The Ghost Shift Read Free Page A

arm were in view. Her hair on the water spread out around her head like a black halo. The woman was facedown, staring blindly into the pool. Her fingers were long and delicate, like Mei’s, and she was just as tall and slim. The wrist was marked with a welt, like a red bracelet.
    The Wolf wedged his foot on the slope, holding a branch with a rough fork at the end. Leaning forward, he lodged the fork under the armpit, and lifted, the corpse’s arm bending at the elbow as it twisted in the water. He executed the maneuver expertly, as if knowing exactly how to exert the minimum effort, and was already stepping back as the body rolled.
    One breast came clear of the water as the arm flapped backward and fell with a splash behind the body, then the other. Mei was beginning to realize why the Wolf had brought her there. This wasn’t just a body in a field. The corpse’s shape was hers, she realized—the same length, the same curves. She gazed along it as it settled in the water, like a nymph rising from the deep, until she came to the face.
    Then she understood, and everything else—the slap of the wave against the bank, the laughter of the cops across the water, the moon dimming as a cloud obscured it—receded to nothingness. All she could see was a woman with the same nose, the same eyes, and the same face.
    Her twin.
    A drop of water trickled off Mei’s nose and splashed in the water by her feet, then another. She breathed normally, she did not weep, yet tears flowed out of her as if a pipe had burst. She stepped forward, descending the bank into the soft mud. The Wolf grunted, but she didn’t halt.
    She reached out, touching the cheek and stroking a lock of hair from across the girl’s left eye. Close up, she saw a green iris surrounded by blood vessels. Her eyelashes were long and her eyebrows neatly shaped. The head turned and the mouth opened as if the corpse were about to speak, but only water spilled out.
    The Wolf leaned forward with his branch and tapped Mei’s shoulder. Her mind was in such turmoil that she hardly noticed, but after a few seconds she came to her senses and climbed out of the pool to stand by him.
    “Do you see why I called you?” the Wolf asked.
    “Yes, Secretary Lang, I understand.”
    “Did you know this woman?”
    Mei gripped her palms to her ribs. “I didn’t know I had a sister. Nobody told me.”
    “Not even your parents?”
    “I never knew my parents.”
    The Wolf did not respond. Instead he threw the branch far into the darkness and rubbed his hands briskly to shed the dirt. Then he placed a hand on her shoulder to guide her back toward the police and Yao. He lit the way with his flashlight, while hers dangled at her side, and spoke over his shoulder.
    “Something happened here, Comrade Song. You can’t explain it and neither can I, but we will discover the truth. You see those people?”—the Wolf pointed at the cops in the arc light—“They don’t care. If we weren’t here, they’d have given up. Just a migrant girl lost in the city. Maybe a big man was involved, and they shouldn’t provoke him. Case closed. Am I too cynical?”
    “No, Secretary Lang.”
    “I’ve lived a long time. Too long, some people think. I’m an old head. I should retire. They say that, don’t they?”
    “They don’t,” Mei lied.
    They were two hundred feet from the police when the Wolf stopped, facing Mei in the banana field, amid the drooping leaves.
    “No one knows who she was. Not these fools, not those who did this. Remember that.”
    As they left the field and walked up the hill, Mei saw Yao laughing with a cop, having lost interest in where she had gone. The Wolf stopped by Inspector Wen, and pointed into the darkness.
    “You can take her now.”

Before dawn, Mei dreamed of the water ghost.
    She was in a boat on the Li River, being drawn toward a cormorant fisher, with two of the birds perched on the bamboo pole that rested on his shoulders, his face hidden by his conical hat.