Steven James - The Rook

After her mother’s death, Lien-hua had decided to take up flower arranging in her place. Maybe in honor of her mother, maybe to work through her grief, she wasn’t sure. After all, the hardest person to know, the hardest person to profile, is yourself.

Flower arranging is supposed to be peaceful and relaxing, but at first Lien-hua found it to be just the opposite.

Frustrating, exasperating, time-consuming? Yes.

Calming and soothing? Not quite.

And yet, in time Lien-hua had learned to distinguish the different moods that a slight change in the arrangement of a single petal could produce. Tranquility. Excitement. Wonder.

Allure.

She angled the two cyclamen to face the white irises and tilted one of the star-of-Bethlehem petals so that it would gather more light.

Using all white flowers in a white vase gave the room an elegant feeling. Pure and innocent.

Lien-hua stepped back. There. Much better.

She plopped onto the bed again and pulled up the computer files, but just as she was about to look over the list of possible accelerants, her cell rang. She answered. “Yes?”

“Lien-hua, I need your help.”

“Pat?” He sounded upset. “What is it? Are you OK?”

“There was an accident. I’m with Tessa-”

A cold chill. “You’re not hurt-”

“No. We’re fine, but listen, can you come get Tessa, take her back to the hotel? I need to stay here, give my statement to the police. If you can just hang out with her for an hour or two until I get back, it would really help out. I think she’ll be all right, I just don’t want her to be alone.”

“Of course. Where are you?”

He gave her the address and they ended the call.

Lien-hua grabbed her purse, but in her rush she bumped her elbow against the vase and it toppled off the desk, scattering her flowers across the carpet.

She took a moment to evaluate the mess and then quickly slipped the flowers back into the vase. She could refill the water later when she had more time.

As she set the vase onto the desk, she noticed that some of the petals had been bruised by the fall.

Wounded petals.

Bruised innocence.

She thought back to the incident that had brought all the flowers into her family’s life. An awkward drop of guilt splattered inside of her.

The arrangement will never be the same again.

Never the same.

As she left the room, she shut the door harder than she needed to, then hurried down the hallway to pick up Tessa from the site of the accident.

While I waited for Lien-hua and the police, I took some digital pictures of the scene with my cell phone and emailed them to the dispatcher to forward to the responding officers. It used to be that we had to wait for a photographer to show up at the scene of an accident or a crime.

Not anymore.

Welcome to the twenty-first century.

I noticed that the transient’s tooth was still embedded in my arm.

Without letting Tessa see, I pried it loose. It hurt more than I thought it would, and my fingers were quivering a little as I dropped it into my pocket and snugged up the elastic cuff of my windbreaker to stop the bleeding.

A few minutes later, three police cars and an ambulance pulled to the curb, and as if on cue, Lien-hua arrived and parked just behind them.

I noticed the eyes of all the male-and female-officers following Lien-hua as she crossed the street. I wasn’t surprised. After all, she carries herself with Oriental poise, has an elegantly beautiful face with a slight nose and high cheekbones, and is, to put it mildly, very, very fit. Of course, she’s also brilliant, cool under pressure, single, and, at thirty-two, just four years younger than me.

Overall, she’s one of the most stunning women I’ve ever met. But as she approached, I tried not to think about all that, and instead, after a quick greeting, I focused on explaining to her what had happened. One of the EMTs gave me a tube of antibiotics for my arm, and I pulled back my sleeve as we approached Tessa, who was sitting on the curb halfheartedly snapping a rubber band against her wrist and occasionally writing something in her notebook.

After a moment, Lien-hua sat beside her. “Hello, Tessa.”

Without looking up. “Agent Jiang.”

“Are you doing OK?”

Snap. “Don’t psychoanalyze me or anything. I just want to go to bed.”

Lien-hua dragged a slender finger across the sidewalk. “Fair enough.” Then she stood and offered her hand to Tessa.

I finished smearing some of the antibiotics on my arm and twisted the cap back onto the tube. “Tessa, I asked Lien-hua to stay with you for a little bit while I finish up here.”

Snap. Snap. “I don’t need anyone to stay with me.”

When Lien-hua saw that Tessa wasn’t going to take her hand, she lowered it.

“Please.”

She set her jaw, got up, and huffed over to Lien-hua’s car.

Snap. Snap. Snap.

I need to talk to her about that rubber band thing.

Once Tessa was out of earshot, I told Lien-hua, “It’s been a rough night, but I think she’ll be OK. I’ll see you at the hotel, all right?”

“Sure.”

I touched her elbow softly. “Hey, thanks for coming.”

“You’re welcome,” she said. “I’m glad I could be here for you.”

Her words tumbled through my head, meaning more to me than she could have possibly meant them to. “Yeah, me too.”

Then she climbed into the car beside Tessa, and a police officer whose face looked like a block of meat with thick stubble glued to its base called out, “Where do you think you’re going?” An old scar crawled across his cheek and dragged one of his lips down into a sneer. His arms were two tattooed pythons hanging out of his shirtsleeves. He wore a detective’s badge.

“They didn’t see what happened,” I said.

He looked at me suspiciously. “And you are?”

“Patrick Bowers. I’m a federal agent. FBI.”

As I pulled out my ID, he studied my outfit, apparently taking note of my jeans, running shoes, and T-shirt. “Fed, huh? If you’re an FBI agent, where’s your wingtips and dorky little tie?”

I almost asked him where his doughnut and dinky little mustache were, but I wasn’t sure that would be the best way to jump-start our friendship. Instead, I just showed him my federal ID.

Lien-hua had waited, but now I nodded for her to take off. The detective didn’t seem interested in the two women anymore. He looked over my ID, working his jaw back and forth. “So, now the Feds are involved in this too?”

“Involved in what?”

He handed me the ID. “Look, if you’re gonna come in here and start some kind of turf war-”

I read the name off his badge. “Detective Dunn, I wasn’t sent in to investigate anything. I’m only here because I was the witness to John Doe’s suicide. Is there something going on I should know about?”

He stepped close enough for me to smell his garlicky breath.

“This is my city. The next time you and your pencil-pushing lawyer buddies from Quantico decide to stick your nose into an ongoing investigation, at least have the courtesy to go through the proper channels.”

“I’d suggest you back away,” I said. “Now.”

He backed up slowly.

“What ongoing investigation are you talking about, Detective?”

“Don’t insult me. You know or you wouldn’t be here.” He rubbed at the sandpapery stubble on his cheek. “So, you the photographer too? Little snapshots of the trolley you’re emailing to everyone.”

This guy was something else. “Your badge says you’re a homicide detective. I was a detective in Milwaukee for six years and I know that dispatch wouldn’t send you here to work an eyewitness cor-roborated suicide, at least not until foul play was suspected. What’s going on here?”