I wanted to jump into the air. Then I recognized a problem: How would we gain access to Kent’s room to find out? This punctured whatever high hopes had started to rise.
Ames was typing away on her laptop. She paused to say, “You know you’re right. I’m going to find those police transcripts and see what people said that day the money vanished. I do want to know what happened. But I’ll have to write about Channing’s father stealing the money if that’s the truth.” She looked at me as if daring me to challenge her.
“If that’s what you find, then that’s what you write,” I said. “But, really, find the truth, Ames.”
She nodded and went back to her laptop. I had to ask an additional question. “What would we do with that footage if we got it? Kent would just make it disappear if we turned it in to the police. Buzz is his pal. Can we trust Jack Wire?”
Ames’s brow furrowed. “You’re right, it could get buried. Kent is verygood friends with Buzz and the judge. I don’t know about the lawyer. He’s just not that experienced, like I said before. Anyway, the judge might not allow whatever video footage you find. You know Kent sent him away on that little junket at the golf club so Channing would be in jail longer.”
“I heard it was for charity.”
“It was, but how did the cost of travel and entrance fee, etcetera, all get paid at the last minute by Kent Cho so the judge could go?” She made a show of comically scratching her head. Her hair was cut about the same length as Channing’s. She was talking again. “I hate to do this to Kent, it would be really bad for how Koreans are treated in this town. But if I were Channing and he made up this whole thing about me attacking him and stealing his watch and put me in jail?” She sniffed. “He deserves to lose everything.”
“Write your feature. Another paper will take it. Someday you’ll win a Pulitzer, Ames,” I said as I stood up and headed for the door. It was a long shot, I knew, but those words came out of my mouth like a prediction. I believed it.
When I returned to Paul’s apartment and saw Channing behind the laptop with the curtains closed, I thought she was watching Chunhyang again. My spirits lifted at the thought because that would mean she still believed in the outcome of the story. She had not meant the words she’d said earlier. I wanted her to have faith in the story of love despite improbable outcomes in real life. Instead, Channing turned the laptop toward me and held her fingers up to her lips as soon as I walked in.
She opened a blank document and tapped the keys,In case this place is bugged, just type here on my screen.
I looked around.Where?I clicked on the keyboard.
Channing turned the laptop back to herself and typed furiously, and then turned the screen to me.I keep thinking about that day. Kentmust have heard us. He thought I was going to accuse him of assaulting me, so that’s why he got ahead of it and told the police I’d taken his watch and assaulted him. There’s some sort of surveillance in that house on Sandpiper Lane. I didn’t find it, but I know it’s there.
How could he have done that? You looked everywhere.
It’s so easy now: small camera, listening device. Something that the detector I have couldn’t catch.She was determined to figure out how and had her ways. On her laptop screen, she had images of maps and street views. Some, like Sandpiper Lane, were familiar. And then she was off, studying drone footage of places I’d never seen.
Kent had mentioned emails he’d sent to Channing a couple of times to me and seemed defensive about them.Is there anything we could use in the emails Kent sent you?I typed.
Channing’s fingers paused over her keyboard. Then she started typing again.They were just weird photos of himself, without a shirt and stuff like that. Gross.
I guess sending you nudes isn’t a crime.
She shook her head.He knows how to avoid getting caught. How does he do that?
What about outside? No one can listen there, can they?I pointed to the door. She nodded and followed me to the landing.
“Recordings are what Ames talked about. You’re right. Kent uses them.” I told her how Ames had described Kent’s insistence that they kiss in a certain spot in his room and how his ex-girlfriend had warned her of the recordings he’d made. “How can we get into his house to find them?” I said.
“I knew it,” Channing said, and seemed to be intensely thinking about something. “He came over to the house that first day to replace smoke detectors. He said the batteries were bad. I didn’t think anything of it. I wonder—” Channing went back inside and started typing again on hercomputer. Then she came back out, holding the laptop in front of her. “He installed new smoke detectors on the first and second floors of the Ahns’ house,” she said, and showed me her screen. “These smoke detectors have cameras and audio, look—”
“Anything they recorded would be sent to an account the Ahns had, right? Like their phones?” I asked. “Maybe they were listening in and told him. They knew about the boys missing camp, remember?”
“Yeah, but she found out late. I mean she could have checked the footage later, but I don’t know. Kent probably set it up for them and monitored it the whole time. Remember I told you that day of the storm not to mention where Minjae and I were meeting you?”
I nodded.
She continued, “Did you say it out loud? That we were going to Jutting Rock? Dahee, did you say it to the boys?”
I nodded again, miserably this time. “I’m sorry, I did. Edison wouldn’t come.”
“Kent sent the police to the beach.”
If I’d only listened to her. “I’m sorry,” I repeated.
“He’s the one who’s at fault. Not you or me. He shouldn’t be listening to our conversations. What’s wrong with him?”
“We can do something with this info, can’t we? Prove he’s—wait, we have to warn the Ahns. Is he still listening to them?” I asked.
