Dragon Bones (5 page)

“We always save the most beautiful ones for you, Inspector,” he recited as though it had been only a few days since he’d last spoken those words to her. He took two discreet steps back to give her time to examine the body alone.

The autopsy had already been performed and the y-incision sewn up with crude stitches, but this was the only thing about the body that could be said to be normal. Stretched out, the bloated corpse seemed like some grotesquely huge monster. The algae-covered flesh had shriveled into what was known as washerwoman’s skin as a result of prolonged submersion in water and had burst here and there both from trauma and to let out gases. The eyes and nose were gone. The mouth was agape, and she could see the shredded remains of the tongue. The genitals were still complete. The fish had not snacked there. In fact, compared with the torso, the bottom half of the body was in relatively good shape.

“A trip down the Yangzi is no picnic,” Fong commented dryly. “It is one of Chairman Mao’s more obscure sayings, but true nevertheless.”

Hulan ignored the joke. She ran the tip of her finger along the flesh of the man’s arm. “He lost his shirt….”

“That’s my inspector. You disappear but you don’t forget how to look. They should send you out to teach the young ones who come in here. Stupid as water buffalo—”

“Pathologist Fong….”

“Yes, of course he lost his shirt. If he’d been wearing a T-shirt maybe it would have lasted, but a dress shirt would not have held up in those conditions. He was wearing jeans. Levi’s 501s. Very strong material.”

She leaned in to get a closer look. All the river muck couldn’t disguise the red color of his hair. She asked, “You’re positive he’s a foreigner?”

“I can guarantee you that he’s not Han Chinese.”

In Sichuan Province alone there were more than forty ethnic minorities, but red hair was highly unlikely.

“I’m sure you’ve also noticed his size,” Fong went on as he picked up a chart. “Once you allow for bloating and such, I figure he stood 182.8 centimeters tall and weighed 77.2 kilos. Since he’s a foreigner, I put that into American measurements. It may make identification easier. He was a little over six feet and about 170 pounds. He may have been young. You know those foreigners and how fat they get. No”—he broke into his unintelligible English—“beer belly, no extra tire around the gut.” He put down the chart and waited.

“What else?”

“He had some papers in his pockets.”

“How could they have stayed with him?”

“You ever get your jeans wet, Inspector?” When she nodded, he went on. “First the water swelled the fabric. Once the body began to bloat, what was in the pockets became fully trapped.”

“Anything more you can tell me?”

“You mean was there foul play?” Fong asked.

“You’re watching too many American TV shows.”

He beamed as though this had been a compliment and once again spoke in English. “Foul play, John Doe, perp, jacket….” He switched back to Mandarin. “It’s important to learn these terms as part of globalization.”

She stared at him until he finally answered her question. “You see this body. You see the damage to the head and face especially. How am I supposed to know if someone or something hit him on the head
before
he entered the river? He was hit on the head many times
after
he was in the river. On this I would testify in court. I ran a toxics screen, but it was inconclusive for poison, alcohol, or drugs. A better question might be, did he commit suicide?”

“And?”

“He was dead before he entered the water.”

“No water in the lungs?”

“The presence of water in the lungs and even the stomach would not be a surprise given the duration of submersion. However, the lack of hemorrhages in the lung tissue indicate he did not die from drowning.”

“Murder?”

“Too much postmortem damage to determine how he died,” Fong answered, “but you can definitely rule out suicide. A corpse can’t dispose of itself after all.”

“Can you tell how long he’s been dead?”

“Ten days, maybe more. If we get the rate that the river travels, I might be able to pinpoint a location for you.”

“That won’t be necessary. Once we have identification, I’m sure we’ll know where he died.”

“We have many new ways to work on identification….”

“Don’t tell me you’re another of our compatriots to travel abroad.”

He smiled crookedly. “I go to pathology conventions wherever I can. Between those and
CSI
on my satellite, I’ve learned a lot. I call my method Chinese Forensics with Capitalist Tendencies.” He paused and looked down at the body with an expression that seemed almost sympathetic. Had the pathologist softened over the years? “We have other tests we can run—”

“Hold off on that for now.” Seeing Fong’s deflation, she added, “But I’d like to see the papers you found.”

Once out of the lab, Fong was all brisk business again, and he hustled down the hallway. Although his lab was orderly, his office was a mess, with piles of journals on the floor, files in haphazard stacks around the room, and books jammed into shelves. Fong flung himself into the chair behind his desk. The only other chair in the room was filled with papers. Hulan stood, remembering not to touch anything. Pathologist Fong was funny that way.

He opened a drawer, pulled out a large plastic bag, and dropped its contents on the desk. Each piece had been wrapped in its own plastic sleeve.

“Why aren’t these materials in the evidence locker?”

Fong grimaced, then leaned forward as if to tell her something in confidence. “He’s a foreigner. Special care, Inspector, special care.”

Did he know something she didn’t? Probably. Undoubtedly.

She quickly sorted through the artifacts. A driver’s license would have made her job easy, but she didn’t see one. Various other papers—probably discount cards, old receipts, and business cards—had come through the arduous and wet journey, but whatever information had been on them was now illegible. She picked up another plastic sleeve. Inside was a piece of lined paper about twelve by eighteen centimeters that had been torn from a notebook.

“You found this in the wallet?”

“Wedged in his back pocket.”

“What is it?”

“Notebook paper obviously. Judging from the quality, I’d say foreign. It might be easier to trace than if it were Chinese, but what are the odds?”

She turned it over in her hand, then held it under the light on Fong’s desk. She could see something still on the paper. She looked at Fong, who said, “I checked under a microscope, and it looks like symbols of some sort.”

She examined the paper more closely. Could it be shorthand? Fong wouldn’t be familiar with those squiggles, but she’d seen enough of them when she’d worked at Phillips & MacKenzie to recognize them. But this definitely wasn’t shorthand. She put the paper back on the desk. Fong waited for her to speak, then when she didn’t he gestured to the plastic sleeves. “Just because you don’t see the words doesn’t mean they aren’t there. I have tests I can do to see what I can pull up.”

For a moment she seemed lost in thought, then she said, “Let me make a couple of calls first.”

Anyone in the building could have done what Hulan did next, which was call the American Embassy—a logical step because Americans outnumbered all other foreigners who entered China on tourist or work visas. Although Hulan hadn’t been in contact with anyone at the embassy for a long time, she felt no awkwardness in making the call. Those who’d been there during her last encounter were now dead, in jail, or long gone.

The receptionist patched her through to a junior staffer, Charlie Freer, who seemed personable, informative, and tactful, which made him altogether perfect for his job. “Car accidents, heart attacks, that’s what I usually deal with,” Freer explained by way of introduction. “We always get information on those cases quickly, and it’s my job to make arrangements to get the deceased back home. But I haven’t had many missing persons cases per se. Actually this is my first. I mean, what American goes missing in China?”

What he said was true. Most tourists traveled the country in tours and on set routes, while the people who worked here were watched in much the way the Chinese themselves were watched.

“But to answer your question,” Freer continued, “I do have a report of a missing archaeologist. It took a couple days to get it. The phone lines are iffy where this guy was working, but you know how that is.”

Hulan did. If Freer’s missing person worked on the Yangzi, that could explain a lot. The phone lines weren’t bad in the major cities along the river, but there were few phones in small towns and villages, and cell connections were notoriously bad because of the height of the gorges.

“We did our usual bit,” Freer conceded. “We have a system that we use wherever Americans travel. We notify expats living in the region by fax and e-mail. We send out notices to tourist hotels and restaurants. I like to think that I can find anyone here in China by nightfall.”

“I thought you didn’t get missing persons,” Hulan said.

“Well, there are missing persons and
missing persons,
Inspector. I had a situation just last week where I got a call from a family in California. A man back home had had a stroke and was officially brain-dead. They needed someone to pull the plug, but the brother, who had medical power of attorney, happened to be here on vacation. The sister-in-law made it clear that we weren’t going to find this guy in the usual places. In my job you can tell when you’re going down a certain path. You know how I deal with problems like that?”

Hulan admitted she didn’t.

“I ask, Would your brother—sister, father, aunt, fill in the blank—be what you might call a free spirit? These are people who travel under the radar, if you know what I mean. I wouldn’t want the local Public Security Bureau turning up and finding our Joe mellowing out and smoking a joint or, worse, being a Goody Two-shoes and working with some human rights group. That would be a real diplomatic fiasco.”

“So where was the brother?”

“Tibet.”

Enough said. Both sides had their watchers. Both sides had their policies. Both sides had their own reasons to track people down and spirit them away.

“About your missing person—”

“Brian McCarthy, a graduate student from Seattle,” Freer said. “He was reported missing on July twentieth, but I wasn’t called until Monday the twenty-second. I called his sister in the States to let her know but only got her answering machine. Next thing I heard she was on her way to the Three Gorges. And of course I informed your ministry of the details, since McCarthy was here as an expert.”

Why hadn’t Vice Minister Zai just given Hulan McCarthy’s name? She shifted uncomfortably in her chair. She knew she was being used, but she didn’t know why.

“McCarthy was working near a town called Bashan on the Yangzi as part of a cooperative archaeological program between China and other nations,” Freer continued. “From what I could tell in my conversations with Dr. Ma—he’s the supervisor down on the site who called me—this Brian seemed very reliable. Not the sort who’d go off without notifying his superiors.”

“Do you have a physical description?” she asked.

Over the phone line she heard Freer shuffle paper.

“He was six feet two inches and one hundred and seventy-five pounds. It says here that he had blue eyes and red hair. Is that a help?”

The body in Fong’s lab had to be that of Brian McCarthy. Over the next few minutes, Hulan provided Freer with the closely matched physical description of the body and explained how and where it had been found. They exchanged further information and made a deal of sorts. Charlie Freer would contact the sister in Bashan and help her get her brother’s body home; Hulan would tie up loose ends on the Chinese side by speaking with Dr. Ma at the archaeological site, and with the various governmental entities, which would include the Ministry of Public Security, the State Cultural Relics Bureau, and the China Travel and Tourism Administration Bureau. Freer gave her Ma’s phone number at the dig but again noted that the line was unreliable. “They have a hard line, but it’s temperamental, and I’ve never gotten through on the cell. You might try sending an e-mail.”

Hulan gave Freer the information about whom to contact at the MPS to get the body released when the time came, then said good-bye. Next she tried phoning the supervisor at the archaeological site, but all she got was an electronic whine. She booted up her computer, accessed the Internet, and typed her message:

Dear Dr. Ma,

We have found and identified Mr. McCarthy’s body. Please inform me of the circumstances by which he might have come to be in the Yangzi.

After sending the message, she quickly checked her other e-mail. She was just about to log out when the computer informed her that she had new mail. It was from Ma:

Inspector Liu,

I am sorry to hear about Brian. We believe he accidentally fell in the river. The current is swift and dangerous here, but we’ve been lucky until now.

The reply was terse, but Hulan assumed that Ma probably didn’t want to deal with the Ministry of Public Security. The less said, the less likely that something might be misconstrued. It was a policy Hulan herself used on many occasions.

She logged out and went back upstairs to Zai’s office.

“I’ve made the identification,” she announced. “Brian McCarthy, your foreigner, was working at an archaeological site on the Yangzi River. The local Public Security Bureau ought to be able to take it from here.”

“Perhaps,” the vice minister said, then added, “Let’s walk.”

They went outside and stood in the shade of the porte cochere. As always, a few men—investigators of the third rank—played half-court basketball. They were strong men, tough in their jobs, but not particularly good athletes.

“Why didn’t you tell me before what you knew?” Hulan asked Zai.

“What was there to tell? Like the Americans, we sent out notices and made the usual inquiries when we were first informed McCarthy was missing, but really there was nothing to be done and no one to be assigned until he turned up.”