The revelation that this attack had been made to stimulate a local money-laundering operation broke that mold. It indicated a long-term interest in a specific area by criminal elements, and introduced the possibility of a conspiracy, which could be used as a selling point to the feds.
I tried to keep the satisfaction out of my voice. “Was Henry the leader, or did you feel someone else might be pulling the strings?”
Leung’s voice was definite. “No. They referred to another-a dai ca, which means ‘big brother.’”
“How did they refer to him?” I asked.
He gave me an apologetic look. “I am sorry. I don’t speak Vietnamese-just a few words.”
That was a disappointment. “They only spoke Vietnamese?”
“No-a little English, too, but not very good. That’s how they told me about the money cleaning.”
“So when they spoke to each other, you didn’t understand anything?”
“Very little.”
“Did you catch any names beyond ‘Henry’?”
Leung nodded, his mood improved from just a few minutes earlier.“Yes. One was called An, and the other Ut-those are first names.”
“Which one had the tattoo?”
“Ut.”
“Did anyone refer to Michael Vu, or Sonny? Or anyone else?”
Leung shook his head.
“Did any of them make any phone calls from your house?”
“Yes-the man Henry did, a few minutes before you arrived.”
A few minutes before Michael Vu arrived, I thought sourly, knowing the Leungs’ phone bill would reflect no local calls.
I let out a sigh, my earlier eagerness tempered. “Is there anything else you can tell me?”
“I regret, no.”
“Nothing was said to you other than what you’ve just told me?”
“Nothing besides the instructions to go to the bank. The man Henry bragged that Brattleboro was going to be a pot of gold.”
“Did he elaborate? Brag about other people he’d attacked?”
Leung shook his head sadly. “I am sorry.”
I rose to my feet. “Don’t be. You’ve been more help than you know.”
The high-school cafeteria was jammed with students, their laughter and noise filling the large room. I stood with my back to a corner and scanned the crowd carefully. I finally spotted Amy Lee sitting at a middle table, talking quietly with another student. She looked better, not as skinny or forlorn. Her expressions were still muted-she played no role in the cheerful cacophony that vibrated off the walls-but the haunted look of a victim was gone.
I didn’t want to embarrass or scare her by a direct approach, so I asked a passing student to tell her that I’d be waiting to speak with her in the library down the hall.
She took several minutes to appear at the door. It was immediately obvious my attempt at diplomacy hadn’t worked too well. The haunted look was back.
I got up and came to her, taking her elbow and gently steering her to a table far from where anyone else was sitting. “Hi, Amy. How’ve you been?”
“Okay.” Her voice was a monotone, barely above a murmur.
I pulled out a chair. “Have a seat.”
She followed my suggestion robotically and sat staring at the tabletop between us.
“Have things gotten better since you went to Women for Women?”
“A little.”
“I thought they might. They’re good people. Are you still going?”
“Yes.”
“Do your parents know about it yet?”
She looked up at me abruptly, her eyes narrowed. “Are you going to tell them?”
“Not at all. That’s a private matter between you and them. I’m just happy you’re taking care of yourself.”
She didn’t answer and went back to looking at the tabletop.
“Did you hear about the shooting yesterday?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you see the newspaper pictures of the four men who were killed?”
She shook her head.
“I think one of them was among the three who attacked you. If it’s okay, I’d like to show you a photo of him.” I pulled the shot of Henry Lam-the one that had made her hysterical earlier-and cradled it in my palm, awaiting her decision.
It was a calculated risk, which was one reason I’d taken the time to watch her in the cafeteria. I’d wanted to see how she was behaving on her own, away from adult scrutiny, and what I’d seen had been encouraging.
She didn’t disappoint me. She slowly nodded, raised her eyes to the photo I laid before her, and murmured yes.
I took the picture back and put it in my pocket. “I’m sorry, Amy. If it’s any comfort, this also means you’ll never have to worry about him again.”
She didn’t respond.
“Could you answer a few questions about that night? If you don’t want to, that’s fine. And if you just want to answer some and not others, that’s okay, too. Would that be all right?”
“Okay.”
That was the first obstacle cleared. Whether it was the passage of time, the influence of her counseling, or the fact that her parents had given her such little support, Amy Lee no longer seemed so concerned with her father’s wish to keep silent, which was another reason I was here, and not trying to talk to him again.
“You told me there were three men that night. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Was the man whose photo I just showed you the leader?”
“It was him.” Neither her voice nor her posture had changed. It was as if I were talking to a soul hovering just outside the body before me.
“Did you catch his name?”
“Henry,” she said without hesitation.
“And the other two?”
“One they called Tri. The other one I don’t know-he never got near me.”
I let that last statement go, not wishing to cut too close to what we both knew had happened to her. “Did they speak in Vietnamese or Chinese?”
She looked up at me, surprised. “Both, and a little English. They spoke Vietnamese to each other. Henry spoke Chinese to my mother.”
“How about to your father?”
“Henry spoke English to him. He seemed proud of that-he bragged that he spoke good English.”
“Did he?” I asked, remembering my own encounter with him.
“It was dirty.” A tone of contempt had crept into her voice.
“You speak Chinese?”
“Cantonese.”
“And Vietnamese?”
She shook her head.
“Did they say anything besides giving you orders? Any references to other places or people or events?”
“No.”
I reached into my pocket and extracted a thick wad of pictures-mug shots, surveillance shots-all of which we’d accumulated over the past week. Included among them were the photographs I’d shown John Crocker.
I handed them to Amy like a deck of cards. “Could you give these a look? See if you recognize anyone else.”
She solemnly did as I asked, slowly and methodically going through the photos, never pausing throughout. She finally shook her head and laid the deck before me.
“Nobody?” I asked.
She looked me straight in the eye. “No. I’m sorry.”
I broke the rules a little then, extracting Michael Vu’s and Truong Van Loc’s pictures specifically. “How ’bout them?”
Again, she shook her head. “No.”
I returned the stack to my pocket. “Not to worry. What did the three men want that night? Money?”
“They took money, but they wanted more. Henry wanted to talk to my dad.”
It was an almost imperceptible shift, but I sensed her beginning to relax a bit, as if the realization that she spoke better English than had her attacker endowed her with a hint more pride and self-worth than she’d been feeling just moments before.
“About what?” I asked of her last comment.
“I don’t know exactly. Part of their talk happened in another room, and Mom was crying a lot, and screaming…” She hesitated, as if collecting her courage, before adding matter-of-factly, “They’d already raped me. It was near the end.”
I was impressed by her frankness-a good sign that she, if no one else in her family, was dealing with reality. “Did you hear any of what they discussed?”