Mandarin Gate (33 page)

“It’s a puzzle, Cora. I know some of the pieces. You know some of the pieces. We have to fit them together. I should have asked you a question long ago. Did Jamyang come to you and Rutger sometime just before the killings?”

The American woman stirred the dying embers with a stick. “Two weeks before. With Chenmo. It was strange because he had always kept his distance, like he was very shy. Stayed away even from the other monks. Rutger said it must be because he was a hermit, that he had taken some kind of vow of isolation.”

“He came to your camp?”

Cora nodded. “He was no hermit that night. He said he understood we had taken pictures of the restoration. He wanted to know if they were the kind he could see on our camera screens. So we showed him. Rutger had been trying to get Chenmo to ask Jamyang to help name some of the old images on the walls and artifacts. A goddess playing a lute. A three-headed Buddha. A lion-headed god. We thought he came for that, and he did answer our questions. But what he wanted to see were photos of the monks who had come to help at the convent. He asked if we knew any of their names, and we explained we did not, that we kept our presence secret.”

“What happened? Did he show special interest in any of them?”

“He took the camera and scrolled through the pictures. He stopped at one and went very still. It was like he was scared by something he saw.”

“What was it? What photograph scared him?”

Cora shrugged. “Monks. Monks,” she repeated. “We came around the world to help monks. But now I know we must fear monks.”

“Did Rutger tell the abbess about this?”

“The abbess came to Rutger later. She was excited about what we were doing, about our photographing the internment camp. She encouraged us, gave us information about what went on in the camp, asked if she brought people who had been prisoners whether we would put them in our cameras. That’s how she said it. ‘Put them in our cameras.’ She said we needed to know what happened in those camps.” Cora broke off, biting her lips, looking into the embers. For a moment Shan thought she was going to weep again. She had seen for herself what went on in such a camp, had been tied inside one of its death shrouds.

“The day before Rutger died, she came back. She said there was something new, that he could film a different secret of Beijing. Rutger thought she meant he should go to the convent to film someone who had suffered at one of those gulag camps.” She pushed the embers and watched the sparks fly into the darkening sky.

“What did Jamyang ask you to do with the photos he saw?”

“He said we must keep them safe.”

“Did you?” Shan asked. “Did you keep them safe?”

“Sure. Rutger has special aluminum cases. Waterproof, even fireproof.”

Shan recalled the empty cases he had found at the campsite. They had not been demon proof.

*   *   *

“
Om mani padme hum,
” Meng intoned as she gave the prayer wheel a shove. “Isn’t that what they say?”

Shan nodded. He was not certain why she had asked him to go with her to the convent ruins. The things they needed to say were not for the police post but they had not needed to drive several miles to find a private place. “It invokes the compassionate Buddha,” he explained, and showed her how the words were inscribed in raised script along the rim of the bronze cylinder. “It makes a new prayer each time it spins.”

She replied with a strangely somber nod and spun the wheel again, then again. “I’ve been in Tibet for years,” she said, “and I have never tried to learn about such things.”

The police cleanup squads had been thorough. There were no more yellow police tapes cordoning off crime scenes, no more red paint and blood. A pile of fresh sand had been dumped by the front gate, with buckets and tubs beside it. A trail of footprints showed where the sand had been hauled and raked around the chorten. Even the loose stone at the base of the chorten had been pushed back in, though it seemed to be working its way out again.

“It was here,” Meng said, “here was where the abbess was killed. The first to die that day.” The lieutenant ran her hand along the wall, as if trying to remind herself where the arc of paint had been, then placed her palm at its center, where the blood had stained the wall. The surface had been scrubbed clean and painted. Everyone in the valley was doing their best to eradicate the murders.

“Lung Ma was the first to die,” Shan corrected her. “He was the most dangerous. He carried a gun.”

Shan led her to the rear of the compound and positioned himself at the crumbling gate. “The monk parked his bicycle outside, hidden in the rocks,” he said in a slow voice, considering the landscape as he spoke. “He took his time, watching at every step. The abbess had sent him a message, saying she wanted to speak of Dharamsala. Every Tibetan knows it like a code word. Speaking about it was always in secret. But she had never spoken to this monk about it. This one thought it was a warning, for he harbored his own secret about the exile capital. He was suspicious. I think he watched the convent from the hill and saw Lung’s truck arrive. There was no possible reason for the abbess and Lung to be together. Lung held the secret of the plan to smuggle the killer across the border. The abbess held the secret of the strange lama who had been roaming the hills, who the killer knew now to be a threat to his plans.”

Shan let the weight of his words sink in as he led Meng to the little chapel where the farmers had stored tools. “For some reason he suspects the message from the abbess, so he comes from the rear, for the advantage of surprise.” Shan stepped inside and showed Meng the brush hook he had found earlier. “He has no weapon but he knows of the heavy blades stored here. Lung was at the front, at ease, having a cigarette, considering his best angle for his target when the man comes in the front gate. On her own the abbess never would want to kill the man, just confront him, shame him. But Jamyang was certain he had caused a killing that day. He knew the leader of the Jade Crows carried a gun, and had told him who had killed his son. Jamyang used the abbess because he knew her message would bring the monk, and used Lung because he knew Lung would kill the man who killed his son.” It was the final agony Jamyang had suffered. The lama had been certain he had arranged a killing. He was convinced the killing was necessary, but also convinced he had to take his own life for doing so.

“So the killer has to be careful, ready for anything. He picks up the brush hook and steals along the far wall, using the cover of the buildings. The abbess has her back to him as she works on the prayer wheel, with the German helping her.” They walked in silence along the path Shan indicated, to the place by the corner of the front structure where the pool of Lung’s blood had been found. “He nearly takes Lung’s head off with his first blow. Then he takes Lung’s gun.”

“Why the front gate?” Meng asked “Why would Lung assume the man was coming in the front gate?”

Shan hesitated. It was point he had overlooked. “Because he didn’t expect the bicycle, or a man arriving on foot.”

“You mean he expected someone with a vehicle,” Meng concluded. “A monk who had access to a vehicle. How many monks in the monastery can even drive?”

“Probably only a handful,” Shan admitted. “Maybe just one or two.”

Meng set the pace now, back toward the prayer wheel. “He kills Lung, leaves the body to collect later and goes to the abbess. Just a terrible accident for Rutger to be there.”

“No. Rutger knew. The abbess invited him. Jamyang told Lung and the abbess because he needed both. The abbess would guarantee the monk would arrive, because no one turns down an abbess. And once there, Lung would exact his revenge. But Jamyang didn’t gauge the depth of the abbess’s anger. She had her own weapon in mind. She had become a believer in what the foreigners were doing, had grasped how painful it would be for the government’s covert plan to be exposed publicly. So she invited Rutger and his camera. Rutger would not have appreciated the risk. A photographer tends to think of his camera as a shield.

“The abbess and Rutger were together. Rutger was probably taking photos of her as she restored the wheel. The killer walked right up to them, immobilized Rutger with a quick shot, then shot the abbess an instant later. When he saw Rutger was not dead he dragged him to the chorten and finished him with the hook then took off his face so he could not be identified.”

“And the girl was here the whole time,” Meng ventured.

Shan nodded. “Always near Rutger. She was sketching the interior of one of the chapels in the back. She appeared in time to see the killer finishing his work.”

As they continued walking they fell into a heavy silence, as if feeling the presence of the killer.

Meng stopped and put her hand on the crumbling stucco of a chapel. “They say these old ruins are filled with ghosts,” she said quietly.

Shan hesitated, then realized they were standing exactly where they had first met. “People lived here for centuries,” he said, remembering his reply. “Lived and died.”

“It wouldn’t have been such a bad life,” Meng said after a moment, an odd longing in her voice. “Like a big reverent family. I had uncles who always went to the temple,” she added after a moment.

He said nothing.

“I’ve been thinking, Shan,” she said abruptly with an awkward glance. “I could get a job as a constable. Lower pay but I would stay in the county. No reassignments a thousand miles away.”

He knew how difficult it was for her to have said the words. It had been why she had brought him here. He offered a small, tight smile. “There’s still a murderer to catch.”

He wasn’t sure if Meng had heard. With a finger she traced the dim shape of the eye painted beside the door. “I remember being told by a teacher once about how the eye of the Chairman was always on us. But we knew he was dead. It scared us. This was different, I think.”

“This
is
different,” he replied.

When she looked up, her expression had become somber. “Is that why I feel we need to be outside if we’re going to talk more about killers?”

Shan stared at her, confused, as she stepped away. Then he realized she meant outside the convent, outside the sacred ground.

Five minutes later she unfolded a map on the hood of her car.

“The mystery of the murders is really just the mystery of Jamyang,” she said. “I have been thinking about that, about how he got here. He was seen on the Lhasa highway. He was going to Drepung, by Lhasa. Hundreds of monks. Thousands of tourists. A likely place for a graduate of the Peace Institute. But after he saw his aunt he hated himself, hated what he had been turned into.”

She ran her fingers along the map to the east and north. “Maybe he was trying to find a way to go home, back to the mountains of his youth. To do penance.”

“He was doing his penance here,” Shan suggested.

“A route home would take him through Lhadrung. There are buses that run to Baiyun once a week. He could have ridden there and started walking.”

Shan bent over the map beside her. “He couldn’t risk being stopped by police. The constant convoys and patrols would have driven him up into the hills,” he added. It was the likely explanation for Jamyang’s arrival on the upper slopes. “He was broken. He just wanted a place to crawl into and hide, where he could begin to heal, to construct a new life, the one his uncle had intended for him. He would never have known about another Institute graduate being assigned to a mission in the valley.”

“Of course not. Every assignment would be secret, the agents unknown to one another. But we don’t know for certain there was another agent here.”

She was trying so hard not to understand. He gazed at her a moment, then pointed to the map. “And what direction did Liang come from?” he asked.

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s always the most obvious things that are overlooked in an investigation. You need to find out when Liang arrived at your district headquarters.”

“Right after the murders were reported of course.”

“No, Meng. He was at the murder scene with the first party of police to arrive. You and I saw him. He was already in the district. His role as some larger-than-life investigator is a cover.”

“Nonsense. Liang is just the son of a bitch thug he appears to be.”

“Check it. You’re going to find he arrived a day or two after Jamyang used a computer in Baiyun to access the Institute’s database. It would have been a week before the murders.”

Meng went very still.

“He only cares about the murders because his agent is connected to them, and they set into motion events that could threaten that agent’s mission. What sent him running to this valley was that threat, not the murders. He’s not interested in finding a killer, he is interested in finding the American woman, he’s interested in me, and anyone interfering with the mission. You said it yourself. These agents can take years to prepare. The investment in such an agent is huge. Nothing can be allowed to interfere. Liang is a handler, a field troubleshooter for the Institute. No doubt he was once a special investigator for the Bureau. But like he told us, he was promoted. He knew how to go through the motions, knew he had to react when the bodies were stolen. It was perfect pretense for him because he also had to make sure no one else investigated thoroughly.

“You were the only knob truly probing the murders. He gave you free rein. He used you because he never thought you were capable of finding the truth. You became part of his cover. What he does is the opposite of an investigation. He knew who the killer was from the beginning. He knew the evidence, and set about to erase or obscure it. He never had tests done on that bullet, he just wanted to be sure no one else did. He wanted you to believe he was seeking the American because she might be a witness but he wanted to find her so he could kill her. From the moment he arrived everything he has done has been to protect the killer.”

Meng staggered backward as if she had been physically struck. She lowered herself onto a flat boulder. “Impossible,” she said. “I would have—”

“Would have seen it? Been told? Avoided helping him? It’s what he does, Meng, what they do. Manipulate people like you and me. Cover up. Enlist you to build the lies.”