* * *
Mei-li listened carefully to what Vanessa said—and what she didn’t—following her usual routine. She had questions, a whole slew of them, but sometimes you got the most answers just letting people talk. Especially when there was nothing but silence, and the person telling the story felt he or she desperately needed to fill that silence...with something. Sometimes the most amazing revelations were blurted out, and Mei-li never broke the flow.
But eventually Vanessa’s story petered out. Mei-li waited patiently until Vanessa said, “That’s it. That’s everything I remember.”
Mei-li knew the odds were against Vanessa’s statement. Witnesses—even cooperative witnesses, as Vanessa seemed to be—rarely told everything they remembered. They tried their best to recount what they thought were the important things, not realizing sometimes it was the little details that broke a case. Then again, sometimes witnesses remembered something important long after the fact. Especially if they weren’t required to repeat their story countless times, so that the story as they told it became their memory of the event.
Mei-li took copious notes in her own cryptic shorthand and asked a few questions when she needed clarification. She jotted Vanessa’s answers down as well, then said, “Would you do me a favor?”
“Of course.”
“Would you close your eyes? Sometimes events can be clearer in our minds if we close our eyes and think about them.”
A nearly imperceptible hesitation was followed by, “Okay.”
Mei-li noted the hesitation but didn’t comment on it, just filed it away for the future. “Thank you.” She waited until the other woman’s eyes were closed, then asked, “Where were the girls when Chet answered the door?”
“In the bedroom. They were...they were taking their afternoon nap.”
Mei-li’s sharp eyes glanced around the room, and she wrote a couple of things in her notebook. “So walk me through everything that happened the minute the door was opened.”
“I couldn’t really see the front door from where I was standing. One of the men must have struck Chet in the head, because I heard him cry out and saw him fall right at the base of the sculpture in the foyer. Before I could react both men were in the living room. One of them had a gun. He put it to my head and demanded to know where the girls were. He told me he’d kill me if I didn’t cooperate—and I believed him.”
Mei-li made another cryptic notation, but said in a matter-of-fact tone, “So you saw their faces?”
“No, oh, no,” Vanessa replied after a second. “Only their eyes. They both wore black ski masks.”
“But you could tell one of them was Chinese and one wasn’t,” Mei-li prompted.
“Right. Their eyes. You know, the shape. I could just tell.” Vanessa cleared her throat. “Well, one was Asian. I assumed he was Chinese, but...anyway, Asian.”
Mei-li’s voice retained its calm, reassuring tone. “Okay, you’re in the girls’ bedroom, where the kidnappers forced you to go. What next?”
Vanessa’s eyelids flickered, but she didn’t open her eyes. “They pushed me down on the floor and bound me with duct tape, then they taped my mouth.”
“Who did what?”
“The Asian man had the duct tape. The other man—the one with the gun—held me down.” Her face scrunched as if she were trying to remember every detail. “They left and came back a minute later dragging Chet. He was still unconscious, and I...” This part was obviously difficult for her. “I couldn’t even be sure he was alive.”
Vanessa took a deep breath, composed herself and continued. “They duct taped him, too, then the man with the gun rolled Chet over with his foot. He wasn’t...he wasn’t very gentle about it.”
Mei-li waited, but nothing more was offered, so she asked, “You’re on the floor, bound, but you can see the men. And you can hear them. Who was in charge?”
“The man with the gun seemed to be...he was giving the orders.”
“Did either of them speak a name when they addressed each other? Either when you were in the living room or when you were in the bedroom?” Vanessa’s eyelids flew open, but Mei-li quickly stopped her. “No, don’t open your eyes. Listen to the questions and answer as best you can, but keep your eyes closed so you can visualize what happened.” When Vanessa’s eyes were closed again, Mei-li asked, “Did either of them say a name?”
Vanessa shook her head.
“Did they chloroform the girls in their beds...or did they pick them up first and then chloroform them?”
“Chloroform first.”
“Who picked up which girl?”
Again Vanessa’s eyelids twitched. “The Asian man picked up Linden. The other man picked up Laurel.”
Mei-li waited for several heartbeats, then asked softly, “Why didn’t they chloroform you?”
Vanessa’s eyes flew open, and she had that startled “deer in the headlights” look on her face, Dirk noticed, as if she hadn’t expected the question and was caught unaware. Mei-li waited a moment, but when no answer was forthcoming, she said, “Or knock you out the same way they knocked out Chet. It doesn’t make sense they’d leave you conscious, does it?”
“I...I have no idea why,” Vanessa stammered. Then she shrugged her shoulders and her voice firmed. “It might not make sense, but that’s what happened.”
Mei-li smiled, and if Dirk hadn’t been watching her so closely he would have been disarmed by that smile, the same way Vanessa was. “You never get all the answers,” Mei-li told Vanessa with a confiding air. “But it’s one of those questions I had to ask.”
She turned her attention to Dirk and started to speak when a tremendous gust of wind buffeted the hotel. As solid as the building was, it swayed, and everyone froze. The room had been darkening steadily as the sky did, but no one had really focused on it until now. Everyone turned toward the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room just as the sky opened up as if a faucet had been turned on full force, and torrential rain slashed against the windows.
Dirk cursed under his breath. He’d momentarily forgotten the typhoon, and now he said, “Those windows make this entire suite vulnerable...and dangerous.” He glanced at Patrick, regret coloring his words. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking of this when I said you’d be safer here than trying to get back to the island.”
Patrick shook his head. “I’m glad I stayed. Glad I was able to help with...” His hand motion encompassed Mei-li and the others, and Dirk understood what he was trying to say.
The phone in the suite rang suddenly, and everyone froze again. For a heart-stopping second Dirk was sure it was the kidnappers again, and he snatched up the phone. “Yes?”
“Mr. DeWinter?” said a voice with a decided British accent—not the voice of the kidnapper who’d called Dirk on his cell phone. “This is the hotel concierge.”
“Yes? What is it?”
“We are very sorry for the inconvenience, but the Hong Kong Observatory has just issued a T9 warning, indicating increasing gale-force winds. While there is no indication Hong Kong will sustain a direct hit from Typhoon De-De—that