The housekeeper had to
urge him a third time before Khai Minh finally let go of An Nhien’s hand and
let himself be led back to his room.
“Get some rest, young
master. If anything changes with her, I’ll run over and fetch you at once.”
Khai Minh didn’t answer.
Every step down the
corridor drove a fresh stab through his chest, and his throat still burned raw,
as if the poison from that night clung to it yet. The housekeeper kept a hand
beneath his elbow, easing him over each small step, ready to catch him if his
legs gave out.
Back in his room, Khai Minh
lay down and closed his eyes. Sleep wouldn’t come.
Six years in the dark had
taught him one thing: when the eyes go blind, the ears must see in their place.
And right now, his ears were catching something that boded no good.
From the far end of the
corridor came the tramp of many feet. Not the soft tread of a nurse bringing
medicine, nor the unhurried steps of family come to visit. These were driven,
hurried, deliberate, threaded through with murmurs that cut off all at once, as
if a whole crowd were holding its breath. Closer and closer. The hair on the
back of his neck rose.
Then a man’s voice lifted,
trembling, choked, pitched just loud enough for the entire corridor to hear.
“My wife… my wife is dead…
they’ve only just found her… oh God, oh God…”
Khai Minh went rigid on the
bed. He knew that voice even as it splintered into sobs. Mr. Minh Quan.
His uncle by marriage, the husband of his aunt, Mai Ngoc.
The door banged open. The
weeping snapped off in an instant and twisted into a roar.
“You bastard!”
A hand seized Khai Minh by
the collar and hauled him upright before his body could brace for it. His head
spun; the IV line pulled taut and nearly tore from the back of his hand.
“Why did you kill my wife?
Well? That was your own blood aunt, your mother’s little sister, you animal!”
“Uncle… what are you
talking about?”
Khai Minh clawed at the
wrist crushing his collar, his voice a ragged rasp.
“What’s happened to her?
She went away on a trip….”
“A trip?”
Minh Quan let out a single,
ghastly laugh, his breath hot against Khai Minh’s face.
“They just dragged her body
out of a cold-storage unit, on your family’s own land. She’s been lying in
there stiff and cold for days, and here you are, playing deaf and dumb?”
The words turned Khai Minh
cold from head to foot.
For a moment the whole room
seemed to slide out from under him, leaving only two words behind, driving
straight into his ears: her body.
Aunt Mai Ngoc was dead.
The woman who had cradled
him when he was a red-faced newborn. Who had sat up whole nights at his
hospital bed after the accident. Who had slid envelopes of cash across desks to
buy people’s silence. Who had trembled at the question, “Where were you when
the car burned?” The woman he had hated and pitied and suspected all at once
for six long years, now lay dead in a cold-storage unit, on the very land that
bore his family’s name.
“It wasn’t me.”
Khai Minh forced the words
out one at a time.
“I never met with her. I
never….”
“Shut your mouth!”
Minh Quan wrenched at his
collar again.
“You cursed her out in
front of a whole conference. You accused her to her face of murdering your
parents. Day after day you went clawing up the past. She was so frightened of
you she couldn’t eat or sleep. She told me, again and again, that this nephew
of hers would turn on her sooner or later. And I still didn’t believe her. I
still cared for you… God help me, I’ll never forgive myself…”
His voice cracked back into
sobs, just as a set of calm, measured footsteps entered the room. Another
middle-aged man spoke, unhurried, in the flat cadence of someone used to
official business.
“Mr. Vu Minh Quan,
please, calm yourself and let us do our work.”
Then the voice turned
toward the bed.
“Mr. Lam Khai Minh.
We’re from the investigation unit. Mrs. Mai Ngoc has been confirmed dead.
On the strength of the initial evidence, we’re taking you into custody to
assist with the inquiry. You have the right to remain silent, and the right to
counsel.”
Khai Minh opened his mouth,
but no sound came.
He couldn’t see the face of
the man who had just spoken. He couldn’t see the crowd packed at the doorway.
He couldn’t see Mr. Minh Quan, who now buried his face in his hands and
wept before a wall of camera lenses.
He could only listen.
He heard the murmurs ripple
out through the crowd. He heard someone sigh, “That’s rich kids for you, all
that money, and he wouldn’t even spare his own aunt.” He heard the shutters
clicking, one after another.
Six years ago, in another
hospital, on another bed, a thirteen-year-old boy who had just lost his parents
said he’d seen a figure in a red raincoat. They called it a hallucination. His
word counted for nothing. He was a crippled child with a freshly injured brain.
Now here he was again, on a
bed, just pulled back from death, his eyes still seeing nothing. Only this time
they no longer called him a boy chasing phantoms. This time they called him a
killer.
“I want to see my lawyer.”
Khai Minh said, fighting to
keep his voice from shaking.
“Mr. Bach. Call
Mr. Bach for me.”
No one answered.
There was only a cold hand
closing around his wrist, drawing it out from under the blanket.
He heard the click of a
steel latch. Then the cuff snapped shut around his wrist, right beside the
leather-strapped watch his mother had left him. The watch that had carried him
through six years of darkness now sat next to another band of cold metal, one
that from this moment on would lock itself around his life.
He didn’t struggle. He only
tipped his face up, toward the sound of Mr. Minh Quan’s weeping, and
murmured, just loud enough for that one man to hear.
“Quite a performance,
Uncle.”
The sobbing out in the
corridor stumbled for half a beat, then picked up again, more heartbroken than
ever.
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