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against the backseat, staring out the side window at the black of nothing, apparently drowning in the loss of her husband, and the probable devastation of her world.
    I was ashamed of myself for snapping at Joe, really ashamed.
    I would’ve called him back to apologize, but Mrs. Chan swung her sad eyes toward me and locked in.
    “I don’t understand,” she said.
    Then she asked me a lot of questions. Good ones.
    How had I identified her husband’s body? Was he alone when he was found? What was he wearing? Had we recovered Michael’s phone? Had he suffered before he died? Did we have any idea who had killed him? Did we have any idea why?
    I answered as well as I could, but none of my answers were comforting. I reached for her hand, but it was awkward, and soon she was staring out the window again.
    A half hour later, Shirley Chan was sitting in a metal chair in Interview 2, sandwiched between Conklin and me, a laptop computer open in front of us.
    I said, “Let us know if you recognize anyone.”
    I pressed Play and the video began showing an overhead view of the Four Seasons’ lobby with yesterday’s date and the time, 4:10 p.m.
    Ten minutes into the tape, Mrs. Chan’s eyes got big as she watched her husband enter the hotel, cross the marble floors as if he was on a mission, and head toward the reception desk.
    Mrs. Chan shouted, “
There he is
. That’s
him
. Michael, what are you doing there?”
    Conklin and I looked at each other over Mrs. Chan’s head as the image of Mr. Chan went toward the elevators. I fast-forwarded the lobby footage until a blonde-haired woman with wraparound shades and a swingy leather coat entered the scene.
    I hit Pause and turned to the grieving woman beside me.
    “Mrs. Chan, do you recognize this woman?”
    Her eyes were fixed on the blonde.
    “Who is she?” Mrs. Chan asked. Her voice was cold. Resigned.
    “We don’t know,” I said. “But she may have been the last person to see your husband alive.”

CHAPTER 14
     
    WE ALL STARED at the image of the blonde-haired woman I had stopped in midstride by pressing a key.
    We didn’t know her name or her occupation, if she was Chan’s date-by-the-hour, manicurist, longtime lover, drug dealer, financial planner, or personal banker. We didn’t know if she was dead or alive, if she had killed Michael Chan, had set up the hit, or had gotten out before he was shot and didn’t know he was dead. She was unknown subject zero.
    Conklin’s prediction that when Mrs. Chan saw the video we would have answers seemed unlikely to come true.
    I said to Mrs. Chan, “I’ll show you another view of her.”
    I shuffled the discs, found the footage from the camera on the fourteenth floor, and booted it up. I let the footage run as the blond woman stepped out of the elevator and walked away from the camera, down the hall to Chan’s room.
    I hit Pause after she had knocked and Chan had opened the door. He wasn’t on camera. We only saw the frozen profile of the striking blonde and the long shadow in the doorway.
    Mrs. Chan asked, “Michael was in that room?”
    “Yes. He was.”
    “Did she shoot him?”
    “We don’t know.”
    “I want to see what she looked like when she left there.”
    I said, “We don’t have anything else. Not long after she entered the suite, the video was corrupted. All we have is two hours of static. If she left through the lobby, she was disguised. We didn’t see her again.”
    “She couldn’t just disappear,” said Mrs. Chan.
    “The hotel is on floors five through twenty-one of a forty-story building. She may have left through the fire exit. Here’s something else. The room may have been under surveillance.”
    I showed Mrs. Chan morgue shots of the two young probable snoops who might have recorded Michael Chan’s last moments. Mrs. Chan didn’t recognize them.
    “They might have been students,” I said.
    She shook her head, and I made a mental note to screen student ID photos from the university, all four