Angie leaned forward. “Do you perhaps remember when a child was left in the angel’s cradle at Saint Peter’s Hospital on Christmas morning in ’86? There was apparently a gunfight, yelling, screaming. Tires screeching. Maybe you were among the crowd of people who were interviewed by police or journalists?”
He frowned, his eyes going distant. “Yes. That was a big day, yes. I couldn’t forget that day. Shooting. The child. The papers said it was a gang fight, yes.”
“You saw?”
“Not me. I was back in the kitchen. We always closed late, after midnight. Things were busy all hours at the Pink Pearl with the nurses, doctors, paramedics often coming over for something to eat, or for takeout, between shifts. But my grandmother was by the cash register that Christmas Eve—she saw something. She died many years ago.”
Adrenaline crackled into Angie’s veins. “What did she see?”
A look of caution entered his eyes. He glanced at the door. Angie placed her hand on his arm. “Please, I need to know. For a friend. I’m looking into the old angel’s cradle case.”
“Are you a journalist?”
“No.”
“Police?”
“I’m doing this in a personal capacity,” she said. “Just conducting some research into the child’s story. For my friend.”
He held her eyes, weighing her, and Angie forced herself to temper the edge she could hear entering her own voice. “Did your grandmother give a statement to the police at the time?”
He shook his head slowly, as if still figuring out whether to trust her. “She didn’t speak English. She didn’t like police. She stayed away from them. Was afraid of police because of her history in China. But she told us what she saw that night.”
“Us?” Angie urged gently.
“Me. My sister. My mother and father and my brother. She was standing over there—facing the windows. That’s where the cash register used to be.” He pointed to a place across from the door. “Red curtains used to run along the bottom half of the windows so that people walking past in the street couldn’t easily look in at the patrons dining at the tables. It was almost midnight—the church bells had not yet started ringing. And that’s when she saw the woman.”
Angie’s pulse spiked. “Woman?”
“In a dress. Running across the road toward the alley between the hospital and the church. She carried a child on her hip.”
“The cradle child?”
“I think so. My mother said she took notice because this woman wore no coat, and it was cold. It had started to snow. Because of the curtain, my grandmother could only see the top half of the woman and the child on her hip. My grandmother hurried up to the window to see more, but already the woman was gone, down that brick alley. Then, just as my grandmother came up to the window, she heard yelling. She said two men then came down the street, from over there.” He pointed to his left. “She said they were chasing the woman and the child. They carried handguns. Also no coats.”
Angie’s mouth went bone-dry. “What . . . what did she look like, this woman?” Her voice came out hoarse.
“All my grandmother could see was very long dark hair. The woman seemed young, she said.”
“And the men?”
“Big. Muscled. They went into the alley after the woman, and then my grandmother heard gunshots, but right as the shooting started, the church bells started clanging. She heard tires screech farther away. Then a black van came past, very fast, although the van might have been unrelated, she said. It was only later—after the newspeople and the police arrived and the crowd started gathering outside the restaurant—that we learned a child had been put in the cradle.”
“And you didn’t mention this to the police—what your grandmother saw?”
“I did,” he said. “The investigators asked to speak to my grandmother directly, with me as interpreter, but she changed her mind—she told me in Chinese that she hadn’t seen anything at all and that she’d imagined it. I relayed her words to the police. She was eighty-two at the time, and her eyesight was not good. Cataracts. She was also prone to imagining things, and no one else had seen these men and that woman, so . . .” He shrugged. Outside the coffee shop, a bus drew up and stopped. Hydraulics hissed noisily as the bus lowered and the doors opened to let passengers out. The man’s gaze shot to the bus through the window, and he checked his watch. “I must go.” He folded his newspaper and pushed himself up onto his feet. “Good luck with your research.” He gave a slight bow.
“Wait, wait.” Angie came quickly to her feet and dug into her pocket for a business card. “I didn’t get your name, and I might want to speak to you again later or call you.” She handed the man her card. He studied it, then glanced up sharply.
“You are police.”
“I work as a detective on Vancouver Island, yes, but this has nothing to do with my job. I promise. Like I said, it’s a personal favor for a friend.”
Mistrust entered his small brown eyes.
“My friend was the child left in the cradle,” Angie said quietly, desperate to build trust before he departed. “She wants to know why she was left there and where she came from. I’m trying to help her. Is there somewhere I can contact you later if I need to?”
“I’m Ken Lau,” he said finally as he pocketed her card. “I live in one of the apartments upstairs. We have always lived above the Pink Pearl. Now I live above the Starbucks.”
“And your phone number?”
“I’m in the phone book. Lau on Front Street.”
And with that he shuffled toward the door and pushed out into the winter afternoon. The door swung slowly shut behind him.
CHAPTER 7
Angie inched down the mile-long causeway toward the Tsawwassen Ferry Terminal. Her goal was to be home in good time for her birthday dinner date with Maddocks—she burned to tell him her news now—but blustery weather and high winds had delayed ferry sailings and backed up traffic. She’d also cut timing fine by having returned to the Starbucks to find Ken Lau.
As she crawled forward, the two case file boxes hunkered on the seat behind her like a heavy presence, alive and full with simmering, cobwebby secrets yearning to be addressed. But she had to wait. She wanted to open the seals in a sterile environment wearing gloves in case there was uncontaminated evidence in there that could be retested. Angie’s plan was to call Dr. Sunni Padachaya, head of the MVPD crime lab, and ask her to recommend a cutting-edge private firm with forensics expertise to run any tests she might require. Money was not an issue. This evidence was priceless—and Angie had investments. She’d been shrewd with her income over the years. The discovery of these boxes was a game changer—it fueled her with renewed hope.