David Rotenberg - The Hua Shan Hospital Murders

She looked at Fong.

“A crucifix bone sandwich. I’m sure the new McDonald’s by Renmin Park will have it on the menu by next week,” said Fong.

“Only if we tell them about it, Fong,” said Lily. With a wicked smile she added, “No more Dim Sum killer stuff, huh.”

The men snickered. Fong gave them a look then without raising his voice said, “If it gets out, you’re both on garbage detail for a year. Someone has to make sure Shanghai’s recycling effort is successful.”

In English Lily said, “You done big bad boss being?”

Fong replied, “Sure.”

Lily smiled. In Shanghanese she said, “Besides, Fong, the cross sort of stuck in his throat. That could be bad for business.”

“No kidding.” He shifted his position and a darkness crossed his delicate features. “So cause of death was a crushed throat, right?”

“We can’t be sure without more of the skeletal bones, but the damage to these throat bones would be enough to cause death, assuming he wasn’t already dead.”

“He wasn’t,” Fong said. “The chin’s not broken on the skull is it, Lily?”

“No, Fong, it’s fully intact.”

The darkness on Fong’s face intensified as he said to Lily in English, “He was still alive.”

“How do . . .”

Fong turned to the taller cop and said, “Lie down.”

The man looked for an explanation but when it quickly became clear that Fong had no intention of explaining his order the man simply lay down on his back.

Fong crossed to the man’s right side and raised his foot quickly then snapped it downward, stopping less than an inch above the man’s fully exposed throat.

The man’s eyes went large – no, huge – and he involuntarily moved his chin up to avoid the foot hitting his face.

“It’s a reflex,” said Fong. “We protect our faces even when it exposes other more vulnerable parts. Only live people have reflex actions, Lily.”

She nodded.

Fong removed his foot and the cop rolled to one side.

“So those neck bones were crushed when the man was still alive. Which leads to one other question.”

“And that would be, Fong?”

Fong went over to the skeleton and removed the top layer of damaged neck bones exposing the equalsided cross. Fong counted the neck bones down to the top of the cross then turned to Lily and counted the same number down her throat with his finger. His finger came to rest well below her larynx.

Lily repeated her question, “And what one other question would that be, Fong?” ignoring the position of Fong’s finger on her neck.

Fong dangled the crucifix on its chain and said in a hoarse voice, “How did they terrify this guy so thoroughly that he agreed to swallow this?”

A thick silence filled the room. Fong allowed the cross to dangle from his fingers. Finally he turned to the cops, “Find me someone who knows about things like this.” The light bounded off the crucifix and momentarily flickered across Lily’s face. There was fear in her beautiful eyes. The image of a man on his knees, his mouth pried open and the metal thing shoved down his throat – no matter how far in the past – was a thing of childhood nightmares.

Fong indicated to the two cops that they should leave. Once they were gone he turned to Lily, “So?”

Lily opened a side drawer and took out a small object wrapped in a white linen cloth. She put it on the table and pulled aside the cloth.

The tiny skull looked paper thin and ready to crumble.

Lily let out a long line of sweet breath then said, “It’s from the same time as the adult skeleton – perhaps the exact same time.”

Fong waited, knowing there was more to come. Finally Lily spoke, “A quick DNA scan suggests there was a relationship between the adult and the child.” A bitterness, sour, from dark places entered her voice as she added, “They murdered the baby with the father.”

“So it would seem,” Fong replied, but he wasn’t sure that Lily was right about what happened all those years ago. It was finding the cross and the baby together that had his attention. Could this have been some bizarre religious murder? Such things were unheard of in secular China, but there were always rumblings – troubling rumblings.

“Fong, please . . .” Lily began in a voice that cried out for Fong to comfort her. But he didn’t. And he didn’t know why he didn’t.

Angel Michael’s state-of-the-art laptop was blinking when he returned from his late afternoon travels. He shucked off the coat that hid his worker’s overalls and punched two function keys. The website www.uofs.w.alberta.ca came up slowly. Along the left side were highlighted icons – class schedules, campus maps, professors’ bios, etc. The page itself had some basic palaver about the university – the usual totally inept academic advertising. Normal. Nothing to attract attention. Nothing out of the ordinary. Very common in every respect except one – there is no such university.

Angel Michael quickly scrolled down to Courses and clicked on Political Science. Slowly a new list appeared from top to bottom. He scrolled down to a fourth-year course with the terse title: Justice. He clicked on the underlined word.

A small box appeared at the bottom of the page. There were no instructions in the box.

Angel Michael moved his cursor to the left of the small box and clicked once. Then to the right of the box and clicked again. Then above and below. Upon the last click the cursor within the box began to blink.

Angel Michael typed in his password – FROM THE MOUTHS – and hit enter. The screen went blank then a large black cross filled the space. Eight pop-up boxes snapped on. This was no low-speed peripheral site.

A counter at the bottom flashed the number 6.

“So they wanted to talk again, did they?” thought Angel Michael as the blood vessel behind his eye began to pulse.

He right-clicked on the number and punched in his second password: BY THE LIGHT.

There was a pause, then in the chat box appeared the words: “Welcome Michael.”

“Hi,” he typed.

“Is Angel Michael’s flaming sword in hand?”

“Not yet,” he lied. The pain swelled.

“When?”

“When I think it’s safe,” he lied again.

Just for the slightest moment the chat box was empty – as if the person on the other end was holding his breath. Finally text appeared. “God be with you.” The first wave of pain crashed behind his left eye.

Angel Michael turned off the computer without exiting the program and sat in the growing darkness trying to will away the pain. “Before the light – darkness,” he quoted. The idea comforted him. He crossed to the window and took out five stick matches from his pocket. He scraped them against the glass. They screeched like fingernails on a black board then flared light . . . and the pain started to recede.

He looked out at the vastness that was Shanghai.He was alone in this strangest of strange cities. Just the way he wanted it.

And despite what he had said in the chat room, his first message was already in place and ticking its way toward zero – toward the future rising of the light.

“This is not a play about a dumb nigger!” shouted the towering Afro-American actor playing Othello as he lifted the middle-aged English actor playing Iago by the throat and held him against the stage-left proscenium arch.

“The Iago Conundrum,” said Fong under his breath from his seat at the back of the Shanghai Theatre Academy’s decrepit old theatre. It had been his wife’s, Fu Tsong’s, favourite performance space and she had performed all over China and Japan.

The Caucasian playing Iago was unable to speak.“Good,” Fong thought, “every bad actor silenced was a move in the right direction.”