Athena's Secrets

by Donna Del Oro

  The Skoroses had sent a card. Athena’s mouth dropped open, and her eyes widened when she read the check they’d sent.

  “Wow…” She showed the check to her mother, who had the same reaction. Her father stiffened and scowled.

  “We cannot accept this. It’s outrageous.”

  “We cannot?” Athena retorted. “I certainly can, Father. Do you realize how helpful this will be? I can finish my bachelor’s degree in one more year instead of two.”

  Her mother looked uncertain. “I had no idea. It’s outrageous but outrageously generous.” She confronted her very proper British husband with a typical Italian gesture, as in Why not, for heaven’s sake? “For them, this is not a lot of money.”

  Ten thousand dollars! Her tuition for an entire year! Add that to the money from painting pastiches, and she could quit her morning job and take more classes.

  “How can I ever thank them, Mum? Father?”

  Her mother’s quick reply overrode her father’s recalcitrance. “Send them a hearty Thank You letter, a nicely framed photo of yourself, and keep in touch with them. I think that’s all they want, ’Thena. They want you to stay in touch with them. You’re in the bloodline, and they take our bloodline very seriously. As seriously as your Nonna does.”

  Her mother’s look, as she glanced discreetly at her husband, said so much more to Athena. More so than our English relatives. Who don’t believe we have special abilities. They think we make it all up.

  Her father’s gaze met Athena’s. This topic had long been a sore subject for them.

  “Don’t get the wrong end of the stick, Athena. You know we—I’m—proud of your…gift. However, our education, our scientific background, makes it difficult for us, the Butlers, to accept this…this second sight that you and your mother have. Don’t take it personally.”

  Athena did take it personally. “Some day it will be scientific fact, Father, when science has the right measurement tools. Some governments take it seriously enough. Look at the CIA’s Stargate project. I read a book about it, but most of it’s still classified.” Athena noticed Chris’s eye rolling, and carefully put the magnanimous check into her wallet. “I’ll deposit this tomorrow at the bank.”

  She hadn’t informed her family as yet, of her other job offer, painting fake masterpieces for Martin Larsen’s Genuine Pastiches of the World’s Greatest Painters. Her father’s constant forehead furrows were a sign that his stress level was still high, and when she read him occasionally, his worries crowded out his other, more routine thoughts. Not least, was the constant reminder that they were all in danger. As evidenced by the two Embassy security men who sat at the table next to them and kept a vigilant watch, while trying to look unobtrusive. All the other Embassy diplomats were enduring such surveillance. As Chris put it, like white on rice.

  As they were getting ready to leave, an hour later, her mother seized her arm. Her pointed look told Athena to turn on her clairvoyance. Indeed, she didn’t need to be reminded, for her mother’s ability to transmit telepathically was so powerful. It was impossible for Athena to block her, once they were in physical contact.

  Detective Palomino would like to see us both on Monday, if possible. There’s been a breakthrough in their serial killer case, but they still need our help. The sooner, the better, he said.

  Okay, but it will have to be at the end of my morning shift at the coffeehouse. So, twelve-thirty?

  I’ll call the detective tomorrow and set it up. Are you certain you’re fine with this? You don’t have to feel obligated, ’Thena, but the detective has confidence in your abilities. They’re desperate to find this monster and get him off the streets.

  Athena inwardly sighed. Her feelings were definitely mixed.

  Yes, I’ll help.

  You’re no longer a girl, a teenager, figlia mia. I’m very proud of you. You’re a grownup in every sense of the word.

  Athena shot her mother a dubious smile and withdrew her arm.

  All she’d received from Kas personally was a brief text, Happy birthday, pretty girl. The Skoros’ generous gift notwithstanding, she was disappointed. At least he’d added “pretty girl,” but it seemed an after-thought. He was trying to be nice and let her down gently.

  Bet he’s already seeing other women—his booty calls.

  Now this with the cops. More ugliness.

  Yeah, adulthood was overrated.

  The real world certainly was.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Detective Juan-Pablo Ochoa picked up Athena on Monday, at exactly twelve-thirty, her mother already in the back seat of his unmarked police car. As she left and waved goodbye, Fergy was smiling again, having hired four more part-timers at the coffee store. These came from a plentiful supply, since the Art Institute and two other universities were within a few Metro stops. He’d asked again if she’d heard from Tony Grabowski. She’d said no but did not reveal what her father’s security team had learned about his false identity and what they suspected about him. Until her Manet pastiche passed muster with Martin Larsen and his partner, she wasn’t going to quit this job. After all, she still had her father’s pragmatic bent of mind.

  Once again in a conference room at the police precinct on the Homicide Division’s floor, the young Hispanic detective got them seated and served hot teas for both Anna and Athena. Legal yellow pads and pens were already on the table for their use. Before they’d finished half their cups, he brought them up to date on the case. This time, he was willing to reveal much more about the suspects.

  “We’ve had this Person of Interest under surveillance since our lineup and Athena’s help in getting information from his jacket. Unfortunately, our eyewitness quickly recanted his testimony one week after the lineup, saying he wasn’t sure about the color of the van, the decal, et cetera. Maybe someone got to him, we don’t know, but there we were. We couldn’t hold the older brother, but we did check out his younger brother, their parents, and the family’s CPS history—Child Protective Services, I mean. Looks like the older brother served as a punching bag for two out-of-control parents, but the children were never taken away. The parents were middle-class professionals who managed to convince the CPS workers that their oldest son was accident prone.”

  Ochoa paused to frown and harrumph his disapproval. Athena liked him even more for that small lapse of professionalism.

  “The older brother learned the electrical trade at his father’s company, left home at eighteen, and took his younger brother with him, who was sixteen at the time. Strangely enough, a week later, a defective electrical outlet caused a fire in the family home that was so intense, both parents perished. Their bodies were so severely burned that the coroner couldn’t find any other COD, uh, cause of death. Looking back, that fire might’ve been a revenge killing.”

  “Hmm, I’d call that poetic justice,” said Athena. Her glib remark displeased her mother, whose spiritual faith ran deep. All life was sacred, in her mind, no matter how horribly someone behaved. Athena disagreed.

  Ochoa nodded. “The brothers inherited their father’s electrician’s business, and the older one’s running it today. His company has a fleet of six black vans. We impounded all six vans for a week and found no trace evidence of foul play inside. They Luminoled all of them, and found no blood splatter or patterns of drops. No seminal fluids.”

  Anna glanced over at Athena and frowned. What? Like her twenty-year-old daughter didn’t know what that meant. Please, Mum! I wasn’t born yesterday.

  Ochoa was far from finished. “There was a fragment of a plastic grommet in one of the vans, alongside the top, inside ridge. What you’d find on a shower curtain to hold it to the rod. But that was it. We’ve formed our own theories about that, but our suspect explained it off as belonging to a plastic tarp he’d used once to transport a dead dog he’d found on the edge of the Beltway. He’d taken it to the city dump and threw away the tarp with the dog’s body. Anyway, when we brought him in a third time for interrogation, he insisted on a lawye
r and threatened a harassment lawsuit.”

  “What has he said about his younger brother?” Anna asked. Athena could imagine her mother’s mental gears turning frantically.

  Ochoa shrugged. “Not much. He’s protected him all his life, taking the brunt of their psycho parents’ abuse all those years. He says the guy comes and goes, stays with him when he’s in town but travels about. Won’t say what he does and where. Then he clammed up. We got nothing else from him. His lawyer said, charge him, and let’s see the evidence. Or let him walk. He walked.”

  “What’s your theory, Detective?” her mother asked.

  “I like the younger brother for these attacks on the little girls in these poor neighborhoods. They’re weak, vulnerable, unprotected for the most part. We think the killer has a deep hatred toward females, maybe getting revenge on a mother who refused to protect them when they were young. Maybe something else is going on. Maybe both brothers are the perps, taking turns, maybe practicing on the young girls, building up for something more challenging and risky.”

  “Like older girls? Teenagers? Women?” Athena asked.

  This time, Ochoa nodded. “A week ago, a fifteen-year-old from that same neighborhood disappeared. Her body was found the next day in an alley, raped, strangled and beaten. It was the same alley where the last young victim was found. Almost like the killer’s taunting us, making it easy for us, and we still can’t get him. Again, there’s no trace evidence from the killer. The rapist used a condom and cleaned up the body. Someone saw a black van with a decal in the neighborhood that same day, but our primary suspect, the older brother, has an alibi. And supposedly, all six of the company’s vans were out on calls. He showed us the call ledger. Not one of their vans was near that neighborhood. If the ledger is correct, that is. It could be doctored, for all we know. And, as the guy’s lawyer says, there are tens of thousands of black utility vans in this city. We’re concentrating on these two brothers because of what Athena saw with that jacket.”

  That hit Athena hard. What if she’d made a mistake and had seen something out of context or saw jumbled, mixed images. She swallowed the lump in her throat and stared at the yellow pad on the table. A man’s life was at stake. She had to be certain!

  “The killer’s clever at covering his tracks, isn’t he?” her mother said suddenly.

  “So you think only one of them is committing these crimes?” Athena asked her.

  She nodded. “But they’re complicit, I think. The older brother is still protecting the younger one. That’s his emotional grounding. He has nothing else to live for.”

  “We agree,” broke in Detective Palomino as he entered the room. The older, taller detective carried a box, which contained several paper evidence bags, all labeled with a white “chain of custody” log attached to each bag’s front.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Butler, Miss Butler, I was interrogating someone, and it ran over. Bosco and Rosen took over so I could bring this to you.” The two women stared at the box of evidence bags. “As Ochoa probably told you, we’ve had our prime suspect’s place of business, and residence, under almost constant surveillance for the past two weeks. The younger brother has never been seen in either place. We’ve had BOLOs out—Be-On-The-Look-Out—for the younger brother. We have his DMV photo from ten years ago. Our lab techs made a photo that aged him but we got nothing. Nothing. When the older brother put a garbage bag in his dumpster, one of our officers recovered it. Old clothes were inside, several items in a larger size—we believe, in the younger brother’s size. Our lab has analyzed all the items, which were washed and cleaned before they were thrown away.”

  “That didn’t make sense to us,” cut in Ochoa. “Who cleans something before throwing it away? Unless they know we’re looking into their garbage.”

  So far, Athena was following their update and the logical theory they were posing. The cops had hoped they’d finally gotten a break in the case. Physical evidence that would justify arrest warrants.

  Palomino perched on the edge of the conference table and sighed. His eyes were puffy and red, his forehead creased with deep lines. This case had taken its toll on him, apparently. The new victim, the teenaged girl, weighed upon his conscience. After a month or two, the case was still unsolved.

  And the killer walked among us.

  The older detective looked first at Anna, then at Athena. “Rather than tell you what conclusions our lab came up with, I’d like you both to handle each item and tell me what you see, what you think. You can write your impressions down on those yellow pads. Are you both willing to do that?”

  Athena glanced over at her mother, who nodded her assent immediately.

  “Me, too,” she finally added.

  One at a time, Palomino opened the bags. He had each woman sign her name to each bag and put on a different pair of latex gloves with each item before touching it. They did so, the whole process dragging out as they removed the gloves, signed a new bag, and then put on new gloves for each new item. Most of the items were shirts, not very old, but worn and faded, cotton flannel, long-sleeved shirts, some with half the buttons missing. One item was a pair of white, athletic socks, stained and soiled, not cleaned beforehand. This stood out, as though the killer or older brother were volunteering a clue, challenging the cops. At first, Athena thought it might be a trap set by the detectives just to test them. Then she began to focus on handling each item, turning away from her mother in order not to be influenced by her countenance or body language.

  All of this was done in total silence, except for occasional reminders by Palomino to sign the “chain of custody” log sheet. Ochoa went out once and came back ten minutes later, to continue observing the whole process. Athena suspected he was videotaping their examination of these items, for what purpose she had no idea.

  One item, the socks, captured her full attention. She wrinkled up her nose and smelled them, could only detect a mixture of sweat and dirt. The flow of images began almost as soon as she did this. The scent of the sea, brine, salt air and sweat flowed into her mind, followed by a heaving boat—no, ship. A large container ship, with a dark underbelly, confined spaces, narrow passageways, a smelly head for men only, and a lighted galley with a large stainless steel sink. There was also a small mess hall, trays of heaping portions of hearty food—hardworking men’s meals. She saw a man’s hands working at electrical panels, long fingers manipulating the various colored wires. His knuckles were scuffed and swollen.

  So the younger brother was an electrician, too, probably on the crew of a big freighter.

  Wait…wait…don’t blurt it out…be patient…here it comes…she recognized the octagon tower…the pentagon-shaped Fort McHenry…the port beyond the buildings. She’d been there several times in the past few years. Baltimore.

  Athena dropped the socks and glanced over at Detectives Ochoa and Palomino. Her mother glanced at her, exchanged a look over the socks on the table and nodded soberly. They’d both seen the same thing.

  “Go ahead, ’Thena,” urged her mother, peeling off her gloves and sitting back.

  “Well, here’s what I saw,” she began hesitantly, “My mother can verify or not. It’s just what I saw.”

  “It’s okay,” said Palomino. “Just tell us.”

  “He goes by an alias, but I couldn’t see it.” Athena launched into a description of what she had seen, the various smells and images, ending with the name of the port city.

  Ochoa sat and took notes, every so often glancing up at the hovering Palomino. The lab analyst, Athena guessed, had found traces of sea salt but all the rest was new to them.

  When she finished, Anna verified it all before adding, “I kept seeing the name, B-U-L-L-W-O-R-T-H. I don’t know if that’s the name of the ship or the ship’s captain or this young man’s alias. Everything else was as ’Thena described it. I had the same vision.”

  Ochoa was out through the door before they could say anything else.

  “Nothing more?” Palomino asked. When they shook their h
eads apologetically, he stood up, ebullient and smiling. “Thank you so much! We’ll check this out and get back to you.” He kept shaking his head and muttering to himself.

  He went to the door that Ochoa had just hurried through and called someone in.

  “Captain, I’d like you to meet our two volunteer consultants, Mrs. Butler, and her daughter, Athena Butler.”

  The supervising officer, a big African-American man with a military bearing, bald, and dressed nattily in a dark suit and red silk tie, nodded his head in greeting, looked the two women over and said little except, “Thanks for your help.” Then he was gone.

  His hasty departure had Palomino chuckling under a raised hand, as if he were stifling a cough. “He absolutely hates our use of psychics. Thinks they’re all self-serving shysters. Before you two came along, we had several who proved worthless and ate up our time and energy. Wait till we show him how we tracked down the person who’s now become our primary suspect. He’ll want to boast to the D.A. that it was his idea.”

  Her mother stood, her back arched, her chin up. Athena knew she was slightly annoyed and preparing to make a point.

  “Remember our agreement, Detective Palomino. Our involvement in this case, our helping your team of homicide detectives, must remain a secret. I don’t want the press to hear of this. If our identities were made known, my family’s safety, my husband’s career, our peace of mind, would be compromised.”

  Palomino swiftly sobered, approached her and shook her hand. “Of course, Mrs. Butler. I don’t want this to leak out any more than you do. Nor does my captain. He’s afraid he’ll become the laughingstock of the entire division. We’ll keep this on the Q.T. We’re still a long way from solving this case, and we need physical evidence that ties this younger brother to those victims. When we bring him in, we’ll ask you to return. If that’s okay with you.”