“Lieutenant Chan, get up!”
Chan opened his eyes. His head throbbed. The air was filled with mist. He had difficulty seeing who was shaking him awake.
“Get up, Lieutenant, we have to get out!”
It was his neighbor, Mrs. Watson. Chan was choking. He couldn’t breathe. Then he realized this wasn’t mist. It was smoke.
Coughing violently, he forced himself up from the rocker and allowed Mrs. Watson to guide him. She was coughing now, too.
The front door of his house was wide open, and Chan stumbled through it with his savior. She still pulled at his arm as they stumbled down the walkway and out into the street. A crowd was gathering.
Mrs. Watson led Chan across the road to a neighbor’s low stone wall. “Sit,” she said. “I need to take care of my house.”
Chan, bewildered by sleep and too much smoke, tried to will his head clear. What had happened? He’d been watching for Mrs. Watson and then everything had gone black.
The sight of the flames and smoke rising from his house seemed surreal.
Mrs. Watson disappeared around the side of her house. Momentarily a spray of water shot over the top of Mrs. Watson’s roof, spreading over the wooden shakes. He realized that Mrs. Watson was soaking down her home to prevent it from catching on fire. The sound of a fire engine’s siren grew louder.
Chan watched the entire scene unfold as if it were a dream. The crowd grew larger. The firefighters arrived, hooked up a hose to the hydrant, and a powerful stream of water was directed toward Chan’s front door and living room. The window he’d been sitting at exploded. The firefighters moved closer and closer to the front of the house, fanning the water from side to side and roof to foundation.
His head pounded, and when he gently touched the most painful spot, he felt moisture. Blood. He’d been hit. Someone had knocked him unconscious.
The firemen were moving inside his house now. The fire appeared more smoke than fire. Mrs. Watson’s fan of water stopped, and moments later she came jogging across the street with a towel.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I, yes, I think so.”
“Let me take a look at your head.” She dabbed gently at the spot that was bleeding. “That’s a hard blow, Lieutenant. I think you might need stitches.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Watson. And not just for that advice. I mean thank you for my life.”
She smiled. Chan wondered how old she was. She’d only moved in recently. They’d exchanged a few pleasantries in passing, but nothing substantial. He did know she lived alone and assumed she was a widow.
“Mrs. Watson, I’m sorry to have to ask you about this, I, uh, well, you’ve been bringing me those letters addressed to David Han. The first time or two, I could understand that the postman might have left them in your box by mistake, but it’s been four or five times now. Is there some reason it keeps happening?”
Mrs. Watson, her eyes on the firemen crawling around, about, and through Chan’s smoking house, finally spoke. “These new credit card companies are quite aggressive, aren’t they? Some might say persistent. I guess that would be a nice word for it.”
Chan couldn’t tell where this was heading.
“I’m sorry about that, Lieutenant. If you’re going to ask me if I’ve been going through your mail, I have.”
She paused, turned to him, and dabbed gently at the back of his head again.
“I know it would be quite lame to say that there’d been a mistake that many times, but after it happened the first time two weeks ago when the letter was mistakenly put in my box, I’ve been looking for any other correspondence that might be mistakenly addressed to David Han.”
“Why is mail for him so important?”
“Lieutenant, I work out of the AG’s office. My area is fraud. When I saw that name, David Han, it rang a bell. I checked it out and found him on our watchlist.”
“What kind of activity is he involved in?”
“He runs an insurance company, Pacific Casualty and Life. It’s a legitimate company selling policies for multiple big insurance companies. That it’s a one-man office is not unusual. There are plenty of individual insurance agents. But what interests us is the higher than average payout to his clients on a variety of damages, both personal and business losses.”
“So a scam. You think Han’s getting a share of those payouts.”
“Exactly. The payments are not huge, so he flies a bit below the radar, but they are a little too numerous.”
Chan thought about this as Mrs. Watson ministered to his head wound. “Did you move here specifically to watch him?”
She laughed. “No, Lieutenant, my moving here is a coincidence, just as my getting that letter meant for your address is a coincidence as well.”
“I guess,” said Chan, “we have the aggressive marketing of First Island National Bank to thank for this.”
“That and an overworked postal worker who sometimes makes a mistake delivering mail. But I keep checking your box in the hope that some other correspondence might be coming your way by accident. Anything incriminating.”
“Are any of his payouts fire-related?” asked Chan.
“Oh yes.”
“Interesting. I’m in the middle of an HPD arson investigation. I tell you, Mrs. Watson, it’s no coincidence that this is the second time in a week that someone’s hit me over the head and tried to kill me in a fire.”
“Are you thinking it’s the same person?”
Chan shook his head. “No, that person is dead. But we’re looking for his possible accomplice right now.”
“It would be quite a coincidence if this alleged accomplice were somehow tied up with David Han’s scams.”
“Or maybe not,” said Chan. “Maybe he’s done jobs for Han. Maybe Han thinks HPD is getting too close for comfort.”
“So he has to eliminate you?”
“Exactly, Mrs. Watson.”
“I think you’d better go to emergency and get those stitches.”
Just at that moment, Chan’s son pulled up in front of them. He sprang out of the car. “Pop! Are you okay?”
“Yes, Dave, yes. Mrs. Watson here just saved my life.” He turned to her. “This is my son, Dave. As coincidence would have it, he’s a doctor.”
“Ah,” she said. “Just what the doctor ordered. Dave, take a look. I think your dad needs some stitches.”
David III examined Chan’s head. “You’re right about that. I have what we need in my bag.”
And with that, Chan’s son retrieved his black bag and put three quick stitches in his head.
“That should do it, Pop.”
The crowd was slowly dispersing. Captain George Freitas pulled up along the curb.
“David, when I heard it was your place, I had to come check. You okay?”
Chan assured him he was fine. Freitas asked a few more questions about how the fire had started. “Well, David, our people will be investigating this too from our end. Between the two of us, we should be able to catch this clown.”
After Freitas left, Chan said, “Dave, I need a favor. Can you drive me down the road to Pacific Heights Place? I need to talk to one of our neighbors.”
“Sure, Pop, you got it. Hop in.”
Chan thanked Mrs. Watson again, and the two Chans drove down the hill to find David Han.
Lanning Lee 