had been slaughtered-or was Frank responsible?’He was chewing a bite of
cream-filled pastry, and though it was tasty, he had trouble swallowing
it.
“It was late July,” Chinh said.
“During the heat wave which you may remember.” She blew on her coffee
to cool it. Bobby noticed that most of the time Chinh spoke perfect
English, and he suspected that her occasional infelicities of language
were conscious mistakes that she inserted in order to seem more
well-spoken than her husband and, a subtle and thoroughly Asian
courtesy.
“We buy house last October.”
“They never catch the killer,” Tuong Phan said.
“Do they have a description of him?” Julie asked.
“I don’t think so.” Reluctantly Bobby glanced at Julie. She appeared
to be shaken as he was, but she did not give him an I-told-you-so look.
She said, “How were they murdered? Shot? Strangled?”
“Knife, I think. Come. I show you where bodies were found.” The house
had three bedrooms and two bathrooms, but one bath was being remodeled.
The tile had been torn off the walls, floor, and counter. The cabinets
were being rebuilt with quality oak.
Julie followed Tuong into the bathroom, and Bobby stayed at the doorway
with Mrs. Phan.
The rattle-hiss of the rain echoed down through the ceiling vent.
Tuong said, “Body of youngest Farris daughter was here, on the floor.
She was thirteen. Terrible thing. Much blood. The grout between tiles
was permanently stained, all had to come out.” He led them into the
bedroom his daughters shared. Twin beds, nightstands, and two small
desks left little room for anything else. But Sissy and Meryl had
squeezed in a lot of books.
Tuong Phan said, “Mrs. Farris’s brother, staying with her for a week,
was killed here. In his bed. Blood was on walls, carpet.”
“We saw the house before it was listed with a real-estate agent, before
the carpet was replaced and the walls repainted,” Chinh Phan said.
“This room was the worst. It gave me bad dreams for a while.” They
proceeded to the sparely furnished master bedroom: a queen-size bed,
nightstands, two ginger-jar lamps, but no bureau or chest of drawers.
The clothes that would not fit in the closet were arranged along one
wall, in cardboard storage boxes with clear plastic lids.
Their frugality struck Bobby as similar to his and Julie’s. Perhaps
they, too, had a dream for which they were working and saving.
Tuong said, “Mrs. Farris was found in this room, in her bed. Terrible
things were done to her. She was bitten, but they never wrote about
that in newspapers.”
“Bitten?” Julie asked.
“By what?”
“Probably by killer. On the face, throat… other places.”
“if they didn’t write about it in the papers,” Bobby said, “how do you
know about the bites?”
“Neighbor who found bodies still lives next door. She say that both
older daughter and Mrs. Farris were bitten.” Mrs. Phan said,
“She’s not the kind to imagine such things.
“Where was the second daughter found?” Julie asked.
“Please follow me.”
Tuong led them back the way they had come, through the living room and
dining room, into the kitchen.
The four Phan children were sitting around a breakfast table. Three of
them were diligently reading textbooks and taking notes. No television
or radio provided distraction, and they appeared to be enjoying their
studies. Even Meryl, who was a first-grader and probably had no
homework to speak of, was reading a children’s book.
Bobby noticed two colorful charts posted on the wall of the
refrigerator. The first displayed each kid’s grades an major test
results since the start of the school year in September. The other was
a list of household chores for which each child was responsible.
Throughout the country, universities were in a bind, because an
inordinately large percentage of the best applicants for ad mission were
of Asian extraction. Blacks and Hispanics complained about being aced
out by another minority, and white shouted reverse racism when denied
admission in favor of an Asian student. Some attributed
Asian-Americans’ suggested conspiracy, but Bobby saw the simple
explanation for their achievements everywhere in the Phan house: They
tried harder. They embraced the ideals upon which the country had been