The Mystery of Revenge (12 page)

If the suspect told Yi-yun as such, why should he kill her? As Paul Winderman analyzed it, Tom Meyers would be too selfish a person to lift his finger to do anything other than playing piano. On the other hand, the victim had been put into a very difficult position, five months pregnant and with no prospect to get married. She had to choose either to be a single mother or to kill the baby or kill herself if she were
desperate.

This was crazy. If only he could figure out how she got killed and where the gun was… It was unlikely she had killed herself; the gun was missing. Although, the fact that she was killed in a very close range did fit. Only two inches, which was another sticky point. Who could get to her so close if it weren’t her boyfriend? If she did kill herself, where was the
gun?

He had her phone records subpoenaed from Verizon, the local phone company serving her apartment building as well as the surrounding areas. No phone calls were made the days before and after the murder. In fact, there weren’t too many phone calls in or out of her apartment. Apparently the couple didn’t have many friends and wasn’t very
social.

If she did kill herself, she needed to have an accomplice who had to be someone she was close to. For all it’s worth, Paul Winderman had requested all the phone records being subpoenaed from her nearest and dearest including Ann Lee, Shao Mei, Amy and Fang Chen. Nothing stood out as suspicious. Ann had one call from Yi-yun a few weeks ago and that was it. Nobody else got a call from the victim at
all.

Paul Winderman finished off the beer, turned off the TV and headed to his bedroom. Hopefully, he had done everything, leaving no stone unturned. Or had he? He stopped with his hand was resting on the doorknob of the bedroom. What if the victim called someone using a public payphone? Was it
possible?

Soon he would be on the witness stand, cross-examined by the defense lawyer regarding the crime scene, evidence, and all that. The little birds told him the court-appointed public defense lawyer was young and smart. It might be good for the defendant; it might be not. It all depended on the members of the jury who got to analyze all the evidence put in front of them and decide whether the boyfriend was the killer. Paul Winderman just wanted to make sure it was the real killer he would testify
against.

Chapter 13

The prosecutor for the state was an ambitious man who had been looking forward to replacing his boss in the near future. He grabbed the case because it had generated quite a media buzz as the victim was a foreign student and the suspect was an upstart award-winning musician. With hint of a subpoena, he sweet-talked Fang Chen into being a prosecution witness even though Fang Chen tried very hard to get out of
it.

Sure enough, Fang Chen’s disdain for the suspect was obvious. In less than ten minutes, it was established that the suspect was a shameless philanderer who had come between a loving husband and the victim, breaking up a marriage so he could have a slave to support him financially. “He forced my ex-wife to go back to work as a bartender at a Chinese restaurant so he could go to Prague,” Fang Chen said. “He didn’t have the financial means to do so before he met
her.”

“You married the deceased when she was a poor immigrant on an F-1 student visa, is that correct?” the defense lawyer asked when it’s time for cross-exam.

“Yes,” Fang Chen
said.

“She left you after she got the green card, is that
correct?”

“Yes,” he answered dully. It hurt him so when he remembered the day she
left.

It was past three in the morning, and Fang Chen had been sitting on the couch, widely awake, tormented by the anticipation that his wife would be gone and their two-year marriage would be over in a few
hours.

Tom Meyers! He could kill him with his bare hands if he had him alone. In fact, he had intended to do just that when he stormed out of his apartment. He wanted to knock Tom’s brain out so he wouldn’t steal his wife from him. Unfortunately, the bastard wasn’t at the Ritz when he went to
search.

After he gulped down two glasses of wine at the bar, Fang Chen headed toward the nightclub Yi-yun had mentioned before. Having failed to grab a jacket before leaving home, he hailed a cab outside the hotel to avoid the evening
chill.

“Please wait for me,” he told the driver. “It won’t take long.” He didn’t want to walk home
afterward.

There were two bouncers at the door, one was young and one was a middle-aged
man.

“Is my friend Tom playing tonight?” Fang Chen asked
casually.

“Oh yes, he’s playing all right,” the middle-aged man answered with a grin, “but I can’t say if he will be tomorrow. He’s leaving us, Tom the
pianist.”

“Why?” Fang Chen asked, pretending to be
surprised.

“He won a competition, a big international one I heard,” the bouncer said proudly. “Oh yes, the young man
did.”

“How wonderful,” Fang Chen said
coldly.

The bouncer had been too engaged in talking to notice the change of Fang Chen’s expression and tone. “Too bad we couldn’t keep him,” he continued cheerfully. “He’s heading to the Symphony
Hall.”

Gripped by anger and fury, Fang Chen abruptly turned his back to the bouncers and stepped into the lobby. To his surprise, Tom Meyers was playing jazz, not classical music, for a large and cheerful crowd inside the
club.

Fang Chen felt the blood rush to his face. How could the guy enjoy himself so when his victim was suffering? A perfect marriage had been destroyed because of him, the ruthless son of a bitch! Pushing the crowd aside, Fang Chen jumped at his enemy with a force as madly as a bull in front of a red flag. “You bastard!” he yelled. “Go fuck the chicks if you can’t keep your cock in the right place!” With all his strength, he hit Tom on his head and knocked him right off the
bench.

The piano went dead after Tom punched an ugly chord with his elbow as he fell. People on the dance floor started to
scream.

“I’ll kill you if you dare to go near my wife again!” Fang Chen shouted as two muscular men swiftly blocked his access to his foe. One of them punched him on the face when he tried to get free. Fang Chen groaned as a hot stream of blood ran down his
nose.

“Take easy, guys,” Tom said calmly. “He’s drunk.” He was on his feet again, standing in front of the
piano.

“I’m not drunk, you bastard!” Tom Meyers’ pitiful voice made Fang Chen even madder. He became so violent that he kicked his feet into different directions and howled infuriatingly like a wild wolf. The club went deadly quiet; there were shocked faces and staring eyes as the patrons quietly backed off to let the trio
pass.

Before the two men could drag him away, however, Fang Chen turned his head and barked at Tom: “Leave her alone, or I’ll kill
you!”

“Oh my!” the middle-aged bouncer was shocked to see Fang Chen being shoved out of the
door.

He was left on the pavement when the club door closed behind him. The cab driver got out the car and opened the back door. “Where do you want to go?” he asked
indifferently.

“Just drive me around, please,” Fang Chen said in a broken voice. The car started to move forward, slowly and smoothly. All of a sudden, the tears burst out like a flood. For a long, long time, Fang Chen hid his face behind the front seat and cried like a wounded dog, sadly and sorrowfully. He just couldn’t help
it.

The cab driver drove him in circles around the city until Fang Chen calmed down and asked to be dropped at the door of his apartment building. “How much do I owe you?” he asked before stepping
out.

“One hundred,” the driver
said.

He gave him one hundred fifty. “Thank you for understanding,” he said. It was almost three in the morning, but he was so ashamed that he wished he could bury himself behind the front seat
forever.

“Don’t take it too hard, man,” the driver said after taking his money. “Women come and go like seasonal birds. They aren’t worth your
grief.”

But Fang Chen couldn’t accept the fact that his own wife was one of the seasonal birds flying from one place to another. How could she tell him that she had never loved him while she should have been grateful for what he had done for her? It was like somebody slapping him on the face, making him so furious that he wanted to do nothing but hit
back.

“Where were you the day the defendant left for his tour?” the defense lawyer
asked.

“What day was that?” he
asked.

“July
21.”

“I would be in my office or in the class if it’s a weekday.” He was teaching summer school as
well.

“According to my record, you weren’t in your office when one of your students visited you at one in the
afternoon.”

“I could be eating my lunch or in the bathroom,” he said
uninterestedly.

“She said she had waited for you at least half an
hour.”

He frowned and
hesitated.

“Where were you, Mr. Chen?” the defense lawyer demanded to
know.

Fang Chen sighed. “I didn’t want people to know because I often take a nap in my office after lunch. I’m sorry that I took a nap when I should’ ve seen her.” He looked rather
crestfallen.

“Is it true that you hated the deceased so much that you wanted her
dead?”

“Objection, Your Honor, speculation!”

“Sustained.”

The defense lawyer stepped back. “Let me rephrase it. Is it true that you hated her so much that you not only filed for the divorce but wrote to the INS trying to throw her out of the
country?”

“Yes,” Fang Chen murmured under his
breath.

The urge to get even with Yi-yun had grown so strong that he could think of nothing but how to make her pay for what she had done. In his desperate mind, Fang Chen even thought of hiring a hit man. He gave up the idea only because he didn’t want to put himself at risk. It would be worthless to ruin his future for an ungrateful
woman.

Finally, just before dawn, he fell asleep. When he woke up, the sun was already peeking through the shades, and the apartment was unusually quiet. He had developed such a headache that he could hardly open his eyes. Reluctantly, he lifted his eyelids and looked around. The bedroom door was open, and Yi-yun was
gone.

It was almost noon when he finally got up and went to the bathroom. What an awful headache! He took three aspirins before wandering into the bedroom. Inside the room, nothing had changed—the bed was properly made, his old bureau was sitting in the corner, and a few paintings were still hanging on the wall except Yi-yun had taken down their wedding photo and her family photo. On the dresser, she had left her diamond engagement ring and her gold wedding ring. With a sinking feeling, he opened the closet. To his surprise, all her clothes were still there. He went to the kitchen and found a note on the refrigerator: “I’ll be back in the afternoon to pick up my
belongings.”

“Fuck you!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “What, your belongings? I’m the one who paid for everything you’ve ever owned. Now, you want to take them away too?” As mad as a termagant, Fang Chen threw the note away and stormed
out.