Vincent nodded in agreement and said, “Call me,” smiling his Chinese Chesire-cat smile as Jack left his office.

Jack picked up his crime scene snapshots from Ah Fook’s and brought them back to the station house. He spread them across the desk and they brought back the scene. Dead hands together, in lifeless passage, the expressions on the faces of the deceased recalling the enormity of the killings, the color snapshots freezing the agony of their tragedy.

Jack stayed away from the emotional edge of it, setting out only the facts in his paperwork. He felt like a drink, but before he realized it, it was mid-afternoon. He left the paperwork on the captain’s desk, a neat overview awaiting only the ME and CSU reports. Included in the file were his quickie snapshots.

He came back to the squad room, where his attention wandered to the array of items he’d shown to Ah Por, still puzzling over the clues she’d given him.

Rain?

Water over water?

Lo mok?

They were hidden explanations, cloaked in yellow witchcraft and Taoist mysticism.

Mona. He remembered her voice, her words spoken in flight, accusing limo driver Johnny Wong of murdering Uncle Four. Mona. The fat man’s mistress, now a shadow in the wind.

Rain? Water Over Water?

Was Eddie Ng a lo mok, a Negro?

None of it made sense now but Jack’s experience was that all of it would tie in later, somehow.

He was about to step away from his desk when the old man entered the squad room. One of the uniforms pointed Mr. Fong, May Lon’s father, in Jack’s direction. Surprised to see him, Jack offered him a chair. The victim’s father sat and took a deep sighing breath.

“The families know now,” he explained, staring down at the worn linoleum floor. “I’ve come from the Wah Fook,” he said, shaking his head in quiet disbelief. “I made all the arrangements.”

“It’s a terrible thing, ah bok,” Jack said solemnly.

Old Fong glanced up at Jack, then again bowed his head toward the floor. Jack figured Fong had remembered things he’d wanted to say earlier, but he’d deferred to the presence of the shooter’s father, lo Gong; things he’d felt the Chinese detective would understand.

“She is … was a good daughter,” Fong said, “and a hard worker. Before she got married, she always had a job. Always made money, and bought things for the family.”

Jack nodded sympathetically. “She honored her parents.”

“Very much so.” Fong’s gaze bore through the floor. “And she was independent. Traveled all over.” He wrung his hands. “Then she got married.” His voice was tinged with regret.

Jack had heard the flipside already, a cynical scenario that again didn’t bode well for his own thoughts about marriage and family in this screwed-up modern age.

“May Lon didn’t like depending on her husband for money. She wasn’t used to the demands of young children, or being cooped up indoors all day. She’d felt isolated. Her husband was away at work most of the time. Her sadness grew deeper and darker. The pressure got to her. The clinic’s brochures explained it, but we never did find the right Chinese words for postpartum depression.”

Fong rubbed his temples, hunched his shoulders. “We never reported her beng, her illness. Everyone was afraid they would take away the children,” he said, drawing another deep breath. “Instead, she moved out. When she started working again, she seemed happy. She seemed happy when she visited the children.”

The karaoke job had been her salvation, but had brought only humiliation and anger to her husband. Ah Por had read their faces correctly: they were incompatible, like Fire and Water. Mix them together and you got tragedy.

“Husband said the sai louh, the little ones, needed their mother. We offered to watch the children full time,” Fong continued, “but husband was against it. Seniors, lo yun ga, should enjoy their golden years, he argued, not hassle with small children. What could we say to that?”

Jack could see the man’s eyes start to glisten, his grief rising to the surface, but the tears never flowed. He’d hide them inside until he got to family time, until after the funeral, after the burial. Then and thereafter, his tears would be eternal.

Fong rose from the chair and stared into the last of the afternoon light outside the squad-room window. His gaze finally came back to Jack, and with a nod of his head and a small wave of his hand, he said, “Thank you for your help. Your father was a good man, and raised a good son,” and turned away.

Jack watched him go down the stairs and out of the station house.

It was already dark when one of the uniforms from the evening shift dropped off the Medical Examiner’s report. Jack reviewed it along with the Crime Scene Unit’s.

The comparative reports confirmed the scenario Jack had envisioned: May Lon had arrived home, was surprised by Harry, was made to sit at the edge of the bed, and was shot shortly after. The Medical Examiner indicated COD, cause of death, as a GSW, a gunshot wound, through the frontal bone of the cranium, exiting via the back of the skull. CSU had found the twisted little slug behind the bed.

The kill shot was angled downward, indicating Harry must have been standing over her. Traces of gunshot residue, GSR, were found on her palm and on her face as well, which meant Harry was less than two feet away when he fired.

Was he talking to her? Pleading?

The wound in her right hand was a neat little round hole in her palm that extended through it, as if she’d thrown up the hand to ward off the bullet.

Did he show her the poem? Did he read it to her?

So the .22-caliber hi-vel slug had torn through her hand before blasting into her forehead and skull, then crashed around, ripping up cerebrum and cerebellum before exiting the middle back her head, slamming her into the hereafter.

The amount of blood that seeped into the comforter indicated she’d bled out over a short time, but the high-velocity gunshot wound to the head had probably killed her instantly. The ME listed approximate time of death—expiration—as 4:30 to 4:40 AM.

The broken clock radio on the linoleum floor, stopped at 4:44 AM. The shooter hadn’t waited long. The desperate, despondent note poem in his pocket. Not long before he ate the gun.

According to CSU, the shooter had lowered his mouth over the gun barrel, his head bowed as if in prayer, when he pulled the trigger. The bullet bored through the top of his mouth, tumbled, and blew his brains out of the top left side of his head. He had GSR on his right hand, the gun hand. Also, some GSR stippling on his face and mouth area. Consistent with the murder-suicide scenario.

They’d likely match Harry’s fingerprints to the gun and the shell casings.

The ME listed the manner of death as DOMESTIC DISPUTE: estranged husband shoots ex-wife, then self, in double tragedy. Two children left behind.

Jack began to feel the weight of the early morning: fourteen hours on the job, the emotional drag of the case.

He really needed a drink.

He could see the Chinatown darkness outside the captain’s windows as he placed the reports on the desk in Marino’s empty office. The day shift had already given way to the night shift when Jack left the station house.

In his old neighborhood, he thought of all the different places he could go for Chinese fast food, but the familiar places now felt empty, unwelcoming, and the lonely winter night finally drove him back to Brooklyn, leaving him staring into a Sunset Park back street of all-night Chinese takeout joints.

Waiting for Buddha

Johnny Wong reached over to a tray in the corner and angled the antenna of the little transistor radio, keeping the Chinese music low-key, a Shirley Kwan Hong Kong pop ballad. He swiveled the antenna until the static cleared, then leaned back on his bunk.