THE FLENSE: China: (Part 1 of THE FLENSE serial) by Saul Tanpepper

Author:Saul Tanpepper [Tanpepper, Saul]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Brinestone Press
Published: 2015-07-10T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

The police finally released her shortly after two the next afternoon, following a long, exhausting night of questions.

The detectives had been relentless, asking about her relationship with the murdered photographer, the missing items from their rooms, the reason for their stay in Shanghai. When she told them about investigating the tragedy at Huangxia, they left the room for several minutes, then returned even more suspicious, insisting that she was lying. There was no tragedy on the resort island, nothing reported anywhere about it. She was using the earthquake in the region as a distraction.

“It’s true!”

“There no tragedy on Huangxia!”

She couldn’t tell if they were genuinely ignorant of the situation there or part of the cover-up. When she told them she’d been there herself less than twenty-four hours before and seen the devastation with her own eyes, they screamed at her in frustration, slamming the table with their palms and ordering her to stop lying and tell the truth.

“The place was empty! Everyone’s dead or gone. I saw the bodies, hundreds of them. We both did. The soldiers made us leave.”

It was off season, they said. No tourists, only locals.

She had no photographs, nothing to prove her assertions. Not that she thought it would help. They would simply claim the images were fake. The officers seemed determined not to believe her.

She had considered telling them about the tiny memory disk DeBryan had given her, the one wrapped inside the tampon. The police had confiscated it before interrogating her, along with anything else she’d been carrying or allowed to retrieve from the room, once the hotel manager gave her access to it. It had all been sealed inside a plastic baggie before being catalogued and whisked away. The disk remained undetected. And without knowing exactly what was on it, she decided there was too much at stake to risk letting them have it. She knew she was innocent. She had to have faith that her innocence would eventually force them to release her. Surely the hotel security cameras would substantiate her story.

“Camera video will be checked,” she was told, “once we have warrant. It not like United States. People have rights to privacy. Must follow protocol.”

DeBryan’s backpack had finally been recovered in the alleyway, right where she’d told them the attacker had led her. It was covered in blood, which she was certain their analysis would show belonged to him. “And blood on knife we found in pocket?” they demanded.

“I don’t know! I suppose it might be his, but also mine.” She showed them her finger.

“Blood on clothes?”

She was certain that belonged only to her. She had bled, she told them, not from a struggle with DeBryan, but with the attacker.

“Laboratory test will prove if you are telling truth!”

The rest of the pack was of little help. It had been emptied of everything but a few useless notes, DeBryan’s identification papers, and a pair of dirty socks. Several more items were found in a trashcan a block away, but when they were shown to her, Angel couldn’t confirm that any of it was his.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.