“I know.”
“Posted them online.”
“That’s why-”
“I’ll be fine. Really.”
“I just wanted-”
“Enough, Patrick!” She stepped back, her slender arms taut.
“Enough. Please. Sometimes you don’t know when to stop. You push things too far. It builds walls, OK? Don’t do it. Not with me.
I’ll be all right. Now please, excuse me.” Before I could respond she brushed past me, leaving me reeling in the swirl of her words.
I had a sense that I should apologize, but I wasn’t sure I’d done anything wrong. In the span of just a few short hours, I’d managed to make both Tessa and Lien-hua, the two women who matter the most to me, angrily turn their backs on me and walk away.
At last, when I realized I wasn’t going to apologize or even go after her, I headed off to join Detective Dunn in the observation room down the hall.
Tessa didn’t have a compact so she was using the curved reflection of a lamp in the lobby of the Hyatt to touch up her eye shadow.
Riker would be arriving in just a couple minutes, and she wanted to make sure she looked all righ-
“Hey.” Riker stepped into view, startling her. He must have come in one of the side doors rather than the revolving door at the main entrance to the hotel.
She noticed he was wearing jeans and a cotton, button-down untucked shirt. She brushed at a strand of hair that had fallen in front of her eye and put her makeup away. “Hey.”
He smirked and held out a full bottle of antibacterial soap as she stood up. “Will this do ya?”
“I sure hope so.” She accepted it, stuffed it into her satchel. It barely fit.
He watched her and grinned playfully. “So, is the raven ready to fly away?”
“That would be a yes.”
They walked together toward the door. “My bike’s out back.
No valet parking for motorcycles.”
A cycle. How cool was that. “What kind do you have?”
“Honda… Not quite a Harley, but they ride forever.” He opened the door for her. “So, you gotta tell me. That poem by Poe, is that why they call you Raven?”
A white fire fueled by regret and anger and a strange kind of homesickness flared up inside her. “It used to be sort of a nickname.” “Your friends at college give it to you?”
Now a blush whispered across her face. So he really did believe she was over eighteen. He thought she was in college! “Naw. Someone I used to trust.”
He led her to his bike. “Ouch. Had to be a guy. Typical for those losers over at SDSU. That where he went?”
“I go to school in Denver.” It was true, it just wasn’t the whole truth. “I’m just visiting San Diego.”
“That’s cool.” Riker stowed Tessa’s satchel, then climbed onto his bike, and she slid on behind him. “So,” he said. “You ready to ride?”
“I’m ready to ride.” Tessa wrapped her arms tightly around his waist, he fired up the bike, and they peeled away from the curb.
76
Over the years Lien-hua had seen some terrible, unthinkable things.
And she’d always kept her cool, kept her wits about her. But today she wasn’t sure she’d be able to.
Ever since hearing about the DVDs, she’d been thinking about the accident no one in her family ever spoke of.
Bruised innocence.
Stay focused, Lien-hua. Don’t get distracted.
The arrangement would never be the same again.
She paused, leaned against the wall just around the corner from the interrogation room, and tried to pull herself together.
Why couldn’t Pat just stop trying to protect her?
OK. Fine. It was flattering, but it was starting to tip her perspective, cloud her objectivity. She needed to focus and not let her feelings for him distract her.
I don’t need protecting. I can do this on my own.
She took a moment to slide Pat out of her mind and order her thoughts, then walked around the corner and motioned to the two officers stationed outside the interrogation room.
They unlocked the door, and she stepped inside.
I threw open the door to the observation room.
Maybe I was angry at Lien-hua, maybe at Tessa, maybe at myself. I couldn’t tell. I just knew I never should have let myself have feelings for Lien-hua. That was the problem. It made it harder to be objective. Harder to step back and see things clearly.
Detective Dunn was already seated at the table, facing the two-way mirror, musing over a pile of notes and file folders. I wasn’t in any mood to talk to him, so instead, I stared at Creighton Melice through the glass. Lien-hua had just entered the room, and Melice was eyeing her coolly. His obsidian eyes tracking her every step. I could see him, but he couldn’t see me.
Everyone knows the bit with the two-way mirrors-that the big mirror on the wall is really a window for law enforcement personnel, but still, it’s surprisingly effective for getting suspects to talk.
People tend to forget that others are watching them when they’re busy watching themselves.
Melice was seated, his ankles shackled together, his wrists cuffed and attached to the table by a short chain.
A collection of maps with crime scene photos hung on the wall to Lien-hua’s left. She took a chair from the corner of the room and dragged it to the table so that she could sit facing Melice.
Detective Dunn stood abruptly, walked to the two-way mirror.
“I need to tell you I’m not comfortable with this.”
“Agent Jiang can take care of herself.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Oh.” I walked to him. Leaned my arm against the glass. “What exactly do you mean?”
He glared at me. “She’s a woman.”
Oh, man. He was pushing things too far. Way too far. “Yes, she is, Detective. And you better be careful what your next few words are. That’s a friendly warning because I’m a nice guy, but I do have my limits. Now, please. Go on.”
He gestured toward the interrogation room. “This guy, Melice, he manipulates women. Seduces them, tortures them, kills them.
He’ll feel more powerful, more in control, with her in there. I don’t want him toying with her.”
“You don’t know Agent Jiang.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I don’t. And that’s what I’m worried about.”
Lien-hua took her seat on the other side of the glass, pulled out her notepad, and started the interrogation.
77
Black holes.
That’s what Lien-hua thought of as she looked across the table and into the dark pools of Creighton Melice’s eyes. She searched them for a clue to his feelings, his state of mind, but they remained emotionless and blank. As she looked him over, she noticed that he had a gauze bandage wrapped around his left hand. Possibly he’d been injured the night before in his fight with Ralph. The doctor who examined his ribs earlier in the day must have treated his hand.
Everything that happened in the room was recorded by a video camera on the other side of the two-way mirror, but Lien-hua had discovered over the years that the visible presence of a recording device helped shake people up. Sometimes she left her recorder behind because of that. Today, she set it directly in front of her.
Just out of his reach.
Melice looked down at the digital recorder resting between them on the slablike table, then back to her. He wore a smirk. Still didn’t speak.
You’re here for one reason, Lien-hua. To find out what he knows about the murders. Stay on track.
She pressed “record.”
“I’m Special Agent Jiang, with the FBI.”
“I know who you are, Lien-hua. I requested you.”
“Well, good, then we can save time with lawyers and introductions. Because I know who you are too.”
“I doubt that.” He grinned slightly. “As you probably heard, I decided not to press charges against you for assaulting me. A few inches to the side and you would have broken a couple ribs, maybe punctured my lung. Not a bad kick for a girl.” To Lien-hua, his voice seemed to seep from his mouth as if it were coming from an open sore.