He unbuckled his seat belt and slid the leather satchel, his only baggage, from under the seat in front of him. There was a slim chance he could make it past them and disappear if he bolted. No one would expect that.
CHAPTER 34
Bowen parked the black Charger on the grassy shoulder a half block away from the spot where Officer Chin had been murdered. He’d heard someone on news radio say she’d been killed, but he couldn’t get his head wrapped around that term. Spiders were killed when you stepped on them. Cancer killed you. Soldiers killed the enemy in battle. But when someone looked a pretty young officer like Jenny Chin in the eye and then shot away most of her face, you couldn’t call that anything but murder.
Bowen had arrested a fair number of murderers in his career. Most were hopped up on something — drugs or emotions. It took a brazen killer to do this, and those were few and far between.
A ribbon of yellow crime scene tape still fluttered from the smooth bark of a slender redbud tree along the street ahead, muted in the early evening gray. Bowen sniffed the chilly air and walked toward it, unsure of what he might find, or what he was even looking for. Hunting — tracking of any kind — required an open mind. If you looked for one thing too hard, you skimmed over a half dozen more tidbits that were just as important, maybe more so.
Bowen found the tracks left by Quinn’s knobby-tired BMW and the divot in the grassy shoulder left by the bike’s side stand. Squatting low at the edge of the pavement, he studied the brown stains in the gravel that would be Officer Chin’s blood. He found a small, white fragment of bone in the stones, still shiny with a film of dried blood and fluid. Marshals were manhunters, not evidence gatherers, so he didn’t have any bags with him. He used his handkerchief to pick it up, then dropped it into an open latex glove. He tied a knot in the glove and stuffed it into his pocket. Every piece of Jenny Chin deserved a decent burial.
From the position of the blood, Chin had been standing by the motorcycle when she was shot. The case report said her partner, a veteran officer named Larsson, had been standing behind her while she made the approach. According to him, Quinn had been distraught and when he saw the officer was Asian, he just drew his gun and tried to kill both of them. That certainly wasn’t the Jericho Quinn that Bowen knew.
He could still see the man’s eyes from their fight all those years ago — focused, intense. There was a cold science in the way he fought, the precision of a fine machine — but no malice. Though Bowen liked to blame the judges, Quinn had knocked him down twice and handily won the fight. Afterward, he’d come up to shake hands, pointing out that Bowen had broken his nose. There was a grace in Quinn’s win, a certain humility that said he could do it again with no trouble at all, but he didn’t want to rub your face in it.
Bowen ran his fingertips across the surface of the road, thinking. From this close range, Jericho Quinn didn’t try to shoot anything. He shot it or he didn’t.
Bowen looked up to watch a woman about his age walk down a nearby driveway to join him. She wore tight jeans and a wool sweater with the design of a llama on the front. Her arms were folded, her chin to her chest as if she was praying.
Bowen didn’t get up but fished his badge out of his jacket pocket and held it up.
“U.S. Marshals,” he said.
“Hmm.” The woman scuffed the toe of a white tennis shoe on the dead grass.
“You see what happened?”
“Nope.” She nodded to the row of tightly spaced cottonwood trees growing like a giant hedge between her house and the road. “As far as I know, nobody did. This is the perfect spot to murder someone so nobody who lives along here could see it.”
“I noticed that,” Bowen said, tapping his credential case against his open hand.
“I have some coffee on if you need a place to write your report or anything.” She was flirting and cute enough, but he ignored her.
Bowen looked up and down the street, thinking. This was too perfect. If it had happened like Larsson said, Quinn hadn’t planned on shooting anyone until he saw Jenny Chin was Asian, after they’d pulled him over. It was too coincidental that he’d stopped in the perfect spot to commit a murder.
“U.S. Marshals? I didn’t know y’all solved homicides. I thought you chased bad guys. You know, Tommy Lee Jones and all.”
“You’re right.” Bowen smiled. “Sometimes, though, you have to do one before you can do the other.”
CHAPTER 35
Seconds before he jumped from his seat, Quinn heard the agonized scream of a woman in the back of the plane. The exit door hissed open and four Korean paramedics in blue jumpsuits poured onto the plane, rushing past Quinn with medical bags and a slender stretcher used to evacuate people from aircraft.
The paramedics rolled back by with the woman a few moments later. She was obviously in the final stages of labor and likely to have the baby before she left the airport.
Quinn let out a long breath, willing his body to calm. He’d not survive long on this kind of emotion. Sooner or later he’d overreact, make a mess of things. If he intended to find Ran and Oda, he had to calm down, get a good night’s sleep — or as close to one as he could — and start fresh. He’d not lied when he told Miyagi that he did not fear death. He did fear getting captured and stopped from doing his job. He feared failure above most other things in the world.
Breathing easier once he was off the plane and moving in a crowd again, Quinn bought a large SLR camera and the bulkiest telephoto lens he could find at the airport store, then hopped the subway to Seoul Station in order to make his connection.
Less than three hours after he’d arrived in Korea, Quinn was standing on the docks in Buson. The sun was going down over the hills behind him, casting long shadows over stacked containers, loading cranes, and superstructures of row after row of cargo vessels.
There were several fast ferries that made the trip to Fukuoka, Japan, in less than three hours. But those passengers would be required to undergo the same scrutiny they would at Narita Airport upon entering Japan: a photo and two index fingerprints.
Instead, Quinn opted to try for a slower, commercial ship that would cross during the night. He looped the camera and long telephoto lens around his neck and approached the captain of a car hauler, heading over with a shipment of new Daewoo sedans and likely picking up a load of high-mileage vehicles to bring back for resale in China or Russia.
Quinn stuck a wad of cash in his passport and held it up to the squat Korean man who smoked a cigarette along the flaking rail of his ship. He pointed to the east, held up the camera, and said “Japan.”
The captain spoke no English beyond “Hello,” which he said over and over again with a slight, ducking bow of his head and shoulders, but the cash spoke loudly enough to get the point across. He didn’t care about the passport, but the fact that Quinn had offered it to him was enough to show he wasn’t trying to hide anything. The bulky camera put a finishing touch on his cover. Standing out was often the best way to blend in.
The ship cast off a half hour later, and Quinn spent the next forty-five minutes walking up and down the deck, snapping photos of anything and everything. The captain said hello each time they passed.
Eventually, the sun set and the lights of Buson disappeared from view. Quinn found the captain again, returned his fiftieth “hello,” and made the universal sign for sleep by tilting his head against an open palm.