The Lost Goddess

32

Jake watched this woman’s reaction with astonishment: the American woman, Julia, was refusing to sit down. She was muttering, half-shouting, she was frightened and gabbling and staring at Chemda.

Finally she managed to say: “It’s her. It’s her.”

Barnier turned to Julia.

“What?”

Julia pointed directly at Chemda.

“Her. That’s her. That… thing. It’s her.”

“That’s who? She’s who? What are you saying?”

Jake listened, confounded.

The American stammered: “That is… the same goddamn person I saw in Paris. The woman who killed the archivist. The curator. Who tried to kill me. That’s her, the killer—”

Jake stood. “You fucking what?”

Barnier was leaping away from the table, as if the bar stools had just been electrified. Chemda suddenly reached for Jake’s hand, her own hand damp and trembling. Trembling violently. Jake was standing and shouting.

“How can you say this?”

The Frenchman turned, shouting at the staff, demanding that they chuck Chemda out of the building and instantly fetch the police. Bar girls were gathering. Staring. And in the middle of the flashing lights and the thumping music Julia stood, still, her face awash; transfixed, appalled, terrified; Chemda gave the appearance, in the melee, of a little girl lost and bewildered.

Jake gazed, motionless. What the fuck was happening?

Even the pantyless schoolgirls were agitated, peering inquisitively down through the glass ceiling, trying to work out the reason for the hubbub. Several Japanese men were pointing, alarmed.

Now Barnier ripped it all up, yelling at everyone.

“Get that bitch out of here, nong! Papasan! Mamasan? Now! Get her out of here before she fucking knifes someone—”

Chemda found her voice. It was uncharacteristically weak.

“But…. but it’s not me! How can it be me? I have been in Cambodia. Jake, tell them!”

But Jake was staring at Julia’s face, the pale, soft face of the young archaeologist, and it spoke a kind of truth. The woman really believed what she was saying; she really believed this outrageous accusation.

Jake swallowed his next words. Momentarily, he was dumbfounded. Chemda flung his hand away.

“You believe them, Jake?”

“No, of course not!”

“But you do. You do! I see it in your face!”

“I don’t. Sorry. A moment. Only… Chemda—”

But it was true, she was right, even though a few seconds’ consideration told him that the accusation was absurd, he had let the shadow of a doubt pass across his face: thinking of her odder behavior; inviting him to the Sovirom compound—

His Khmer girlfriend was staring his way, with tears jeweling on her eyelashes. She was finally breaking, after all of this — she was falling, losing, unhinging.

“Don’t ever speak to me — ever again—”

Chemda pushed aside his protesting arms; she stepped down from the table and strode through the parting crowds, through the g-stringed dancers and the Taiwanese tourists and the trio of fat and chortling white businessmen just coming through the doorway curtains.

The curtains rustled and closed. Chemda was gone. The bar returned to life. Lady drinks were fetched. Someone ordered short time. Once again, the clientele stared up at the glass ceiling, where the girls in plaid miniskirts and no underwear resumed their bored and languid shuffle.

Jake was momentarily paralyzed by anger and guilt. Run after Chemda? Phone her? Give her space? Why had he let the doubt even enter his mind? The idea that she was the killer was beyond absurd, it was physically impossible — how could Chemda have been flying to and from Europe to kill people? Just surreally ridiculous. And then there was the moral impossibility: Chemda. Of all people. No. Not Chemda.

But then why did Julia appear so genuinely shocked and convinced?

The American woman was tentatively approaching. She put a hand on Jake’s shoulder.

He shrugged it off. Snapped in her face.

“You are wrong. She’s been with me in Asia for the last few weeks. Every minute of every day. What you said was grotesque.”

Her answering expression was pained.

“Mr. Thurby. Jake… I’m sorry, but I thought it was true—”

Barnier was behind her.

“So you think, Julia, it might not be true? Then why did you fucking say it?”

“Because it was the same woman, only with darker skin! I’m not joking. I wouldn’t joke. Not about this! Chemda is the same, only with much darker skin. But the same age, same eyes, same face, same stance, same everything else.” Julia frowned. “Jake, does she have any siblings? Close in age?”

Jake shook his head. “No.”

“Then I don’t… understand. An identical killer? Maybe they are cousins… or what?”

“Who cares. Let me through.”

He shoved between Barnier and Julia, pushing himself into the sordid bustle of Soi Cowboy.

The street life of Soi Cowboy was blithely ignorant of the turmoil in Baccara. Freelance whores were eating sausages on sticks outside Rawhide, fake monks were begging sorrowfully at the corner by the Dollhouse.

Where was Chemda?

Jake tried the phone three times. Nothing. Voice mail. He went back, walking up to the doorman of Baccara.

“Did you see a girl? A Khmer girl, running out of here?”

“Nnn?”

“A dark girl? Please, which way did she go?”

The doorman grunted, and shrugged — and pointed at another bar.

Jake demanded: “Lucky Star? She went in there?”

A shrug — then another curt but directed nod.

“Girl.”

Pushing urgently through the Cowboy crowds, Jake entered the indicated bar.

Lucky Star. It was dark. He squinted, saw two naked girls on a stage, one wearing a pelvic harness and a strap on dildo, penetrating the other, time and again. The girls writhed and moaned, robotically. The music was Debussy: “Claire de Lune.” Men in the shadows were silently throwing fifty-baht notes onto the stage.

Jake ran right out. Despairing, depressed, desperate. Evidently the doorman had thought Jake had just wanted girls. Girls on girls.

It was all disgusting. Soi Cowboy disgusted him. Meeting here had been some kind of joke by Barnier, a repulsive joke by a sick and frightened man.

He was never going to find her. Maybe they would kill her. Whoever they were. His anxiety surged. Raged. A monster from the swamp. At the corner of Soi Cowboy by the Dutch pub, he anxiously phoned his hotel on the off chance, as a last chance — but the receptionist had not seen her either, and that was that.

His hopes had gone.

Jake looked up and down the glittering lights of Asoke Boulevard in terminal dismay. A bleeping from his phone; a text message.