Blood Passage by Michael J. McCann Page A

to your cousin at that time that may have related to these memories?”
    “ Peter asked him a question.”
    “ What was the question, Mrs. Chan?”
    Grace Chan looked down at her hands in her lap and said nothing for a few moments. Then she said, “He asked Taylor, ‘do you remember who hurt you because you found out about the game?’”
    “ Did Taylor say anything to that?”
    Grace Chan kept staring at her hands. Her chin trembled slightly. Finally she said, “Yes, he said that Shawn and Gary hurt him.”
    “ Shawn and Gary?”
    “ Yes.” Grace Chan looked up at Dr. Walsh off-camera. “Peter asked if they were Chinese and Taylor said, no. He said Shawn was a black man and Gary was a white man.”
    “ All right. Was there anything else?”
    Grace Chan glanced reluctantly at her husband, who was obviously unhappy about what his wife was saying.
    “ Anything else?” Dr. Walsh prompted.
    Grace Chan nodded. “Taylor asked to see Peter’s pictures.”
    “ Pictures?”
    Grace Chan wrung her hands in her lap. “Peter said, ‘what pictures?’ and Taylor said, ‘the pictures on your tummy.’”
    “ What did he mean by this?” Dr. Walsh asked.
    “ Tattoos,” Grace Chan said. “Peter has tattoos on his chest. But he didn’t show them to him right away. He asked Taylor what the pictures were like.”
    “ And?”
    “ Taylor said, um, he said, ‘birds, two funny birds with fire. Fire in their mouths.’”
    “ I don’t think we need to go into this at all,” Dr. Chan interjected. “This is not relevant. Can we discuss something else? Do you have any other questions, Dr. Walsh?”
    “ Does your cousin have tattoos on his chest, Mrs. Chan?” Dr. Walsh persisted.
    Grace Chan nodded.
    “ Dr. Walsh, my wife’s cousin has absolutely no relevance whatsoever. Can we—”
    “ Did he show them to Taylor at that time?”
    Grace Chan nodded again.
    “ Dr. Walsh—” Dr. Chan tried again to interrupt.
    “ How did Taylor react when he saw them?”
    “ He laughed. He came up to Peter and touched them, and he laughed. Peter said, ‘another little secret, right?’ and Taylor said, ‘another secret.’”
    “ Had he ever seen them before, Mrs. Chan? Had Peter shown them to him before or mentioned them to him before?”
    Grace Chan shook her head. “They’re secret tattoos, or whatever. Dragons. To do with Peter’s, um, affiliations. He doesn’t talk about them with anyone.”
    “ Had anyone ever mentioned them before to Taylor or discussed them in Taylor’s hearing?”
    “ Peter is not talked about in our house,” Grace Chan replied, looking miserably at her husband. We don’t discuss him around Taylor. So, no, Taylor had no way of knowing that Peter had tattoos, let alone what they looked like.”
    The video clip ended.
    Hank went back to his chair and sat down. He picked up his pen and jotted a few notes in his notebook.
    “ This cousin Peter have a last name?” he asked, still writing.
    “ Yeah,” Josh said. “It’s not Liu. Just a second, I’ll find it in my notes.” He tapped the touchpad and studied the display. “Here it is. Mah. M a-h.”
    “ Peter Mah,” Hank repeated.
    “ Yes, that’s right.”
    Hank wrote it down, although he didn’t need to. He knew about Peter Mah, and he knew about the significance of the dragon tattoos on his chest.
    “ There’s another one you may want to see,” Josh said, tapping again.
    “ Oh?”
    “ Dr. Walsh interviewed Taylor on-camera with his mother,” Josh explained, “but he wasn’t saying anything at all about the previous personality. So she closed it down and we talked about it in a sidebar. She thought maybe I could get him to say a few things if we made him feel more comfortable away from the camera. So I asked him to show me his room. We went into his room and I got him to show me his toys. We left the door open so his parents could hear what was going on and so he felt he could leave whenever he wanted. We just sat down on the