Never Enough (16 page)

“Maybe she was talking about the divorce.”

“When he didn’t show up for work yesterday or today either, I called Nancy again. This time she told me he was dealing with ‘health issues’ and might not be coming to work for a while. That’s when I called the meeting here. We’re not people quick to panic, but we’ve decided that if no one hears from him overnight we’ll contact the police in the morning.”

Bryna took a deep breath. “David, do you think—please pardon the cliché—that Nancy ‘knows more than she’s telling’?”

“Trust me: right now, you don’t want to know what I think.”

Bryna stayed up through the night, sending Rob e-mail after e-mail: “I can’t be of any help if you don’t respond!!!” “YOUR FAMILY IS REALLY CONCERNED ABOUT YOU…CALL ME.” “Rob…Please call me…Please…I know something is happening and I’m really worried…Please let me know you are okay.” “Rob, this isn’t funny…Please call me…Nan’s okay. PLEASE.” “Rob…Please Please…call me. I’m all alone and want to talk to you…it’s very important…” “Rob, we have a very strong friendship…please call.” “ROB…YOU HAVE TO CALL ME NOW!!!!! IT’S VERY IMPORTANT…Please.”

Rob did not reply.

NANCY WAS SITTING AT THE KITCHEN TABLE ON WEDNESDAY
morning when Connie came in at 7:00 a.m. to make breakfast for the children.

“I’ve got a list for you,” Nancy said. “After you take Ethan to PIPS, I want you to go down to Stanley and buy a new bedspread. I’ve written down the size. It’s for the bed in my bedroom.”

“The spread you have is very nice,” Connie said.

“I know, but I have to put a new one on. The old one reminds me too much of Mr. Kissel. It makes me sad. It makes me feel very lonely.”

Then Nancy told Min to go to Adventist Hospital on Stubbs Road in Happy Valley to buy a Velcro strap that she could use to support the ribs she kept saying were broken.

“Everybody move fast,” she said. “We’ve got a lot to do today. Grandpa Ira will be getting here tonight. Oh, Connie, while you’re down in Stanley pick up some more peppermint oil. Oh, and Min, stop at the hardware store in Stanley on your way back and buy some more rope. I want nylon-coated rope. Do you understand that? Nylon-coated.”

The morning was cloudy, with rising humidity. It was going to be a sticky afternoon. Min got back to the apartment first. As she walked into the living room with the Velcro strap and the nylon-coated rope she smelled something awful, like rotting fish.

“Put those things down, Min. I need you to do something else right away. Go down to the storeroom and start clearing out those boxes you rearranged. There’s still not enough room. Bring them up and stack them in the hallway.”

Trying not to breathe deeply, Min glanced around the living room. Nancy was standing on the new carpet from Tequila Kola. The old carpet had been rolled up and dragged behind the living room couch. Its bulkiness suggested that something had been rolled up inside it. It seemed to be the source of the stench.

“Why big?” Min asked, pointing toward the old carpet.

“Oh, I stuffed some old sheets and pillows inside it. I’m having it moved down to the storeroom this afternoon. Now you get down to the storeroom and start clearing out those boxes.”

Min did not go directly to the storeroom. She called Connie. She explained about the rolled-up carpet and the smell. She asked Connie how soon she’d be back. In ten or fifteen minutes, Connie said.

It was just after 11:30 a.m. when Connie carried the new bedspread and the peppermint oil into the apartment. The smell hit her as soon as she stepped into the living room. She looked at the new carpet on the floor. Then she looked at the old carpet rolled up behind the couch. The old carpet had to be the source of the odor. It was also so large in circumference that Connie knew it contained something more than old sheets and pillows.

Connie and Min went into their tiny room behind the kitchen to confer.

“I think Mrs. Kissel has done wrong,” Min said.

“Yes,” Connie said.

“Do you think—the carpet—the bad smell—”

“Yes,” Connie said. “Mr. Kissel.”

The two women hugged each other and cried.

When she regained her composure, Connie e-mailed Bryna O’Shea, whom she had come to consider a friend. The tone of the e-mail did not suggest an emergency, but the very fact of receiving an e-mail from Connie would alert Bryna that something out of the ordinary had occurred.

Chow Yiu-kwong rang the doorbell of the Kissel apartment at 2:00 p.m. Wednesday. He and a three-man Parkview maintenance crew had come to move the carpet to the storeroom. Min answered the door. Having dragged several tightly sealed moving cartons into the living room and pushed them next to the carpet, Nancy had gone into the bedroom to nap. The carpet was eight feet long. Chow could see that it had been rolled around a bulky object about six feet long. He and his crew could also smell the carpet. One of the men retched. Chow told two men to roll in the luggage trolley. Grunting loudly while trying not to inhale, the four men lifted the stinking, untidy heap onto the wheeled platform. They stacked the cartons next to it.

Ethan had been napping, but the noise from the living room woke him up. He ran out from his bedroom just as the workmen were starting to push the heavy trolley toward the door. To be helpful, Ethan ran ahead and opened the door.

As they passed, he shouted, “Yuck! Bad smell!” Min took him by the arm and pulled him away from the carpet. She gagged.

Chow came back from the storeroom at about 2:45 p.m. to return the keys. This time, Nancy answered the door.

“Is everything all right?” she asked as Chow handed her the keys.

“No, miss,” he said. “Very bad smell in the carpet. Something wrong. Very bad smell.”

“Oh, that’s nothing,” Nancy said. “Forget about it.”

Connie’s cell phone rang just after 10:00 p.m. It was 6:00 a.m. in San Francisco. Bryna had just woken up and had seen Connie’s e-mail. “What’s going on, Connie?” she asked.

The words poured out of Connie in a torrent: Mrs. Kissel had not let anyone in the bedroom since Monday morning, Mr. Kissel had disappeared, there was a new carpet in the living room and workmen had just taken the old one down to storage and it was rolled up as if there was something inside it and whatever was inside it smelled horrible.

“Connie, I’m worried about Mr. Kissel, too, but if you’re saying what I think you’re saying—no, that’s impossible.”

“You did not smell the carpet.”

“Connie, do you think Mr. Kissel is in the rug?”

“I don’t know!”

“You’ve got to go down to the storeroom and look!”

“No, no! No, I can’t do that. I’m afraid!”

Bryna called David Noh, but she wasn’t able to reach him until 5:00 p.m. by which time it was almost 9:00 a.m. Thursday in Hong Kong.

Noh didn’t have to be asked twice to call Connie. As soon as Connie told him about the bulky, heavy carpet that smelled like death, his last doubts about Rob’s fate disappeared. He left the Merrill Lynch office right away and went to the nearest police district headquarters—Western Division on Des Voeux Road—to not only file a missing persons report, but to explain that he had a pretty good idea of where the missing person could be found.

He gave a statement to officer Ng Yuk-ying. When he got to the part about Connie telling him that “a large, stinky carpet” had been moved from the Kissel apartment to a storeroom the day before, she excused herself. She came back within minutes, accompanied by Detective Senior Inspector See Kwong-tak, the officer in charge of Western District Crime Squad 2.

In plainclothes, nearing retirement, his face weathered if not quite wizened, Inspector See was a steadying presence. He listened attentively, writing down names, dates, phone numbers, and addresses. Noh’s account was so clear and complete and his delivery of it so polished that Inspector See asked very few questions.

“What happens now?” Noh asked.

“Now, I am sorry to say, we will find your missing person.”

Inspector See didn’t even have to go to Parkview to confirm that what David Noh had told him was true. On the phone the supervisor of the maintenance division told him that the foul-smelling carpet had been a major topic of conversation all day.

See pondered his next move. These were
gweilos
. Very wealthy
gweilos
. Merrill Lynch was a significant corporate force in Hong Kong. If indeed a
gweilo
Merrill Lynch multimillionaire investment banker had been killed, and especially if it turned out that he’d been killed by his wife, the case would cause a sensation in the expatriate community. Overnight, it would acquire a profile higher than any case on which See had worked during his nearly thirty years with the Hong Kong Police Force.

He cautioned himself to proceed with care. Wealthy expats didn’t have quite the influence at the highest levels that they’d had before the handover, but there were so many more of them, especially Americans, that they remained a constituency requiring delicate handling. The merest hint of police heavy-handedness could provoke an international incident, with
gweilos
yelping all over the newspapers and television about Chinese insensitivity to human rights.

From See’s perspective, there was more to be lost than won here. No great glory would attach to making an arrest in the case because—if David Noh’s suspicions were confirmed—there would be precious little detective work required. Yet the echoes of any blunder would pursue him through the rest of his years.

See obtained a search warrant that would permit entry into the storeroom even over the objections of Nancy Kissel. Accompanied by an officer named Chan Ping-kong, he arrived at Parkview at 7:00 p.m. He went to the property management office, where he’d arranged to take statements from the men who had moved the carpet the day before. He sent Chan to the storeroom in tower 15. He told Chan to “inspect” the storeroom but under no circumstances to try to enter it.

“Sir, I am not sure what you mean by ‘inspect,’” Chan said.

“I was trying to be discreet,” See replied. “I mean smell it.”

Chan returned in twenty minutes. “Inspector,” he said, “I smelled it. I think we will need to go inside, sir.”

“First, we will speak to Mrs. Kissel.”

Nancy was back from Isabel’s dance lesson in time to take a call from Bryna at 9:30 p.m.

“No word from Rob?” Bryna asked.

“No. You know, Bryna, I’ve always worried about Rob’s safety.”

“You have? You’ve never said that before. Why?”

“So many things can happen. But I’m telling myself not to worry. Right now, it’s all about staying calm.”

AS HE RUSHED DOWN THE HALLWAY TEN MINUTES AFTER
having been awakened by the 11:00 p.m. call from Nancy, Ira saw three policemen in plainclothes standing outside the apartment door. He nodded, they stepped aside, and he went in. Nancy was sitting at the dining room table, surrounded by police officers, some in plainclothes, some in uniform. She was silent, trembling, and staring off toward nowhere.

“Nancy! Are you all right?”

She stared at him as if she’d never seen him before. She didn’t speak. She was shaking.

A slender, middle-aged man dressed in polo shirt and chinos rose from the table and introduced himself to Ira.

“You are Mr. Keeshin?” he said. “I am Senior Inspector See.” He gestured toward the living room. “Perhaps if we may speak a word in private?”

Ira walked into the living room but did not sit. See looked as fresh and lively as if he’d just stepped out of the shower to start his day. Ira had the bizarre thought that the inspector would be heading for a golf course as soon as the sun rose. What drove that notion from Ira’s mind was the expression on Inspector See’s face. Like most Westerners, Ira found it difficult to read Chinese faces. But Inspector See’s expression was all too scrutable: it signified profound sadness.

“Sir, we know where your son-in-law is,” he said.

“Where?”

“In a storeroom in the basement of tower fifteen. We are quite certain.”

Ira gazed at the inspector, trying to process.

“We would like to ask your daughter for a key to the storeroom. In any case, we have a search warrant that permits us to enter it.”

“But why—”

“Mr. Keeshin, we are quite sure the body of your son-in-law is in the storeroom, wrapped inside a carpet that Mrs. Kissel had some men move from this apartment yesterday.”

Ira suffered the onset of comprehension.

“Oh, my God!”

See, who was almost exactly the same height as Ira, stepped forward and placed an arm gently around his shoulders. “I understand,” he said. “I am a father, too.”

“Oh, my God! Oh, my God, I can’t believe it! Oh, my God, it can’t be!”

Ira spun as if the inspector had just slapped him. He put his hands to his face.
“Oh, my God! Oh, my God, no!”
He reeled back toward the dining room, his cheeks already slick with tears.

See followed. “We have asked your daughter for the key to the storeroom but she tells us she has lost it.”

Ira turned to face Nancy, who continued to stare into space.

“Give them the goddamned key!”

Shaking hard, she whispered, “Kitchen drawer.”

A uniformed officer returned with the key a moment later. Ira could hear Ethan crying in his bedroom. Nancy seemed locked into a catatonic state. Connie, awakened by the sound of Ethan’s cries on her intercom, hurried through the kitchen and into the living room.

“Connie,” Ira said, “please stay in the kitchen until I call you.”

She pointed toward Ethan’s room.

“He must be wet,” Ira said. “I’ll change him.”

Nancy was shaking so hard her chair rattled on the dining room floor. “We are going to the storeroom now,” Inspector See said softly to Ira. “If you wish, you may come with us.”

“No, no,” Ira said. “I need to make a phone call. And my daughter—look at her, she needs to get to a hospital. I want you to call an ambulance for my daughter.”

“One is already on its way.”

Two constables, a man and a woman, stayed in the dining room with Nancy. The rest of the police followed See to the storeroom. Ira changed Ethan’s diaper. He made sure Isabel and Zoe were still asleep. He called his wife in Winnetka to tell her to call her son-in-law at Skadden, Arps in Chicago and ask him to find the best lawyer in Hong Kong right away.

The doorbell rang. It was two ambulance attendants with a wheelchair. As they helped Nancy up from her dining room chair, Ira stepped into the kitchen and spoke to Connie. He told her he would reserve a suite at the Parkview Hotel for the children. When they woke up she was to tell them that Mommy and Daddy were busy and that instead of going to school they were going to the hotel, where they could play all day long.

“Keep them there,” Ira said. “Keep them busy. Don’t let them watch TV by themselves. I’m sure this will be on the news.”

Connie was crying her sweet
amah
’s heart out. She looked up at Ira and nodded. “I will take care of them, Mr. Keeshin,” she said.

The stench assaulted the policemen as soon as they opened the storeroom door. It was the smell emitted by a decomposing and putrefying human body approximately ninety-six hours after death. The grotesquely swollen carpet lay on the floor. Nancy had fitted black plastic garbage bags over each end and had secured them with adhesive tape. She had then wrapped the entire carpet in polyethylene sheeting. After taping that shut, she’d tied four cushions to the outside of it, using blue nylon rope.

Scientific Officer Mak Chung-hung got down on one knee and slit open the black plastic bag at one end. He stuck a gloved hand inside. He felt a human head. He looked up at Inspector See and nodded. It was 2:15 a.m., Friday, November 7.

Connie called Bryna in San Francisco, where it was late Thursday morning.

“The police came. They took Mrs. Kissel away. They said Mr. Kissel is in the storeroom. There were so many police here. So many.” She shut her cell phone when she started to cry too hard to say anything more.

Bryna realized that no one in the Kissel family even knew that Rob had been missing. She thought it would be better if she told someone instead of waiting for the Hong Kong police to make the call. She didn’t want to call Bill because the news might kill him. She didn’t want to call Jane because she couldn’t bear to be the one to give the news to Rob’s adoring little sister. Eventually, she called Andrew in Greenwich, where it was early evening.

Hayley answered. She said Andrew was busy talking to a contractor.

“I have to talk to him. It’s really important.”

“Can’t I take a message?”

“No, it’s too important for a message.”

Andrew came to the phone impatiently. “What is it, Bryna?”

“Andrew, I think you’d better sit down.”

“For Christ’s sake, Bryna, what do you want?”

“It’s Rob. He’s…gone.”

“I know he’s gone. He told me he was going to tell Nancy last weekend that he wanted a divorce. He’s left her. So?”

“He didn’t leave her. She killed him.”

“Bryna, are you out of your mind?”

“She killed him, Andrew. The Hong Kong police have just arrested her. She wrapped his body in a carpet and tried to hide it in a storeroom.”

Bryna heard the phone drop. She heard Andrew scream. Hayley picked up the phone.

“What’s going on?”

“Nancy killed Rob. She’s been arrested.”

Andrew was screaming so loudly in the background that Bryna couldn’t hear Hayley’s reply. Then she heard the children start to cry.

“I’m sorry,” Bryna said, and hung up.

A week earlier, Andrew had paid $4.7 million in restitution to the board of 200 East Seventy-fourth Street in return for assurance that no criminal charges would be filed against him. To raise the money, he’d liquidated Hanrock’s $25 million portfolio of New Jersey real estate. Investors, including Rob, should have received $15 million from the sales. Instead of paying them, however, Andrew covered up the fact that he’d sold the New Jersey properties. He used the $20 million he retained after settling with the co-op board to finance a plunge into Connecticut real estate. Using forged documents and a stolen notary public stamp, he was able to defraud banks into issuing huge mortgages on properties he’d already mortgaged elsewhere. He was convinced that as long as he stayed current on interest payments, no one would be the wiser. Meanwhile, he used the illegally obtained proceeds to make down payments on new properties, on which he then obtained even larger mortgage loans from unsuspecting banks.

It was a scam that required both a clear head and a firm hand on the tiller, neither of which Andrew possessed in the best of times. The shock of learning that Nancy had killed Rob was not one he was well equipped to absorb.

As soon as the ambulance pulled out of the Parkview driveway, Ira looked out the back window and was astonished by what he saw. They were being followed by dozens of cars and trucks, some with flashing lights, some with television broadcasting equipment mounted on top.

“Jesus Christ,” Ira said out loud. “What did the police do, tip off the entire fucking Asian press corps?”

Nancy lay under a blanket, still shaking, apparently still not able to speak.

Ruttonjee Hospital, the closest to Parkview, was on Queen’s Road East in Wan Chai, not far from the offices of Dr. Dytham, whom Nancy had visited on Tuesday morning. As they turned off Queen’s Road into the hospital driveway, the ambulance slowed to a standstill. Still more television station news crew trucks were double-parked on both sides. A swarm of cameramen and photographers had gathered by the emergency room door.

The ambulance stopped and the attendants got out to unfold the wheelchair and to open the swinging doors to the back. Cameramen and photographers, shouting and shoving, surged forward. Strobe units and television lights turned the driveway as bright as a beach in the midday sun. Nancy swayed back and forth, her eyes shut, shivering spasmodically, her arms clasped tightly around her chest.

Ira climbed out of the back of the ambulance and pushed shouting cameramen out of the way. As soon as the attendants placed Nancy in the wheelchair, Ira put a blanket over her head to shield her from the pulsing and flashing of the lights.

In the emergency room, Nancy was examined by a female physician named Li Wei-sum. Emerging briefly from her trancelike state, Nancy told the doctor that her ribs were hurting badly and were undoubtedly broken. Dr. Li, however, could detect no sign of injury to the ribs. She did note “abrasions of lip, chest, knees and feet,” as well as “bruising on upper and lower forearms, shoulders and backs of hands.” Judging from the color of the bruises, Dr. Li noted, they were unlikely to have been more than two days old.

Inspector See, who had just arrived at the hospital, waited for Li to finish her examination. Then he stepped forward and told Nancy that she was under arrest, charged with the murder of her husband. She gazed at him as if she hadn’t understood a word he’d said. Her shaking approached the level of spastic paralysis.

Shortly before 4:00 a.m., she was brought to an upstairs ward. Ira gazed in and couldn’t believe it: there must have been fifty women lying on cots.

“What is this?” he said. “You can’t put her in there!” Then he realized that they could. She was under arrest now, charged with murder. They could put her wherever they wanted.

When Nancy saw the ward she emerged from her apparent catatonia in a hurry. She began screaming. She screamed louder than Ira had ever heard anyone scream.
“I’m not staying here! You can’t do this to me! Let me go, let me go! I’ve got to get out!”

Ira and two nurses helped her to a bed as she screamed. It was a single bed in a long row of single beds, all the others occupied by Chinese women of the sort that for six years Nancy had forsaken public transportation in order to avoid.

She finally screamed herself into exhaustion. Ira stood by her, stroking her head, waiting for the sedative she’d been given to take effect. By 5:00 a.m. she’d fallen asleep and the ward was quiet, except for the static coming from the radios of the two uniformed policemen who stood guard at the foot of Nancy’s bed.

“Can you turn down those radios, please?” Ira asked. “Down? You know, down?” He gestured the turning of a dial. The policemen understood him. With slight bows of apology they lowered the volume of the static. Ira asked them when someone in authority would arrive. He wanted to know what was going to happen next. Their lack of English made communication difficult, but they eventually conveyed to Ira that a ranking officer would be there by 9:00 a.m. Ira looked at his wristwatch and allowed himself to feel how stupefyingly exhausted he was. He went back to the Parkview Hotel to try to sleep for an hour or two.

The pathologist found that Rob had been killed by five blows to the right side of his head from a blunt object. The blows had been so hard that much of the right side of his skull had been crushed in upon his brain, resulting in the extrusion of significant amounts of brain matter. The consistency of the wounds’ severity and their grouping in such close proximity to one another led the pathologist to conclude that all five blows had been struck with the victim in a stationary, quite likely prone position.

It was not hard to reconstruct what she had done with his body after she’d killed him.

She had slid a black plastic garbage bag over his head and had tied the bag shut with blue nylon cord. She had covered the body with towels. She had put the towel-covered body into a children’s sleeping bag later identified as having come from her daughters’ room. She had wrapped the bag in sheets of polyethylene and had sealed the sheets with adhesive tape.