The Silent Girl

silent. Only Bella gave them a voice.
    “And you hid?” asked Jane.
    “I didn’t understand what was happening. I climbed off the chair and started to go up the steps, but then I stopped. I heard him pleading. Begging for his life, in his broken English. That’s when I understood this wasn’t a game, wasn’t some trick he was playing on me. My father didn’t play games.” Bella swallowed and her voice dropped even lower. “So I did what he told me to do. I didn’t make a sound. I ducked underneath the stairs. I heard something fall. And then a loud bang.”
    “How many gunshots in all?”
    “Just the one. That single bang.”
    Jane thought of the weapon found in Wu Weimin’s hand, a Glock with a threaded barrel. The killer had used a suppressor to muffle the sound of those first eight gunshots. Only after dispatching his victims did he remove the suppressor, place the grip in Wu Weimin’s lifeless hand, and fire the final bullet, ensuring that gunshot residue would be found on the victim’s skin.
    A perfect crime, thought Jane. Except for the fact there was a witness. A silent girl, huddled under the cellar steps.
    “He died for me,” whispered Bella. “He should have run, but he wouldn’t leave me. So he stayed. He died right in front of the cellar door. Blocking it with his body. I had to step in his blood to get pasthim. If I hadn’t been there that night, begging for my goddamn ice cream, my father would still be alive.”
    Jane understood it all, now. Why Wu Weimin did not flee when he had the chance. Why there were two bullet casings on the kitchen floor. Had the staged suicide been a last-minute idea, something that occurred to the killer as he stood over the cook’s body? It was such a simple thing, to wrap a dead man’s fingers around the grip and fire the last round. Leave the gun behind and walk out the door.
    “You should have told the police,” said Jane. “It would have changed everything.”
    “No, it wouldn’t. Who would believe a five-year-old girl? A girl who never saw the killer’s face. And my mother wouldn’t let me say a word. She was afraid of the police.
Terrified
is a better word.”
    “Why?”
    Bella’s jaw tightened. “Can’t you guess? My mother was here illegally. What do you think would have happened if the police focused on us? She had my future to think of, and hers as well. My father was dead. Nothing we could do would change that.”
    “What about justice? That had no part in the equation?”
    “Not then. Not that night, when all she could think about was keeping us both safe. If the killer knew there was a witness, he might come looking for me. That’s why she wiped up my footprints. That’s why we packed our suitcases and left two days later.”
    “Did Iris Fang know?”
    “Not then. Not until years later, when my mother was dying of stomach cancer. A month before she died, she wrote
Sifu
Fang and told her the truth. Apologized for being a coward. But after so many years, there was nothing we could prove, nothing we could change.”
    “Yet you’ve been trying, haven’t you?” said Jane. “For the past seven years, either you or Iris has been mailing obituaries to the families. Keeping their memories and their pain alive. Telling them that the truth hasn’t been told.”
    “It
hasn’t
been. They need to know that. That’s why the letterswere sent, so they would keep asking questions. It’s the only way we’ll find out who the killer is.”
    “So you and Iris have been trying to draw him out into the open. Sending notes to the families, to Kevin Donohue, hinting that the truth’s about to be revealed. Taking out that ad in
The Boston Globe
, hoping the killer will get worried and finally attack. And what was the plan then? Turn him over to us? Or take justice into your own hands?”
    Bella laughed. “How could we possibly do that? We’re
only
women.”
    Now it was Jane’s turn to laugh. “As if I’d ever underestimate
you.
” Jane reached into her briefcase and pulled out the Arthur Waley translation of
Monkey
, the ancient Chinese folk novel. “I’m sure you’ve heard of the Monkey King.”
    Bella glanced at the book. “Chinese fairy tales. What do they have to do with anything?”
    “One particular chapter in this book caught my attention. It’s called ‘The Story of Chen O.’ It’s about a scholar who travels with his pregnant wife. At a ferry crossing, they’re attacked by bandits and the husband is killed. His