Mark Gilleo - Sweat

Not with two dead men on the floor.

Wei Ling was going back to her mother country. The doctor picked up the phone and called C.F. Chang. “We are coming home. Get me on a charter flight out. Have people at the airport in Beijing. This afternoon.”

“It is done,” Laoban answered. “And my son?”

“As you ordered.”

The doctor filled a clean syringe with Seconal, walked up to Wei Ling, and delivered a measured dose in her moving arm. Just enough to knock her out until they were on the plane, safely in the air over international waters. Once back in China, he could do anything he wanted with her, as long as the baby was born healthy.

The doctor went to the bathroom and put an adhesive bandage on the small present he had received from DiMarco, the blood from the cut on his neck already beginning to dry on the edges. He went back to the murder scene, opened the drawer in the desk, and pulled out Wei Ling’s file and passport. He put the file in his medical bag and flipped open her passport. There were two stamps on the first page and a valid work visa for the U.S. Just a Chinese citizen going home before her visa ends. ***

The Saipan Police questioned every non-seamstress employee on duty, and started contacting the long list of guards who had worked for Lee Chang in the past. No one came forth with any clues as to the identity of the dead white man on the infirmary floor next to Lee Chang. The girls were locked in their rooms while the police questioned the foremen and guards, employees untrained and unskilled in any form of security other than keeping a hundred girls in line.

Police Captain Marco Talua arrived as the bodies were removed from the premises. Saipan’s only official coroner vehicle, used by its only coroner, carried Lee Chang in its long rear section. The dead American with a scar on his neck and a tattoo of the grim reaper dressed as Santa Claus rode in an ambulance, covered in the obligatory white sheet. Captain Talua walked over to the soon-to-be transported bodies and took a look at their faces.

Looking at Lee Chang, the captain bowed his head for a moment of silence. He stared at the white American, forewent any visible indication of prayer, and gave the nod for the bodies to be moved. He turned toward the facilities of Chang Industries and stopped one of his officers on the scene.

“Did anyone question the girls?”

“No, sir. Not yet. All indications are that they were at work. They couldn’t have seen anything.”

“No surprise, I guess.”

“No sir, I guess not. Do you want to question them? It could take all night to do it right.”

“If it takes all night, it takes all night. They may not have had the opportunity to do any killing here today, but every last one of them had the motive.”

“I’ll get the foreman. He should be able to lead us around.”

“Fine. I’m going to take a look at the crime scene. Come find me.”

“Yes, sir.”

Captain Talua stepped into the infirmary and looked at Lee Chang’s coagulated blood on the tile floor. A crime scene investigator, who issued parking tickets during the week, milled about taking snapshots. He measured the distances between objects in the room and the locations of the now absent bodies. The quiet clicking of the camera shutter and flashes of light filled the room. The captain looked around at the empty beds in the infirmary, all perfectly made. He checked the bathroom, which was spotless and smelled of bleach. The room was sterile enough to host an organ transplant operation.

The crime scene investigator stepped from Wei Ling’s former residence in the storage room and looked around for any obvious photo shots he may have missed. He had been there an hour already, snapping through two hundred shots with the bodies and another hundred after they had been removed.

“Good afternoon, Captain,” the investigator said, finally speaking.

“Not for the two victims.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Give me the scoop. Tell me what I need to know.”

“Two victims in the infirmary. One Caucasian, the other Asian, all signs indicating that it was Lee Chang, though I have never met him.”

“I saw him in the body bag. It’s him.”

“Like I said, I never met him.”

“What’s in that room?” the captain asked, nodding in the direction of the storage room.

“It seems like a storage closet that has had a bed thrown in it. The room is pretty clean of evidence as far as the crime is concerned, less for the handcuffs. One bed, one side table, a trash can, a bed pan….”

“…handcuffs?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I would say that’s out of the ordinary. An empty infirmary and a bed in the storage closet with handcuffs.”

“A worker who was being punished?” the investigator asked noncommittally.

“Possibly,” the captain answered, suddenly concerned that he may have to explain the situation to someone outside of the comfort of his island.

“Where is the person who was in this room?”

“It looks like she left with the doctor.”

“The doctor? I thought the doctor was pulled off the beach a few weeks ago.”

“He was. A new doctor arrived from China sometime during the last week.”

“Where is he now?”

“We don’t exactly know. We’re trying to locate him. He was staying at a hotel in Garapan City. No one really seems to know much about him.”

“Has anybody notified next of kin for Lee Chang?”

“The housekeeper is upstairs. She made the call about thirty minutes ago.”

“Did she see anything?”

“She claims she was upstairs working.”

“Squeeze her a little. Make her cry if you have to. She knows something. Lee Chang wasn’t changing any bedpans himself.”

The captain thought as he looked around the crime scene. What a mess. As the crime scene investigator left the room, Captain Talua gave his parting remarks. “I have to check on something, but I want updates every thirty minutes. Phone, radio. Whatever.”

“Yes, sir.”

Chapter 39

With Jake in the passenger seat, Tony drove the SUV down the last hundred yards of road and came to a halt in front of the police barricade. Two squad cars were parked at an angle, head-to-head, blocking the road and the main entrance to Chang Industries under the auspice of checking passing vehicles. In the last hour, traffic had amounted to one delivery truck that was turned away and now Jake and his three burly guests. Tony looked at the police and his natural aversion to blue flashing lights made him squirm in his seat.

Jake looked at the looming fence with its roll of razor wire running along the top and his lips puckered slightly. The description of Chang facilities as a prison went far beyond proverbial. Tony eyed the fence through the windshield and had a flashback of a federal vacation he had endured in New Haven, Connecticut, for getting caught with an eighteen wheeler full of stolen cigarettes.

“Jake, maybe we should come back.”

“It would be too suspicious. Besides, I didn’t just fly halfway around the world to get cold feet. We are U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. We haven’t broken any laws.”

“Yet,” Tony added. The Castello brothers sat expressionless in the back seat.

“We aren’t going to break any laws, Tony. Chang Industries cannot keep us from meeting this girl. This is not a prison. She is here of her own free will. If she decides she wants to leave, we are here to assist.” Jake held a folder in his hands with legal documents quoting every law that Lee Chang was breaking on U.S. soil, unlawful imprisonment at the top of the list. Tony and the Castello brothers were there purely as a show of force. A combined seven hundred pounds of persuasion.

Jake rolled down the passenger side window, nodding and smiling at the officer.