Page 38 of Mystic Justice
‘Cool, cool,’ Ji-ho said. ‘You’re in the “will you, won’t you?” bang zone.’ He sounded almost wistful. ‘Good times.’
‘What zone are you in?’ Krieg enquired.
Ji-ho smiled. ‘Oh I’m in the “full-love-adoration” zone. I’ve been with Mei for a year now, and as soon as I can crack her family, I’m gonna pop the big one.’ He pulled out his wallet and opened it to reveal a photograph of a woman I assumed was Mei.
She had a calm, thoughtful expression and was wearing a traditional redqipaowith gold embroidery, the kind usually reserved for celebrations. Her dark hair was swept into an elegant bun and delicate pearl earrings framed her face. There was something timeless in the way she was looking at the camera: poised, self-assured and quietly radiant. The love in her eyes shone through. ‘Whoa,’ I commented. ‘You’re punching above your weight.’
Ji-ho grinned. ‘Don’t I know it? As soon as I’ve learned Mandarin, her parents will have to approve of me.’
‘They don’t like you?’ Krieg asked.
‘They likemewell enough, but they don’t love my job. They want a lawyer or a doctor for their little girl, not a police tech.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ll win them over.’
‘No doubt,’ I said firmly. Ji-ho had eager, puppy-dog energy; if Mei’s parents could resist that then, in my view, they weren’tworth bending over backwards for. Though that was easy for me to say because Krieg had no living parents to impress.
‘Okay.’ Ji-ho tapped the pen in his fingers on the desk and turned back to his computer. ‘I just isolated the right CCTV footage this very second. You’ve got great timing.’
‘What have you got for me?’ I asked eagerly.
He clicked and used his three monitors to good effect. On the second screen he pulled up Botany’s CCTV and showed me a visual of Sandra Jaxim hustling out of the bar on the night of Moss’s murder. She’d said she worked until 11pm, but she’d left bang on at 9.30pm. Her head was down, she was clutching her purse and she looked so furtive she might as well have had ‘I’M UP TO SOMETHING NEFARIOUS’ tattooed across her forehead.
We watched until she walked out of frame, then Ji-ho clicked another button and on his third screen we saw the CCTV that the coven had given us after Kass had pulled strings for me. We watched Sandra enter the coven tower half an hour later, still in her smart work clothes, black trousers, white blouse.
‘You got her coming back out again?’ Krieg asked.
Ji-ho nodded. ‘I sure do. Check it.’ He clicked another few buttons and we watched Sandra leave the tower. The time stamp said 10.39pm. She was dressed in the same black trousers but now she was wearing a black blouse. She looked like she’d had a fast shower: her curls looked darker and were slicked back into a bun. She shoved something into her bag and then she marched away in sturdy kitten heels.
Lena Shaw followed a beat later. In contrast, she was dressed to the nines in tottering heels and a little black dress that barely covered her crotch. It was an outfit that said she was about to hit the town, not kidnap a co-worker, but people used disguises and I wasn’t ruling her out until we had a solid alibi for her.
She watched Sandra leave but didn’t call out to suggest they share a taxi. No friendship there.
‘I followed Jaxim’s progress on some other CCTV.’ Ji-ho pulled up some more footage and we watched Sandra climb into a taxi withFast Carswritten on the side of it.
‘Have you—?’ I started.
‘Tracked down the taxi company and asked for the record of pick-ups on that day and their location?’ He grinned. ‘Why yes, yes I have. They were super amenable. No warrant needed.’ He waggled his eyebrows. ‘Methinks they’re hiding some shit and they don’t want us digging in, because they virtually threw the records at me.’
‘And?’
‘And—’ he paused for dramatic effect ‘—they dropped her off at the Baltic Triangle, outside the Botanica Garden.’
‘Any link to the bar Botany?’
‘I checked. Nope – different owners, even when you peel back the shell corporations.’
I patted his shoulder. ‘Ji-ho, you’re a genius.’
He beamed. ‘Back at you, Shirlylock. I can’t wait to see you kick butt on this one. I read the Hollings’ girl’s file – to drown someone afraid of the water is just freaking brutal. I love the water but I despise dark underground spaces. Too much Indiana Jones as a kid. And yes, I’m aware of the irony of a naga being afraid of the underground.’
Besides Ji-ho, I’d never encountered another naga. I’d never seen him in snake form, though I had seen his eyes transform to slitted pupils on rare occasions when he was under pressure to assimilate vast quantities of data. He’d once told me that it was his snake-like brain that enabled him to process various data streams at the same time.
‘Not all snakes like the underground,’ I murmured absently as my own brain whirred. ‘Some are tree snakes or water snakes.’
He nodded emphatically. ‘I’m totally descended from water snakes. I’m never happier than when I’m floating.’ He grimaced. ‘It’s another reason why Mei’s family don’t like me – they’re fire elementals.’
‘Opposites attract,’ Krieg asserted.
I wondered what that meant for us. As far as I could see, we had a lot of similarities: career-driven, focused, deadly.
