Code Name Komiko (13 page)

She was beginning to think the prank call Mingmei had received might have been more than just a good citizen trying to return a phone to its owner. She said nothing aloud, because she knew she was just speculating at this point; she had nothing to go on other than a gut feeling.

But it would nag at her until she knew for sure.

“I’m just glad you’re okay,” she said. Matt politely stepped back a bit so Lian could throw both her arms around Mingmei. “And Meihui will be okay, too. I just know it. She’s going to outlive us all.”

Mingmei smiled, and took a sip from the cup Matt had brought her.

“Oh, American boy,” she said, making a face. “We’re going to have to teach you how to brew tea properly.”

He shrugged, and they all smiled, bathed in the blue light through the open doorway.

It was healthy, Lian thought, to find something—anything—to laugh about in the midst of all of this.

7:11 PM HKT —
Komiko has logged on

Komiko:
Hello, everybody.

Crowbar:
you ok?

Komiko:
A scary incident at a friend’s house. Don’t worry about it; nothing to do with you or 06/04. It’s just on my mind.

At least, Lian didn’t
think
it had anything to do with 06/04. Even if there was some connection between her missing phone and Mingmei’s stolen computers, she didn’t see how it would lead back to the group. She’d been scrupulous about not putting that kind of info on her phone in any form that would make sense to anyone but her.

Torch:
Sorry to hear it. Hope everything’s okay.

Lian almost typed a snarky comeback, but decided just to enjoy the sentiment. A note of humanity from Torch was sure to be fleeting.

7:13 PM HKT —
Blossom has logged on

Blossom:
Present and accounted for.

Crowbar:
Good 2 see every1, whats the news?

Komiko:
I talked to Zan this afternoon. He trusts us about as much as Torch trusts him.

Torch:
He sounds like a smart guy.

Komiko:
Well, he’s exactly as smart as Blossom. He had the same idea, about going undercover at Harrison’s complex. I tried to talk him into waiting, but he’s too fired up.

Torch:
I’ll say again, it’s not a good idea. As soon as we start involving a third party, things get messy.

Blossom:
If Zan is willing to take that risk on himself, I dont see what harm itll do.

Torch:
06/04 works because we’re a small, focused group. Every hand knows what the others are doing. Zan is a wild card; we can’t predict what he’ll do or police his mistakes.

Crowbar:
Ive got 2 agree . . . Komiko U R maybe 2 close 2 him already. If harrison figures out what hes up 2 & questions him, whats 2 say he wont give U up 2 save himself?

Lian grit her teeth as she decoded Crowbar’s distracting shorthand. Once 06/04 had vanquished all the evils in the world, their next mission should be to sit Crowbar down with a touch-typing program and a dictionary.

Komiko:
I don’t think he’d do that. He’s got integrity.

Torch:
Please. You’ve known him 24 hours, which means you don’t really know him at all. If avenging his sister is his top priority, everything else — including you — is a distant second.

Blossom:
BUT . . . if hes that focused on getting justice for his sister, hes going to try to take Harrison down however he can. Which sounds to me like hes on our side. The enemy of our enemy, and all that.

Blossom:
If we back him, work together, and prove that Harrisons up to something… thats a HUGE coup for 06/04.

Crowbar:
. . .

Crowbar:
It would be nice 2 take Mynahs work 2 the finish line

Lian knew she had to be careful how hard she pushed. Blossom was in favor of Zan’s plan, and Crowbar could be persuaded. Torch was Torch; he’d dig in his heels the whole way, but even he couldn’t argue with results.

Komiko:
One person is already dead because of Harrison. If we stand by and let that happen to someone else, we’ll regret it forever.

Crowbar:
Speaking of which Ive got the prelim post mortem for Jiao

7:24 PM HKT —
Crowbar has uploaded one PDF

Nobody typed anything for a couple of minutes as they read over the coroner’s report. There were two versions, one in basic Cantonese and the other in basic English. Lian scanned the genderless drawing of the victim; both the left and right flanks were circled. She checked this against the handwritten notes down the left of the form.

DESCRIPTION OF CORPSE:
Body is that of Asian female approx 15 years, 65 inches, 106 pounds. Clothed in white blouse, gray skirt, white undergarments, socks, left shoe. No jewelry present.

EXTERNAL EXAMINATION:
Unenbalmed body in early-stage putrefaction due to submersion in salt water. Rigor mortis in major muscle groups, livor mortis fixed anteriorly. Skin intact with no trauma save medical intervention.

Lian scratched her head at terms she didn’t know:
sclerae, nares, irides, crepitus
. Context clues helped, but she got the feeling these weren’t the important parts of the exam anyway.

HEPATOBILIARY:
The liver weighs 2040 grams, edge blunted, cut surfaces discolored, blackish.

“Blackish” sounded wrong, even to a layperson like herself. The word cropped up again in describing the kidneys.

Crowbar:
1 important thing 2 note is under RESPIRATORY

Crowbar:
No water in lungs = she didnt drown, she was dead b4 she went N2 water

Crowbar:
Kidney & liver discoloration is concerning

OPINION:
Unknown Asian female, approx age 15-17 years, prelim exam inconclusive. Toxicology screen out.

The exam was dated, and the box next to
FURTHER ACTION
had been ticked.

Crowbar:
Tox report will tell if drugs were involved. I suspect yes

Crowbar:
Not necessarily recreational, she could have been dosed

Komiko:
I saw any number of vats of toxic chemicals at the factory. The whole place seemed like it was poisoning me slowly.

Crowbar:
I wouldnt rule that out, we would need more 2 go on though

Lian sat back from the laptop. “More to go on.” Such as, the papers her father had been sweating over the night before in his study? The ones detailing the health and safety concerns at Harrison Corp?

“Lian,” her mother called. “Dinner in five minutes.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Komiko:
I might have an inside track on HC safety records. I’ll have to get back to you guys later, though.

Komiko:
I really think we’re starting to see this puzzle come together.

Blossom:
This is exciting. Let me say again how glad I am to be part of this.

Komiko:
Glad to have you. Bye.

7:35 PM HKT —
Komiko has logged off

Lian stepped into the living room, snagged the cordless phone off its cradle, and returned to her bedroom, shutting the door behind her. She Googled the number for the Mount Davis hostel and dialed. Zan had been incensed this afternoon, and he probably wouldn’t appreciate the question she wanted to ask him now. But if he knew of any drug problems that his sister might have had—painful as they might be to admit—it could go a long way in helping make sense of the coroner’s report.

“Lei ho,” Lian said when a woman answered. “I’m looking for a young man staying there. His name is Zan.”

“I’m sorry,” the woman said after some shuffling of papers. “There’s no one on our ledger by that name.”

Lian sighed. Of course he’d used a fake name. It was probably a good idea on his part, but it gave her no way of tracking him down.

“Okay,” she said. “Thank you for checking, anyway.”

She returned the phone to its cradle and then entered the dining room, where her mother was just setting out the bowls. But for the stoneware, the scene looked much like the one in her father’s office last night: he was surrounded by stacks of papers, rubbing at his temples in frustration.

“It never ends,” he said with a sigh as Lian took her seat.

“Don’t forget to come up for air.”

“Air and ramen,” her mother said, spooning out the broth, laden with noodles and the fragrant scent of spiced pork. “The two most essential things in life.”

Lian blew across a spoonful to cool it. “Smells delicious.”

“I’m glad that you decided to join us,” her mother said. Lian detected an edge to her tone.

“Sure, why wouldn’t I?”

“I didn’t know whether you might prefer to skip out on dinner altogether tonight and just add half an hour to your other dinners this week.”

Lian set her spoon back down in her bowl. “You spoke to Ms. Fang.”

“She called here this afternoon to ask whether you were feeling better,” her mother told her. “I had no idea you were under the weather. Of course, I didn’t see you at all yesterday after school, so it certainly seemed possible. And the way you were dragging around this morning made me think you had told your teacher the truth. But tonight you’re spry as ever, chatting away on your computer, making phone calls to your friends. And I haven’t heard one note from that violin. So tell me, were you really sick? Or did you lie to Ms. Fang?”

Lian shot a glance at her father, but a bank of numbers seemed to be commanding his full attention, even as his soup grew cold.

The hesitation was enough to confirm her mother’s suspicions. “A lie shows a lack of respect, Lian. For Ms. Fang, for your violin, for me, for your father. And one lie begets another. Soon, I won’t know whether a single word out of your mouth is true.”

Lian couldn’t stop herself from rolling her eyes. “Seriously, mother? You always do this. You take one tiny thing and drag it out to the worst possible conclusion.”

“I just expect more of you.”

“And I expect that missing one violin lesson isn’t going to spiral into me working a girlie bar over in Wan Chai, with a tattoo over my butt crack saying ‘It’s All My Mother’s Fault!’”

Her mother fixed her with a stern look. “You need to think very carefully about what you say next, Lian.”

Lian clenched her fist under the table and breathed hard for a moment. Then she felt something in her uncoil, and she relented. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to Ms. Fang.”

The apology seemed to soften her mother’s dark eyes. “Is everything all right? Calling in sick—that just isn’t like you.”

“I’m just . . . frustrated. My last senior secondary year, I figured it’d be a cakewalk. But already schoolwork is piling up on me, and all the . . . extracurricular stuff on top of that, it’s just a little overwhelming.” She didn’t need to detail what the “extracurricular stuff” entailed, but she was acutely aware of how much of her time it was eating into.

“And Mingmei,” Lian continued. She elected not to mention the break-in, not until she knew more about what had motivated it. But her friend was still on her mind. “She’s making doe eyes at the new boy at school. Who just happens to be the boy you seated me next to at the dinner the other night.”

At this, at last, her father looked up. He hadn’t touched his soup. “Rand Harrison’s son?”

“Right,” Lian said. “Matt. They became really friendly, really fast. Now they’re even inviting me to some yacht party on Friday, which, let’s be honest, is the last place in the world I want to be.”

Her father straightened in his chair. “Oh, no, Lian—if you were invited, you must go. It shows good manners. It shows respect.”

Lian had nothing like respect for Rand Harrison. She wasn’t overly fond of his son, either.

But the pleading look on her father’s tired face told her that there was only one response.

“Of course, Dad.”

“Perhaps you and Mingmei could go shopping for a new dress tomorrow,” her mother suggested with a smile. “Once you’ve finished all your violin practice, of course.”

Lian gave a thin smile. “Good idea, Mother.”

The soup had gone as cold and flat as her tone. She ate the rest in silence and then excused herself.

Lian scanned the back of the aluminum can, reading the ingredients as the lab computer booted up. Maybe there was something a little hypocritical, she realized, about researching dangerous chemicals when she was skipping her lunch period in favor of a cream soda and a quick energy bar full of things she couldn’t pronounce.

One crusade at a time
, she thought, swallowing a mouthful of soda.

She’d been on top of her homework the last couple of nights, using it and the extra violin practice as excuses—however valid—for not going dress shopping with Mingmei. It had actually felt nice to get reinvested in the semester, to take a break from the late-evening factory raids and car chases and just be a solid student again. She had managed to hold her own in a spirited economics class debate this morning, drawing praise from Mr. Chu and a clap on the back from Matt.

Not that she needed his approval.

But through it all, she’d still been distracted by the lack of word from Zan. She’d heard nothing since he’d stormed away from the ice cream shop Tuesday, determined to infiltrate Harrison Corp with or without her help. If he’d made it in, had he found anything? Had he uncovered his sister’s records? Or had something sinister already happened to him, too?

It was with these thoughts in mind that Lian began her Google search in a private browsing session. She couldn’t stop picturing the large vats of hazardous chemicals on the factory floor, so she began by querying what might be inside them.

The results were disturbing from word one.

Lian opened a separate tab to look up what “NPEs” stood for. These nonylphenol ethoxylates, she read, were detected in the majority of branded clothing samples worldwide. They were a common detergent that broke down to form a toxin known to turn male fish into females through hormone mimicry, among other baffling environmental effects.