“Hey, listen.” I spoke as gently as I could. “I’m sorry I got so mad. You know that, right?”
Silence.
“It’s just that I care about you so much. You’re the most important person in the world to me. I love you. I don’t want anything to happen to you.” I thought she might argue with me, might make a snide comment, like, “Oh. Do you typically shoot the people you love?” but she didn’t.
“I was gonna do what you said.” I detected no trace of anger in her voice, just a thread of loneliness. “About not wandering off by myself, or whatever. But then these two sharks totally ate this fish, like, right in front of me, and I kind of freaked out. I went looking for you.”
She came looking for me.
She came looking.
“Listen,” I said. “There’s a lot going on with this case right now-”
“That’s all good. I understand. I know you’re probably mad and everything, but I was hoping to have some time by myself today.
Just to chill. If it’s OK.”
She wanders around the back rooms of the aquarium and now she wants me to give her more freedom? Not going to happen.
“I don’t think so, Tessa.”
She threw a question at me out of nowhere. “Did you see the jawfish?”
“The what?”
“The jawfish.” She pointed to a nearby exhibit just past the barracuda tank. “Male jawfish carry the developing eggs of their young in their mouths. Did you know that?”
“No, but I’m glad I’m not a jawfish.” She’d cut me off, switched subjects. I wondered if she’d been listening to me at all. I started to get even more annoyed.
“Other fish do it too,” she said. “Like arwana. Even after their fish hatch, the male continues to carry the young fish in his mouth, to protect them while they grow.”
Oh.
So this wasn’t a conversation about fish.
“How does he know when to let the young fish go?” I asked.
She stared at the barracudas, then at the jawfish. “When they’re big enough to make it on their own, then he lets them swim away.
I think sometimes they probably go where they’re not supposed to, but he trusts them, even though they’re not perfect.”
I felt my throat squeeze. “Do the young fish come back?”
“Maybe,” she said. “If the dad makes them feel safe.”
I sighed. “You’re good, you know that? You’re really good.”
Earlier in the day she’d convinced me to bring her with me, now she’d nearly convinced me to let her go off by herself.
She gave me a soft smile.
“So,” I said, “you want to leave my mouth and go swimming around on your own for a while.”
“I’ll come back.”
“Where will you go?”
“I don’t know. Maybe hang out downtown a little. I mean, I need to stop by the hotel first-but, is that OK?”
“Hold on. Let me think about this.” I tried to sort out my frustrations from my feelings, my trust from my hesitation, my-
“Well?”
“Quiet, I’m thinking.”
She waited maybe four seconds. “So?”
“I’m still thinking.”
“You think slow.”
“Insulting me will not help your case.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to. How about this: you think a lot faster than most men your age.”
“That counts as an insult.”
Make her feel safe. That’s your job. So she’ll always feel safe swimming back. “OK, Tessa. Take the afternoon. We’ll both get some space. But if I call to check up on you, don’t give me a hard time about it.”
“As long as you don’t do it, like, every five minutes.”
“I want you to know, you’re more important to me than my work. You know that, right?”
She was quiet for a moment and then, without any sarcasm or scorn, she said, “Yeah. I know that.”
“I’d do anything for you.”
“OK, I know you love me, but let’s not overdo the caring-dad bit here, all right?”
Well, back to normal.
“And we’ll have supper together,” I said. “We’ll figure out a time and a place later.”
She nodded. “That’ll work.”
We headed for the door. “So, you have to tell me. Did you have that jawfish speech prepared, or did you just make it up on the spot?”
“I’m pretty good thinking on my feet,” she said. “So, can I ride back to the hotel with Agent Jiang?”
“Agent Jiang?”
“Yeah. You told me to before. Remember? That I should ride with her to see how she drives.”
“OK. And then tonight I’ll see you for supper.” We passed the front ticket counter with its tropical fish. “By the way, have you heard of the ampullae of Lorenzini before?”
“No. What are those?”
“They’re these electrosensory organs on a shark’s head. A researcher named Lorenzini discovered them.”
“Huh,” she said. “How about that.”
As we were exiting, a man wearing a suit that cost more than I make in a week brushed past us, almost knocking into me. “Watch where you’re going,” he grunted.
Then Lien-hua met Tessa and me outside by the steps, and as they were walking away, I saw a patrol car grind to a stop in the middle of the No Parking zone.
Detective Dunn clomped out and tossed a cigarette to the pavement.
It’s never a good sign to see a homicide detective show up during a missing person investigation. I hoped that didn’t mean Cassandra’s body had been found.
I decided that before going to see Ralph, I needed to talk with Detective Dunn.
37
On their way back to the hotel, Lien-hua tried to ease up on the gas. After all, teaching Tessa bad habits would not be the best way to cultivate Pat’s friendship.
Tessa sat quietly, staring out the window. Lien-hua decided it would be polite to start a conversation, but she didn’t want Patrick’s stepdaughter to feel like she was being profiled, psychoanalyzed.
Start with something safe.
“So, Tessa, what did you think of the aquarium? Not the spooky backroom stuff, I mean the fish. The sharks.”
Tessa shrugged. “Yeah, I liked it, but I saw a couple sharks eat this fish. That was way disgusting. I don’t like watching things die.”
Oh. Great conversation starter that was.
“Well, we have that in common then. I don’t like watching things die, either.” Change the subject, change the subject. “I heard Pat call you Raven. Is that your nickname?”
“Just for him. No one else.”
“You don’t like it?”
“No. I do. But don’t tell him. I never had a nickname before. I like Raven.” Tessa paused. Stared out the window, at the clouds.
“Sometimes I wish I could fly like they do. Today, I pretended I was flying with the sharks.”
“While they were swimming over your head?”
“Yeah. I thought it’d be cool to swim with ‘em. I used to swim a lot, when I was a kid. For a while I even wanted to be a lifeguard.”
She swung her gaze to Lien-hua. “Do you swim?”
“No. I never learned how. Just between you and me, I’ve always been kind of scared of the water.”
“Afraid you might drown?”
Lien-hua drummed her fingers against the steering wheel. “Are you hungry, Tessa? Need to grab a bite to eat?”
“I’m OK.”
Lien-hua noted the mileage. Nine more minutes to the hotel.
“So, Agent Jiang. Your first name, Lien-hua, what does that mean, anyway?”
Good. Safe ground again.
“It means lotus. My mother was Buddhist-”
“Was? What, did she switch to something else?”
“I’m afraid she was killed, Tessa. In a car accident. Three years ago.”
Death again. Why does this conversation have to keep coming back to death?
“Oh. Sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
“It’s OK.”
A taut silence. They’d both lost their mothers prematurely. Un-related by blood, thought Lien-hua, but sisters in sorrow.
After a few moments, when the time finally felt right to continue her explanation, Lien-hua said, “Many Buddhists consider the lotus the most beautiful flower in the world. It grows in the mud, but blooms pure and white, untainted by the soil. The Lotus Sutra is one of the most sacred Buddhist texts.”