found there after five. And yet Kang could still position himself as the zestful one and Tay as the lazy bastard who came in late. It hardly seemed fair.
“I brought your mail, sir.”
Kang dumped a small stack of something into Tay’s in-tray, but Tay was still thinking about Kang’s dig over his working hours and didn’t bother to look at it.
Didn’t his late evenings count for as much as Kang’s early mornings? They bloody well ought to; but where arriving early at the office was taken as the mark of an energetic man, staying late at the office was merely the indication of a man with no better place to go. It was all just so goddamned unfair.
“Did you get an ID on the woman at the Marriott yet?” Tay asked Kang, covering his annoyance.
“No hit from the prints in the local database, sir. It looks like she was a visitor.”
“What does Immigration say?”
“They’re generating a list of all the female entries during the last thirty days who haven’t exited yet. They ought to have it to us by this afternoon.”
“How many will there be?”
“No idea, sir.”
“When you get the list, I want you to check everyone on it by tomorrow. If there’s anyone you can’t account for, I want to know it by six o’clock.”
“I’m not sure I can do that, sir. There’ll probably be hundreds of names. I won’t have enough—”
“The Chief has already authorized whatever resources we need,” Tay interrupted. “I want that list checked by tomorrow. Get the men you need and get it done, Sergeant.”
Kang bobbed his head and started to close the door.
“And one other thing,” Tay added.
“Sir?”
“Get her prints into the Interpol system. Maybe they’ll get a hit.”
“How much detail do you want me to include?”
Tay thought about that, tapping the cap of a felt-tip pen against his teeth with an audible clicking sound.
“Can you just send the prints without any details?”
“Well, sir, if we don’t give them any reason we’re looking to match them, the priority will drop pretty low.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” Tay thought some more. “Just tell them they’re unidentified prints from a crime scene.”
“Perfect prints from all ten fingers? Nobody will believe that, sir.”
“Just do it that way and let’s see what happens.”
Kang shrugged. “Right, sir.”
“What about Forensic Management Branch? When are we going to get their report?”
“Tomorrow, probably late, but it won’t say much.”
“FMB didn’t get anything?”
“There wasn’t much to get. They’re running the samples from the vacuum and the wipe-downs now, but they say they’d be surprised to find anything. The killer cleaned up pretty thoroughly. It almost looks like he knew exactly what he was doing.”
“No prints either?”
“A few partials from the back of the headboard and a couple of other places, but nothing good enough to return a match.”
Tay nodded at that and returned his attention to the IP on his desk. Kang took that as a signal that he was dismissed and closed the door quietly behind him.
Tay started back to work on the IP. Then, suddenly remembering the mail Kang had brought in, he put the file down, pulled his in-tray across the desk, and peered into it. There wouldn’t be anything but junk, of course; there never was. Still, each time he flipped through a new mail delivery, some combination of curiosity and hope always flared within him.
To his surprise, right on top of the pile there appeared to be an actual letter. He picked it up curiously and took a closer look. It was an airmail envelope with a metered stamp that carried the return address of a law firm in New York City. He checked to make certain the letter was actually addressed to him. It was.
Tay held the envelope for a moment without opening it. Perhaps he was being sued. He had never been sued and didn’t know what he would do if he was. But surely that couldn’t be what the letter was about. If he were going to