Excerpt: "Never Enough" By Joe McGinniss

Prologue: Three Days In November 2003

Isabel was nine, Zoe six, and Ethan three. Rob and Nancy had arrived in Hong Kong in 1997 when Zoe was an infant. Ethan had been born there. Rob had been sent to Hong Kong to make money for Goldman Sachs and for himself. He’d done both. Three years later, he’d moved to Merrill Lynch to make more.

Ira had breakfast with the children while Nancy got dressed. He took the girls down to their school bus. They were thrilled by Grandpa Ira’s surprise visit. Connie, the nanny - or amah, as nannies are called in Hong Kong -would take Ethan to his preschool later.

The morning was cool, the sky clear. November marked the end of Hong Kong’s summer. In November, the daytime temperature dropped into the seventies and the humidity eased. The air pollution lingered - the pollution never went away anymore - but it was slightly less oppressive than in summer.

Ira and Nancy took a taxi to the Aberdeen Division police station on Wong Chuk Hang Road, near the Ap Lei Chau Bridge. As soon as they arrived and stated their business they were led to a conference room and joined by Sergeant Mok Kwok-chuen, who was ready to write down the details.

But instead of speaking, Nancy started to tremble, as if on the verge of a seizure. Then she closed her eyes and began to rock back and forth, her arms crossed tightly in front of her, moaning.

Ira tried to calm her. She quivered and sobbed. Sergeant Mok was attentive and solicitous. Ira told him that Nancy had been badly beaten by her husband, who had then gone missing and who was still missing after three and a half days.

Eventually, Nancy was able to stutter a brief account of what had happened. She said her husband had been drunk and had begun hitting and kicking her when she’d resisted his attempts to have sex. Then he’d left their apartment and she didn’t know where he’d gone. The account came out in fits and starts. Nancy would speak a few coherent sentences, then slip back into a state in which all she did was tremble, moan, and cry.

Sergeant Mok explained that he could issue a missing persons report, but that before Nancy could press assault and battery charges a police doctor would have to examine her and record her injuries. He said that could be done at Queen Mary Hospital in nearby Pok Fu Lam, not far from the University of Hong Kong. Ira and Sergeant Mok helped her to a waiting patrol car.

It was almost noon when they arrived. Queen Mary, the teaching hospital for the medical school of the nearby University of Hong Kong, was one of the largest and busiest acute-care facilities in the territory. The lobby was overflowing with patients waiting to be seen. The Hong Kong patrolman who brought Ira and Nancy to the hospital explained to a receptionist why they had come. The receptionist told him that Nancy would have to wait her turn. They sat and they waited. And they sat and waited. Nancy did not like to sit and wait under any circumstances. She didn’t see why she should be made to now. This was the sort of thing she’d been putting up with for six years. The Chinese did not seem able to grasp the obvious fact that certain people should not be made to sit and wait.

Ira asked the patrolman how much longer the wait would be. He didn’t know. Nobody knew. Nancy had already been waiting for two hours. She said enough was enough. She was a busy woman. The children would soon be getting out of school. She and Ira left. Maybe she’d come back tomorrow.

That evening, Ira and Nancy brought Isabel, the nine-year-old, back to school for a dance lesson. Like most children of wealthy expatriates in Hong Kong, the Kissel girls attended the Hong Kong International School, the territory’s most costly and prestigious day school.