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in haphazard stacks around the room, and books jammed into shelves. Fong flung himself into the chair behind his desk. The only other chair in the room was filled with papers. Hulan stood, remembering not to touch anything. Pathologist Fong was funny that way.
    He opened a drawer, pulled out a large plastic bag, and dropped its contents on the desk. Each piece had been wrapped in its own plastic sleeve.
    “Why aren’t these materials in the evidence locker?”
    Fong grimaced, then leaned forward as if to tell her something in confidence. “He’s a foreigner. Special care, Inspector, special care.”
    Did he know something she didn’t? Probably. Undoubtedly.
    She quickly sorted through the artifacts. A driver’s license would have made her job easy, but she didn’t see one. Various other papers—probably discount cards, old receipts, and business cards—had come through the arduous and wet journey, but whatever information had been on them was now illegible. She picked up another plastic sleeve. Inside was a piece of lined paper about twelve by eighteen centimeters that had been torn from a notebook.
    “You found this in the wallet?”
    “Wedged in his back pocket.”
    “What is it?”
    “Notebook paper obviously. Judging from the quality, I’d say foreign. It might be easier to trace than if it were Chinese, but what are the odds?”
    She turned it over in her hand, then held it under the light on Fong’s desk. She could see something still on the paper. She looked at Fong, who said, “I checked under a microscope, and it looks like symbols of some sort.”
    She examined the paper more closely. Could it be shorthand? Fong wouldn’t be familiar with those squiggles, but she’d seen enough of them when she’d worked at Phillips & MacKenzie to recognize them. But this definitely wasn’t shorthand. She put the paper back on the desk. Fong waited for her to speak, then when she didn’t he gestured to the plastic sleeves. “Just because you don’t see the words doesn’t mean they aren’t there. I have tests I can do to see what I can pull up.”
    For a moment she seemed lost in thought, then she said, “Let me make a couple of calls first.”
    Anyone in the building could have done what Hulan did next, which was call the American Embassy—a logical step because Americans outnumbered all other foreigners who entered China on tourist or work visas. Although Hulan hadn’t been in contact with anyone at the embassy for a long time, she felt no awkwardness in making the call. Those who’d been there during her last encounter were now dead, in jail, or long gone.
    The receptionist patched her through to a junior staffer, Charlie Freer, who seemed personable, informative, and tactful, which made him altogether perfect for his job. “Car accidents, heart attacks, that’s what I usually deal with,” Freer explained by way of introduction. “We always get information on those cases quickly, and it’s my job to make arrangements to get the deceased back home. But I haven’t had many missing persons cases per se. Actually this is my first. I mean, what American goes missing in China?”
    What he said was true. Most tourists traveled the country in tours and on set routes, while the people who worked here were watched in much the way the Chinese themselves were watched.
    “But to answer your question,” Freer continued, “I do have a report of a missing archaeologist. It took a couple days to get it. The phone lines are iffy where this guy was working, but you know how that is.”
    Hulan did. If Freer’s missing person worked on the Yangzi, that could explain a lot. The phone lines weren’t bad in the major cities along the river, but there were few phones in small towns and villages, and cell connections were notoriously bad because of the height of the gorges.
    “We did our usual bit,” Freer conceded. “We have a system that we use wherever Americans travel. We notify expats living in the region by