“Ally Duncan? I can say in all honesty that there’s nothing mediocre about you.”
If he wasn’t mistaken, he detected a slight flush on her high cheekbones. But she drawled, “Well, Luckey Davis, it seems we’re quite an amazing pair.”
He broke into laughter, but doubted anyone noticed, because the room was filled with noise. Though they’d met on a serious matter, she didn’t take herself seriously. He liked that about her.
“How would you feel if we went out to your car so you can translate for me?” They’d finished eating. “We’re going to need the quiet.”
“That’s a good idea,” she said. He helped her up from the chair and, after he paid the tab, let her walk ahead of him as they made their way to her vehicle. He had to admit she looked terrific in her designer jeans.
Concentrate on the job, Davis. What he’d have given to have met Ally under other circumstances. He wanted to know if she was involved with another man. And after that he wanted to make plans to see her again that had nothing to do with business. But there were rules a Ranger had to follow. Luckey wanted and needed her trust while he worked on this case. Rules had to come first.
Once they were inside her car, he passed her the papers from the file and pulled out his handheld digital recorder.
Her gaze met his. “Luckey? Before we start, I want to thank you for breakfast. I enjoyed it very much.”
“So did I. Don’t forget you’re doing me a great favor. It was my pleasure.” I want to do it again and again. “When you’re ready, I’ll turn this on.”
* * *
WAS THIS A one-time happening with Luckey? Would she ever see him again? Ally wished it didn’t matter, but she was so attracted to him she could hardly think about anything else.
Taking a deep breath, she looked down at the writing. She ought to be used to this after working alongside her mother in China on human trafficking cases. They’d assembled statistics about lost girls disappearing from Hunan Province for several years. But each case was heart wrenching in its own right.
Ally knew she could never be indifferent to the suffering of these young women. Thank heaven there were people invested in fighting this brand of evil, people like the bone-achingly attractive man sitting beside her. If Ally’s mother were to find out about this, she’d be overjoyed to hear that the Texas Rangers had been called in to work on this case. But Ally had promised Luckey complete secrecy and she meant to uphold that promise.
“I’m ready.”
He turned on the recorder. “This is James Davis of Company H, Austin, Texas, investigating the case of Jane Doe, a young Chinese girl who died March 2. It is now March 10, 10:30 a.m. Dr. Allyson Forrester Duncan, Director of Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, will translate a message from the secret Nüshu language of the sworn sisters in the Hunan Province of China. It is written in the deceased’s blood on the underside of the dress she was wearing when mounted police found her body dumped on an Austin street.”
Shuddering over the circumstances of the poor girl’s death, Ally began translating while he held the recorder.
“‘Someone help us. We are being held by an evil man with a dragon’s forked tongue. He smells like garlic and speaks English, Xiang and Indonesian. There are many of us imprisoned here, and other evil men speaking English come to do terrible things to us. We’ve been kidnapped and stolen from our homes. We don’t know where we are. We miss our families. I know I am going to die. Some of the others with me have been killed already for trying to escape. There is no way out of here. Please, someone help us.’”
Ally handed him back the pages. He turned off the recorder, then rewound it and played it back so she could hear. When it was over, he clicked off and said, “That part about the men speaking English is significant. But even more so is her mention of the man who smells of garlic and speaks with a dragon’s forked tongue. Those have to be clues.”
“Definitely,” Ally said. “We know that a forked tongue means the same thing in every language. But because she was Chinese, I would have thought she’d use the analogy of a snake. Instead, she did refer to the Komodo dragon, the long forked tongue of which is a deep yellow. That was an unusual thing for her to do.”
“Agreed. Komodo dragons come from Indonesia,” Luckey mused. “Perhaps her reference to the tongue meant he was blond haired. She said he spoke Indonesian as well as English and her native language. What is it again?”
“Xiang, which she would have spoken in Yongzhou and Changsha, but being upper-class, she would have spoken Mandarin, too.”
“Thank you for doing this, Ally,” he said. “The whole department is indebted to you, not to mention the parents of this girl if they can be found. Their anguish must be terrible.”
Ally looked at him. Her pain went too deep for tears. “What a brave young woman to write that, knowing it would be her death sentence if she was found out. I can’t even imagine her terror. How was she killed?”
“Shot in the back.”
“Probably trying to escape a situation she couldn’t bear a second longer.”
“No doubt,” he muttered. “Ally? Are you free for a while longer?”
His question quickened her pulse. Whether he’d asked her that because of the case or for another reason, it didn’t matter. She didn’t want to have to say goodbye to him this morning. “Yes.”
“Will you follow me to the morgue? I want to show you the dress from the evidence room. I hope it won’t distress you too much, but something you said about this woman being of the higher class has given me an idea I want to explore.”
Ally didn’t have to think. “I’ve wanted to see the real article all along.”
“It’s not a pretty sight.”
“I’m not worried about that. After what that girl went through, if there’s anything I can do to help you find her killer and have her body shipped back to her parents, I’ll do it.” But identifying her sounded next to impossible.
He gave Ally the address in case they got separated, then slid out of her car and got into a Volvo parked at the other end of the lot. Her heart pounded against her rib cage all the way downtown, where she parked her car next to his in front of the coroner’s office.
Luckey’s eyes searched hers with concern after she got out. “Are you sure you’re all right doing this?”
“Positive. During the years I helped my mother gather statistics, we always felt so helpless. But today I’m going to be doing something useful. You don’t know what a good feeling that is.”
“Actually I do,” he said in his deep, attractive voice.
Of course he did, and she admired him for it.
Luckey accompanied her inside and introduced her to the coroner. “Dr. Duncan is the Chinese expert I needed for this case. Could we see inside the evidence box again?”
Dr. Wolff told them to go into his private office while he retrieved it. It wasn’t long before he returned with a box of plastic gloves and another, larger box.
After they’d both donned their gloves, Luckey took off the lid of the evidence box and gently removed the garment. As he handed it to her, she saw the hole made in the back. “When you’re ready to tell me anything and everything you can about the dress, I’ll record you.”
After studying the writing on the inside, she laid it out on the table and nodded to him. “This is a cheongsam, actually the term for a man’s mandarin-style robe. Over the years it became the name of a body-hugging, one-piece women’s dress that features a frog, which is a knob of intricately knotted strings. It has two big openings at either side of the hems for convenient movement, and it is often buttoned on