Chapter
23: Dead Before He Could Testify
The whole workshop sank into silence.
Outside, the wind kept slapping a rusted sign against the
wall. The sound came steady and even, like someone driving a nail home, one
hammer stroke at a time.
Khai Minh had always imagined he would scream. That he would
lunge and close his hands around the throat of the man in front of him and
demand to know how a person could throw someone else’s entire family off a
cliff for money.
But right now, he only stood there.
Both hands gone cold as ice.
“Why did you do it?”
The mechanic breathed out hard.
“Because back then I was in debt. My wife was pregnant. And
they warned me that if I pulled out, my whole family would disappear.”
“So you chose to let my family disappear instead of yours.”
The man didn’t dare answer.
It was a long while before he spoke.
“After it was done, I found out they’d put someone on my tail
too. The man in the red raincoat wasn’t me. Whoever threw the lighter, that
wasn’t me either.”
Khai Minh’s head came up sharply.
“You saw the man in the red raincoat?”
“Only from a distance. He was standing near the bend, right
where the car went into the guardrail. Then I heard the explosion.”
The mechanic’s voice caught.
“I panicked and ran. It wasn’t until the news the next
morning that I found out there’d been a child in that car.”
Khai Minh pressed his lips together hard.
So seven years ago, he hadn’t been the only one who saw the
man in the red raincoat.
It was only that everyone who saw had chosen to keep their
mouths shut.
“Why call me now, after all this time?”
“Because Minh Quan is looking to bury every loose end. Every
mouth.”
The man stepped closer, the sour reek of cold sweat rising
off him.
“A few weeks back, I heard the news that Madam Mai Ngoc had
gone missing. I knew sooner or later it’d be my turn, so I found a way to reach
you. That night down in the basement of Lab Seven, I meant to hand you
something.”
“Hand me what?”
“An old phone. It still had the messages Minh Quan sent me
back then.”
Khai Minh’s question came at once.
“Where’s the phone?”
“Gone.”
“What did you say?”
“I brought it to the basement. He’d told me to lure you down
there so he could deal with you. But I had a bad feeling, so I carried that
phone in with me. The second I got there, his people had both exits blocked. I
only got out by crawling through a maintenance drain. And somewhere along the
way, the phone slipped out of my hands.”
The mechanic gave a bitter little laugh.
“By now it’s probably sitting in his pocket.”
Khai Minh felt the anger tear white-hot up through his chest,
but his voice held steady.
“Everything you’ve just told me. Would you dare say it again,
in front of the investigators?”
The man took a step back.
“You want me to testify?”
“Not just testify. You confess your own part in it.”
“I don’t think I’d live long enough to make it that far.”
Khai Minh turned squarely toward him.
“You can walk in and turn yourself in, tell the whole truth,
take whatever punishment you’ve got coming. Or keep running, and one day die in
some alley where nobody even knows your name. It’s your choice. Make it.”
The mechanic gasped for breath.
“Fine.”
He said it at last.
“I’ll come in.”
Khai Minh didn’t ease off in the slightest.
“When?”
“Day after tomorrow.”
“Why not today?”
“Because I still have a wife and a kid.”
The mechanic’s voice cracked open all at once.
“They’re hiding out in a rented block in the south. Minh Quan
hasn’t found them yet, but I can’t keep them hidden much longer. You get my
wife and kid out of Dong Cang first. Once they’re safe, I’ll walk into that
investigation office and tell them everything.”
Khai Minh said nothing.
“Hate me all you want. Put me away for as many years as you
like. But my child never did anything to anyone.”
Khai Minh reached into his coat and switched off the
recorder.
“Give me the address.”
The mechanic let out a breath of relief, but Khai Minh wasn’t
finished.
“Your wife and child leave Dong Cang. And you, day after
tomorrow, you show up.”
“I promise.”
“Don’t promise me.”
Khai Minh turned and felt his way toward the door with his
cane.
“Keep your word to the ones who are already dead.”
Two days later, the mechanic never came to the meeting point.
At eight that morning, Bach’s men were already waiting
outside the rented block in the south of Dong Cang. The car meant to carry his
wife and child out of the city sat tucked in a narrow alley, engine still
running, but the door of the flat stayed sealed shut.
No one picked up the phone.
No one answered the door.
By the time the landlord came with the key and got it open,
all that was left inside was clothing flung across the floor, a shattered cup
in the kitchen, and a child’s school satchel lying abandoned by the leg of a
table.
There was nothing to say whether they had left on their own,
or been taken.
Khai Minh was sitting in his study when the news reached him.
He held the phone to his ear for a very long time.
“And the mechanic?”
Bach was quiet a moment before he answered.
“The police just found a body at an old repair yard near the
West Docks.”
Khai Minh’s hand closed into a fist.
“Him?”
“He had ID on him. Preliminary identification says it’s him.”
“Cause?”
“Beaten in several places. Stabbed once.”
Bach lowered his voice.
“There was an IOU at the scene. Empty liquor bottles. A knife
with the creditor’s fingerprints on it. Investigators are leaning toward a debt
killing.”
Khai Minh laughed out loud.
“Another harmless little reason.”
He drove the tip of his cane hard into the floor.
“How much longer do they plan to keep up this act?”
Bach didn’t know what to say.
“You still have the recording?”
“I do.”
“Send me a copy. Right now.”
“I already made one.”
Khai Minh paused a beat.
“What about his wife and child?”
“My people are still searching. Neighbors say a seven-seater
was parked at the mouth of the alley around dawn. Nobody got a clear look at
the plate.”
Khai Minh leaned back in his chair.
The mechanic had deserved to face the law. He had shattered a
whole family for money. But he hadn’t deserved to die like that, and his wife
and child least of all deserved to be dragged into a debt he’d made.
“Bach. Keep looking for his family. Alive or dead, we find
them.”
“All right.”
“And the recording, for now, don’t hand it to the
investigation unit.”
Bach understood at once.
In Khai Minh’s own case, someone had already worked to steer
the evidence off course. Turn over the recording in a rush, and it might well
vanish before it ever reached a file.
“What are you going to do?”
“Make a call to someone.”
Khai Minh hung up.
He sat still in the middle of the room. From the corridor
drifted the sounds of the new servants passing back and forth, the low crackle
of a radio, keys knocking against each other. The whole house was crawling with
Minh Quan’s eyes and ears now.
Khai Minh unlocked his phone and dialed a string of numbers
he knew by heart.
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