Chapter Eleven
“Class dismissed for today,” Master Chang declared. “Will you come with me, David?”
Lois went into the house to talk with Mrs. Chang as usual. David followed the master to the den. Mr. Chang sat down cross-legged in the accustomed spot on the carpeted floor and motioned for David to sit down facing him.
“How did you know where Charles Pan lived?”
“Who--who's--Charles Pan?” David stammered a little nervously.
“You offered me all the information about him. You gave me his address on a piece of paper, which I still have in my possession. What was your purpose in doing so?” Mr. Chang glared at him.
David gave no answer and a moment later, he fell supinely on the carpet with his eyes closed. Mr. Chang moved forward in his cross-legged sitting posture. He felt David's pulse. None. He put his hand under David's nose. No breath. David was dead. He checked his body and stood up, suddenly noticing that Lois was in the doorway.
Lois suspected something when she saw David following Mr. Chang into the den. She invented an excuse with Mrs. Chang and came to the den a few minutes later.
“Someone hit his Death Xue six hours ago,” Mr. Chang said to no one in particular. He felt numb in the brain. There are quite a few Death Xues on different parts of the human body. Generally, when a Death Xue is hit, the person will die immediately, but many masters have a special skill of poking at the Death Xue, and the delayed death will happen a few hours later. Exactly how long the death will take depends on how much strength the killer-master uses.
Lois walked to the body and examined it, too. The master was right. She lost a clue, maybe a very useful clue, or he wouldn't be dead. Mr. Chang collected himself and said to Lois, “I'll call the police. When they come, they'll probably put me under arrest because they think I am a suspect. He died right before my eyes. Please promise to look after my wife, will you?” He sounded a little depressed and resigned, his head sinking into his hands with his elbows propped on his knees.
“That's what I should do since she is now my Dry Mother, but don't worry. The police have nothing against you. There's no trace of murder on his body. Since the police don't know such things about kungfu, they can never find the cause of death like we did. They won't believe it even if we tell them about it. I'll call a detective friend of mine and let him handle the case.” She went to the living room to use the phone. Mrs. Chang already knew the incident and sat there white-faced, very nervous and trembling all over. Lois called Sam and gave him the address.
Mr. Chang came into the living room, too. The three of them sat there, speechless, waiting for the police to arrive.
“I think David knew some master who did something wrong or even illegal,” Mr. Chang observed at last. “The master was afraid that David would reveal it either of his own free will or by force. So he had to eliminate the living evidence before it was too late.”
“That's obvious,” Lois agreed, “but we need yet to find out which master and why.”
Sam, Pedro and the local police arrived at the same time. The detectives scrutinized David, but could find nothing wrong. David looked like he was in as profound a slumber as a log. Charles had already arranged the body in a sleeping position before police came. The policemen thought that the young man had a severe heart attack. So they just sent for an ambulance to carry the body away and took statements from Mr. Chang and Lois as witnesses. When the local police left, Sam and Pedro were invited to stay behind and Lois filled them in on this event and suggested that these two cases might be related.
When Sam and Pedro left, Lois was still there to console Mrs. Chang. After the shock was over, she felt better and returned to the kitchen to continue her preparation for dinner. Mr. Chang said to Lois, “Now that David is dead, as well as the clue with him, I think you need not come to classes anymore, though you are always welcome to visit us.” Lois consented to the suggestion. While eating, Lois told Mrs. Chang that she would be very busy and could not come to the classes anymore, but promised to visit her as often as possible. When Lois took her leave, Mrs. Chang shed a few sentimental tears, holding Lois's hand lingeringly as if Lois were going to another planet on a star voyage and would never return.
***
“Both death cases involve some master or masters,” Lois stated at breakfast when every household member was sitting at the dining room table. They were having fried spring rolls, home-style, and sweetened soybean milk.
“Have you visited all the masters on the list I gave you?” her father asked, sipping some milk.
“Not yet, but I will soon.” Lois took a bite on a spring roll.
“Are you absolutely sure that Richard Chang is the stranger?” Tricia queried.
“With every probability, though he never confessed to it, but it's not important now. We want to find the real killer, or the one behind all this. Besides, he is my Dry Father now. I don't want to embarrass him by asking him directly,” Lois replied after she washed down the spring roll with the soybean milk.
“As I said before,” her father broke in, “he never killed anyone. We must respect him as a master. All of you can learn something from him. He has some special kungfu that I don't.”
“Is he the one that killed my dad?” Alida asked suddenly, her chopsticks resting on a spring roll.
“No,” Lois replied hastily. “I'll find the one who did.” She did not want Alida to hold an abhorrent feeling against the wrong person. She wanted Alida to grow up in the radiant sunshine of love, not in the whipping storm of animosity. She wanted Alida to hold in her tender, young heart only the sublime and sacred emotions, not the horrible and cruel reminiscence. Love makes one live happily and animosity miserably. Only open-mindedness and forgiveness can turn animosity into love, hence misery into happiness. Lois recalled a case she had solved a year earlier.
A girl of sixteen was found murdered in the school parking lot. The single mother asked Lois to find the murderer. The case was very simple. Lois found a clue in the victim's diary and nailed the killer, who was a boy of the same age in one of the victim's classes. The boy was, of course, prosecuted. The mother demanded to talk to the boy in jail, which was granted.
“Why did you kill my daughter?” the mother asked exasperatedly.
Silence.
“Wasn’t she a nice girl?”
“Yes, she was nice.” The boy's voice was barely audible.
“Then why did you kill her?”
“'Cause I love her.” This was a surprise answer, beyond the mother's imagination.
“You love her, yet you killed her?” She was all astonishment and confusion.
“She didn't love me. She loved another boy.”
“What do you know about love? I mean, true love, not lust?”
Silence.
“Lust is only for sex while love is more than sex, above sex, beyond sex. That is, above and beyond the physical into the spiritual,” the mother explained. “Love is for love. Love is not to kill. If you truly love her, you must show your love, not your killing. Only true love can win true love. If you showed enough love, patient love, subtle love, caring love, unselfish love, deep from the bottom of your heart, she would feel it; she would feel it eventually as time drew on. If your love had all the merits, truer and deeper than that of the other boy, then she would feel it and compare it and turn to you someday. If your love is not as true or as deep as that of the other boy, you are a born loser, a doomed loser. You should hate yourself, not my daughter. Now you ruined everything for her and for yourself.” She saw the boy's face stained with tears, remorseful tears.
At a press conference, the mother told the media, “I'm mourning for my daughter. I didn't love her enough during her short sixteen years. Now she's gone. Even if he were sentenced to death, it would not bring her back to me. So I demand that he should be sentenced to be my son to replace my daughter.”
“Suppose you should hate him?” a reporter asked.
“It's not a question of what I should. The boy needs love more than hatred.”
“Do you mean he can escape punishment?” another reporter asked.
“He needs love more than punishment, if he truly repents for what he did. As a mother, I love all children, both mine and others. If my love will make him a better man, it's worth it.”
“What about justice?” a lady reporter asked.
“Justice is not revenge. The purpose of putting a criminal behind bars is to prevent him from doing more harm to the innocent and a death sentence is for the same purpose, only for those who never repent. If a criminal can truly repent, he deserves a welcome back to the community because no further harm will come from him.”
As a result of negotiations, the boy's parents gave him up to the single mother. The boy's father said, “ I can rest assured that my son will benefit more from a mother with such intense love. If my wife and I had loved him as much, he would never have committed the crime.”
***
May I speak to Miss Lin?”
“Which Miss Lin?”
“Miss Lois Lin.”
“Speaking.”
“Hello, Miss Lois, this is Walter Li.”
“Hi, Mr. Li, how can I help you?”
“My son is dead.” A sob came from the line.
“Who is your son? I mean, what's his name? Do I know him?” Lois wanted her voice to sound compassionate, albeit really curious.
“David Li.”
Lois was flabbergasted. The David in Master Chang's classes? No such coincidence. Lois pulled herself together and said, “I'll come over in ten minutes.” She hung up. So the familiar figure she had seen the other day was David Li.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Li were at home with tear-streaked faces when Lois got to their house. Mrs. Li was so overwhelmed by the death of her son that she could not find her tongue even to greet the new arrival. The front of her Golden Delicious apple-green silk blouse was stained wet with maternal tears, a Kleenex box on her lap.
“The police called me,” said Mr. Li after he dried his face with a crumpled tissue and uttered some incoherent words of etiquette. “They found our address from the driver's license David carried in his wallet. We drove to the morgue and examined his body. He had been struck on a Death Xue. I told the policeman who accompanied me, but he didn't believe it because the autopsy resulted in nothing.”
Lois expressed her hearty condolences and comforted the bereaved parents.
“The police told me that David was found dead in another master's house where he had been learning kungfu,” Mr. Li continued. “They didn't tell me anything about it. I'll go to that master, Richard Chang--I presume that's his name--and ask him why he killed my son.”
“The Death Xue on your son was poked six hours before his delayed death. So Master Chang didn’t do that to him. I was there when he died.”
Mr. Li said nothing.
“I'll investigate your son's death,” Lois offered. “It might be related to my uncle's death.”
“Tell me what you know, Miss Lois.”
“I will when I can prove it,” Lois promised.
***
“Tricia, can you call Sam to pass on the information?” Lois asked. “I'm kind of busy right now.”
“All right, whatever you say, Big Sister,” Tricia said cheerfully, hooking a stray tress of her sunstreaked, corn-colored hair behind her right ear and picking up the phone.
The three sisters were in their office. They were making plans for their next move. Tricia would continue to work on Frank’s case. Sally would help Lois dig up something about David Li. Lois would go to see the rest of the masters on her list. There were five more she didn't pay her homage to yet.
It was not difficult for Lois to find all the missing addresses on her list. She began to visit the masters one after another in the order of distance from near to far.
The next master was a former post-office clerk, eighty-five now, enjoying his peaceful retired life. Lois crossed out his name from her suspect list.
Another master, Erik Hsu, was sixty-one, the owner of a big computer company and also the president of an organization called Hunter Corps. He received Lois in the study of his grand mansion on a hill outside
This man is sure for the killing, Lois thought. If not killing the human, at least the cousins to the human. Yes, all animals are cousins of mankind, some close, others distant.
Mr. Hsu stood up to shake hands with Lois. He was of medium height, burly with a potbelly, which made him look as if he was at least eight months pregnant. When he spoke, his hands always moved in front of him like the pincers of a lobster. He wore a pale blue Chinese-style long-sleeved satin upper-garment--another type of clothes worn by old kungfu people--buttoned up to the collar, which was soft, not folded, one inch high with a pocket on the upper left side with a curved opening to the middle from which a gold watch chain snaked up into the second buttonhole.
“I'm Lois Lin, a reporter from the Central Jersey Times,” Lois fibbed as she was seated in one of the armchairs facing Mr. Hsu across the huge desk. “My latest article is one concerning notable people in this area, which, of course, includes you.” Mr. Hsu said nothing and just nodded in acknowledgment.
“Can you tell me something about yourself, Mr. Hsu?” She held a notepad and a pen in her hands.
“It's a long story. Perhaps you'd better be more specific.” His face was expressionless.
“For instance, how did you reach the position where you are now?” Lois ventured a question.
“I'm sorry, but I don't exactly like to talk about my past,” Mr. Hsu answered evasively, his face dark like cloudy weather. He sank lower in his high-backed chair.
“I can see you like hunting.” Lois tried another topic, hoping to entice something more interesting from him. He must have a vast volume of past stories stored in that big belly of his.
“Very much. I'm often thrilled after hitting a moving target. I'm really good at it,” he bragged.
“I see that you are not a churchman, or a Buddhist, or a humanist.”
“I'm an ecologist, to wipe out some excessive life forms that will mar the ecological chains. This is an act of great humanity.” He virtually smiled in rapture.
“Do you use poison on your bullets or arrows?” Lois probed.
“Sometimes when I come across a poisonous snake. As the Chinese saying goes: ‘Use poison against poison.’” He cocked his head a little in arrogance. Half an hour later, Lois bade her fruitful farewell and left the grand mansion behind.
***
“He's sure high on my suspect list for two facts.” Lois told her sisters at dinner about her interview with Mr. Hsu. “First, he didn't care about quenching the flame of life. On the contrary, he even boasted about it. Second, he admitted that he had poisonous weapons in his possession.”
“I heard that he was not nice to his employees,” Mrs. Lin interjected. “He has a fiery temper.”
“Could he maintain some kind of hostility against Uncle Charles?” Lois asked.
“They didn't even know each other,” Mrs. Lin observed. “Charles made friends outside the kungfu circle. He took pains to skulk any social intercourse in the kungfu world.”
“It may be a coincidence,” Sally put in. “I checked David Li's background today and found that he worked in the computer company that bad-tempered old guy owns. Did the owner have anything to do with David's death?”
“I'm going to find out,” Lois said. “And you'll dig deeper, Sally, till the coffin's revealed, if there is a coffin and we will find out what's in it.”
“A dead body, or even a skeleton,” said Sally.
“Not necessarily. Some will use coffins to smuggle guns or drugs,” retorted Tricia.
