The Uninvited

Their tips are spiked, like narrow bones.And at the bottom right of the page,where an artist would put his signature, isa hand-print. The fingers are together,with only the thumb separate from the rest.The effect is that of a stop sign.Have the police checked thefingerprints against Sunny Chen’s? Hiswife may have demanded it. She hadinsisted, after all, that the drawings couldnot have been left by Sunny. The jaggedellipse and the eye are large in relation tothe hand. I pull the Jenwai folder back onmy screen and call up the image of thesmear that Sunny Chen was so keen for thepolice to fingerprint at the factory, yet soreluctant to discuss: the smear he laterclaimed he’d made himself. He’d called it‘evidence’. I stare at it for a long time.