Return to Dust by Andrew Lanh Read Free Book Online

smoked cigarettes outside a Saigon bar as she whispered to passing soldiers—I’d watched her when I was a thirteen-year-old boy. She was pretty, too. Day in, day out—I mooned over her. Was I merely a stammering immigrant to these shores? I was in this to solve a murder. I was a professional. Murder, not mayhem or matrimony. Murder, not matchmaking. Murder. Or, frankly, was it indeed just a suicide?
    Suicide, not, well—sex. Damn.

Chapter Five
    I woke up bloated and tired—last night’s wine leaving me headachy. I yawned, pulled myself out of bed, and showered. My muscles ached. I really needed to get back to running. I’m not out of shape but in need of muscle on my long, lanky body. The slightest beginning of a paunch because I was no longer a young man. Thirty-nine now, my last birthday—a created birthday, given me when I arrived in America, a thirteen-year-old boy who, till then, had no birthday at all, or at least none that I remembered from the orphanage.
    I decided to hit the gym before my ten o’clock class. I teach two days, Tuesday and Thursday, one section of Introduction to Criminal Science and one of Investigations. While swimming laps in the pool after the workout, I was distracted, unable to focus. A horrible image overwhelmed me—Marta Kowalski dropping off that final cold stone bridge. The cleaning lady no one paid any attention to—an old woman dragging a dust cloth over my bookcases. Was it possible Karen’s instincts were on target?
    At that moment a wave of belief swept over me. But why would anyone kill her? And in so gruesome a fashion? Toppling onto those rocks. A neck snapped. So I stopped swimming, resting on the side of the pool, my hair in my eyes, heart pounding, the veins in my hands jutting out as I gripped the side of the pool.
    Leaving the gym, I spotted Hank Nguyen headed to the parking lot with a backpack casually slung over his shoulder, a couple books cradled against his chest. Despite the morning chill, he wore his jacket unzipped, flapping in the slight breeze. Worse, he wore a pair of khaki cargo shorts. November, I thought—why do young people think they’re invincible to the elements? Probably because they are. When you hit your late thirties, you realize that nature crouches on the dark horizon, getting ready to trip you.
    â€œHey, Hank,” I yelled, causing him to stop moving.
    â€œRick,” he answered. “I was gonna call you later. I had to be in town this morning. See what you’re up to.”
    â€œYou’re just the man I want to talk to.”
    He grinned. “Ah, you need my help with some mystery.”
    I paused. “Actually, I do.”
    That surprised him, so he stopped moving. “Really? Tell me.”
    â€œTime for coffee?”
    He nodded. “I’m on a break from the academy. Thought I’d use the library at my old alma mater.” He pointed toward the College Union. “The coffee is not good here. They use your recipe.”
    â€œYou’ll live.” I smiled. “No one has a recipe for making coffee.”
    â€œMaybe that’s the problem then. Mystery solved.”
    Now twenty-three years old, Hank Nguyen had graduated with a degree in Criminal Justice from the college and was training at the Connecticut State Police Academy. He wanted to be a state trooper—the first Vietnamese-American, he claimed—and then, a few years down the road, a private investigator. Like me. We’d become close friends after a bumpy start. Pure Vietnamese—part of a big, rollicking family in East Hartford, all fleeing from Saigon in 1975 or thereabouts, drifting on hostile waters to Hong Kong—he had disliked me when he was my student, sitting in my class with a scowl on his face. I’m mixed blood, one of those pathetic lost souls celebrated in Broadway’s Miss Saigon —to my horror—and the native Vietnamese are notorious in their dislike