The Mystery of Revenge (13 page)

He went to the hardware store across the street and bought a new lock. “Too bad, bitch, you can’t boss me around anymore,” he said loudly when he opened the apartment door, “because I won’t compromise you any longer. If you want to leave me, fine, you can leave without taking a pin or a needle from
me.”

The aspirin he took worked quite efficiently, and the headache disappeared soon after he was ready to replace the lock. In his overexcited mood, Fang Chen took the toolbox out of the cabinet and set to work.
Of course you can ask your Tom to replace everything you had from me
, he thought sardonically while working.
Don’t regret it if he can’t afford
it.

He was quite pleased when he finished the job. Gleaming inside the golden frame, the lock gave the door a beautiful new look. Satisfied, he double-locked the apartment and went to
work.

Yi-yun didn’t call him during the day as he had expected. When he was back from work, his door was perfectly locked; nothing indicated that she had ever broken
in.

She might have tried, or both of them might have tried but given up. They dared not to break it, or he would call the police. Thrilled by the result of his little revenge, Fang Chen smiled for the first time since his wife had uttered the
D
word.

Before he went to bed, however, he was once again seized by a sudden anger because he remembered what she had said. If she never loved him as she told him, there should have been no reason for her to marry him. Why did she do it then? It was because she needed his money and the green card, of course! What a wicked woman! She had been treating him like a fool, using him as a tool, but she wouldn’t get away from her wicked doing anymore because he would make her pay. As far as he knew, she had her temporary green card less than a year ago. It wouldn’t be renewed if she got divorced within a two-year period. The bitch, she was either too smart or too stupid to ignore the immigration rules. She forgot that her legal status depended on the stability of her marriage. Without the green card, she had to go back to China or back to school full-time.

Yes! She should definitely suffer the consequences!
Even if Tom Meyers married her immediately, which he doubted would happen, it would still be a good scare. Fang Chen grinned when he thought of the possible outcome. Tomorrow, he would get on her case and call his lawyer to file for divorce; at the same time, he should inform the INS about Yi-yun’s green card scheme.
I should mention Tom Meyers so they can track her down
, he thought to himself. It was his luck that he knew where Tom was employed. As long as they knew where the bastard was, they would be sure to get to Yi-yun.

“Is it true that you threatened to kill the defendant in front of a crowd at a night club?” The defense lawyer continued pounding on
him.

“Yes,” he said
defiantly.

“If you were so mad that you wanted to kill the defendant, we can surely assume you wanted to kill your unfaithful wife as
well.”

The prosecutor was up on his feet really fast. “Objection, Your Honor!” he
shouted.

“Sustained. No assumptions, only facts,” the judge warned the defense
lawyer.

The lawyer turned to the jury meaningfully with a smirk on his face and then turned back to face Fang Chen. “But you did tell your lawyer that the deceased needed to be punished for her sin, is that correct?” he asked, looking at him
slyly.

“Yes,” Fang Chen said, looking up to meet the eyes of the defense lawyer rebelliously. “She needed to be punished because of her adultery, but that doesn’t mean that I killed
her!”

Chapter 14

Standing a few feet away from the casket, Ann saw her friend emerge in front of her, as pretty and delicate as a spring flower. Instead of the usual sparkling radiance, however, there were sheer sorrows in her beautiful eyes.
Oh, Yi-yun
, Ann cried.
How could you leave me without saying good-bye?
Tears poured down so furiously, Ann could hardly
breathe.

It was the most heart-wrenching phone call she had made weeks ago when Tom Meyers asked her to call Yi-yun’s parents. He had identified the body, and he wanted to notify her parents, but he couldn’t speak
Chinese.

Yes, Yi-yun’s parents! How could she ever forget! To bring such devastating news over the phone to her parents whom Ann had heard so much about nearly cut her into pieces. They were hardworking people and devoted to their
daughter.

Her hand shook when she dialed their number given by Fang Chen who found it in his old Rolodex. When she finally answered the phone, Yi-yun’s mother couldn’t understand a word Ann had said. “What did you say about my daughter?” she kept asking. “Who are
you?”

Breathing deeply, Ann repeated the terrible news twice, then a third time when Yi-yun’s father picked up the phone because his wife had dropped it abruptly. There was a dead silence followed by heart-tearing shrieks in the
background.

“How can we come and get her?” Yi-yun’s father asked, sobbing. “We want to bring her home,” he
said.

“You need to get a passport and a visa,” Ann said, even though it could take several months before they could obtain both. “We’ll wait for
you.”

A week later, Yi-yun’s father called back. Both he and his wife had no way to acquire their passports in a reasonable time frame, and he wondered if Ann would help them to get Yi-yun cremated so they could bring her ashes home when they were able to do so. He told Ann that Yi-yun’s mother had fallen ill and had not been eating since she heard the
news.

Yes, of course she would help. In fact, she would immediately arrange the wake at a funeral home so Yi-yun could be properly
mourned.

She sank into the armchair after she hung up the phone, weeping. For the last few weeks, she cried every time she thought of her friend, a bubbly and fun-loving young woman. Why should she die? How could anyone kill
her?

By then, Tom Meyers had been accused as Yi-yun’s murderer, and everyone knew Yi-yun was five months pregnant. If Tom didn’t want to marry her and didn’t want the baby, it could be his motive to
kill.

Oh, poor Yi-yun! If only she weren’t so busy at the time when Yi-yun left Fang Chen, she might have been able to persuade her to stay in the marriage, Ann thought wistfully. Poor Fang Chen, who first lost his wife to Tom and then lost the love of his life forever. When she mentioned the request from Yi-yun’s father, he said he would pay for the funeral and the
cremation.

A tearful Fang Chen was standing next to her, holding her hand. Next to them were Yi-yun’s old roommate Amy and her neighbors including Ms. White and Shao Mei. True to her character, Shao Mei had been crying loudly and
shamelessly.

In addition to mourning the loss of her friend, Ann was deeply saddened as she wished she could repay Yi-yun’s help and kindness. Imagine if she had gotten fired from China Dragon the first night! In return, however, she had badly failed her friend because she didn’t offer Yi-yun any help when she needed it. Of course she didn’t know what kind of trouble Yi-yun was in, but she could have spent some quality time with her. After a few heart-to-heart talks, she might have been able to talk Yi-yun out of the divorce. There were so many things Ann could have done, if only she had
known.

After the service, Ann kept Yi-yun’s ashes in her apartment, waiting for the parents to show up and collect them. A few weeks passed, then a few months; finally she got a phone call from Yi-yun’s father. “Her mother and I have decided,” he said, voice cracking because of the pain. “We would leave Yi-yun where she belonged.” It must have been the most difficult decision they had ever made in their life. “She’d been dreaming of living in America since she was a teenager. For so long, it had become the purpose of her life. She wouldn’t be happy if we brought her back. She belonged to America, the country she embraced wholeheartedly.” He had to stop several times during the conversation to regain his strength. His wife had been getting better, he told Ann, but they had a long way to go before they could fully recover from the disaster. “She’s our only child, you know,” he broke
off.

“It is well understood,” Ann said. She promised Yi-yun’s father that she would do whatever she could to lay her friend to rest. She planned to hold a fundraiser for Yi-yun, but Fang Chen stepped in once again. He went out and bought a plot at the Mount Auburn Cemetery. In early spring when the trial for Yi-yun’s murder was underway, she, Fang Chen, and Shao Mei brought Yi-yun’s ash to the cemetery for burial. Yi-yun would have turned twenty-four on that
day.

Chapter 15

The courtroom was quiet. Shao Mei took the oath and sat down. She was a character witness for the prosecution. When the prosecutor asked her for help a week ago, she didn’t hesitate for a second; it was her duty to see Yi-yun’s killer get punished, she told the
prosecutor.

“Ms. Shao,” the prosecutor said, “can you tell the jury who you are and how you came to know the deceased and the
defendant?”

“I came to know Ms. Yi-yun Lin the first day when I landed in the US,” she said with emotion, and her voice quivered. “I met the defendant when I went to his concert with Yi-yun about a year ago. I was a physics professor at Beijing University before I came to the
US.”

She was a Beijing native, born in Beijing, grew up in Beijing, and studied and worked in Beijing. In her adult life, Shao Mei spent it all at Beijing University, first as a student, then a teaching assistant, then a lecturer and an associate professor until she was sent away to the labor camp. She made the rank when she was thirty-eight, a few months before the Cultural Revolution
started.

She considered herself lucky to have survived the most terrible catastrophe of mankind as many of her friends and colleagues perished during the ten-year
terror.

It was the winter of 1966 when she was arrested along with hundreds of other professors by the students turned Red Guards who occupied the campus as soon as Mao started the revolution. A year later, she and her husband, a professor at Tsinghua University were sent down to a labor camp where her son was born several years later. Due to the intensive physical labor, she couldn’t take care of him. He was sent to live with her aged parents when he was only two-months-old. Mother and son had been separated until he was
three.

While being brainwashed at the labor camp, Shao Mei had been nursing a dream to leave the country because she hated her life. The politics in China had become so unpredictable over the years that every minute she could lose her freedom if she wasn’t careful. In fact, a joke could turn into a crime on a daily basis. Just look at how many innocent people got arrested or killed because they bad-mouthed Chairman Mao or the
government.

Shao Mei got her chance after she was released from the labor camp. As a professor at one of the most prestigious universities in China, she was able to make connections as well as pass along her requests to her newfound foreign friends. Before long, one invitation came through, and she got the chance to leave the country as a visiting scholar. Without knowing what would happen to her in the United States, she already knew she would never go back to her native country. She just had enough of the communism and all sorts of political movements that made her life and millions of others miserable through and
through.

Yi-yun made it possible with her generosity and
help.

“How can I afford a room? I only have $400!” She was almost in tears, which never happened in her life before, after a visit to the international office at school. She had spent the first night on Yi-yun’s couch. “The cheapest room in the city is $500 a
month!”

“If you don’t mind sleeping on my couch for a month or two,” Yi-yun said, looking at her sympathetically. She only had one room, but she could tell Shao Mei wouldn’t be able to survive without her
help.