Hanging the Devil, page 2
The pilot was louder and more insistent, but Grace couldn’t make out any of the words. An angry blend of Russian, English, and something else. She saw a ruddy face with angular features, short black hair, and a long, sharp nose. Spittle flew from the corners of a wide mouth as the man shouted at his former passengers.
It was a face twisted by fear, and Grace could see why.
The ghost took a short cylinder from the man to his left. With a movement as graceful as a ballet dancer, he bent both legs and swept his left arm in a broad arc, striking the tip of the tube against the floor. The road flare sputtered to life. The flame was red, orange, and angry.
The ghost shrugged in apology, then tossed the flare underhand at the helicopter.
The fiery baton spun end over end before landing at the edge of the wreckage, where a thin trickle of fuel ran across the marble floor.
Shouts turned to screams as the pilot convulsed in a frantic effort to free his broken legs. He strained to reach the flare, slapping his nearest arm repeatedly against the mangled door, as a river of blue fire ran straight at him.
The stocky man threw a second flare. It landed among the wooden crates and turned the cockpit into a crematorium. The roar of the flames muffled the last of the pilot’s screams.
Smoke poured from the broken body of the helicopter like a fleeing soul.
Grace gasped and took a shaky breath, tasted salt and realized she was crying again. She bit down on her lip and forced her legs to move. As she began to turn away from the inferno, she heard sirens. The ghost said something to his companions, and Grace saw them shift their weight and adjust their stances.
She wasn’t going to make it. She stood in no-man’s-land, between the gallery and the escalator. Grace dashed back to the gallery as the three men turned their backs on their victim.
She would hide until they left, then she would run. As far and as fast as she could.
She didn’t expect them to head for the gallery where she was hiding.
Grace willed herself to become invisible and wished she was four again, when closing your eyes made the monsters go away. Her guardian Buddha was in the middle of the hall, so her back was exposed if they came into the heart of the exhibit. She remained in a crouch in case she needed to run. Between her hiding spot and the exit was an uneven forest of pedestals and tables displaying other Buddhas of various sizes.
The ghost walked directly toward the first pedestal after the entrance, which held a sitting Buddha about fifteen inches tall and ten inches wide.
Grace knew this statue. It was the first artifact her uncle had shown her the night she slept in the museum for the first time. A patina of gold covered a bronze figure that looked not only serene but mischievous, as if Buddha was keeping a secret. It was the oldest Buddha in the gallery. Her uncle said it was priceless, then smiled and looked around at the other statues, reminding her they all were. Then he put a hand on the side of her face and told her even the oldest statue in the museum wasn’t as precious as family.
The ghost extended his pale arms and lifted the Buddha unceremoniously from the table. As he turned to hand it over to his men, his eyes swept the room. Grace was too slow, and too curious, to stay hidden.
Before she could shrink behind the column, the eyes of the ghost found her. His eyes were bloodred. His features were Asian, his face long and elegant, his skin bleached parchment, so pale he seemed to glow.
Grace vaulted from her hiding spot like an Olympic sprinter.
The two men in black were slow to react, the shorter one careful to not drop the Buddha. Grace cut diagonally across the gallery and crossed the threshold before they took a single step. She kept her head down and made it halfway to the escalator before she spared a glance over her shoulder.
The helicopter burned like a funeral pyre, and directly behind her, the ghost was walking after her. Walking, not running. As if she could never hope to escape.
Grace closed the distance to the escalator and went into a slide, letting her legs skid across the floor until she reached the top step. She scampered down, skipping steps whenever she could, heart pounding.
When she reached the bottom, she spun on her heel to look up the escalator. The ghost stood at the top, making no attempt to ride down the steps. Grace kept moving backward toward the main entrance without taking her eyes off him. As she neared the main doors, the pitch of the sirens got higher.
Police would arrive any minute, but Grace wasn’t going to wait to be rescued. She would save herself. Grace stared at the ghost, who was watching her like a cat tracking a mouse. When their eyes met, he smiled and waved.
For the second time that night, Grace turned and ran.
She spun through the revolving door and leapt down the steps two at a time. She hit the street and sprinted into the darkness of a sleeping city. It was a city she didn’t know, but it was also a city that didn’t know her.
Grace hoped that made it the perfect place to get lost.
4
Sally almost lost the man she was hunting when he took a sudden right turn and cut across Jackson Street. She ran along the rooftops of San Francisco, tracking her quarry between buildings.
She had followed him from the moment he exited the bar on Stockton Street, a tourist dive where over a dozen women had been drugged. Weeks of surveillance eliminated most of the likely suspects after Sally spent countless hours in clubs drinking watered-down cocktails and declining invitations to dance.
She knew it could be anyone. One in five women living in San Francisco will be drugged by a stranger, or by her date, by the time she turns thirty. One in ten for men. It was a nightly occurrence almost impossible to track, but recently there had been a disturbing spike at Chinatown bars.
Rumors spread from emergency rooms and twenty-four-hour clinics, stories of women carried by friends who thought too much alcohol or something recreational had made them tipsy. They were the lucky ones, women whose friends stayed close when their knees started to buckle. Few would come forward because most couldn’t remember what happened.
Sally suspected a lone actor who got a taste for control. A fetish became an addiction.
Young drinkers traveled in packs, and half their friends were digital acquaintances, so victims often assumed a new face at the bar was simply a friend of a friend. Sally could only search for a pattern.
Bartenders’ descriptions were consistent with women’s fractured and half-remembered tales. Male, early thirties, with short black hair and close-cropped beard. Nice clothes. Someone who worked in an office, good salary, nice watch. Athletic, with a great smile and perfect teeth.
Sally knew she could never catch all the men spiking drinks, but she’d settle for this one. No one knew his name, but Sally knew he looked an awful lot like the man she was tailing.
Her business partner, Cape Weathers, would have approached this very differently. As a private detective, Cape worked the streets more than rooftops. Gathering evidence, building a case to hand over to the police. Cape might bend the law, but he didn’t disregard it entirely.
Sally had been raised in a school run by the Hong Kong Triads, where lessons included reading, writing, and killing with your hands. She had a code but wasn’t big on laws. And the day she arrived in this city, Sally had made a promise to herself.
As long as she lived in Chinatown, she would keep it safe.
Cape was working a case of insurance fraud, straightforward and boring. No need for a trained assassin, so Sally had time on her hands. Maybe not time to kill, but enough to stir up trouble.
Sally waited for a passing car to mask any noise as she leapt from the roof to the fire escape. Though only five feet tall and as lithe as a gymnast, she didn’t want the groan of rusty bolts to give her away. She hopped from one landing to the next until she reached the lowest platform, where a ladder was suspended eight feet above the ground. Sally bypassed the ladder and did a somersault over the railing. She landed on the sidewalk in a crouch as her target strolled east on Stone Street. Sally closed the gap, blending into the shadows as he turned down Washington. She waited until he passed the Chinese Independent Baptist Church, a modernist building of white stone with a twenty-foot cross cut into the facade. The perpendicular lines etched into the stone foreshadowed the intersection up ahead, which gave Sally an epiphany.
She knew where this guy was heading.
The Li Po cocktail lounge was a Chinatown fixture, famous for mai tais and popular with locals and tourists. The club stayed open late, and the hidden bar downstairs remained open even later. Sally guessed her predator wouldn’t risk getting trapped in the basement, but at this hour plenty of twentysomethings and college students with fake IDs would be crowding the bar upstairs. If the guy had struck out earlier, Li Po was a good place for a nightcap attempt.
The street was quiet. A lone streetlight was a poor sentry against the darkness. A few feet beyond the light was a garbage dumpster, and set back from the curb, a residential building which must be the source of the trash. This street opened onto a wider avenue at the corner, which meant more lights, cars, and late-night revelers. Assuming this was the right guy, Sally would have to wait until he made another attempt in the bar. Unless she forced an encounter.
Take him now.
Sally could hear the man whistling as she closed the distance. She had spent her childhood learning to become invisible, and the sound of her footfalls was as absent as her shadow. She matched his pace and stayed close.
He was almost a head taller than Sally. His topcoat looked very expensive.
“Hey, sailor.”
It was something Sally would never say in a million years, which made her want to say it all the more. The man turned, startled, a look of irritation evaporating as he got a better look. Even dressed for concealment, Sally was striking. Green eyes set wide in a face that blended East and West, long hair braided and draped over her shoulder like an ebony scarf.
Testosterone took over, and the man squared his shoulders to assert his height, then ran a hand through his hair to conjure his charm. His lips parted in a tentative smile as his brain scanned a vintage catalog of opening lines.
Sally had to admit the rumors were true. This asshole had perfect teeth.
Her right arm shot forward, wrist perpendicular so the heel of her hand struck his sternum at an upward angle. She aimed for the xiphoid process, the point where cartilage fuses the rib cage, directly above the diaphragm. Too gentle, and she would knock him on his ass, but too hard and the cartilage would shatter, shards flying into his heart and lungs.
Sally tried for the Goldilocks hit, a short punch, arm snapping like a piston. The goal was knock him down, knock the wind out of him, and knock that smile off his face. It did all three.
A trifecta of nonlethal violence.
Prince Charming landed on the sidewalk like a frog. A look of shock appeared, his eyes watering as a thick, whistling sound emanated from deep in his chest. Sally bent down and reached under his topcoat. She rummaged through his jacket pockets and wondered idly if perhaps she had hit him too hard.
When she found the glass vials, Sally decided she hadn’t hit him hard enough.
There were three small tubes the size of perfume samplers given out at department stores. Sally guessed they contained GHB, liquid ecstasy, or another drug like Ambien or scopolamine. The original date-rape drug, Rohypnol or roofies, had lost market share to more potent synthetics. Overdose wasn’t a concern as long as you thought of your victim as a piece of meat in a dress.
The handsome stranger gaped like a koi fish and sucked in air.
He appeared incapacitated, but Sally learned at a young age to take nothing for granted. Crouching so her shoulders were level with his, she shaped the fingers of her right hand into a flat blade and struck his left shoulder at a point just beside the collarbone. He wheezed like a broken accordion as his shoulder slumped, eyes wide, then Sally shifted the vials to her right hand and performed an identical strike against his other arm.
For the next five minutes his arms would feel like overcooked pasta.
Sally brought her left hand behind his head and clutched his hair, almost gently, and pulled him to his feet. She figured one dose would do the trick. Guiding him along the sidewalk, Sally turned his head like a joystick to steer him over to the dumpster. She scanned the windows of the apartment building, but lights were dim and curtains were drawn.
“Bottoms up.” Sally pulled his head back and thumbed the top off one of the vials. Poured the contents down his throat, shaking the vial to make sure he got the full dose. “You probably won’t remember much after this, but hopefully you’ll remember me.”
The man gargled something that sounded to Sally like thank you, but that was probably her imagination. Maybe profanity was involved and gratitude wasn’t on the tip of his tongue.
“Sweet dreams.” Sally patted him on the cheek and slipped the remaining vials into his pocket. When the police got the call, they would find him in possession. Guilty as found, soon to be charged.
Sally widened her stance, dropped a shoulder and, with an effort, hoisted him onto her back just long enough to roll him into the dumpster.
He landed in a fetid jumble of garbage bags and corrugated cardboard, his expression a dreamy look of panic, pupils dilated and a thin line of drool running down his cheek. In the wan light of the dumpster, his lips parted as if he was about to say something in his defense. His perfect teeth gleamed like a perfect lie.
Sally brushed her hands together like someone who just finished a household chore.
I love taking out the trash.
The sun would be making an appearance soon. There was a building with a fire escape only a block away, and she could make better time across the rooftops. She strolled past the streetlamp toward the main intersection, the shadows welcoming her like an old friend.
Sally heard the footsteps as soon as she reached the corner.
Someone running, out of breath. Not a late-night jogger, the footfalls were too uneven and hard, shoes smacking against concrete. Sally stood and listened a moment longer. Someone running from something, with no destination beyond escape.
Sally reached the corner in time to see a young Chinese girl sprinting toward her.
Maybe she doesn’t see me.
Sally braced herself as she realized the girl was accelerating. Whatever might be chasing this girl made Sally look like a safe alternative. That was a new feeling to examine later. Sally caught the girl in her arms and lifted her off the sidewalk.
The girl’s legs kept kicking as if she was too afraid to stop running. Sally held tight until the feet stopped, then lowered the girl onto the ground.
Arms locked around Sally’s waist as the girl’s face buried against her chest. Sally could feel a heart beating at twice the rate of her own. She gave the girl a squeeze.
It was the first hug Sally had given to anyone since she was five.
A stream of words poured from the girl in a torrent of English and Cantonese. Sally spoke both fluently, but the verbal waterfall was beyond translation. She waited until the girl ran out of breath, then untangled her arms and took a small step backward until their eyes met.
Neither one of them blinked. After a long moment, the girl inhaled and tried again.
“I saw a ghost,” said Grace.
5
“A ghost.”
Cape Weathers looked both skeptical and open-minded, which wasn’t easy. Being inscrutable was one of the few things that made him qualified to be a private investigator.
Being stubborn didn’t hurt.
Cape glanced at Sally. “Maybe we should call the police and tell them to be on the lookout for Jacob Marley…or Beetlejuice.”
“I believe her,” said Sally.
“Never said I didn’t.” Cape behind his desk in a chair that was more tragicomic than ergonomic. Scarred leather on a wooden frame, wheels that squeaked every time he rolled back and forth across the hardwood floor, which he did incessantly.
Grace sat in one of the client chairs with no wheels. Sally leaned against a bookshelf that ran the length of the wall. The early morning sun struggled to penetrate the fog and break through the window at the back of the office.
Grace looked over her shoulder at Sally and said something in Cantonese.
“No police.” Sally shifted her gaze to Cape. “We need a plan B.”
“She can’t go back to her uncle’s apartment,” said Cape. “The thieves might have checked his wallet for an address.” He watched the girl’s reaction at the mention of her uncle. She was remarkably stoic, a frisson of fear passing over her face as fleetingly as a cloud.
Sally locked eyes with Grace, which seemed to instill instant calm.
Cape reminded himself how young Grace was and made a mental note to refrain from thinking out loud about all the dreadful, horrible, unimaginable things that might happen. He would be neurotic on his own time.
“A friend of her father got her into the country on a charter flight from Hong Kong,” said Sally, “but we don’t know if she’s got a visa or was smuggled in under a false name.”
“We can check that without making waves.” Cape stared at the ceiling. “That’s the least of our troubles.”
Sally nodded. With the uncle dead, Grace had no sponsor or legal tether to the country.
After Grace ran into her hours before, Sally got her to stop hyperventilating and took her to an all-night diner. Sally wasn’t inclined to call the police, so she called Cape and woke him up, then asked to meet at his office. Now the only man Sally truly trusted was half-awake behind his desk, tracing the cracks in the ceiling as he replayed the story in his head.
The normalcy of the diner had been jarring. Sally wanted to shock Grace into recounting the robbery as if it were a bad dream fading with the rising sun. A stack of pancakes and a chocolate shake can distract even the most traumatized kid for a few minutes. That was all the time Sally needed.
