Chinese Burn Page 4

  There was a big junction coming up, and she moved into the lane to take the I75, the Fisher Freeway downtown. She saw brake lights coming on again in front of her, and thumped the steering wheel in frustration. She just wanted out of the car and to run and hide. The traffic slowed, but it didn't stop, and she took the first exit ramp. The light was green, and she turned right onto 3rd Street, looking for somewhere, anywhere, to drop the car. Now she recognized a big American city, as polished skyscrapers rose around her.

  Sam drove slowly, took a left to get onto smaller roads, and then she saw a Hilton Hotel and pulled into their car park. She put the car in a corner spot, as far from the door as she could. She dropped the keys in the glove box, got out, and shut the door. Hopefully the police would find it before it got stolen, and she'd not get too big a bill from the rental company.

  She started to walk towards the skyscrapers, and what she hoped would be the city centre. There was a government building to her left, and more office buildings to her right. She walked on quickly; she needed some shops, stuff to change her appearance. After about five minutes of walking, a park opened out in front of her and the landscape softened from the hard faces of blank buildings. There were more options and she turned left for no good reason, other than that she wanted to keep moving and look like she belonged. She got lucky, there was a pharmacy on her left, and it was open.

  Sam stepped inside the CVS store and picked up a basket. It took her less than five minutes to find everything she was looking for; blond hair dye, scissors, electric hair clippers, a Lions cap, a plain white t-shirt and some underwear — the only clothes she could find — five packets of cookies, some nuts, and a couple of bottles of water. She paid cash and headed back out of the door. She stood in the entrance to the pharmacy and looked left and right. The next problem was somewhere to hole up, somewhere with running water to do her hair. It wasn't going to be downtown, and there was much less high-rise to her left so she turned that way and started walking.

  Sam kept going as the buildings started to thin out and lower. She was hoping for a cheap hotel that wouldn't be too fussy about her lack of ID. Or some old building that she could creep into - there was obviously no shortage of derelict buildings in Detroit, but she needed something a little less public, she needed to get off this main road and into the side streets.

  The next junction she turned right, onto John R Street. Almost immediately on her left there was a graffiti strewn side-alley running beside a derelict old building. Perfect. She turned left into it like she knew what she was doing and half-way down she found a door that had already been broken into. She pushed gently and the hinges creaked and groaned. A waft of hot, damp decay seeped out onto the street. Sam peered into the gloom beyond the door. It could not have looked less inviting. Her heart was pounding; anyone or anything could be in that building.

  She hesitated, pulled away and started to back off. Then she stopped. Where the hell else was she going to go? There was no choice here, she had to get inside, get off the street and change the way she looked before she could move about. All these crappy, derelict buildings were going to be just as scary. She glanced left to right. There was no one else around. She took a deep breath, and pushed her way inside.

  Paul Jobert pulled up the rented Camry outside the house of Paul and Madeline Ravert. He turned the engine off and sat for a moment. His stomach growled and he wished he'd picked up a burger or even a steak at the airport before he had grabbed the car. Now he was deep in suburbia and the only thing he had to eat were his fingernails. Jobert sighed as he surveyed the scene. He thought he was done with this shit.

  It was all Sam Blackett's fault. He'd love to know how the hell she came across the information on Shibde, but if they pulled her in to find out what she knew and how she knew it, then they would also confirm her story for her. So they had put a tail on her, but all she had done was sit on a beach in India. After a month, he had dialed it back to electronic surveillance only — although they hardly needed to bother, just about everything she did was on one or other social media channel. There had been nothing of interest for nearly three months. Until now. Well, maybe now was when he could start to get out from under the rock she'd dropped on him.

  A couple of Ann Arbor black and whites sat blocking the driveway with their lights idly flicking round. Two burly, no... two fat local cops were leaning on the bonnet of one of them, and looking bored. Yellow crime scene tape marked out the porch and much of the driveway. Jobert sighed again, pulled the door open and got out of the car. What was the chance these Muppets would recognize his ID? Zero. One of them eased off the bonnet as Jobert approached.

  "What's your business, sir?" he asked, politely enough.

  Jobert flipped open his CIA ID and said, "I need to speak to whoever is in charge of the investigation."

  "Where'd you get that, Wal-Mart?" said Muppet One, after a quick glance.

  Jobert eased back his shoulders, straightened his back and put his hands on his hips. The card was actually fake, since he had no intention of using his real name up here, nor an alias that the agency knew about. But since he knew what the real cards looked like, and he knew all the best forgers in DC, he knew that this was more than good enough to pass muster.

  "I appreciate that you two are already pretty much the bottom of the law enforcement food chain," he snapped, "but I promise you that if you don't get the man in charge out here in the next thirty seconds you will be pulling whatever duty the Ann Arbor Police Commissioner can find that's more miserable that this - believe me son, you do not want to fuck with me."

  Muppet Two pushed himself off the bonnet and stepped forward. "May I see that ID please sir?" he asked.

  Jobert impatiently flipped it back open. Muppet Two glanced at Muppet One.

  "I'll get Rice," he said, and ducked under the tape to head inside.

  Jobert eyeballed an increasingly uncomfortable Muppet One for the next minute until he heard two pairs of footsteps coming down the drive. He turned to see a thin, pale man dressed in an ill-fitting brown suit, trailed by Muppet One.

  "I'm Detective Jud Rice, this is my crime scene," said brown suit.

  "I need to see it, and I need to know whatever you got," said Jobert.

  "Can I see that ID?" said Rice.

  Jobert thrust it at him.

  Rice nodded. "'K, I was wondering if you guys were going to turn up 'cos of this China thing. Don't suppose asking what the hell is going on will get me anywhere?"

  "Not a chance."

  Rice spat a gob of tobacco juice on the pristine sidewalk, then said, "Boys, if the NSA or the FBI turns up, try to treat them with a little more respect." He turned and led the way back inside, talking as he went. "Looks like a straightforward argument that ended in murder to me. We can't find any damage to the exterior doors or windows, so it looks like the victim opened the door to whomever it was that killed her. So she didn't feel threatened. Mind you, no one round here really feels that threatened by a knock on the door - this ain't Detroit. But still, indicates it was most likely someone she knew."

  Rice had stopped half-way down the hall at an open doorway. He waved inside and Jobert followed the gesture. About ten feet into what appeared to be a dining room; a woman's body lay sprawled. There was a large pool of blood centered on a spray of blond hair. Rice shrugged, "That's her, looks like straightforward blunt force trauma to the head. No sign of a fight or any resistance...'

  'So why do you say there was an argument?'

  Rice shrugged again, it was his default communication mechanism as far as Jobert could see.

  "Why else would someone have killed her?" said Rice.

  Jobert sighed. Wearily. 'I thought that was what you were here to find out."

  Rice gazed at him with blank brown eyes. "We don't have a whole lot of resources around these parts for challenging obvious assumptions without good reason. And at first, second and third glance, there ain't no other reason to kill this woman. Nothing seems to have
been disturbed, all the likely high value items are still here, including some pretty fancy jewels in a safe upstairs. We did a quick door-to-door and no one heard anything, but then, I don't think we'd expect them to - the houses are a good distance apart."

  "Murder weapon?"

  "We haven't found it yet."

  "Prints?"

  "We've dusted, but like I said, we don't get a whole lot of murders round these parts, and we don't have a whole bunch of resources to throw at something like this..."

  Jobert shook his head impatiently. "Yes, you do — this is potentially a matter of national security and I need you to look at every single angle. Throw everything you have at this, and anything you learn, any suspects you pull in, I want to see them first. No one talks to them before I do. Got that?" Jobert pulled out a card. "Call me here, day or night, 24/7."

  Rice shrugged, and took it.

  "Don't fuck this up, you don't want your name all over the papers for letting through the next 9/11 bomber."

  Finally, Rice nodded. "I'll do what I can. This is my number." He handed over a card as he said it.

  "Good, call me. I'll be staying locally." Jobert turned on his heel and stalked back out of the door. By the time he was in the car he had dialed Mart Wallace.

  "Mart, I just finished with local PD at the Ravert's place. Anything on Blackett?"

  "Yeah, lots, she rented a car, the poh-leese are looking for it, and get this, she checked into a Holiday Inn in Ann Arbor last night.'

  "Goddam, she was in Anne Arbor last night?"

  "Yup."

  Jobert blew out a long breath.

  "What did the cops say about Madeline Ravert?" asked Wallace.

  Jobert outlined the conversation he had had with Rice.

  "They think Blackett did it? This creepy love thing the media are talking about?"

  "It's the easiest explanation from their point of view."

  "What about you, you think she did it?"

  "No. Not really," said Jobert.

  "So what the hell? If she didn't do it, then who did, and why are the Chinese saying she did?"

  "None of it makes any sense. And I thought the Shibde thing was a mess. This girl attracts trouble like honey attracts bears."

  "So what now?" asked Wallace.

  "I want to know everything, and I mean everything about this Ravert guy and his wife."

  "You got it. What are you going to do?"

  "See what they know about her at the Holiday Inn." Jobert hung up, Googled for some directions and turned on the engine. It didn't take him long to find the place. He wasn't expecting Sam Blackett to still be in residence, but nor was he expecting to find another black and white parked outside the front door. "What the hell..." he muttered as he got out.

  He found the two cops at the reception desk taking notes from the young guy at the counter. He didn't want to flash the card in front of the civilian, so he waited till they had finished, and then pulled them aside. Fortunately, they were a little sharper than the last pair, and didn't question the ID.

  "What's the story here?" he asked.

  The two cops exchanged a glance before the older of the pair — mustachioed and in his thirties — spoke. "Some trouble this morning. A girl bolted without checking out. She'd paid with a card, so there's no problem with the bill, but it's kinda weird, because she left everything in her room." The cop tugged as his moustache as he finished. "That's why they called us; they didn't know what to do with her stuff."

  "What was her name," asked Jobert.

  The cop checked his notes, "Sam Blackett, with two 't's."

  "Ok," Jobert nodded, "ring a bell?"

  "What?" said Moustache.

  "Oh... it's the one the Chinese are after..." said his partner.

  "Right, they asked for her arrest and extradition this morning on a murder charge, the victim was Roger Ravert and he lived in Ann Arbor. Detective Rice is at their home right now, where his wife was murdered last night." Jobert didn't try too hard to keep the sarcasm out of his tone.

  Both men shifted awkwardly, but remained silent.

  "What else do we know?" asked Jobert.

  "Not much, they're sending someone with a key to show us the room."

  Three beats later a plump man with cropped red hair and a nervous smile waved a key card at them, and they followed him up a flight of stairs and down a corridor. He opened the door.

  "This is it," he said, "We haven't touched anything. Are you guys going to take her stuff away? We don't want the responsibility."

  Jobert surveyed the room from the doorway, but didn't enter. There was no obvious sign of a struggle or any trouble. And yet the room had clearly been left in an enormous rush. He could see clothes, a bag. Why? Surely the Chinese extradition news wasn't enough to spook her into just leaving everything and running? It didn't make any sense. Something else must have rattled her.

  "Who's been in here since she left?" he asked.

  "The receptionist saw her running out of the hotel early this morning. It seemed a little strange, but when you work in a hotel, you expect to see everything, the stories I could tell..."

  "Another time," said Jobert.

  "Yes, well... no one saw her come back, and when she didn't check out on time we sent one of the cleaners up here to get her out. We've got a convention coming in and we need all the rooms tonight."

  "Well you can't have this one. I need a full forensics team to go over this place with a toothcomb. And I want every scrap of DNA matched with hotel workers. I also want everyone who saw her or spoke to her questioned about anything and everything she said or did."

  The two cops exchanged a look. "Sir, we don't have the authority to make any of that happen."

  "Ok, so you," he pointed at Moustache, "are coming with me to find someone that can. And you," he pointed to the younger cop, "are not moving an inch from this doorway. No one comes in or out of this room until we get back with the forensics team. Got it?"

  They both nodded.

  "Key, please," Jobert demanded.

  The redheaded crop handed it over.

  "If anyone asks, the girl took off without paying her bill, and she's under police investigation. No one says anything more. All right, let's go." And with that, Jobert strode back down the corridor.

  Chapter 4

  Sam was in a wide open space that looked like it had once been some kind of lobby. A high, wood-beamed ceiling above her, and walls that had once been bright in red, gold and blue. She moved through it carefully; plaster shards, dust and broken concrete on the floor. She needed water and she didn't think it was going to be easy to find.

  She started to climb the stairs, her heart still racing. If there was rainwater somewhere, it was most likely on the roof. Occasionally, she diverted off the stairs to check out some of the spaces, but the place had been stripped. The windows were mostly boarded, those that weren't were smashed, or tagged, or both. The only good news was that there was no sign that anyone else had been here recently. She started to relax.

  She followed her instincts and after counting 12 floors she found a broken window that led out onto an open terrace. It was shaped in a blunt-V, and was overlooked by a much taller building at the point. There was black, dusty debris everywhere, and some very dangerous looking fire-steps that led up another floor to a second terrace.

  Sam went back inside and found her way up the interior stairs and out onto the higher terrace. This was more promising, with the same thick layer of black crap that covered most of the concrete floor, but there was a run-down building to one side that looked like it might have once held air conditioners.

  Sam struggled in through a broken window, inside; she discovered that someone called this home. An area of floor had been cleared between the middle two of four, dead air conditioning units, and a bedroll had been laid out consisting of a foam mattress, a couple of blankets and a clean-ish sheet. Beside it there were three pans and a candle that was nearly burnt down to the base. The pans were e
xactly what she needed to color her hair. Just add water. It seemed like there was little chance of water up here, but maybe one of the old A/C units had a condensation tank or something.

  She started to search more thoroughly and quickly found a stash of other items hidden behind the furthest A/C unit from the window. There was a battered suitcase half-filled with clothes, four tins of beans, five tins of tomatoes and sweet corn, ten tins of hot dog sausages, three packets of Oreo biscuits, a jar of instant coffee, a single ring gas cooker, a box of 20 candles with most of them left, and a well-thumbed paperback novel, Raymond Chandler's 'The Big Sleep' — but the real find was three old plastic coke bottles filled with water.

  Sam sat back on her haunches and pondered the risk. It was pretty clear that this was still someone's home. Someone living rough — but not that rough — high above the streets of downtown Detroit. Whoever it was had probably headed down to those streets for a day of pan-handling. And reading Raymond Chandler, they were unlikely to be in the first flush of youth.

  Sam doubted that sort of person would tackle those stairs more than they had to. She had time to borrow some water and the pans to color her hair, and then get out before whoever it was arrived back. She could even clean up properly, get rid of the sweat and fear from her flight, and put the clean panties on.

  It wasn't exactly a shower at the Holiday In, but it was better than nothing. She'd leave ten bucks and a note to say thank you. She peeled a ten off the roll of cash, and placed it at the top of the bed. Then she put another 20 bucks of ones and fives in her jeans pocket and put the rest in her sock — can't be too careful.

  Paul Jobert sipped at his watery coffee and watched as the investigation whirled around him. He was reasonably satisfied with his efforts - although he had pulled the national security card more times than he cared to think about, he'd got what he wanted. A local crime scene team was picking apart Sam Blackett's room and her possessions, and Jud Rice had sent a couple of detectives down here to question everyone who had been in the hotel that morning. There was no sign of Blackett or the car she had hired, but he had reason to hope it was only a matter of time.