They came into Chinatown, moving at a walking pace through dense late-evening traffic. Regular taxis and pedicabs, families on foot walking half in the street because the sidewalks were too crowded.
Fischer parked in a bus stop and put her law enforcement placard on the dash. They got out of the car and walked back to the Cathay Orient Bank, the only pedestrians in sight who weren’t hiding under black umbrellas. When they reached the bank, they went up the steps and found four people waiting between the carved stone columns. Two uniformed security guards stood near the bronze doors. A man in a brown suit came up to them.
“I’m Warren Lee,” he said. “The vice president. This is Cindy Wang, our in-house counsel.”
Cain shook the vice president’s hand and nodded to the lawyer. She was wearing a black dress and a three-strand pearl necklace. Ryan Harding’s call about the search warrant must have pulled her out of a dinner somewhere.
“I’ll let us in—”
“Let’s read the warrant first,” the lawyer said. She pointed to the papers in Ryan Harding’s hand. “Is that it?”
He handed it to her and she stood on the top step, using the light from the phone screen to read the document. She checked the judge’s signature, and then she read through the entire thing again.
“Is this my copy?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Go ahead and let us in, Warren,” she said. She folded the search warrant in half and put it in her purse. “Do we even know if this woman has a safe deposit box with us?”
“She does,” the vice president said. “I looked it up when you called.”
He stepped to the left of the door and lifted back the cover on a keypad and print reader. He punched in a code and then held his thumb over the scanner until the lights on the keys turned from red to green. Then he used a key to open the metal gates that covered the doors, and a second key to open the front door. He held it open and all seven of them stepped into the bank’s dark lobby. When the man closed the door and locked it, the only light came from an exit sign on the wall above the door.
“She rented the box in 1998,” the vice president said. He had gone off through the dark, and then he hit a light switch. High above, in the arched marble ceiling, bulbs blinked on with hollow glassy clicks. “She’s had it ever since.”
“Do you know what month she rented it?” Cain asked.
“I think it was October. I can get you the signature card. It’ll have the exact date.”
There was a long teller counter in the back of the room, and behind it, lit now by overhead spotlights, was the door to the vault.
“You understand I need to document this,” the lawyer said. “Since you’re basically breaking into the safe and taking something that belongs to a customer.”
“You didn’t call her, did you?” Fischer asked.
Cain saw the vice president glance downward but didn’t catch what he said.
“What was that?”
“It’s policy,” the vice president said.
“You tipped her off.”
“On the phone, you didn’t say not to,” the lawyer said, looking at Ryan Harding. “I’ll need photographs of your badges and IDs.”
She nodded at one of the security guards, who was holding a small video camera. “And this gentleman will film us. No objections?”
“None,” Cain said. “But let’s do this. We haven’t got much time now.”
He got out his badge and his driver’s license and held them side by side while the lawyer photographed them. While she was doing the same with Fischer, and then with Ryan Harding, Cain went to the counter and leaned on it to watch the vice president open the vault. He dialed the combination, then spun the polished steel spindle wheel. The round door, when he pulled it back, was a foot thick.
Everyone moved into the vault now, stepping over the high threshold and then down a set of stone stairs to the polished concrete floor. There may have been other rooms in the back of the vault, but the doorway there was blocked off by a velvet rope hanging between two brass poles. The first room was where the safe deposit boxes were. Hundreds of them lined the walls on either side of the entrance.
“It’s 1206,” the vice president said. “Here.”
He took another set of keys from his pocket and unlocked the front panel. He pulled it open, then slid a steel drawer out of the wall and carried it to a high wooden table in the center of the vault. He set the drawer down and Cain and Fischer came next to him so they could see. It was a little larger than a shoebox. The guard with the video camera came around the other side, filming.
The only thing in the drawer was a legal-size manila envelope.
“May I?” Cain asked.
“Go ahead,” Fischer said. “Let’s see.”
Cain took a set of latex gloves from his coat pocket and pulled them on. He picked up the envelope and knew what was inside from its weight and stiffness. When he turned it over, the other side was speckled with brown-black stains.
“Is that blood?” the vice president said. “Dried blood?”