Blood Passage by Michael J. McCann Read Free Book Online Page A

an e-mail to Waverman about the hotel expense, locked the binder in his bottom drawer, got up, lifted his jacket from the back of his chair and, manila envelope in hand, took the elevator down to the main floor. The hotel was four blocks away and he was looking forward to the walk.
     

5
     
    Hank looked out the second-floor window of Josh’s new hotel room downtown and saw nothing unusual in the parking lot below. Cooper Street was busy with lunch-hour traffic. He pulled the heavy curtains together and sat down across from Josh at the table in the corner of the room. Josh was powering up his laptop while finishing off the last of his late breakfast. Looking at the ugly bruise on the student’s cheek, Hank flexed his sore shoulder. His back was still a little stiff as well, but the walk had helped shake out a few of the kinks.
    “ Okay,” Josh said, swallowing the last bite of his sandwich, “I talked to Dr. Walsh and she told me Dr. and Mrs. Chan signed a limited waiver that allows us to disclose information to the police in situations where a crime may have been committed. What do you need to know?”
    “ Take me through this thing from the beginning,” Hank said, removing his notebook and pen, “starting with the child’s name.”
    “ Taylor Chan.” Josh crumpled up the paper wrapping from his sandwich and fired a three-point shot into the trash basket next to the bed. “And the crowd goes wild.”
    Hank smiled. “Played some basketball, did you?”
    “ Yeah. Thomas Gaines was the only school to offer me a full athletic scholarship. Vanderbilt was my first choice, but they didn’t come through. Hey, I was starting point guard my last two years at TGU, and we were conference champions my senior year. Not bad, even if it was Division II.”
    “ You didn’t want to walk on at Vanderbilt and take your chances?”
    Josh shook his head. “I wouldn’t have made it. Too much talent ahead of me. And I needed the scholarship. My dad’s a dentist and my mother’s his dental hygienist, so we were okay for money, but Dad has a thing about me paying my own way. So I took the full scholarship. It was the right thing to do.”
    “ Apparently it led you into research you find very interesting,” Hank said. “Tell me about Taylor Chan.”
    “ As I said, his father’s Dr. Michael Chan, an economics professor at State University.” Josh moved his cursor around, looking at his laptop screen. “I’m just opening the file with my notes in it.” He tapped the touchpad. “His mother’s name is Grace Wong. Grace’s father’s name was Warren Wong and her mother is Anna Liu. Anna Liu is the sister of Stephen Liu, who was the father of Martin Liu.”
    Hank wrote down the names. “So the boy’s mother was related to Martin Liu, is that what you’re telling me?”
    “ That’s correct. They were cousins.”
    “ So you’re saying that Martin Liu was supposedly reincarnated after his murder as the son of his cousin Grace Chan.”
    Josh sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “As many as 25 per cent of documented cases involve alleged reincarnation into the same family. Often while carrying her child the mother has a dream in which a deceased family member announces to her that he or she will be reincarnated as their child. These are called announcing dreams. More than 75 per cent of all documented cases involve an announcing dream of some kind. Grace Chan had an announcing dream in which her cousin Martin told her he was returning to life as her son.”
    “ A dream,” Hank said.
    “ That’s right.”
    “ Did she tell anybody about this dream?”
    “ Her husband.”
    “ Did her husband tell anyone about the dream?”
    “ No, according to him he forgot about it. Apparently it happened in her fifth month and stayed in the back of her mind until Taylor was born, but Dr. Chan completely forgot about it until Mrs. Chan reminded him last fall when Taylor started talking about being Martin