THE DEAD AMERICAN (The Inspector Samuel Tay Novels Book 3) (16 page)

Tay sat and smoked and thought about Zachery Goodnight-Jones, and about Emma Lazar, and about Tyler Bartlett. Most of all he thought about the horror of Tyler hanging from that bathroom door and slowly strangling to death. Tay wondered what Tyler’s sin had been, what had he uncovered that had required him to die?

He also thought about the sudden and unexpected appearance of John August in the mix, and he tried to decide how that fit together with everything else. August had told him who was really behind The Future, so he had another piece of the puzzle. The problem was that piece didn’t fit any better than the other pieces he had. He still didn’t have the vaguest idea what the whole puzzle was going to look like when he put it together, or if that was going to explain who had killed Tyler Bartlett, or why.

He finished his cigarette, went back inside, and undressed. Then he got into bed and turned on the television. After flicking back and forth through the channels for a while, he realized that Pattaya, God help it, had even dumber television programs than Singapore. But he hadn’t brought a book to read so he sat with his back against the headboard and for a while he watched a movie about American cops in spite of the plot making absolutely no sense to him.

Tay knew he should shut off the television and get some sleep. He was not an early riser and he had never trusted anyone who was, but he was still going to have to haul his butt out of bed at six o’clock tomorrow morning to make the two-hour taxi trip to the Bangkok airport and catch his ten o’clock flight back to Singapore.

He was always tired when he traveled. He really didn’t understand those people who claimed to take pleasure in travel. At least this trip had been worth the effort. He now had two new players in the murder of Tyler Bartlett: John August, and the Chinese army. And he wasn’t at all sure which one of them worried him more.

Finally Tay shut off the television and the light. He pulled the duvet up under his chin and lay still, staring at the darkness. His last conscious thought was that he hoped his mother wouldn’t decide to show up in his dreams and start another one of those interminable conversations they had been having lately, the point of which usually turned out to be to remind him what a lousy son he was.

Sometimes just before he went to sleep he could hear her coming, but he couldn’t hear her tonight. Perhaps tonight his mother would just stay wherever she was and let him get a few hours’ sleep.

He hated to think such a thing about his mother. He really did. He wondered if that might mean he really
was
a lousy son.

IT WAS RAINING
when Tay emerged from Terminal Three at Changi Airport, and the taxi line was long and moved slowly. When at last it came his turn, his driver was an elderly Chinese man who was short and bad-tempered. At least he didn’t try to engage Tay in conversation, which Tay regarded as a major blessing.

The wipers
thunked
back and forth across the windshield, and the tires hissed against the wet pavement. Tay watched through the rain-streaked back window as the landscape rolled by.

The road into the city from Changi was two lanes of pr
istine concrete lined
on both sides by trees of identical heights with perfectly matched banks of bougainvillea piled up between them. The trees were so perfect they looked like life-sized plastic replicas of trees rather than the real thing. It was freakish that something so artificial looking could exist in nature.

Tay had mixed feelings every time he returned to Singapore from somewhere. His city was a tight, squeaky-clean little ship. No criticism, no dissent, no opposition. It was like an entire country run by the Walt Disney Corporation. Disneyland with the death penalty, somebody once called the place, and Tay thought that about summed it up.

Tay had lived all of his life in Singapore. Singapore was his home however much it annoyed and irritated him; but when he stopped to think about it, he was amazed how little attachment he felt to it. Wasn’t it unnatural not to be attached to one’s home? Just about as unnatural as those phony-looking trees streaming by outside the window of the taxi?

Maybe his suspension was the jolt he needed. His father had been an American, and that entitled him to American citizenship although he had never pursued it. Perhaps he would do that now. Perhaps he would get himself an American passport. Then he could go live in Miami in a condominium overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, or buy a ranch in Montana, or find himself an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan from which he could walk to the Metropolitan Opera anytime he wanted.

Who was he kidding? He was never going to do any such thing. He was going to spend the rest of his life in his little row house on Emerald Hill Road sitting in the garden and smoking Marlboros. How could he hold out the slightest hope of becoming somebody else now that he was over fifty? He was who he was, and that was that.

Tay leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. The drudgery of twenty-first century air travel took a terrible toll on both body and spirit. Every time he went to the airport, the toll seemed to get higher. He stopped thinking about Miami and Montana and Manhattan, and he allowed himself just to drift in the twilight between waking and sleeping while he waited for his bad-tempered Chinese cabdriver to return him to Emerald Hill Road.

Tay stopped outside his gate and collected the mail that had accumulated in his box while he was away. Inside, he tossed it on the table and went into the kitchen to make coffee.

When he came back with a mug in his hand, he shuffled dutifully through the mail although he knew it would be nothing but junk. It wasn’t until he pushed aside a circular from his neighborhood supermarket that he noticed the off-white envelope with the Ritz-Carlton logo. It was addressed in blue ink and, although he didn’t recognize the handwriting, he could think of no one he knew at the
Ritz-Carlton other than Emma Lazar.

Putting down his mug of coffee, he used both hands to tear open the envelope. He removed a single sheet of paper folded in thirds.

I have been trying to call your cell phone, but you don’t pick up and each time I’m sent straight to voicemail.

Tay patted his pockets looking for his cell phone and then remembered he had stuck it in his carry-on bag. He found the bag, unzipped it, and pulled out the phone. It was turned off, which would explain why Emma hadn’t been able to get through to him.

Thinking back, he remembered turning it off when he got on the plane for Bangkok. Was it possible he had forgotten to turn it back on? Was it even possible he had left it turned off the entire time he had been away? Yes, it was possible. In fact, he was pretty sure that was exactly what had happened. He pushed the power button on his phone and it beeped and lit up. The moment it connected with SingTel, it began emitting a furious series of tones that meant he had both voicemail and text messages waiting for him.

Tay shut the telephone off again and went back to reading Emma’s note.

Did you go away somewhere? You didn’t tell me you were leaving, but I can’t reach you and your house looks like it’s closed up. Is everything all right?

It was true that he hadn’t told Emma he was going to Thailand to see August. That was partly because he didn’t know what to tell her since he didn’t like talking about his connection with August, and partly out of reflex. He told almost nobody what he was doing. That was just who he was.

Tay could see how him leaving town without telling Emma might annoy her, but he thought her note sounded more disappointed than irritated. Maybe she would understand. The trip had certainly yielded some interesting pieces to help them put together the puzzle that was the death of Tyler Bartlett. He figured that certainly ought to be enough to get him off the hook.

Anyway, forget that. I think I found out what’s going on here and why Tyler became such a problem for them. Call me as soon as you get this. You’re not going to believe what I’ve discovered.

There was no signature, but it didn’t need a signature.

Tay picked up his coffee, took a sip, and read the note through from the beginning again to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. He hadn’t. Emma was clearly excited about whatever it was she had discovered, but he couldn’t help but wonder a little. He had been gone less than twenty-four hours. That was hardly enough time for Emma to make much of a breakthrough.

Tay took a final sip of coffee, returned the mug to the table, and picked up his cell phone again. Thumbing it on, he scrolled through the call list until he found the last time he had called Emma at the Ritz-Carlton. It wasn’t difficult. He made so few calls that his call list was almost empty.

“What do you mean she checked out?” Tay asked the Ritz-Carlton telephone operator.

“I mean she is no longer in the hotel, sir. She left yesterday.”

“That’s impossible. She was there yesterday.”

“That may well be, sir, but she checked out overnight.”

“At what time?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I am not authorized to give out any details with regard to our guests. I’m sure you understand that at the Ritz-Carlton we value the privacy of every guest and we—”

“This is Inspector Samuel Tay of Singapore CID,” Tay snapped.

Technically that was still true even though he was on suspension. At least it was close enough.

“I need to know exactly when Ms. Lazar checked out and whether she indicated where she was going,” he continued.

“I’m sorry, sir, but I’m still not authorized to give out that information over the telephone.”

“Now look here, young lady—”

“Would you like me to connect you to our general manager?”

Tay hung up. All he needed right now was an extended argument with some supercilious git. Besides, he had just asked by reflex. He didn’t really see what good knowing Emma’s checkout time would do him, and he knew perfectly well no one ever told a hotel where they were going when they checked out.

Tay picked up the note Emma had left for him and examined it again. There was nothing about it that told him when it had been written or when it had been left in his mailbox.

He had been away less than a day. Yet in that time, Emma had not only discovered something so significant that she thought it explained why Tyler had been murdered, she had tried to reach him repeatedly by telephone, and then she had come to his house and put a note in his mailbox. After that, she had checked out of her hotel and disappeared.

None of that made any sense to him.

He turned his telephone off, tossed it on the table, and lit a cigarette.

When the doorbell rang, Tay dumped his cigarette into the ashtray and leaped to his feet. It had to be Emma, he thought. He walked quickly to the front door and pulled it open.

It wasn’t Emma. It was Sergeant Kang.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but your telephone is off.”

“I know it’s off, Sergeant. It’s off because I turned it off.”

“This is important, sir, or I wouldn’t have bothered you.”

Tay went out and opened the gate, and Kang followed him into the living room.

“Well, Sergeant,” Tay said as soon as he closed the door, “out with it then. What’s this all about?”

“That woman writer you’ve been helping, sir, wh
en was the last—”

“I was just trying to reach her, Robbie, but she’s checked out of the Ritz-Carlton. Have you talked to her again?”

Robbie Kang’s eyes slid off of Tay’s and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Tay felt a sudden sense of physical discomfort, like the feeling he got when he was about to vomit. He had no doubt at all Kang was going to tell him something awful.

“She’s dead, sir.”

Tay pointed to a chair, and Kang sat down.

“Tell me,” was all Tay said.

“Her body was found early this morning in an alley behind the Maxwell Road Food Centre, sir. I wanted you to know before you read it in the newspaper.”

“I don’t read the newspaper,” Tay said. It was a ridiculous response to hearing that Emma was dead, of course, but it was the first thing that came to mind.

Tay was stunned. Of course he was. But Tay had also been a homicide detective for most of his life and it only took a moment for his professional instincts to shove aside his shock.

“Behind the Maxwell Road Food Centre you said?”

“Yes, sir. Only a few hundred yards from the apartment where Tyler Bartlett was found, if you can believe that.”

Tay could believe it all too easily.

“What was the cause of death?”

“It looks like strangulation, but until the pathologist—”

“Were there any signs of sexual assault?” Tay interrupted.

“No, sir. None. No damage to her clothing, and no indication of a struggle.”

“Robbery?”

“We didn’t find a purse, so possibly it was stolen, but her watch and jewelry were untouched. It doesn’t look like a robbery to me. She was just… well, strangled. We think whoever strangled her caught her by surprise. Probably grabbed her from behind.”

Tay lit a cigarette, tossed the box back on the table, and shook out the match.

“Do you think she was killed where she was found?” he asked.

“No, sir. We figure she was strangled somewhere else, and the body was dumped there. I think she could have been strangled in a car and then the car drove there to get rid of the body. That would be consistent with someone grabbing her by surprise from behind. If she had been in the front seat—”

“I get it, Sergeant,” Tay interrupted. “What time was she found?”

“Just before five this morning.”

“When I called the Ritz-Carlton a few minutes ago, they told me she checked out last night.”

“Not exactly, sir.”

Tay looked at Kang, drew on his cigarette, and waited.

“We found a Ritz-Carlton card key in one of her pockets so we took it to the hotel and checked the room number. That’s how we initially identified her since she didn’t have a purse. The hotel said a man had checked her out just before midnight last night. He told the cashier she wouldn’t be coming back, and he paid her bill.”

“Did this man collect her things, too?”

“There was nothing in her room. Either he took whatever she had there, or she took it when she left.”

“Why would you kill somebody and then go pay their hotel bill?”

“Maybe she hadn’t been killed at that point. Maybe she’d been kidnapped and the kidnappers were trying to keep her from being reported missing. But later they changed their mind about keeping her and killed her instead.”

“Did you trace the credit card this guy used?”

“He paid cash, sir.”

“That must have gotten him noticed. I’ll bet nobody has paid cash at the Ritz-Carlton in at least a decade.”

“There wasn’t much to notice, sir. A local man, the cashier said. Middle-aged, average height, average weight, wearing a dark suit. Nothing distinguishing about him at all.”

“Have you looked at the surveillance video?”

“The camera covering the cashier’s desk started malfunctioning about an hour before the man showed up. We’re still searching the images from the other cameras, but it doesn’t look good. Whoever he was, he seems to have walked right between the areas covered by cameras. It was almost like he knew where they were.”

Tay smoked quietly and thought about that. Could somebody have hacked into the hotel’s security system, determined where the cameras were, and shut off the only one they couldn’t avoid? He really had no idea, but it supposed it was at least possible. Almost everything seemed possible these days.

“Anything else, Sergeant?” Tay asked, putting out his cigarette.

“No, sir. That’s all we’ve got now. I’ll keep you posted.”

Tay nodded as he stood up, but he didn’t say anything else.

“I almost forgot, sir.”

Sergeant Kang was at Tay’s front gate when he stopped and turned around.

“That disk drive you asked me to give to the Wangster to check out?”

It took Tay a moment to remember what Kang was taking about, but then he did. The disk drive Betty Lee had given them, the one that Tyler had set up in her apartment and connected to her Wi-Fi. He had asked Kang to find somebody to examine its contents, and Kang had told him about a computer geek who owed him a favor, a Chinese kid who called himself the Wangster.

“What about it, Sergeant?”

“Well, sir, it’s encrypted. The Wangster says the encryption is the most sophisticated he’s ever seen.”

“So you’re telling me he’s not going to be able to tell me what’s on the drive?”

“No, sir. The Wangster says he can crack any encryption scheme ever invented. He just thinks this one is going to take him a while.”