Read Online White Ginger by Thatcher Robinson - Free Book Online

and discarding them.
    Lee leaned forward from the backseat to speak with Bai. “What did you find in the basement?”
    â€œIt wasn’t a basement. It was a crawl space.” Her voice was raspy from the acid bile. She pulled a stick of gum out of her pocket, unwrapped it, and chewed. “They were using it for a graveyard.”
    Lee’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “No way!”
    â€œWe found Mrs. Yan down there,” she added.
    Her revelation brought back the image of Mrs. Yan. She lost her train of thought and her heart skipped a beat.
    â€œHoly shit,” he mumbled.
    â€œYeah . . . holy shit,” she replied tiredly.
    â€œWhat else?”
    She looked aside at Jason. She wasn’t sure how much to divulge. He refused to look at her. “That’s all there was,” she offered lamely. “It seemed like enough at the time.”
    She turned around in her seat to meet Lee’s gaze. His disbelieving stare questioned her. He always seemed to know when she was lying.
    â€œIt would seem that things are about to get interesting,” Lee said. “What do you think will happen when the fire department puts out the flames and discovers a body in the rubble?”
    She wanted to correct him: bodies . Instead, she kept her mouth shut, turned around, and closed her eyes until Jason’s voice interrupted her jumbled thoughts.
    â€œMrs. Yan’s body will be burned beyond recognition. It will take weeks, if not months, to identify the remains. If they start digging, they’ll find more bodies. It’ll become apparent the deaths are gang related. At which point, the police will make things very difficult for Sammy Tu and the Wah Ching .”
    When Bai opened her eyes, she saw that Jason was smiling, happy at the thought of Sammy Tu’s problems.
    Lee posed a question to Bai. “And what about the girl?”
    She couldn’t tell him that Jia had been smuggled out of the country without revealing how she’d gotten the information. He would see through any lie she told. Instead, she shook her head and covered her face with her hands. She wasn’t prepared to deal with the callous murders in the crawl space. She was still trying to get her head wrapped around the needless violence.
    Jason spoke without turning to look at her. “Tell him, Bai.”
    She turned to look at Jason. He continued to ignore her. She spoke softly. “Two Wah Ching were in the basement burying Mrs. Yan. They told us that Sammy Tu has taken Jia to Vancouver to sell overseas.”
    Lee put his face between the seats again to stare at her in surprise. “You left two men in the basement to burn alive?”
    â€œNo,” she replied tiredly, leaving it at that.
    Lee was silent as he mulled over the information. He turned to Jason. “No prisoners?”
    Jason’s reply was indifferent. “No prisoners.”
    Lee sat slowly back in his seat. After a short while, he asked, “Why Vancouver? And why sell the girl overseas?”
    â€œSimple,” explained Jason. “She’s too close to home in Oakland. She might escape and find help. In Vancouver, they’ll sell her off to Asia or the Middle East. There’s always a market for young girls. She’ll end up somewhere she doesn’t speak the language and has no friends—a slave.”
    â€œAre we going after her?” asked Lee.
    Bai wasn’t sure how to respond. She wanted to go after the girl, but she found herself momentarily overwhelmed. Her cases typically involved finding someone who didn’t want to be found—a runaway or a deadbeat dad. This was her first foray into the slave trade. It wasn’t going well.
    Her answer was feeble and she knew it. “We need to talk about it.”
    She stalled for time, trying to figure out what to do.
    Ignoring her indecision, Lee plowed on. “I think we should go after her. ‘Failure is not falling down but refusing