Inspector Zhang and the Disappearing Drugs by Stephen Leather Read Free Book Online Page B

Mrs. Clare, icily.
    “I bet he could have teamed up with a guy he'd met. Maybe gone up country, trekking with the hill tribes. It's easy to lose track of time when you're in the jungle.   Or maybe he met a girl. Thailand is full of beautiful women.”
    “Our son is a virgin,” Mrs. Clare said.   “He is a virgin and will be on his wedding day. He has promised us that.”
    I tried not to smile but I figured that any red blooded twenty-one-year-old male would have a hard time clinging on to his virginity in Thailand.
    “I am serious, Mr. Turtledove,” said Mrs. Clare.   “Our son believes in the Bible as the word of our Lord. Besides, if he had met a girl, he would have told us. Our son tells us everything.”
    “How many children do you have?” I asked.
    “Six,” said Mr. Clare. “Three girls. Three boys. Jon Junior is the oldest.”
    “And has he been in touch with any of his siblings?”
    Mr. Clare's brow furrowed.   “I told you, he hasn't been in touch since the last phone call.”
    “You said you hadn't heard from him. That doesn't mean he hasn't been in contact with his brothers and sisters.”
    “They would have told us,” said Mr. Clare. He folded his arms and sat back in his chair and glared at me as if daring me to contradict him.
    I doodled on the notepad.   “How was your last conversation with Jon Junior?” I asked.
    His glare darkened. “Now what are you suggesting?”
    I kept looking at the pad. The doodle was turning into an angel with spreading wings. “Jon Junior came out here on a holiday, then he calls you to say he wants to work here. He's your eldest boy and you were expecting him to work in the family firm, so it must have come as a shock.”
    “A surprise, yes.”
    “So did you argue with him?”
    “We had an exchange of views.”
    “And you weren't happy about his career change?”
    Mr. Clare tutted. “He wanted to throw away his education to live in the Third World, in a country which hasn't even opened itself up to the Lord.”
    “It's a Buddhist country, but there are Christians here. And churches.”
    “That's not the point,” said Mr. Clare. “I didn't want him throwing away the opportunities he had worked for.”
    “So you did argue?”
    “I don't like what you're suggesting,” said Mr. Clare. “You're making it sound as if I chased him away. I didn't, Mr. Turtledove. We discussed his plans, and we agreed that he should give it a go. If he wanted to be a teacher, that was up to him. But yes, I made my feelings clear on the subject, of course I did.”
    Mrs. Clare patted her husband on the shoulder.   “Teaching is a noble occupation, and we told him so,” she said.   “We suggested that if he wanted to teach, he should come back to Utah. He said he wanted to teach in Thailand, for a while at least, and we gave him our blessing. We said that he should try teaching in Thailand for a year.”
    “Then he would come back to Utah,” said Mr. Clare. “That's how we left it.”
    “We have also taught our children to follow their own path, but to use the Lord as their guide,” said Mrs. Clare.
    “When he said goodbye, he said he loved us and that he'd call again in a week,” said Mr. Clare. “That was the last we heard from him.”
    I looked down at the doodle again. I'd drawn horns on the angel and I flipped over the page before the Clares could see what I'd done.   “Do you have an address for him?”
    “He was staying at a hotel in Sukhumvit Road but when we spoke he told us that he was checking out and moving into an apartment. He said he'd write to us with the address.”
    I asked him for the address of the hotel and wrote it down.
    “We've already been there,” said Mrs. Clare. “So have the police. He checked out, just as he said he did.”
    “You've spoken to the police?”
    Mr. Clare shook his head. “The embassy said they'd spoken to them. And they said that they had checked all the hospitals.”
    I nodded and smiled but didn't tell them