by Dale Mayer
She thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Let me talk to the police first.”
“The trouble with that is, we won’t know what you said, so what we say later could contradict you,” he warned. “You’ll need to keep it simple.”
“Okay,” she muttered.
When the cops arrived, she quickly explained what had happened. They took one look at her, at the old man on the ground, and at both Cain and Eton, then raced into the house. She knew that would be the focus from now on. It wouldn’t matter what Morgan had done. Not the shooting today or the heavy drinking he’d kept up steadily, because all Morgan wanted to do now was drink some more, so he wouldn’t have to deal with the next few months.
As it was, an ambulance arrived and checked him out, but he refused transport to the hospital to get any care for his head injury. He didn’t say very much of anything. Once they got him upright, he just sat on the porch steps and stared into space, with almost the same blank look that her father had.
Petra sat down beside him, speaking in their native language. “You knew all this time,” she said. “You knew how much my family had suffered.”
He didn’t say anything.
“But you also suffered,” she said, trying to find a way to understand him, to find some way to make sense of him just leaving her sister here. “It didn’t bother you at all that she was rotting a few feet away from you?”
He didn’t say a word.
“Instead, you just sealed up the room tight and left it. My God,” she said. “Did you kill her yourself, or did your son do it?”
He shifted uneasily at that.
“You know the cops will have questions for you,” she said. “No way they can shield you from it this time. This is way too big,” she said. “You can’t just fire your gun to scare them away. Not to mention the fact that another shooter was trying to kill the three of us. While you were out cold on the sidewalk, somebody from the other side of that wall over there tried to kill us.”
He looked at her with a sharp gaze at that point, and she realized he really was in there and listening.
She nodded. “Were they after your son Chico?”
He got an odd look in his eyes, but he shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “He’s a bad seed.”
“Do you know who Chico was working for?” she asked.
“Tristan.”
She looked at Cain and shrugged. “He says Chico was working for Tristan.”
“Ask for any details that you can get.”
Knowing they probably didn’t have much time, she quickly turned back and said, “Please tell me. What kind of work was he doing for Tristan?”
“Devil’s work.”
“Killing people?”
He just shrugged.
“Theft, drugs, burglary, anything? What was it?”
“All of it,” he replied.
She sagged back with a big sigh. “Right, a bad seed.”
Morgan nodded slowly.
“And Tristan? Do you know where they would meet?”
“No,” he said. “But all that was before Chico left, before Tristan left.”
“Do you know where Tristan is now?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head.
“Do you know how they kept in contact with each other?”
“Phone.”
Petra looked at Cain and asked, “Did you get Chico’s phone? Apparently Chico and Tristan communicated by phone.”
Cain frowned at that, pulled out his own phone and sent a quick text.
She looked back at the father, not nearly so imposing now. “He’s dead, you know.” The old man looked at her in surprise. “Your son, Chico,” she said. “He’s dead.” But instead of the sorrow she expected to see, there was what looked like relief. She thought about that for a moment. “He’s caused you a lot of trouble, didn’t he?”
The old man slowly nodded.
“Did he threaten to kill you?”
He nodded even slower.
“And, if you were to say anything about my sister, he’d put a bullet in your head too, right?”
He nodded again, even slower.
She groaned. “Well, I still wish you would have said something, but Chico’s dead, and he can’t hurt you anymore. He can’t hurt anyone.”
The tired old man just stared out into the horizon.
“Was he your son?”
“I don’t see how,” he said. “Bad seed.”
She looked up at Cain and shrugged.
*
Cain encouraged her to continue with her questions.
“What’s the deal with Tristan?” Petra asked Morgan, but the old drunk man just shrugged. “Who does he work for? Do you know company names or anything at all?”
She kept asking questions, now in English for Cain’s benefit, but the man had sunk into some drunken haze. It made sense now that he’d been drinking so heavily. But no way that dead body would remain undetected forever. Possibly until he died. Maybe the son—whether Chico or Tristan—would come back and take care of Morgan and torch the place. It was an incredibly sad scenario. Maybe Tristan still would resort to arson.
Cain looked back at the house, as he listened, and he realized how large the wing on that side of the house was. Cain looked at her and said, “I want to go back inside and look at the floor below Chico’s bedroom.”
She nodded. “The cops are inside. They may not let you.”
“Well, I’ll give it a try,” he said.
With Eton at his side, the two of them walked in, slipped past the cops, and headed directly to the rooms under the wing where the body was found. He couldn’t believe there wouldn’t be some kind of decomposition impacting the floor below. But the climate was so dry here, and, with the room sealed up like that, he didn’t know. As they headed to the room downstairs, he exchanged a look with his partner.
“Do you think something’s here?” Eton asked.
“It’s time to find out,” Cain said. Reaching forward with his gloved hand, he checked the knob. It was locked. He quickly popped the lock and pushed it open.
They stood in the open doorway, surveying the scene. The smell was strong down here, but nowhere near as bad as upstairs. Some people might not have known the difference. The room was completely empty, except for a series of large cupboards. They walked through to them and pulled open the doors, but nothing was here.
He looked behind the cupboards, wondering why these were even here. “I wonder if this was an office or something. He could have come up and down the stairs, and no one would have noticed anyone was working down here.”
“An office for what though?” Eton said. “Everything’s gone.”
“It wouldn’t take much to clean it out.” He motioned to a tiny piece of something white stuck behind a particular cupboard. Even with the two strong men, they had to put their backs into it in order to shift the big sturdy cupboard. After moving it, Eton reached down and pulled out a photo.
It was the gunman, Chico, from the museum, with someone else. The other man was slightly older and had a hand on Chico’s shoulder. They looked like they could have been related.
They both studied it, wondering where the picture was taken. It could have been anywhere in Europe. Cain flipped it over and saw the name Tristan written there. “Okay,” he said and immediately took a photo and sent it off.
“It’d be nice if we could get more on this Tristan guy,” Eton said. “And find out what he was into.”
They worked together to move the other cupboard slightly too. Behind it, they found a series of envelopes taped to the back.
“I wonder how long ago he did this,” Cain said. Hearing footsteps and voices on the stairs, he said, “We need to hurry.”
They quickly ripped everything off the back of the wardrobe cupboards and, along with the photo of Tristan, put it all together, and slipped out the side door, the police none the wiser. Walking around the front, they went to where Petra sat beside the old man.
Cain held out the photo to the old man. “Is this Chico?” they asked, pointing to the one from the museum.
He looked up at it and nodded.
“And Tristan?”
He nodded.
“They got along?”
He nodded and shrugged.
She quickly started to ask him questions. And this time he spoke in his native language.
“They get along to a degree. Tristan is dominant and uses Chico,” she said, looking at the photos. “Tristan is older, so I didn’t go to school with him and don’t know that much about him.”
“Good enough,” he said. “Do you need to stay here?”
She sighed. “Most likely.” She looked up at him. “Are you leaving?”
“We found some stuff we want to sort through,” he said quietly.
She nodded. “Go on back to the bed-and-breakfast. I’ll come down in a little bit.”
With that, the two men turned, slipped through a side gate in the stone wall, and walked back to the bed-and-breakfast. Cain knew the cops would probably come after them pretty quick, looking for statements if nothing else, and he and Eton would be happy to provide them. The bottom line was that it was a pretty shitty time frame right now for added complications. Their first focus was on finding Bullard.
Cain and Eton walked through the front door to the bed-and-breakfast and headed straight to their rooms. They saw no sign of the older couple, which was a good thing, although Petra’s father still sat outside on the front porch. Upstairs in their rooms, they quickly opened up the envelopes and took photos of everything, sending it to their team. Then they sat down to diagnose what the hell they had found.
“This looks like a hit list,” Eton said of the piece of paper in his hand. “And Bullard’s name is on it.”
Immediately Cain rose, took one look, and whistled. “Well, this is the best connection we’ve found yet. So it appears Chico was essentially working for this Tristan guy? Acting at his bidding anyway. And what is Tristan’s deal? Is he the one who’s been hired out to take down Bullard’s team, or is he the one doing the hiring?” Remembering the little black book he’d stashed in his pocket, he pulled it out, skimming over its contents fast. Cain said, “I’m not sure if these are contacts, but there are names, dates, and places.”
“We’ll have to analyze all the content,” Eton said, holding out his hand.
Cain passed it over. “Money is listed too. So I’m worried that the list is a kill sheet.”
“In which case, it’s a good thing that Chico asshole is dead,” Eton muttered. He went through some of the names on the list, reading out a couple of them.
Cain didn’t recognize any of the names. He was busy working on the piece of paper in his hand that had Bullard’s name on it. He sent that off to his team, knowing that everybody would be working on it, including Ryland. As soon as Cain sent it, his phone buzzed with replies and answers from the rest of the team. But Cain wanted to make sure they all had copies of everything.
He sat down and placed one particular envelope on the bed and carefully went through it. It was a machinery list. Weapons that Chico had; weapons that he liked; weapons he would buy again. It was almost like a shopping list of what to get. Then Cain noted the tiny little marks on the side of some guns listed here, and he remembered seeing a couple of those in the closet.
“Looks like this is a list of his weapons cache,” Cain said, laying down the sheet of paper. “Most of this was not easily obtainable.”
“Somebody’s got contacts,” Eton replied. “Tristan maybe.”
“Apparently. I’m still frustrated as hell though.” He looked at the list that had Bullard’s name on it. The thing was, Bullard’s name was in the middle. “I wonder if this is a wishful-thinking dead list,” he muttered out loud. “And did you notice that nothing is checked off?”
“Right. So it’s almost like a possible assassination list,” Eton said.
“Regardless we’re not on it,” Cain said. “That’s weird.”
“No, but see that little mark beside Bullard’s name? I think it’s a plus sign, maybe signifying the team.”
“That could be,” Cain agreed. “What we need to do is figure out if everybody on this list above Bullard’s name has been taken out already.”
“And we’ve got to focus on finding this Tristan guy. He’s the connection we have to work with now.”
“Hopefully the team can take that old photo and find out what he looks like currently. We really need a new photo,” he said.
“And we need it, like, now,” Eton agreed.
“Might be a little easier said than done.” He looked at Eton. “I wonder if our hosts here know anything about Tristan.”
“Go ask,” Eton said. “Everything that we’ve got here basically connects all of them, and, with Bullard’s name right there in black-and-white, we know it’s related to him. But it’s a matter of who Tristan is connected to that would hire him for something like this. Unless he’s the one doing the hiring, but then the question would be why.” Both of their phones buzzed just then. Cain looked at the message and said, “The name on the top of the list is dead, taken out eighteen months ago.”
“So it is a kill list,” Eton said.
“They’ll work their way down,” he said. “And there are three names after Bullard. Just because our guy Chico died, that doesn’t mean Tristan or one of his thugs isn’t still after them. And us too for that matter.”
“Who do you want to contact?”
The two men looked at each other. At the same moment, they said, “Ice.”
“I’ll go talk to Petra’s aunt and uncle downstairs,” Cain said, heading to the door, with the photo of Chico and Tristan. “Check to make sure Ice has all this and bring her up to speed.”
“Will do.”
When Cain walked downstairs to the kitchen, he found the old couple sitting at the kitchen table, talking over a cup of tea. As soon as he walked in, silence fell. They hopped to their feet. “Do you need something?”
He shrugged and said, “Sit down for a moment. Do you know these men?” he asked, as he held out the photo.
Immediately Migi’s face twisted with distaste. “This one we spoke of earlier,” she said, pointing to the dead gunman Chico. “But this one is definitely trouble.”
“Who is he?” Cain kept his tone neutral, as he leaned back against the counter.
She shook her head. “We don’t talk about such things.”
“Which only adds to the mystery,” he countered.
The uncle looked at his wife, then back at Cain. “Tristan is Chico’s older brother. When they were young, Tristan was the local ruffian, breaking into all the houses. He would slash tires and kill cats,” he said, shaking his head. “When he disappeared, we all breathed a sigh of relief. But then he came back as a man. He carried guns and knives and was bad news.”
Migi shrugged and said, “This one, he picked up the local boys and turned them bad too.”
“More than just the one? Chico?”
“Tristan turned the local thugs and troublemakers into true criminals.”
“And how would we find Tristan?”
“You don’t,” she snapped, getting quite cranky about the whole thing. She wrapped her arms around her chest and said, “Stay away from him. He’s bad news.” And, at that, she turned her back, effectively ending the conversation.
Cain reached over, picked up the photo, and said, “Well, I guess I have to find him my way then.”
Immediately she turned and cried out in alarm, “You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll bring him back to this town. We don’t want him here,” she said, her stress evident.
He slowed down. “Is he that bad?”
She nodded. “He would shoot you as soon as look at you.”
“A lot of men are like that in the world,” he said, his voice hard.
The old man looked at him, a tremor evident in his hands and his lips as
he spoke. “Please, if you contact him, leave our home.”
“Do you think he’ll come after you?”
“Yes, of course he will,” Pedro said. “No one is safe if he is around. They’re both bad, two peas in a pod really, but Tristan? He’s the worst.”
And, with that, Migi got up and left the room.
The old man slowly stood. “She called the cops on Tristan once, way back when,” he said. “He was bad news back then, but he’s really ugly now. He’s always threatened to come back to take her out. So she steers clear of him.”
“What would be his reason to go after her?”
“She called the cops on him,” he said. “The same reason he killed cats as a teenager. Just because he can.”
Cain nodded slowly. “Got it,” he said. “At the same time, it might just give him a reason to come back and have a second chance.”
“He doesn’t need a reason. He would do it just for fun,” the old man said. “Please don’t bring him here.”
At that, Cain said, “In that case,” he said, “we’ll find another place to stay.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” he said. “We don’t need this kind of trouble.”
“The trouble was here long before we came,” he said. “It always has been.”
“That’s true, but now you are stirring up stuff that will hurt Migi.”
“Did she ever do anything to hurt him?”
“Except for calling the cops, no,” he said, “but even that was too much for this asshole.”
“Well, we’ll see about it in the morning.” And he walked back upstairs.
He knew that, from somewhere inside the house, Migi was watching him. He didn’t know where, but the layout was such that there were likely little hiding spots for her to check out her guests because she was just that kind of person. But it was obvious that she was legitimately spooked. Now he wondered if anybody would get any sleep in this house tonight.
As he walked back into their rooms, he heard Eton on the phone with Ice. By the time the call was over, Ice was totally up to speed. Unfortunately she also didn’t have any good news on Bullard. Cain bit down his disappointment on that. His team was out searching. Her team was out searching. For all he knew an entire army had been mobilized. Since Terkel had confirmed that Bullard was still alive, then Ice would dive under every wave to find him.