by Dale Mayer
Terkel was rarely wrong. Still everyone had to be wrong sometime. Maybe this was the time. But Cain sure as hell hoped not.
Just then Eton said, “Some weird undercurrents are going on in this town.”
“They’re really spooked downstairs,” Cain said. “They’ve asked us to leave, if we contact Tristan. They’re afraid of a certain amount of retaliation.”
Eton looked at him in surprise. “For what?”
Cain quickly explained what Tristan was like growing up and how Migi had called the cops on him.
“And he still threatens her?” Eton asked.
“What they saw when he was a teenager was a total disregard for life, torturing animals and such. And, when he came back years later as a man, he mobilized all the younger toughs into his own little gangsters.”
“Well, we don’t have to stay here and make them uncomfortable. We can gather all the information we can get tonight and will pull out early tomorrow.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Cain said. “They’ll be happy enough to see us go.” He looked around at the paperwork. “You learn anything new?”
“Nope,” he said. “Not so far. Strange that Petra isn’t here yet.”
Cain stopped at that. “She should be back by now, shouldn’t she?”
“Except for the fact that she doesn’t live here,” Eton reminded him. “She did say she was coming back though,” he added quietly.
“I know. So I’m wondering what the holdup is.” Cain thought about that and said, “I’ll go back and take a look.”
Chapter 6
“You think that’s wise?” Eton asked Cain.
“Maybe not, but I don’t feel like I can leave her to deal with all this alone. And we don’t know who that shooter was after.” The more he thought about it, the darker his soul felt. “I don’t like anything about this now,” he said. “I’m gone.”
With that, he raced from the bed-and-breakfast and headed back to the crime scene. What he really wanted to know was if she was okay. But, in his heart, he realized things were not only not okay but that something seriously wrong was going on.
*
Petra had been sitting on the step beside the old man, as the cops came and went. Several came to talk to her a number of times.
They’d asked her about the two men; she told them to go to the bed-and-breakfast. One had already been dispatched in that direction. She just shrugged, knowing the men could hold their own. The fact of the matter was that, if they hadn’t gone into that bedroom, her sister still wouldn’t have been found. She just couldn’t believe her sister had been lying here dead for all this time, for months. They didn’t even know how long yet.
The cops had asked her several questions about it, and she was hard-pressed to come up with actual dates when she’d last heard from her sister. But then even that was blurred. When was the last time she heard from her via phone? She didn’t know. And, no, she had no idea what happened to the child. Her sister had threatened to keep it and then, in the next breath, had threatened to abort it.
Petra never did get any answers, but to think of her sister lying up there with a bullet in her forehead, having been there for several months, was just beyond anything she could comprehend. And to know that this old man beside her had known. She just shook her head and buried her face in her hands.
When she heard the whispered words from beside her, she finally came out of it and stared at Morgan in shock. “You’re sorry?” she asked in confounded disbelief. “You’ve let somebody lie there in that condition for God-only-knows how long.”
“Four months,” he said. “Four months and twelve days.”
That was the first inkling she had as to how much it had cost him too. She groaned. “And you seriously couldn’t tell anyone?”
He shook his head. “Chico told me what he’d do to me.”
“And it’s quite possible he would have carried out his threats,” she said, “but he’s gone now.”
“Good,” he said sadly. “He should never have been born.”
“Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean that what you did was any better.”
“I didn’t kill her,” the old man said. “And those two men you came with? They’re the same.”
“Are they?” she asked dubiously. “I don’t think so.”
“They are,” he said. He looked at her. “Don’t end up like your sister.”
She winced at that. “I wasn’t planning on it.” She couldn’t find anything inside her heart that said these two men brought out the same feelings as his son’s interest in Petra used to. “They may be in a similar industry,” she said, “but I think they’re on the side of the good guys.”
“The side of the good guys changes,” Morgan said, with the wisdom of somebody who’d lived long and hard.
“Is that what happened to you?”
He nodded slowly. “And then I wanted out. I wanted to retire. I wanted to have my family. Only to find my family was worse,” he said sadly.
“I’m sorry about Barlow,” she said.
“Chico killed him,” he said. “Chico killed him deliberately. There was no need for that. Barlow was a good boy.”
She nodded. “There was no need to kill my sister either,” she said gently. “Did you talk to her when she was here?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t know,” he said. “I didn’t know. But the boy told me there was something in his room that I didn’t want to see. He said I wasn’t allowed to open the door, and, if I did, he’d know. When the shots were fired at you today, I figured it was Chico.”
“How would anybody know?”
“The door was triggered,” he said, “to send an alarm to somebody. I guess to the neighbor. And whoever it was, was supposed to kill whoever opened the door.”
“Well, they didn’t get us,” she said quietly.
He gave a broken laugh. “They’re not done, you know? They’re never done, people like that. He’s just biding his time, waiting to come back around again.”
She winced at that and then looked up at the street. The cops came and asked her more questions. She answered as honestly as she could, but there wasn’t anything to say. When they got to why the men wanted to look into the room, she said they’d had past dealings with Chico and were trying to track him down. The cops just nodded. That family was very familiar to those at the police station.
“A lot of weapons are up there.” The cop looked at the old man. “We’re taking them.”
The old man looked at him and nodded. “I don’t care,” he said. “But if you take them all, you leave us defenseless.”
“These weapons are not for household use,” he said, “and, if you have a license, you can have your own.”
“I do,” he said.
She snorted at that. “He shot at us as we came up the sidewalk.”
The old man glared at her. “I didn’t want visitors.”
“We’ll be taking that gun too,” the cop said.
She watched as weapon after weapon was carried out of the house. When something really big was carried out, she whistled silently. “Is that like a rocket launcher or something?”
“Or something,” the old man said.
“Are these all new? Like, in working condition?”
He nodded. “Like I said, bad seed.”
“When was the last time you talked to my sister?”
“I didn’t talk to her at all,” he said, “because I stayed to my side of the house. They came and went at all hours.”
“Did you see her?”
“Not really,” he said. “There were always women. Your sister was just one of many.”
“She’d hate that,” Petra said.
“Of course, but she still came.”
“Of course,” she murmured. Just then she watched as a tall man strode down the street toward them.
“Interesting. He’s coming back,” she said.
The old man looked in that direction. “He’s dangerous. Watch
yourself.” After that, he went silent.
She asked Morgan a few more questions, but he wasn’t interested in answering. When Cain walked up the front steps to where she sat, he asked, “Are the cops still on it?”
“Yes, they just hauled out an arsenal of weapons.”
“Good,” he said. “Some very high-end pieces were in that lot.”
“Surprised you didn’t take them for yourself,” she challenged.
“I have no need of them,” he said.
“This guy here,” she said, motioning at the old man, “said the door was triggered to send a signal to somebody when it was opened.”
Cain raised an eyebrow, thought about it, and said, “And that would explain the shooter.”
“In what way does that explain the shooter?” she said in exasperation.
“He wasn’t a good shot,” he said quietly. “I suspect he’s been living next door, and, now that the door alarm has been triggered, he’s long gone. Probably been here so long that he forgot to take his shit with him.”
The old man looked at him and started to laugh. “You’re right there,” he said. Only he said it in such a broken language that Cain wasn’t exactly sure what he’d said. Petra quickly translated.
He looked at the neighbor’s place and asked Morgan, “You know who it was?”
The old man looked at her, she translated, and he shrugged. “Another bad seed.”
“So do you think anybody’ll care if I go take a look inside that house?”
The old man looked at him, shook his head, and said, “You probably should. But it might be triggered to blow.”
“Great,” Cain said under his breath. Then aloud, he said, “You’d better stay here then, Petra.” He turned, and, rather than going to the front sidewalk and walking around the stone wall, he headed to the hedge.
Before she realized it, he’d already slipped through. “Smooth,” she said admiringly.
The old man glared at her.
She shrugged and explained how easily he’d gotten through the hedge.
“I told you that they’re the same,” he said.
Just then the gurney came down, carrying the body of her sister. She jumped to her feet, her hand to her lips, as she stepped back to give them room. It was just so painful to see her like this. She’d been so vibrant and alive. And what she was now was not even dead. It was like she was rotting from the inside out. And that was just so wrong.
The coroner gave Petra a sad look, as he walked beside the gurney to the ambulance. She knew he couldn’t tell her much that she didn’t already know. Her sister had been shot. But the cops didn’t know whose hand to place around that gun. She had a damn good idea, but the asshole was dead already.
She looked at the cops as they came out, and she asked, “Can I go home now?”
He nodded. “We know where to find you.”
“And what about the other two men?”
“We’ll talk to them tomorrow morning,” he said. “We’ve got your statement right now, and we’ll get theirs when we talk to them first thing.”
She nodded and turned, heading down the sidewalk. As she turned to leave, the old man called out, “Watch your back.”
She stopped and thought about that, then turned and smiled at him. “Thank you.” As she got to the sidewalk, she turned right toward the empty neighbor’s house, after Cain. As she got around the side of the stone wall, she noted that this house was almost as dilapidated as the main house next door. Much smaller and older, probably once a part of a grand estate, now sold off piecemeal, just a rental.
She walked to the front steps and knocked. Cops were all around, and they had checked out the place, but, with the shooter’s truck long since gone, nobody seemed to care.
Cain answered the door, and he held it open for her. “Come on in.”
“Is anybody here?”
“Not now,” he said. “I would ask if you knew who rented it.”
She shook her head. “I don’t come down here very often,” she said. “This is the ratty part of town. Nobody does.”
“Understood,” he said. “The thing is, somebody’s been living here. It’d be nice to know who.”
“Well, track that truck,” she said. “That’ll tell you.”
“There’s got to be a real estate rental database somewhere too,” he said.
“Maybe, but, on the other hand, I don’t think anybody really gives a shit. We have a lot of empty houses where people move in and squat,” she said.
“Good to know,” he said. “And something to keep in mind.”
She nodded, walked slowly around the house, and asked, “Did you see anything useful?”
Yes,” he said. “Come here. I’ll show you.” He led the way into the bedroom.
There she stopped at the doorway, not sure what she was looking at.
“Looks like he might have been trying to pack in a hurry, but, when he ran out and left, he probably took off with just the one bag and obviously left this one behind.”
She walked over and peered inside. “What is it?”
“Electronics,” he said, with a nod of satisfaction. “Which also means he’ll be coming back in the dark to get it.”
“And?” But she knew the answer ahead of time. “You want to stay here and wait for him, don’t you?”
He gave her a note of satisfaction, with a clipped nod. “I sure do,” he said. “It’s a perfect opportunity to find out exactly what the hell’s going on.”
She looked at him. “I want to be here too.”
*
“No way,” Cain said calmly.
“Why not?” Petra asked.
“You’re not prepared,” he said. “This is a fight that you can’t win alone.”
“He was shooting at me.”
“He was shooting at anybody and everybody,” he said. “Chances are, he’ll come in with a gun, trying to sneak in and out and be gone. He’ll leave town and possibly the country even.”
“How long do you think he’s been here?”
“Well, if you had any kind of security images,” he said, “we could check, but, as it is, I suspect since Chico left.”
“Of course,” she said. “He was just here to keep an eye on the house, wasn’t he?”
Cain nodded.
“And that’s why he can’t afford to leave this stuff behind. Have you gone through it?”
“I still have to do that,” he said, “but I got the laptop up and running.” He pointed to the desk on the side.
“Wow.” Then she nodded. “You’re right. He’ll come back for this—and quick.” She thought about it for a moment. “He can’t drive the truck,” she said. “So he’ll have to walk in on foot.”
“It could be a cop,” he said. “Did you think about that?”
“Maybe, but why would it be?”
“Depends on if they’re getting paid,” he said.
She thought about the people who might have lived down here. “My aunt and uncle will probably know.”
“Maybe call them and see,” he said. “I’m definitely not their favorite person anymore.”
She pulled out her phone and walked off a few paces and called her aunt. A rapid-fire conversation followed that he couldn’t do anything more than stand here and listen to.
When she hung up, she said, “A cop was living here. Just a young rookie.”
“Well, guess what? That young rookie is in this up to his neck.” His voice was cheerful, upbeat.
She frowned at him. “Why are you so damn happy about it? It’s a bad cop.”
“But it also means,” he said, “we have a good chance of catching him.” Just then Cain heard the faintest of noises outside, still a way off and moving slowly, trying to not make noises like Cain just heard. Cain grabbed her and pulled her close. “I want you to go back home,” he whispered. “It’s too dangerous for you.”
“Like hell,” she said, but lowering her voice too. “I’m in the middle of this, whether I like it or
not.”
“No,” he said, “not yet you aren’t. And, if we can keep you out of it, we can keep you safe.”
“Have you forgotten that I was also shot at and that he would have recognized me?” she asked. “Do you think that, once you’re gone, this will be over?”
“I hope so,” he said, looking down at her. “The last thing I want to do is to leave you here as a target.”
“I’m a target already,” she said. “So, until we solve this, I’d just as soon stick close.”
He stepped back slightly.
“I mean it,” she said. “You can’t just push me away.”
“Well, you’re not giving me a chance to,” he said, with a half laugh.
She shook her head. “No. And I won’t. Like I said, it’s too important. I live here.”
“Would you live anywhere else?”
“In a heartbeat,” she said. “I’m just not sure what to do about my father.”
“He’s not unhappy here, is he?”
“No, but I’m not sure he’s getting the best care.”
“I’m not either actually,” he said, thinking about it. “But I’m sure you have old folk’s homes here that would do better for him.”
“Yes, but I don’t know if he would be happy there either.”
“I’m not sure anybody’s happy anywhere sometimes,” he said, with a sad smile.
She shrugged. “You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
She stopped and looked at him. “Why do you even care anyway?”
“Why do I care about what?”
“If I ever wanted to leave?”
“Just wondering,” he said, but something odd was in his voice.
She glared at him. “Are you thinking, after this is all over, that I won’t be welcome here?”
“I have no idea,” he said honestly. In fact, he’d been thinking out of his own curiosity because there was just something about her. “I don’t want to lose track of you.”
She shrugged. “You’re not making sense.”
“That’s a common problem,” he said, laughing softly. He reached out and gently flicked her chin. “But remember. I can’t have you making a sound here.”