Hunting a Killer, page 2
They found a vacant table in one corner of the diner and ordered coffee.
“Go ahead and eat, if you’re hungry,” Mika said.
“Naw, I’m good.” Buck waited for the coffee to arrive before saying, “When you said your brother was killed—”
“Murdered,” Mika interjected.
“Okay, murdered. You implied your mother was, too. How?”
“Do you honestly want to know, or are you doing some Good Samaritan thing because you feel sorry for me?”
Buck immediately decided honesty would be better than hedging. “It’s obvious you’re suffering. I have the feeling you haven’t talked to anyone about what happened. Or more, you’ve talked to the police and perhaps relatives, maybe a friend or people you work with, but you haven’t let it all out. Because of that, it’s eating a hole in you.” He tapped his chest. “Here, and probably in your head, too, if that makes any kind of sense.”
Mika nodded. “It does. The cops think it was a home invasion. My uncle?” He shrugged. “He probably agrees with them, though he never said. He’s the only relative I’ve got left, now.”
“No father? Okay, dumb question. You just said you’ve only got your uncle. Is he here in town?”
“No. He flew in after hearing about the murders, took over the funeral and burial arrangements because I’m too young—” he rolled his eyes, “—hired some lawyer to handle everything else, and left. He never was close to us when my father was alive and after he died, Elias, that’s my uncle, got Mom to agree to move here and then pretty much walked away.” Mika grimaced. “He’s good at that.”
“Off topic, sort of, but how old are you?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Hell, that’s not too young.”
“Tell that to Elias. Anyway, no, I didn’t open up to him, given his attitude. The guys I work with sympathized with me about what happened, but that’s it.”
Buck took a drink of coffee, studying Mika. “You sound as if you don’t believe it was a home invasion, or a break-in, or whatever.”
“We live…lived in a lower middle-class neighborhood. If you were looking for a place to rob, would you choose a small house in an area of small houses where it was pretty obvious the people were struggling to make ends meet?”
Buck chuckled. “I wouldn’t, but then I’m not a burglar, even a stupid one.” He paused before asking, “How were they killed? Shot, like they surprised the guys?”
“Shot, yeah, but not until after they…” Mika took a deep breath. “It looked like they tortured Reko and Mom, first. They were slashed with a knife, or knives. Cut…” He shuddered, closing his eyes, saying, “I walked in on the scene. There was so much blood.”
“Damn. No wonder you’re so, well upset doesn’t begin to describe it.”
“It doesn’t. The detective, his name is Windom, suggested the killers tortured them, trying to find out where they kept any valuables.” Mika’s mouth tightened. “As if there were any. All of us worked, because we had to, to pay the mortgage and keep food on the table.”
“If it wasn’t a burglary or home invasion, then why were they killed?”
“I don’t know! It’s not like we had any enemies. We’ve only lived here for a couple of years. How could we have made enemies?”
“What did your brother do?”
“He worked for a janitorial service. Mom worked part time as a cashier at one of the big-box stores.”
“Definitely not the kind of jobs that bring in the big money.”
Mika snorted. “No kidding.”
“What about your father, before he died?”
“Whew. Okay, this is going to be hard to explain so it makes sense to you.” Mika smiled wryly. “It never did to Uncle Elias.”
“Try me,” Buck said when Mika went quiet.
“All right. Soon after they married, my folks began living off the grid. You know what that means?”
“Yeah. You are totally self-sufficient. You don’t use any public utilities, especially electricity. As I understand it, you hunt and fish for your food and raise your own vegetables.”
“Exactly. Dad owned a small piece of property in the mountains. He and Mom, and some of his friends, spent the first six months of their marriage building a house into the mountain slope. I mean, in it. All you could see of it from outside was the front wall and about six feet of side walls, with a roof composed of solar panels for heating and power. By the time Reko was born, it was two stories, the second one fully underground. I won’t bore you with the rest of the details about it. Anyway, I came along two years later. By then they had only minimal contact with the outside world.” He smiled to himself. “It was a wonderful life, as far as we were concerned.”
“You never left there, all the time you were growing up?”
“We did. Dad had an older truck and once a month we’d come down to the city to stock up on necessities we couldn’t make ourselves, like toilet paper, some clothes, boots, books. Upkeep on the truck was how I learned about cars and repairing them, since we did it all ourselves.”
“Makes sense. Books?”
“Oh yeah,” Mika replied. “As soon as we were old enough, Mom spent every weekday morning home-schooling us while Dad did repairs or made new furniture, cleaned the cistern, and the bathroom, which was basically a fancy indoor privy. He hated the bathroom part, but it was necessary, of course. In the afternoons, he and Reko would hunt and fish while Mom and I tended the garden and made the meals.”
“Even in winter?”
“Yep. We had a sort of greenhouse set up for growing things like potatoes and other root vegetables. By the time spring came we were good and tired of them, but it was what it was.”
“Didn’t you get bothered by hikers and hunters?”
“Occasionally. All Dad had to do was walk outside with his shotgun cradled in his arms and they’d hightail it. He was a big man, and with his full beard, damned fearsome looking.”
Buck chuckled. “Dressed in deerskin pants and a fringed leather jacket?”
“Actually, yes. We didn’t let anything go to waste. Mom made quilts from rabbit pelts. It used to piss her off that there was nothing she could do with the fish other than eat the meat.”
Buck grimaced. “Yeah, I don’t think the skins would make good clothes. They’d be real smelly, to start with.” He was glad when Mika laughed, although it was a brief one.
“I’m talking your ear off, aren’t I,” Mika said at that point. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Hey, it’s okay. I think it’s helping you to get things out there. I bet I’m about the only person you’ve told about what it was like growing up.”
“Yeah.” Mika sighed. “The people I know, now that we’re…” He bit his lip. “Now that I’m living here, are the guys I work with and occasionally someone I date, which isn’t that often.”
“At least you do. Even if it’s only a couple of times, you’re out and about, not going from home to work and back home again.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
A flash of pain in Mika’s expression made Buck wonder if he’d had some bad experiences with dating but he wasn’t going to pry. The fact that Mika was opening up to him at all was a small miracle, he figured. Don’t push or that will stop.
Mika picked up his cup, set it down again without drinking, and said, “It’s late. I should let you go.”
“I work nights,” Buck replied with a smile. “I’m used to these hours. You, on the other hand need to get some sleep so you can face your job in the morning.”
“I’m off tomorrow…today now, I guess. I can sleep in. Well, a little. I have to go by the house to get whatever I’m going to keep because the people the lawyer hired are supposed to be there in the afternoon to start clearing things out so it can be put on the market.”
“I hope you have lots of boxes and a van for the furniture.”
“No furniture. Where would I put it, even if I wanted it? I’m living in a motel right now. That’s the other thing I have to do, this afternoon. Find a cheap apartment.”
Buck considered offering to help and telling him there were a couple of vacant apartments in his building. He didn’t because he was afraid Mika might take it the wrong way. They barely knew each other and for all he knew this could be the first and last time Mika wanted to be around him. When he thinks about it, he may regret opening up to me as much as he has.
“Thank you for listening,” Mika said, getting to his feet.
“You’re welcome. You know where to find me if you need an ear to bend again, or a shoulder.”
“To cry on?” Mika’s lips pressed together momentarily. “I’ve already done the crying. Now I have to face whatever comes next.”
“Getting moved?” Buck asked as he stood as well.
Mika nodded. “That and find out why…” He shook his head, starting toward the door.
As Buck followed him, he wondered what Mika wanted to find out. He had a feeling he knew. “Leave that for the police. It’s what they do best.”
Mika turned to look at him. “I know. I will.”
Buck didn’t believe him, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. When they were outside the diner, Mika thanked him again for listening and then they parted, Buck going back to where he parked, Mika heading in the other direction.
* * * *
He’s a nice guy. I almost feel guilty, making him listen while I babbled on about…everything. Still, he was right. Talking did help. It would be great if Buck is right about the police, too, but I don’t think he is. They’re looking in the wrong direction. I know they are. Like I told him, no thief would think there was anything of value in our house. They were looking for something they thought Mom had, or Reko, or maybe even me. But what, and why?
Mika shivered. If they thought it was me…No. If they had, they’d have come looking for me. It’s not like I’m hiding out. Not really. I went straight from the house to the motel once the cops said I could. And I’ve gone to work every day, too.
He kept on walking, heading back to the motel. The tension he’d almost let go of, because of his talk with Buck, began to return and he felt his shoulders tighten. Stopping where he was, he turned slowly, looking for anyone who might be interested in a lone man walking the dark streets. There was no one in view which he supposed was unsurprising, given the hour. Still, he stepped up his pace and soon was back at the motel and in his room. He took a fast shower before falling into bed. Moments later exhaustion overtook him, and he slept.
Chapter 3
Even from the outside the house looked different, as if it was vacant and had been for a long while—which Mika knew was partially the truth.
It is vacant—and lifeless. Everything that made it not only a house but a home is gone.
He unlocked the front door, stepped inside, and instantly felt deep pain mixed with anger when the first thing he saw was the dried blood on the living room carpet. Evidence of where his mother and brother had been so viciously murdered.
Then he noticed something else. Every drawer in the desk was standing open, as were the doors in the cabinet which had served as a TV stand. The cushions on the sofa and the armchair were askew; the two photos above the sofa weren’t quite straight.
He hurried into the kitchen. All the cabinet drawers and doors were standing open and it was apparent that the contents had been moved around. “At least they didn’t throw everything on the floor,” he muttered.
Going to the second floor, he checked all the bedrooms. Again, everything that could be opened was. This time the searcher hadn’t been as neat. The mattresses were tipped up, leaning against the walls. Clothes in the closets were pushed to one side of the bars or lay on the floor. Dresser drawers had obviously been gone through.
In the bathroom, the contents of the medicine cabinet were piled in the sink and the linen closet in the hallway had been rifled through.
If I wanted any proof that whoever killed my family had an ulterior motive, this is it. But why come back later. Why not search the house the first time they were here?
The only reason he could come up with was that something scared them away—a nosy neighbor, a cop car heading somewhere with its lights and siren going. Maybe Mom was screaming and they were afraid someone heard her. Whatever the reason, they got out of here then came back to see if they could find what they were looking for.
“Did they?” he asked under his breath. “Or is it still here somewhere? If it is, how the hell can I find it if they didn’t? The big if and I know it.”
Before doing anything else, he went into his bedroom, put the mattress down where it belonged, then set the two duffel bags he’d brought with him on the bed. He began filling one of them with his clothes, carefully folding them first. They took up most of the bag, with enough room left for his books. When he started taking them off the shelf of the headboard, he realized they’d been moved and put back in a different order from how he kept them.
So whatever they were looking for was something flat that could be hidden in a book? A logical conclusion, he thought, as he packed them into the bag—although not necessarily the correct one.
Taking the second bag, he went down to what had been his mother’s bedroom. There wasn’t much he wanted from there—the scrapbooks she’d made containing the story of their lives before they’d moved down to the city, and the family photos hanging on the walls. He paused as he took them down, looking at the one of the four of them, taken a month before his father had died. They were standing in front of the house, his parents in the center, arms around each other, with Reko and Mika on either side.
If you had been more careful we’d still be living there, not down here. One misstep and…He clenched his hands. I miss you. We all do…did. He felt his eyes tear up and wiped away one that crept down his cheek.
Then, resolutely, he continued what he was doing. When he finished there, he moved down the hallway to Reko’s room. His brother had been an ardent gamer, both single-player games, on his laptop, and multi-player ones online. Deciding it would give him something to do once he found a place to live; he put the laptop and the DVD cases holding the games, as well as some movies, into the duffle bag. Reko hadn’t been much of a reader, but he did have a few books which went into the bag as well. Lastly, Mika went to the closet. Reko had owned a leather jacket their mother had made him right before their father’s death. She’d begun work on one for Mika, as well, but had abandoned it in all the chaos that had followed the finding of her beloved husband’s body. Mika took the jacket from the closet, slipping it on. It was a bit large, but he didn’t care. It was his now, a remembrance of a well-loved brother and their lives growing up.
Getting the other duffel bag, Mika went back downstairs. He decided to take a couple of pots and some dishes and silverware from the kitchen. Then he went into the living room and took down the two photos above the sofa, laying them carefully in one of the bags. Finally, he went to the desk. Although it had obviously been searched by the killers, he hoped they hadn’t taken what he was looking for. He knew his mother had kept a file with all their personal information, including his and Reko’s birth certificates, his parents’ marriage certificate, and his father’s death certificate. He found it, buried between other ones for bills paid and receipts, and set it aside. There was also an address book holding a few names, which he stuck in the file he was taking with him. He thought that would be it until he got to the bottom drawer where he found a flat wooden box. Inside, there were letters tied together with a faded ribbon. It was obvious the searcher, or searchers, had gone through them as they were out of order, which he found out when he thumbed through them. Knowing his mother, they would have been by date from first to last, as she was very orderly.
Finished with what he’d come to do, Mika hefted the duffel bags over his shoulder, left the house, locking the door behind him, and went to his car. He tossed the bags in the trunk, and, finally, called Detective Windom, who was in charge of the murder case, to report that he thought someone had broken into the house. From all the interest the man showed, merely commenting that what Mika thought was a break-in was probably the result of the police searching the house, Mika knew nothing would be done about it.
“He’s made up his damned mind and nothing’s going to change it,” he muttered angrily after hanging up.
* * * *
Mika spent the afternoon looking for a furnished apartment that he could afford—and would be willing to live in, because the two were not necessarily congruent. He wasn’t too picky about the neighborhood, but he really wanted an apartment where he wasn’t either sharing space with cockroaches or needing earplugs to block out the noise of a neighbor’s TV or loud music.
He was about to give up and head back to the motel but decided to take a look at one more. According to the rental website, it was one of six in an older house that had been broken up into apartments. The woman who greeted him when he rang the bell was of indeterminate age, and very scrawny, with a beaklike nose. All that was counteracted by her welcoming smile. She introduced herself as Ms. Grant before taking him up to the second floor to show him the one available apartment.
It was definitely on the small side, with a bedroom that was barely large enough for the full-sized bed and dresser it held. The closet was tiny, not that it mattered. Mika didn’t own enough in the way of clothing to fill a large one. The living-dining area had a decent sofa and a table with two chairs. The kitchen was off to one side, and while not modern, the stove and fridge were new, according to Ms. Grant. The bathroom had a shower stall instead of a tub, in deference to the space available. He checked all the cupboards, especially those under the sinks, rating a laugh and a, “No bugs, I promise,” from her. “I pride myself on keeping the house clean.”
He had to admit what he’d seen of it on the way up to the apartment reinforced her words, as did the apartment itself. He told her he’d like to rent it, which of course involved going down to her office off to the side of her apartment to fill out the necessary paperwork. She told him it would take a day for her to check his references and then she’d call him one way or the other to let him know if she would rent to him.
