The Silent Girl

TWENTY-FOUR

SOMEONE WAS IN THE KITCHEN CELLAR THAT NIGHT, MRS. FANG. A child who may know what really happened,” says Detective Rizzoli. “Do you know who that child was?”

The policewoman studies me, monitoring my reaction as I absorb what she has just told me. Through the closed door I can hear the sharp clacks of fighting sticks and the voices of my students chanting in unison as they practice their combat maneuvers. But here in my office it is silent as I weigh my possible responses. My silence alone is a reaction, and Detective Rizzoli is trying to read its meaning, but I allow no emotions to ripple the surface of my face. Between the two of us, this has become a chess game within a chess game, played with subtle moves that Detective Frost, who also stands watching, is probably not even aware of.

The woman is my true opponent. I look straight at her as I ask: “How do you know there was someone in the cellar?”

“There were footprints left behind in the kitchen, and on the cellar steps. A child’s footprints.”

“But it happened nineteen years ago.”

“Even after many years, Mrs. Fang, blood leaves behind traces,” explains Frost. His voice is gentler, a friend’s, patiently explaining what he believes I do not understand. “With certain chemicals, we can see where blood has been tracked. And we know that a child came out of the cellar, stepped in Wu Weimin’s blood, and walked out of the kitchen, into the alley.”

“No one told me this before. Detective Ingersoll never said anything.”

“Because he didn’t see those footprints,” says Detective Rizzoli. “By the time the police arrived that night, the prints were gone. Wiped away.” She moves in closer, so close that I can see her pupils, two black bull’s-eyes in chocolate-brown irises. “Who would do that, Mrs. Fang? Who would want to hide the fact a child was in the cellar?”

“Why do you ask me? I wasn’t even in the country. I was in Taiwan visiting my family when it happened.”

“But you knew Wu Weimin and his wife. Like them, you speak Mandarin. The child in the cellar was their little girl, wasn’t it?” She pulls out a pocket notebook and reads from it. “Mei Mei, five years old.” She looks at me. “Where did they go, the mother and daughter?”

“How would I know? I couldn’t catch a flight home until three days later. By then, they were gone. They packed up their clothes, their belongings. I have no idea where they went.”

“Why did they run? Was it because the wife was illegal?”

My jaw tightens, and I glare back at her. “Are you surprised that she would run? If I were illegal, Detective, and you thought my husband had just killed four people, how quickly would you put me in handcuffs and have me deported? The girl may have been born here, but Li Hua wasn’t. She wanted her daughter to grow up in America, so can you blame her for avoiding the police? For staying in the shadows?”

“If she wiped away those footprints, then she destroyed important evidence.”

“Maybe it was to protect her daughter.”

“The girl was a witness. She could have changed the course of that investigation.”

“And would you put a five-year-old girl in a courtroom and have her testify? Do you think a jury would believe a child of illegal immigrants, when the whole city has already called the father a monster?”

My answer takes her aback. She falls silent, thinking about the logic of what I’ve said. Realizing that Li Hua’s actions were in fact reasonable. It was the logic of a mother desperate to protect herself and her child from authorities whom she did not trust.

Frost says, gently: “We’re not the enemy, Mrs. Fang. We’re just trying to learn the truth.”

“I told the truth nineteen years ago,” I point out. “I told the police that Wu Weimin would never hurt anyone, but that wasn’t what they wanted to hear. It was so much easier for them to think he was a crazy Chinaman, and who cares what goes on in a Chinaman’s head?” I hear the bitterness in my own voice, but don’t try to suppress it. It spills forth, sharp and grating. “Searching for the truth is too much work. That’s what the police thought.”

“It’s not what I think,” says Frost quietly.

I stare back at him and see sincerity in his eyes. In the next room the class has ended, and I hear students departing, the door whooshing shut again and again.

“If Mei Mei was in that cellar,” says Detective Rizzoli, “we need to find her. We need to know what she remembers.”

“And you would believe her?”

“It depends on what kind of girl she is. What can you tell us about her?”

I think about this for a moment, looking back through the fog of nineteen years. “I remember she was afraid of nothing. She was never still, always running and jumping. The little tiger, her father called her. When my daughter, Laura, would babysit, she’d come home exhausted. She told me she never wanted to have children, if they were going to be as wild as Mei Mei.”

“An intelligent girl?”

I give her a sad smile. “Do you have children, Detective?”

“I have a two-year-old daughter.”

“And you probably think she’s the cleverest child ever born.”

Now it was Rizzoli’s turn to smile. “I know she is.”

“Because all children seem clever, don’t they? Little Mei Mei was so quick, so curious…” My voice fades and I swallow hard. “When they left, it was like losing my own daughter all over again.”

“Where did they go?”

I shake my head. “There was a cousin in California, I think. Li Hua was only in her twenties, and so beautiful. She could have married again. She could have a different name.”

“You have no idea where she is now?”

I pause just long enough to raise a doubt in her mind. To make her wonder if my answer is truthful. The chess game between us continues, move followed by countermove.

“No,” I finally answer. “I don’t even know if she’s alive.”

There is a knock on the door, and Bella steps into the office. She is flushed from the exertions of teaching class, and her short black hair stands up, stiff with sweat. She dips her head in a bow.

“Sifu, the last class of the day has left. Will you need me?”

“Wait a moment. We are just finishing here.”

It is clear to the two detectives that I have nothing more to offer them, and they turn to leave. As they walk to the door, Rizzoli pauses and regards Bella. It is a long, speculative look, and I can almost see the thoughts whirring in her head. Mei Mei was five years old when she vanished. How old is this young woman? Could it be possible? But Rizzoli says nothing, merely nods goodbye and walks out of the studio.

After the door shuts, I say to Bella: “We are running out of time.”

“Do they know?”

“They’re closer to the truth.” I draw in a deep breath, and it worries me that I cannot cast off the new fatigue that now drags me down. I am fighting two battles at once, one of them against the enemy that smolders in my own bone marrow. I know that one of these enemies is certain to take my life.

The only question is, which one will kill me first?