I hurriedly punched End Call on the navigation screen to disconnect. Ebba Johansson had brought up the idea of pendulum dowsing and now I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I drove fast and rolled down my windows so that the wind whipped my hair around my face.
Yes, I’d done pendulum dowsing before.
It was how I saved Katie.
It wasn’t difficult. You swung an object from a string and asked questions to narrow down answers. Easy peasy if that was your thing. I’d tried it after the end of my old life but never got it to kick in. That part of dowsing was obviously dead to me now. Why had I agreed to take on this case? Just because my old high school crush was connected and it made me curious was a dumb reason. I was beginning to wish Ebba Johansson had never stepped foot on my driveway.
I’d finally relaxed, and was listening to a motivational book on audio when my cell phone rang. The display on my dash announced the incoming call was from Joon Kim. I reached to hit End on the dash and ignore the call but hit the Accept button instead. Damn.
“Hello! Hello!” shouted Joon Kim.
“Hi,” I replied, trying to keep the disappointment from my voice.
“I heard about Ron. You found him, right? Good for you! And you found him in the Bat Caves, which is really kinda weird after I told you about the caves!”
Did everything he said have to sound so excited? Couldn’t I just be left to drive in broody silence?
“So what now?” he asked me but then I heard him busy talking to a customer in his store so I guess he really didn’t want an answer.
“I’m kind of busy.” There was more chatter in the background so he obviously wasn’t paying attention to me. I reached over to disconnect the call while grumbling about him wasting my time.
I started thinking about Ava Johansson and how her mother had called her a spoiled brat. Ebba had given her everything but Ava hadn’t cared. It was polar opposite to how I was raised in poverty and abuse and maybe that was what had set me on edge. Abandoned by my own mother—who might very well be alive—and having to deal with someone else’s mom who was going to extraordinary lengths to try to find her dead girl. Maybe all this drama hit too close to my own aches.
Then again, maybe I’d just been in therapy far too long and should stop overanalyzing things.
I let up on the accelerator before I got a ticket and rubbed the back of my neck. Ebba’s admission about her daughter’s behavior made me realize I knew next to nothing about the girl beyond what was painted in the media. Of course all the papers and TV had colored her as this beautiful young woman who’d been kidnapped and killed by her ex-boyfriend. There was more empathy and money to be made glorifying the qualities of the victim than there would be in stating she acted like a lazy princess. Maybe the answer to finding Ava was to get to know the real person. I called Joon Kim back.
“Hello-o-o!” he cried. “If you have bad cell service come into my store and I’ll fix you up.”
“I don’t have bad cell service; I hung up on you because you were busy.”
“Oh.”
“How well did you know Ava Johansson?”
“How well do we ever know anyone, right?”
Great, now he was going to get all philosophical on me.
“You must’ve seen her a lot? She’d come over to visit Ron, and since you lived there...”
“Well, sure, she’d come to see Ron but not me, right? I was, like, the fifth wheel except the third wheel. If you know what I mean.”
“I’m just trying to get an idea of what kind of person she was.”
The talkative Joon fell silent for once.
“What time do you take your break?” I asked.
“Anytime I want because I’m the manager,” he boasted.
“I can be at your store in half an hour,” I told him. “I’ll buy you lunch.”
Joon agreed and at the next exit I turned around so I was now headed north.
I was at Bellis Fair Mall trying to squeeze my car into one of the last available spots when I got a text from Joon that he’d meet me at the Chipotle in the food court and that he was wearing a straw fedora. I thought he might be joking about the hat until I spotted him standing in the line to get his food. I walked up and introduced myself.
“You’re skinnier and paler than in the pictures I’ve seen of you.” He tilted his head and looked me up and down.
“What pictures?” I frowned and then realized he’d seen me in the media. “You saw me on the news and stuff.”
He nodded and smiled as if my trauma of a year ago was a photo op.
“Nice hat,” I remarked. “Makes you look like a cross between Justin Bieber and Frank Sinatra.”
“That’s what I was going for.” He gave me a fist bump.
We waited while the food line inched forward and he complained about the mall being overrun by Canadians and that was why the lines were so long.
Once we were seated and he was digging into his burrito I started my questions.
“Did Ron and Ava fight a lot?”
“Not really.”
“But sometimes they did?” I pushed.
“Ron was an easygoing guy, right? He wasn’t the type to fight with anyone. Ava would get wound up...usually about her mom...and Ron would just let her rant so if they had a fight, it was more her than him.”
I nodded. “Did Ava complain about her mom a lot?”
“A ton.” He shook his head. “Too much.”
“Tell me about Ava.”
He chose to ignore that question. “So you found Ron down in the Bat Caves after I told you about the caves so, in a way, I’m the one who found him, right?” He puffed out his chest and grinned proudly with a dollop of salsa clinging to the corner of his mouth.
“Sure. You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes except you didn’t know that’s where Ron would be, only that he liked to hike there.”
“It’s all about clues, right? I gave you the clue and you ran with it.”
“More like I hiked with it.”
“Touché.” He grinned and winked at me. “You just had a feeling in your gut that he was there after I said it, or what?”
“I wish it was like that but it wasn’t. Lately I’ve been trying different hikes, and when you mentioned the caves it made me think of...” Of all the times in high school I wished Ron would take me down to the caves for a make-out session. “It made me realize that would be a nice easy hike that was about my speed. Not too hard.”
He looked at me like he didn’t believe it, then picked up his burrito and took another huge bite.
“But you don’t act surprised that he was found dead,” I pointed out. “Some people probably thought he was still on the run from killing Ava.”
“I guess I’m not really surprised.”
Or grieving. “Why?”
“Anybody who’d kidnap their ex-girlfriend, send a ransom note to the mom for a hundred grand and then kill her in a park after getting the money...” He gave me a twisted smile. “I figured if he could do all that, there’s no way he could stand to get caught, right? Besides, Ron’s the type of guy who’d die in jail, you know? Me? Give me my game systems and I’d never leave my room if I didn’t have to eat, poop or work.”
“Ron needed more than games, food and pooping?”
“Yeah. He had to be outside and hated being stuck inside. He liked to smoke a little weed, do a lot of hiking and just be in nature, right? Being in a prison cage like that...it would’ve killed him. He’s better off like this.”
“Better off dead?”
He might have been right on some level but that sounded pretty cold to me, and I was starting to dislike Joon Kim.
“What’s your opinion on why he’d do all that? She caught him cheating and broke it off. Why kidnap her for ransom if all he wanted was to live a simple life? And why kill her?”
Joon took off his hat, placed it on the table next to his food and rubbed his receding hairline as he thought about that. “He was always t
alking about traveling the world and hiking all over. He hated working at the sporting goods store. Ava always told him she’d get part of her mom’s massage business eventually and, when she did, they could sell it off and travel together. Of course that was when they were still getting along and she thought she was his only piece of tail.”
“Things got angry after that?”
“Not on Ron’s side.” Joon slurped from his drink. “Ava went ballistic but Ron acted like he didn’t care that she ended it. Obviously he cared big-time though, right? Maybe he realized he made a big mistake cheating on Ava. Could be that he still wanted to hike Machu Picchu instead of Mount Baker, ya know? Maybe he saw that hundred grand as a way out of this shitty town.”
He sure made it sound plausible.
“Is that what the cops thought?” I asked. “That Ron wanted the cash so he could get out of this map dot?”
“Sure. That’s what the cops even told his mom and dad. I’d just gotten back from Korea and went to visit his folks, yanno, to pay my respects and say how shitty all this was, and the cops were there talking to them about Ron’s possible motives.”
“What do you think went wrong that he didn’t just take the money and see the world?”
“Chickened out, I guess.”
Except Ron didn’t kill himself. Someone shot him in the back of the head and took the gun with them so someone else was involved in this mess. I looked at Joon with new eyes.
“And you were in Korea when Ava was murdered, right?”
“Yeah, my grandma was sick.”
“But she’d already been missing when you left. Just that no one thought anything of it yet. Just figured she was partying with friends.”
He slurped his drink.
“So when did you get back?”
“A couple weeks after they say she was killed, why?” He shoved the remainder of the messy burrito in his mouth and then talked with his mouth full. “Oh you think I had something to do with it or something?”
I cringed at the gooey food in his mouth. “You’re not exactly bawling your eyes out here. Did you have something to do with any of this?”
“Hey, I cried about it, okay? I might not be crying now but I had my moments. Of course I didn’t have anything to do with this. If I did, I’d have all that money, right? Do I look like a guy with a ton of cash in my pocket?” He waved at himself. “I’ve got it going on, but not a hundred grand worth.”
“Yeah you’re a rock star.” I handed him a napkin. “Except for the sour cream beard.”
“Not a designer label here, yanno.” He wiped his face. “I’m a walking ad for knockoffs.”
“Let’s get back to Ava. She breaks up with Ron and I understand she tried to get back with him. Did he take her back? Were they a couple when you left for Korea?” I realized Ebba didn’t think so but a mom was seldom the first person to know about their kids’ romantic relationships.
“When I left they were still broken up. Not for lack of trying on Ava’s part though. She was willing to get back together if he’d swear off other girls. He just told her he wanted to relax without a relationship for a while. He was chill like that but not her, right? Ava was freaking out. Kept coming by the house but Ron was never home. He worked and hiked. That was it. She could be a handful, though, and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Maybe he just flipped out, right? Guess he did.”
We were quiet a minute. He scrolled through his phone while I scooped up guacamole on chips and ate a few.
“What was Ava really like?”
“What do you want to know?” He took a couple of my tortilla chips and double-dipped the guac, stuffing the chips into his mouth.
I tried not to look revolted as I pushed the bowl toward him. He could have them. “I mean besides how Ava was like with Ron. What was she like as a person? Did you like her?”
He chewed and chomped my chips and noisily slurped his fountain pop while he considered his answer and I waited patiently.
“Fun but also kind of a bitch.” Joon licked a green dollop of guac that clung to the corner of his mouth. “Not an outright bitch but the kind who’d give you an unsult.”
“An insult?”
“No, an insult tucked inside a compliment. Unsult. She’d make snide remarks and backhanded compliments so you’d think she was being nice and later you’d think and go...huh?”
“Oh.” I thought about that and then asked, “She was like that to everyone or just Ron?”
“Everyone. Like if she saw me wearing this hat today she’d say,” he carried on in a singsong voice mimicking Ava, “‘Oh, Joo-o-o-on, look at yo-o-o-ou! I’ve never seen anyone be able to pull off that kind of hat!’”
“Gotcha.”
“Yeah, so sometimes you think she’s giving you a compliment but if you really think about it, she’s not.” He slurped the remainder of his pop then reached for mine. “But considering where she came from, it’s no wonder she turned out like that. I mean, have you met her mother?” He made a big display of visibly shuddering. “That woman is a class A beotch.”
I blinked in surprise. Ebba was stuck-up, maybe, but a bitch? “Did she come to your apartment often?”
“Ava or Ebba?”
“Either.”
“Ava was there every single day when she was dating Ron. Sometimes she’d even come over when he wasn’t around to get away from her mom and we’d just hang. A couple times Ebba showed up to scream at her about getting her ass to work but Ava would just blow her off.” He smiled, apparently proud of Ava’s defiance. “If I had the day off and Ron was at work, Ava and I’d watch Netflix all day and game and stuff. She was cool like that.”
“So you were close with Ava?”
He gave me an abrupt nod and his face screwed up and for a second I thought he was going to cry.
“Don’t be telling the cops that, or nothing. I don’t need that headache. Besides, Ava only came over on account of Ron. When Ron was around she only had eyes for him. She’d come over hoping to catch him when he came home from work but mostly he went out after so it was just me and her. We chatted a lot. Sometimes she’d come to my store when she was shopping in the mall and then we’d come right here to Chipotle.” He sighed and said wistfully, “She liked the salad with chorizo.”
“Did you two ever get together...you know...as a couple?”
“Oh no-o-o.” He shook his head emphatically. “Ron was her goal. Not that I wouldn’t have given her the ol’ Joon torpedo if I’d had the chance but she wanted Ron so I had to respect that. I mean she was a little bitch but she wasn’t a slut so...”
Maybe Joon wasn’t as casual about his lack of torpedoing Ava as he claimed. Could be he arranged for the kidnapping before he went to Korea and somehow Ron found out so Joon killed him too. I looked at Joon sitting across from me casually scrolling through his phone and it seemed unlikely the guy cared that much about anyone or anything.
Suddenly he held his phone out to me to show me a selfie taken with Ava sitting almost exactly where I was right now. They were making goofy duck faces and doing peace signs with their hands.
“What’s that around her neck?” I leaned into the picture and then enlarged it. “Some kind of key?”
He flipped the phone around and looked at it. “Yeah she always wore that.”
“A key to your place? One that Ron gave her?” I asked.
“Nope. She was wearing it the first time she came over. I don’t think she ever took it off.”
“Do you have any other pictures of her?”
“Sure. Ava was picture happy. Always wanting me to snap her pic and send it to her so she could load it on Instagram and Facebook.” He tapped his phone and then handed it to me. “Just scroll through that album.”
There were a couple dozen pics of Ava and Ron together and apart and also pics of each of them with Joon. Most of them were in the house, which was a complete pigsty. In a lot of the pictures there was pot and booze littering the coffee table. Marijuana was legal in Was
hington and it didn’t strike me as a surprise that Ron might partake in a little weed but the house looked like a party place and that took me back a bit.
“How much did Ava like to party?”
“Quite a bit.” He took back his phone and slipped it into the pocket of his shirt. “We all did. Except she liked to go out to the clubs, the casinos, bars... I’m more of a party-at-home kinda guy.”
“Could you send me any pictures you have of her?”
“Sure.” He shrugged. “But why?”
“Just trying to get a feel for who she was as a person and you know what they say about pictures being worth a thousand words.”
He tapped repeatedly on his phone and soon my own cell phone was chiming with incoming messages.
“What about hiking?” I asked. “We all know how much Ron loved it. Sounds like that’s what he lived for. Was that something Ava was into?”
“Oh, she tried.” Joon rolled his eyes. “She bought all the most expensive gear and was always asking Ron to bring her along but, of course, she couldn’t handle the bigger trails. Ron took her along a couple times but he liked a challenging outing and didn’t want to babysit a newb.” He glanced at his phone. “I gotta get back to work.”
We got to our feet.
“By the way, how’s your sick aunt?”
“My aunt?” He tilted his head. “You mean my grandmother? The one I visited in Korea when all this exploded with Ava and Ron?”
“Oh yeah, your grandmother.”
“She died.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
He shrugged. “She was really old.” He slipped his hat back on his head and we gathered up our food containers and wrappers and brought them to the disposal area.
A Grave Search (Bodies of Evidence) Page 9