Themes Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng Kylie Lee Baker

Systemic Injustice and Police Cover‑Up in Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng

Defining the Thematic Claim

In Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng, Kylie Lee Baker argues that systemic injustice operates not through isolated bad actors but through a coordinated institutional machinery that silences victims and buries evidence. The novel’s central claim is that the NYPD and the mayor’s office actively suppress the investigation into a serial killer targeting Asian women because those lives are deemed expendable. The cover-up is driven by election-cycle optics, institutional racism, and a culture that treats “deprioritized” cases as erased. This page traces that claim across three key plot developments, connects it to the novel’s characters and symbols, and confronts the story’s contradictions.

The Cover‑Up Unfolds in Three Acts

1. Delilah’s Death as a Silenced Beginning

The novel opens with a murder that should have launched a full-scale investigation. In April 2020, a white man shoves Cora’s half‑sister Delilah onto the subway tracks, killing her instantly. The attacker vanishes into a deserted city. Cora later learns that the police did almost nothing. No serious search is conducted. The case is filed away without leads. This negligence is not mere incompetence—it foreshadows a pattern. When Cora eventually gains access to Officer Wang’s secret files, she discovers that Delilah’s death is one of 374 murders of Asian women the department has chosen to ignore. The initial failure to pursue Delilah’s killer is the first thread in a larger tapestry of institutional silence.

2. The Reporter Who Can’t Report

After cleaning the crime scene of Yuxi He—a doctor killed in her Chinatown apartment—Cora, Harvey, and Yifei meet a reporter named Devin McSomething (Themes page). They tell him about the bats left at every scene, hoping publicity will force police action. Devin is initially eager, but later his editor kills the story. Yifei confronts him, and he admits that running the full report would get him arrested—not fired. This episode reveals that the suppression is not just internal police policy but extends to the press. The mayor’s office, facing an election year, has leverage over what gets printed. The article that finally appears is a shallow piece praising increased police presence in Chinatown, a classic example of “copaganda” that buries the real crisis.

3. Officer Wang’s Secret Recordings and the Mayor’s Note

The most direct evidence of a cover-up comes from Officer Kevin Wang, an Asian‑American detective who tried to pursue the serial killer. Cora finds his backup files, which include audio recordings of conversations with his superiors. In one exchange, a captain tells Wang to “deprioritize” the case because “people die every day” and the city can’t save everyone. The recordings also capture a man—likely Captain Antoni Mezzasalma—ordering Wang to stop sending emails and to “leave your bag,” confiscating confidential files. The most damning piece is a photograph of a note on the mayor’s letterhead: “ANTONI—REGARDING OUR LAST CONVERSATION—KEEP THIS QUIET, PLEASE. DO WHAT YOU NEED TO DO. W.” This direct order from Mayor Webb to the precinct captain confirms that the cover-up reached the highest levels of city government.

Wang himself is murdered shortly afterward, shot in his bed by a machine gun while off duty—an execution that Cora suspects was designed to silence him. The crime scene is so fresh that Cora and Harvey arrive before the police photographer, an anomaly that suggests the investigation into Wang’s death was also compromised.

Character and Symbol Connections

Characters as Witnesses and Victims

  • Cora Zeng (Cora Zeng character page) transforms from a passive victim of tragedy into an active archivist of injustice. She cleans the crime scenes, collects the thumb drive, and assembles the evidence the system tried to shred.
  • Delilah Zeng (Delilah Zeng character page) is the initial sacrifice whose death is never properly investigated. Her ghost guides Cora toward the truth, symbolising the unavenged dead.
  • Yifei Liu (Yifei Liu character page) embodies the frustrated activist who tries to use the press and is blocked at every turn. Her refusal to give names to the reporter shows her awareness of the danger.
  • Harvey Chen (Harvey Chen character page) provides comic relief but also practical support, yet his role as a coworker means he too is caught in the system of underpaid, unseen labor.
  • Officer Wang is the whistleblower whose murder is the system’s final silencing act. His death scene—meant to be cleaned before proper documentation—mirrors the erasure of the women he tried to save.
  • Mayor Webb and Captain Mezzasalma (Auntie Lois character page) represent the political and police arms of the cover-up. The mayor’s note and the captain’s threats reveal a coordinated effort to protect the killer from exposure.

Symbols of Burial and Erasure

  • Bat (Bat symbol page): The serial killer’s calling card becomes evidence of a pattern, but it is also the thing the police ignore. Bats in drains and vents point to a systematic infestation that authorities refuse to treat.
  • Jade bracelet (Jade bracelet symbol page): Appears on Officer Wang’s ghostly hand when he passes Cora the thumb drive. The bracelet signifies ancestral protection and the burden of memory that the living must carry.
  • Joss paper (Joss paper symbol page): Burned for the dead, joss paper also symbolises the burning of evidence. The police literally shredded Wang’s case files, and Cora must piece them back together like paper fragments.
  • Orange (Orange symbol page): In the final scene, Cora offers half an orange to a ghost and eats the other half herself. The orange represents agency and the refusal to let fear consume her; she reclaims what the system tried to take.

Complexity and Contradiction

Baker does not paint a simple picture of good cops versus bad cops. Officer Wang is a flawed character: he kept photographs of the murdered women that border on voyeuristic, and Cora feels uneasy about the man whose crime scene she cleaned. The system is not monolithic—it includes the well-intentioned but ultimately powerless Wang alongside the actively corrupt Mezzasalma. Moreover, the novel does not exonerate the Asian American community. The silence of bystanders, the pressure to “move on,” and the complicity of families who accept official stories are all part of the broader failure.

Another layer of complexity is the pandemic context. As Baker writes in her Author’s Note, the COVID-19 pandemic “eroded trust in our leaders” and led to the sacrifice of vulnerable populations. The cover-up is not solely about racism but also about a culture that accepts mass death as normal. The serial killer’s murders become indistinguishable from the daily COVID death toll in the eyes of the power structure.

Finally, the novel’s climax—Cora leading the hungry ghosts to burn down the mayor’s mansion—is both a cathartic fantasy and a statement about the limits of institutional justice. When the system fails, the only recourse is spiritual defiance. Yet Cora does not achieve justice in any legal sense; the killer is never named or tried. The cover-up succeeds in the sense that the official record remains blank.

Study Questions and Answers

  1. What evidence in the novel directly proves that the mayor ordered the police to suppress the serial-killer investigation?
    Cora finds a photographed note on the mayor’s letterhead addressed to Captain Antoni Mezzasalma that says “Keep this quiet, please. Do what you need to do.” This, combined with Officer Wang’s recordings of the captain telling him to “deprioritize” the case, establishes a direct chain of command that buried the truth.

  2. How do the press and the police work together to hide the murders?
    The reporter Devin McSomething is prevented from printing Yifei’s account under threat of arrest. The paper instead runs a story praising increased police presence in Chinatown, which obscures the ongoing attacks. The police also destroy Wang’s case files and order his fellow officers not to cooperate.

  3. Why is Officer Wang’s death significant to the theme of cover-up?
    Wang is killed in his bed while off duty, before his crime scene is photographed. The cleaners arrive anomalously early, suggesting that someone deliberately tampered with the evidence. His murder is a silencing tactic that mirrors how the women’s deaths were handled—sanitized and erased.

  4. What role does the symbol of the bat play in exposing the cover-up?
    The bats left by the killer form a pattern that three victims share, yet the police ignore it as coincidental. Yifei explicitly calls the killer “Batman” based on the calling card, but the press refuses to print that detail. The bat becomes evidence of a deliberate oversight.

  5. Does Cora achieve justice by the novel’s end? Explain the ambiguity.
    Cora leads the ghosts to burn the mayor’s house, a symbolic act of vengeance, but no legal accountability is achieved. The killer’s identity is never publicly revealed, and the cover-up remains in place. Cora instead finds small personal peace—offering an orange, building an altar, getting vaccinated—suggesting that justice must be redefined when institutions fail.