you can.” Afterward he chatted with the buffet owner, yet the latter couldn’t remember when Bao arrived at the restaurant. Peng said that he took a nap as soon as he checked in, sleeping until the time of the political study. While it sounded plausible for a man of his age, no one could prove it. Zhong maintained that he strolled around the shopping mall before eating at the Chinese Express. No one there remembered seeing him, with customers coming and going all the time, and Zhong did not see Chen or Bao.
So Detective Lenich had a lot to do, following up on his new direction.
It was not until after five that the American cop finished talking with the writers. Chen, too, felt obliged to talk to the delegation. A speech of formalities, though not a long one.
“We have to be more careful,” Chen said. “To ensure the safety of the delegation, we have to reemphasize our disciplines. And I want to repeat a few of them: Do not go out by yourself. Do not go out without reporting to the delegation head. Do not meet with unknown people. In addition, turn in your passports, so they will be under my special care.”
These were not new rules. During the early stage of China ’s first opening its door, Chinese delegations abroad had to follow the rules literally. A considerable number of people defected then, either by disappearing or seeking political asylum. So they were supposed to go out only in groups, with one watching another, and with their passports under the care of the delegation head. But things had since improved. Most of the delegations were made up of those doing well in China. They would be unlikely to gamble on an uncertain future overseas.
“If you have any questions, you can ask our interpreter, Catherine Rohn,” Chen concluded. “She has been doing a great job for us.”
“But what do we do in the evening?” Shasha said. “She won’t be here with us all the time.”
It was a good point, so Chen requested that Catherine stay with them at the hotel, at least for one or two days. It appeared to be a very reasonable request. Chen himself was busy with many things, and there needed to be an interpreter around for the Chinese writers.
She agreed quietly. “It’ll save me downtown traffic in the morning.”
The hotel manager cooperated promptly. Instead of giving her the room Huang had occupied, he promised her another one on the same floor as the delegation. Chen was pleased with the arrangement. Perhaps later, after the delegation political study, he would run into her in the corridor.
And he did, only earlier. As the delegation was having their evening political study, Catherine called into Chen’s room.
“Miss Rohn wants me to come and discuss tomorrow’s activity,” Chen said to the delegation at the end of the phone conversation. “Americans like to stick to their schedules.”
“That’s true,” Shasha said. “They have to cook with the recipe in their hands. No improvisation or imagination. But she is so attractive, and speaks good Chinese too.”
To his surprise, Chen found Detective Lenich in Catherine’s room. Her true identity, as a U.S. marshal, was no longer being kept from the American investigator. She was dressed in shorts, sandals, and a light yellow T-shirt. She must have taken a shower, her hair still wet. She started making a fresh pot of coffee for Chen.
Detective Lenich elaborated on his theory. “The murder was a collaboration between an outsider and an insider. An insider to point out the target, and an outsider with a car to move the body. My colleagues have made a more thorough search of Huang’s room. Nothing there matched the fiber found on his clothes, and the bus in which the delegation traveled to St. Louis is equipped with imitation leather seats.”
But this theory opened up a number of new questions, Chen observed. For such collaboration, the plan must have been made far in advance. That afternoon, the delegation was originally scheduled to arrive for lunch at the hotel, but, because of a traffic accident along the highway, they arrived several hours late. Then there was the unforeseeable factor of Little Huang’s bath in his room. So the outsider in Detective Lenich’s conspiracy theory would have had to wait hours outside of the hotel, and the insider-a delegation member-would have had to be there too, see Little Huang walking out, and point him out to the murderer. And during that time period, there must have been some contact between the insider and outsider.
Lenich had checked with the hotel phone service. Nothing. It was no surprise, Chen thought. He himself had made a point of not using the hotel phone except for official business. For such a murderous conspiracy, the hotel phone would have been unacceptable. The only phone calls Detective Lenich had discovered were from Shasha’s to Chen’s room. And another one from the lobby house phone-possibly a wrong number, since no one spoke when it bounced back from Chen’s room to the hotel operator.
“A room-to-room call,” Detective Lenich commented. “It was around five-forty. No one picked up. It proves only one thing. Little Huang must have stepped out of the room by that time. Incidentally, that also rules out Shasha as a suspect.”
They then discussed the delegation activity for the next day. Lenich thought the Chinese writers had better remain in the hotel, but Chen said that they had been complaining. It would be hard to keep them in for another long frustrating day.
“Let’s go to the Arch,” Catherine suggested. “It’s close to the hotel. If there is any new development, Detective Lenich can come over.”
Lenich and Chen left her room around ten-thirty. She walked them to the door with a wan smile. It had been a long, exhausting day, and she looked pale in the corridor light. Chen then accompanied the American cop to the hotel’s front gate.
Back in his room, he found several fax pages about Little Huang from the Chinese Writers’ Association. The information from the official channels showed nothing suspicious in his background. He didn’t start working for the association immediately after graduation; he was assigned to teach a middle school. He got the job at the Writers’ Association when another interpreter suddenly quit. He was reliable and easy to get along with; though not a Party member, he was given the opportunity to serve as interpreter for delegations visiting abroad. This was Huang’s third trip out of China. The last page of the fax also detailed a change in the arrangements for Little Huang’s family’s trip to the U.S. His father had suffered a severe heart attack upon learning the news.