by Elen Chase
"Look what you did, you old hag, you have to buy me a new one now!"
"Go sell your butt and buy it yourself, you spoiled brat."
"Tsk, and I thought you came here to apologize."
"You really should learn a bit of respect for who raised you!"
"You didn't raise me!"
"Oh, Andrew, good morning," said Sara when I opened the door. Dan and the old lady were fighting in the kitchen. It was a side of him I had never seen: Dan the asshole.
"Good morning," I said.
"I'm so happy that they are getting along again," said Sara. "Are you hungry?"
"Yes... Is that ‘getting along’?”
"Oh yes, it's always like that with them."
I was a bit bothered by all the commotion, but I was feeling much better than the day before. I sat at the table and Sara went to the kitchen.
"Oh, Andrew!" said the old lady when she noticed me. I felt uneasy talking to her, after she had almost tried to kill me just hours before. "I came to apologize to you today."
"Oh, well, sure Madam… apology accepted," I said, secretly still scared she might get her gun out and finish what she started the day before. Sara put a plate full of pancakes on the table and just looking at them made my stomach groan.
"You see, you got caught up in a very regrettable situation yesterday. Although it was all this idiot's fault, because he didn't tell anybody he had come back," she explained, looking at Dan. I decided it was the best timing to start eating.
"Anyway, I am ready to help you with anything you might need. Dan refused to tell me what you came here for, but if you ever feel like opening up to this mama here, my door is always open."
A nice change of heart, I thought.
"I will remember it, thank you, Madam."
"I really like you, Andrew. I can tell you're well educated, and you're very cute too. Do you need a job?"
"Cut it out now," said Dan.
"Nobody asked for your opinion here."
"You came to apologize, now you did it, so just leave."
"Now what? You're scared I'll be taking your boyfriend from you?" she told him. Just like Sara did the day before, she immediately referred to me as his boyfriend. I always knew since we were kids that Dan was the type to like people in general regardless of categories like “male” or “female”, so it didn't surprise me to find out he was bisexual during our adolescence. But even knowing that, shouldn't they assume that we're friends instead of a couple? I found it somewhat annoying.
"That's ridiculous," he said.
"Anyway, I have a business to run, so I'll be going now. Sara, you have work today, you're coming with me."
"Yes, Mama," said Sara smiling. I greeted them and thanked Sara for the breakfast.
"One last thing, Dan," said the old lady when she was at the door. "That girl, the daughter of the detective, she came looking for you, more than once. Apparently, she left some of her things here. I told her I could get them for her, but instead she wanted you to call her when you came back. You understand, right? She was worried for you too."
I could see Sara looking at the ground on the other side of the door. Whoever this girl was, she was clearly jealous of her.
"I see. I'll call her," said Dan.
"Next time you dump a girl at least give her back her things, you damn idiot!"
"I got it, now get going already." He slammed the door behind her.
"I never knew this side of you," I told him when we were alone.
"It's frustrating. Even though I tried to keep my distance from them all my life..."
"They love you anyway," I said, and he remained silent. "Why did you try to keep your distance? I think it's great that you have them. I'm glad you were not alone during the past seven years."
"Drew... I..."
"Yesterday Sara said that you went doing some ‘dangerous job’ on your own. What was it, and why did you do that?" Since I was staying at his place, I felt I had the right to know something more about the person I was living with.
"She was probably talking about my job with the drug dealers. The thing is that there was something I wanted, and to get it I had to get in the dirt. I didn't want to bring down anyone else with me."
"What was it?"
"… Revenge," he said after a pause.
"On whom?"
"The man my mother ran with."
"Who was that?"
He took a deep breath before replying, "The owner of a casino. He made her lose everything. After we came here, she begun to work at the brothel so that she could go spend everything at his place. After two months, she ran away with him. I have never seen her again. But that man eventually came back to town without her. I wanted to destroy him."
"And what did you do?"
"It wasn't easy to get close to him so the thing I needed the most was information. And to get it I had to get to know more people and their most intimate secrets."
"So you started doing prostitution, and drugs."
"Yes."
"What happened in the end?"
"He was killed before I could do anything. Six months ago, somebody put a bullet in his brain. I was dedicating all my life to a revenge that was stolen from me." He smiled bitterly. "I fell into depression when I found out. I pretended to go away on a job and spent four months in the slums of the closest city, selling my body on the street and spending what I gained on drugs. I was waiting to die from overdose anytime when I accidentally met a doctor I knew from when I still lived with my mother. He brought me to a rehabilitation center in the countryside, where I've been for the last two months. As soon as I came back, I wanted to see An because I hoped she would help me understand what to do with my life now. And there I met you." I didn't know what to say to him. His situation was worse than I had imagined. He looked at me straight in the eyes and I felt uneasy. "Are you disgusted by me?" he asked. He said it slowly, with pain in his voice. He didn't wait for me to reply before he went to the bathroom to shower.
Honestly, I was shocked. The Dan I knew wasn't the type to seek revenge or hate anyone, not to mention that he dedicated six years of his life to that. All of that for his mother, a woman who abandoned him without turning back. Did she deserve all the importance he had given her? He even left Uptown to stay with her. He even left me. Those thoughts were making me uncomfortable, so I decided I needed to move my attention to something else. While waiting for him, I began my research on Robinson.
Chapter 7
Bart Robinson Jr., age thirty-two, was the son of the minister of education. He studied in the highest-level schools of Uptown, graduated in law with honors and was about to lead a successful life both as a professional lawyer and as a politician in the same party as his father. He was known to be a caring and balanced person; he had a beautiful fiancée, a lot of money, and was always doing charity and giving speeches to the freshmen at different universities. In other words he was perfect, at least until he went crazy and shot his own father, two bodyguards and four other colleagues in one colleague’s villa where they were holding a meeting about the party's internal policy. On the internet, I found several interviews and videos about him. I looked at him and tried to capture any detail about his personality, from the way he talked, to his clothes, wondering if that person really could have met Shallie in the period she was missing. Ultimately, it was hardly probable I'd figure out anything from the internet, knowing the fact that his car was found in the lake had never reached the public. Despite everything, I felt that there was something I was missing, something I could have guessed from the information I was looking at, but I wasn't able to connect my thoughts into something concrete. I needed a starting point, an event around which I could build a theory. Lost in my thoughts, I was startled by Dan's voice behind my back.
"I guess that may be it."
"Eh? What?"
A towel around his neck, drops of water were still falling from his hair. "The timing. This guy's car was found two days after your girlfrien
d. They were investigating the area because of her, her case was closed the next day, and right after that, Walker was threatened. In addition, they found the car, but then they covered it up. Robinson was the son of a minister, and a member of the City’s most influential political party. I guess the police immediately contacted him or his father when they found the car, and then agreed to keep it secret."
"I see. Yes, it makes sense. But then what about what happened two weeks later?"
"I don't know, but if he had a plan, clearly something went wrong."
That was my starting point. I was glad I could discuss it with him; my brain was finally able to expand on all the information at once.
"What if it wasn't just him?" I said then.
"It may be, why do you think that?"
"Let's say he kidnapped Shallie on his own. He covered it up, most likely helped by his father. Then his colleagues must have done something against him, and like you said, if he had a plan, something went wrong. The first thing that I can think of is that they found out what he did, but nothing leaked from them, so I guess they wanted to negotiate with him to keep their mouths shut. Doing it in person looks like the best way to keep any business secret, so they met in that villa. Now there's something strange, something that doesn't fit the picture: even if the other politicians found out and wanted to threaten him, why kill everybody there, his father included, and commit suicide on top of it? It could be, but it doesn't feel right. At that point he could have faked an accident to get rid of them. Why die after all the effort to cover up the truth? And by dying he would actually take the blame for everything instead, you know?"
"And his connection with Shallie stayed hidden anyway," said Dan.
"Exactly. Once he died, they could have just uncovered it. The public opinion loves to put all the blame on one bad guy, so they can pretend the rest of the world is perfect and pure. Still the police didn't uncover it. The only thing I can think of is that he wasn't alone. There was someone else involved in the whole thing, someone the news cannot talk about. And this person, or these people, are still well hidden and supported by the police. They might be related to the cause of her death."
"It makes sense. It's possible. But we need proof, otherwise you are just guessing. You could be imagining things, and in the end this Robinson was just completely insane and made that massacre on a rampage. Also, don't forget that the information we have might be controlled by the police or whoever else is behind them as well. So let's be cautious."
"Yes, of course," I said. I opened the web page where I was reading the information about Robinson, and I had an idea. "I think for starters we should talk to someone who knew this guy, just to get an idea of what kind of person he really was."
"Sounds good, but who and how?"
"Look here," I showed him the paragraph I was reading.
"‘Engaged to Lilian Marshall, daughter of John Marshall, the chief of medicine of the Rosedeer University Hospital.’ It's where your father works. Do you know this John Marshall?"
"Nope, but I'm sure my father does. Maybe we can use it as an excuse to get closer to his daughter, even though I don't want my parents to be involved in this."
"If that's the only problem, I'm sure there's something we can do. I'll think about it."
"Thanks." I felt relieved and I was secretly proud of myself for my deductions.
"By the way, I'm impressed. I didn't think you were so smart," he said.
"Hey, that's rude. Besides, before all of this happened I was about to enroll in the police academy."
"Really? I see," he said with a polite smile.
Of course, I forgot he didn't know that. I glanced at him and suddenly remembered our conversation from earlier. There was still in him something of the boy I knew? Since he was ready to do so much to help me, I guessed he still kind of cared for me. And I? I was still confused. I didn't know anything about his mother in the first place, and the life he led after leaving Uptown was dark and far away from me. He said he was too ashamed to tell me, and I could understand that. I don't know how the fifteen-year-old Andrew would have reacted to knowing what he was doing. But one thing was sure, I had no right to judge him. The way I was running away from home and from my loved ones wasn't so different from what he did, and if he hadn't been with me in those days, who knows what could have happened to me? Thinking of that made me miss my parents. They had to go through so much suffering in their lives, and I was just making it worse for them.
He was now drying his hair with the towel and wasn't paying any attention to me. I thought I could answer his question from before and tell him “I'm not disgusted by you, shit happens,” but the words wouldn't come out of my mouth. At the same time my sense of guilt toward my parents was growing, so I knew I had to break the silence in the room and get distracted.
"Hey, Dan," I said, but I still had nothing in mind to tell him. He turned my way with an interrogative expression on his face. Now I really had to think of something. "I don't have other clothes to wear, maybe I should buy some." In fact, I still had something in my backpack, but that was the first thing that came to my mind. Or, I could have just asked if I could wash them. I felt like an idiot.
"You can get something from my closet; if my jacket fits you then anything should be good. Unless you really want to go shopping," he said with a grin on his face. He must have understood I spoke without thinking.
"I— I don't," I said then, and went to his bedroom. I was glad I didn't have his eyes on me anymore. I opened the closet almost expecting a corpse to pop out of it, and I was surprised to find it in perfect order. He liked to keep his things in order when we were children too, and I was glad it was still the same. He had sweaters and winter clothes in the first drawer, t-shirts and pants in the second, and shirts on the hangers. That day finally felt like spring weather, so I chose a t-shirt and I put a shirt on top of it, leaving it open. Then I noticed that at the bottom right of the closet there was something else. I moved the shirts, and there I found a woman's dress. Looking closer, I saw it wasn’t just one; there were also other dresses, shirts and skirts. All of them very sexy. I hesitated, staring at those clothes, until Dan came in the room.
"Done already?" he asked. I looked at him with the dress still in my hands.
"Are these yours?" I said.
"Are you seriously asking me that?" He looked offended, but I don't know why, it seemed perfectly possible to me. Then I remembered the old lady saying something about a girl who left her things there.
"Oh, that's what the old lady was talking about."
"Yes, I had totally forgotten about it."
"So these are your girlfriend's?"
"Well, I should say ex-girlfriend by now."
"Did she come over often? There's a lot of clothes here."
He seemed to think about it for a moment, and then said, "Occasionally, yeah."
"I guess that's the good part of living alone, that your girlfriend can sleep over at your place whenever you want…. I'm kind of envious." I ended up smiling, thinking of Shallie coming to my house. I remembered how she was nervous the first time she met my parents. And again, the first time we made love, in my room. I felt a dull pain in my chest and I put the dress back in the closet, then sat on the bed. Dan probably perceived something was wrong with me and sat down by my side.
"I am kind of envious of you too," he said.
“Why?” I asked. I was a bit surprised about it.
"She is... well, if you meet her you will know immediately, but she can be pretty intense. And besides her and another kid, all the people I went out with were a bunch of weirdos. I have no idea how to have a normal relationship."
"Pfff—" That confession unexpectedly made me smile, and his troubled face was too amusing to hold back a laugh. "I can't believe you just said that."
"What? Is it so funny?"
"No, no, I'm sorry. Thank you," I smiled at him. He was trying to cheer me up, and he really did it. Methodically, he started to pu
t the girl's clothes in a bag.
"Anyway, before I called the guy I told you about. The one I tried the drugs for. He owes me a favor, so he said he will listen to our questions," he said.
"Good, when are we meeting him?"
"He said he doesn't want strangers in his laboratory, but we can go meet him at his club any night, I will just have to ask the guard for him."
"He owns a club?"
"Yes, that's his actual job. He's there every night, no better place to do business."
"Of course. So, can we go tonight?"
"Sure. It opens at midnight."
Chapter 8
That night, before dinner, Sara knocked on our door. Apparently, that morning she and Dan agreed on exchanging the sofas they had in the rooms. This time she had makeup on, and her curly hair was tied in a high ponytail. She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and smelled of shampoo. She probably had just gotten changed after coming back from work. I could totally see her redoing her makeup after the bath just to look cute when she met Dan. She was undeniably an attractive girl, with her long legs and all the right curves, but I still couldn't picture her being a prostitute. Thinking about it, I realized that I had no idea how such a job worked, except for the obvious part.
"Thanks again, Sara," said Dan while we were moving the sofa to her apartment on the other side of the corridor.
"No problem. Mine is a sofa bed, so it's better if you have it since now there's the two of you," she said. I have to admit I was happy I wouldn't see that one anymore. Looking at that bullet hole just made me remember how I was almost shot the day before. In her room, Sara covered the couch with a couch cover, while I looked around. The flat was the same size as Dan's, but was divided differently. The bathroom and the kitchen were bigger, so instead of a bedroom, her bed was in the living room. It was a double bed round shaped, with silk purple sheets on it and three pillows. The way she had decorated the house matched the style of the bed and was very girly; I thought it suited her well. Sara invited us over to dinner, and since neither of us felt like cooking, we accepted. She still blushed every time Dan looked at her, and got super excited whenever he asked her anything. Dan on the contrary seemed a bit troubled by her reactions, and looking at them was, from my point of view, hilarious.