A Perfect Cover. Maureen Tan
back into the drawer.
“When I finally looked away from the body and drawing pad, I discovered that Beauprix was standing just inside the doorway, leaning against the wall near Joe’s desk, watching me. I suspect he had been there for quite a while. When he saw that I was done, he crossed the room and took the drawing pad from me.”
“And you told him what you saw.”
I shook my head.
“Not then. When you called me in Washington, you said that three people had been killed. I asked Beauprix about them, asked what they had in common. Nothing, he said, except that they were all Vietnamese immigrants living in the same small community. And each of their bodies was dumped in New Orleans East, below I-10 where the Inner Harbor Canal meets the Intercoastal Waterway.”
The area that Beauprix had described was sprawling, isolated and very industrial. Built to accommodate river-and ocean-going vessels and the cargo they carried, the canal and the waterway linked Lake Pontchartrain with the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico beyond. Heavy industry and Port of New Orleans container terminals spotted the marginal land east of the canal and on either side of the waterway with busy, sprawling complexes. Every day, billions of dollars’ worth of imports and exports were created, transferred, stored and transported.
“According to Beauprix,” I continued, “bodies tend to turn up in that area with some regularity.”
“And so?” Uncle Tinh said, sounding distressed.
“And so, the official view is that the killings are unrelated. They are an unfortunate coincidence in a city where it’s not all that unusual for strangers of the same race living in the same neighborhood to end up dead. Not that Beauprix believes that. But he was working on instinct. The sketches—my observations—gave him something more substantial than his gut feeling.”
I paused and, as I finished the Scotch remaining in my glass, I recalled how Beauprix had stopped speaking and simply stared at me when he’d turned over the last page in the drawing pad, the page that put all the pieces back together. What he had seen on the paper, or perhaps what he’d seen in my face, convinced him that his investigation needed me. Undoubtedly he was relieved to have his hunch confirmed by someone else. But, at that moment, he had looked at me as if I were something…alien.
That reaction was nothing new to me. Most of the people I’d worked with over the years had eventually been able to overlook my gender, my size and my appearance. But few were able to accept that which they didn’t understand. And they didn’t understand how observation, talent and memory could intertwine to produce insight. Witchcraft, a federal prosecutor had once judged it.
When I’d come to live in the U.S., I’d left behind the taunts that I was dust beneath the feet of true Vietnamese. No longer Vietnamese but not quite American, I struggled to find my place in a society where I was neither black nor Asian, but had Caucasian parents. It was my adopted uncles who taught me to value myself for who I was, to stand alone by choice. Thanks to both of them, I had grown into an adult who found it easy to ignore people’s reactions to who I was and what I could do.
But when Beauprix had looked at me that way…
Why should I care what he thought of me?
Agitated, I stood, stepped out through one of the French doors onto the balcony. I braced my hands against the decorative wrought-iron balustrade and leaned forward, looking out over the convent grounds. On the wide brick promenade leading to the building’s front door, the alabaster statues of three Ursuline nuns knelt in perpetual prayer. Deliver us from evil, I thought, thinking about the horrors that I’d seen that day and adding my silent petition to theirs.
Then I went back inside and told Uncle Tinh the rest of the story.
“Beauprix showed me photographs of the other victims taken on the scene and, later, at the morgue. He carries a set with him, admits he can’t get their faces—their stories—out of his head. As he told me about the other victims, I sat beside him in the front seat of his car, studying the photos and sketching what I saw.”
I tried to make my voice sound as cool and professional as Beauprix’s had when he’d given me the information.
“The boy was the third victim. Multiple stab wounds. The official view is that the boy got mixed up with the wrong element. Drugs, maybe, though the investigating officers couldn’t find anything in his background to suggest any kind of criminal activity. He was a college student, studying to be a graphic designer.
“Seven weeks ago, the only female victim was found beaten and strangled. Her name was Vo Bah Mi. She was fifty seven. Her ring had been removed from her finger.” I shuddered at the memory of her hands. “Her husband didn’t have an alibi, so he was taken into custody and charged with the murder.
“Beauprix thinks that Yu Kim Lee, thirty-two, was the first victim. He was found almost six months ago, bludgeoned to death. His extremities were crushed. There are no suspects.”
As I spoke, I watched my uncle’s horror grow, watched as it stretched his eyes and tightened his mouth.
“I’d already found the pattern in the third killing, so it didn’t take much time to discover a similar pattern in the first two. Different methods, perhaps. But beneath the appearance of unrestrained violence, there was the same cold, calculating deliberation. The same focus on destroying their hands. And the same cruelty. Cruelty like I’ve never before seen, Uncle Tinh. It’s the work of one person. I’d stake my reputation on it.”
“May I see the sketches?” Uncle Tinh asked, and I heard the tremor that his business-like voice could not quite disguise. “Did you bring them with you?”
“They’re in my briefcase. With my jacket, in the foyer. I’ll get them.”
As I began to rise, Uncle Tinh waved his hand in my direction.
“Stay where you are,” he said. “Finish your drink.”
He crossed the room to his desk, lifted the telephone that rested there and tapped two numbers into the keypad. From somewhere in the apartment, I heard faint ringing.
“Vin. My niece’s briefcase is in the closet in the foyer. Bring it into the study, please.”
He put the phone back in its cradle but, instead of returning to his chair, he perched on the edge of his desk. Vin came in, handed the glove-leather briefcase over to my uncle and scurried away.
“With your permission?” he said, and I nodded.
Uncle Tinh opened the briefcase, found the drawing pad, lifted the cardboard cover and began turning pages. A few pages in, and he shook his head, then looked at me.
“May I remove these?” he asked.
“Of course.”
I watched the blood drain from my uncle’s face as he began carefully tearing the pages from the pad and placing them, one by one, on the polished surface of his desk.
I didn’t tell him that as awful as the drawings were, the reality was worse.
“The killer used his victims like an artist’s canvas,” I said. “He or she was creating images for a specific audience. Whether that audience is one person or many, I don’t know. And whether the images were intended to horrify or satisfy or intimidate, I don’t know. I guess that’s what we—Beauprix and I—need to figure out.”
By the time my uncle put down the last page, his mouth had tightened until the skin surrounding it was pinched and pale.
“Mon Dieu,” he kept murmuring. “Mon Dieu.”
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