Red Jade by Henry Chang Read Free Book Online

independent. Traveled all over.” He wrung his hands. “Then she got married.” His voice was tinged with regret.
    Jack had heard the flipside already, a cynical scenario that again didn’t bode well for his own thoughts about marriage and family in this screwed-up modern age.
    “May Lon didn’t like depending on her husband for money. She wasn’t used to the demands of young children, or being cooped up indoors all day. She’d felt isolated. Her husband was away at work most of the time. Her sadness grew deeper and darker. The pressure got to her. The clinic’s brochures explained it, but we never did find the right Chinese words for postpartum depression.”
    Fong rubbed his temples, hunched his shoulders. “We never reported her beng , her illness. Everyone was afraid they would take away the children,” he said, drawing another deep breath. “Instead, she moved out. When she started working again, she seemed happy. She seemed happy when she visited the children.”
    The karaoke job had been her salvation, but had brought only humiliation and anger to her husband. Ah Por had read their faces correctly: they were incompatible, like Fire and Water. Mix them together and you got tragedy.
    “Husband said the sai louh , the little ones, needed their mother. We offered to watch the children full time,” Fong continued, “but husband was against it. Seniors, lo yun ga , should enjoy their golden years, he argued, not hassle with small children. What could we say to that?”
    Jack could see the man’s eyes start to glisten, his grief rising to the surface, but the tears never flowed. He’d hide them inside until he got to family time, until after the funeral, after the burial. Then and thereafter, his tears would be eternal.
    Fong rose from the chair and stared into the last of the afternoon light outside the squad-room window. His gaze finally came back to Jack, and with a nod of his head and a small wave of his hand, he said, “Thank you for your help. Your father was a good man, and raised a good son,” and turned away.
    Jack watched him go down the stairs and out of the station house.
    It was already dark when one of the uniforms from the evening shift dropped off the Medical Examiner’s report. Jack reviewed it along with the Crime Scene Unit’s.
    The comparative reports confirmed the scenario Jack had envisioned: May Lon had arrived home, was surprised by Harry, was made to sit at the edge of the bed, and was shot shortly after. The Medical Examiner indicated COD, cause of death, as a GSW, a gunshot wound, through the frontal bone of the cranium, exiting via the back of the skull. CSU had found the twisted little slug behind the bed.
    The kill shot was angled downward, indicating Harry must have been standing over her. Traces of gunshot residue, GSR, were found on her palm and on her face as well, which meant Harry was less than two feet away when he fired.
    Was he talking to her? Pleading?
    The wound in her right hand was a neat little round hole in her palm that extended through it, as if she’d thrown up the hand to ward off the bullet.
    Did he show her the poem? Did he read it to her?
    So the .22-caliber hi-vel slug had torn through her hand before blasting into her forehead and skull, then crashed around, ripping up cerebrum and cerebellum before exiting the middle back her head, slamming her into the hereafter.
    The amount of blood that seeped into the comforter indicated she’d bled out over a short time, but the high-velocity gunshot wound to the head had probably killed her instantly. The ME listed approximate time of death—expiration—as 4:30 to 4:40 AM .
    The broken clock radio on the linoleum floor, stopped at 4:44 AM . The shooter hadn’t waited long. The desperate, despondent note poem in his pocket. Not long before he ate the gun.
    According to CSU, the shooter had lowered his mouth over the gun barrel, his head bowed as if in prayer, when he pulled the trigger. The bullet bored