12
T
“He paid her a visit,” I told Ronan, speaking to him on the phone.
“How close did you get?” Ronan spoke as if he were clenching his jaw, as Mikky blurted out swear words loudly in the background. Shit must be going down.
“What’s going on?” I questioned because it’s rare for Mikky to lose his cool.
Ronan grunted. “Long story.” He hesitated a few beats before adding, “We’re getting targeted.”
“What? You got hit?” Assuming he was talking about a gun attack. “Drive-by?” Although even a drive-by shooting wouldn’t significantly impact the club because of its architectural design. The valuable areas of the club were in the hub of the building, away from the windows.
“Nah. Rats,” he replied bluntly. “We had to close the club.”
“Rats? What?” I assumed he meant people who caused problems for us. It must be bad if they closed the club.
“Long story. And ah…some weird shit with a valued member,” he sounded annoyed and impatient as if he wasn’t in the mood to go into great detail.
“Which member?” I was curious, as we go to great lengths to please our members, so it's rare for someone to be displeased.
“Mr. Yarmouth,” he sounded down in the dumps.
“Isn’t he the guy who makes kids’ toys?” I asked, vaguely remembering Ronan pointing him out to me once.
“Yeah, educational toys or something. We’ll sort it,” he raised his tone to sound more confident, even though I sensed he was worried. “Anyway, what happened with the cop and the girl?”
“She took a ride with them, then parked outside the gardens. I couldn’t hear what they were discussing, but they’re obviously on her back. She seemed upset when she climbed out and ran off, and I lost track of her,” I clarified.
“Huh, looks shifty as fuck,” he growled. “Anyway, are you at Gotland?”
“Yeah,” I lied. They hated when I cut class, but the private detective that Mikky hired wanted to meet me in Larsson, so I was taking a cab to the airport and should be back tonight.
“Alright, see you tonight,” he exhaled as the burden of the world was weighed down on his shoulders.
“Ah, nah, I’ve got plans,” I told him. “Good luck sorting out the rats.”
“Yeah, thanks,” he groaned, then swiped off.
As soon as I finished the call, I messaged Riley since I hadn’t contacted her in a while as it’s fucking torture to being told that I couldn’t touch her. Fuck, I don’t know how long I could endure it. It’ll be easier not to eat for a week. But Mikky demanded that we kept our distance while watching her closely, which was fucking impossible.
Me: How has your day been?
I pulled up inside the airport parking lot, grabbed my bag, locked my Mustang, and jogged toward check-in to catch my plane. Once seated, I nestled down and closed my eyes until my phone beeped.
Riley: OK. Do u want to go out for dinner or get some takeaway?
I was surprised by this message, as I usually pursue her, not vice versa.
Me: Sorry, I can’t. Going out of town. I’ll see u tomorrow?
Riley: Where?
Her prying nature took me aback, as she wasn’t usually like that. If anything, she was excellent at allowing me to keep secrets from her; however, that went only one way, as I didn’t want her to hold secrets from me.
Me: I have some business to attend to.
Riley: OK. The club is closed, so I’m not working.
Me: I heard.
Riley: Do u know why?
Me: I’d be killed if I said ??
Me: I have to go. I’ll contact you tomorrow.
Once the plane landed in Larsson, I kept my wits about me as I hadn’t been here since my dad was murdered, and my mood was dark.
Danny Lam met me at the airport in Larsson as the rain came down while we walked to his car. The cold rain and ominous clouds reflected my temperament. Danny tried to make small talk as we drove to the suburb where Annika and I grew up, and I felt numb. Nothing. No anger. No rage. No sadness. Nothing. Nothingness bore an enormous hole into my stomach, leaving me emotionless and eager to get the job done so that I could return to Gothenburg.
This suburb where I had my first kiss, smoked my first cigarette, won high school awards for my artwork, sipped my first whiskey stolen from my dad’s home office, and had my first crush.
I shared all of my firsts with Annika, who was my first kiss and crush, and it was with her that I had my first whiskey and cigarette. I couldn’t change history, but it’s impossible to carve a future while I had my father’s unsolved murder hanging over me. And Annika had the answer to this mystery, so why didn’t we sit Riley down and give her the third degree?
Maybe Mikky had gone soft and struggled to be cruel to a shy, young girl who cleaned his kitchen floor for a living. Or perhaps it was his sadistic side that wanted to make her suffer for a crime she might not have committed. But whether or not Riley Laws was Annika, it’s curious that the Larsson police were on her back.
Even when Danny turned onto our old street, I could see the white panelboards of the house I once knew and the bay window on the top floor. My old bedroom. The bedroom window that Annika allegedly witnessed Mikael shooting my father.
The house looked different, cold and lonely, or maybe I was projecting my gloom upon the place. Then Danny pulled up outside, and I realized the evergreen tree that grew outside was nothing but a stubby trunk. Strangely, seeing the tree that we used to climb helped my father build a treehouse on its strong limbs with his bare hands.
He pulled up outside, and as the house owner opened the front door, we were expecting him after Danny had organized a tour to take notes and photos for the investigation.
To the best of my knowledge, the woman was in her early sixties and was very accommodating, but I wondered if she felt nervous living here. We sold the house at a low price because real estate prices had dropped, so she got it for a bargain. Pardon the pun, but there must be a cloud of uneasiness there, particularly at night.
We followed her inside. She asked if we wanted a drink, which we declined. Danny assured her, “We’ll be here for no more than ten minutes. "
“Well, you know the way,” she said, pointing to the stairs, overly cheerful to disguise her nervousness at seeing me, the dark, brooding one with a scar on my forehead and tattoos up my forearms. I knew I looked like a guy you didn’t want to stumble across down a dark alleyway, and that’s on a good day.
“Thank you,” I said, swallowing back the rising anxiety buzzing in my stomach. Numbness replaced with anxiety, the closer we got to my room.
“So, here we are,” Danny stated, holding his phone to record me as I walk back in time. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I told him. With the different décor and scents in here, and my bedroom transformed into a sewing room, I struggled to envision my belongings in this space when I was a kid - posters on the walls, toys and books on the shelves - but I think the wall color was the same. My mom liked plain, white walls to layer colors with drapes, ornaments, and rugs.
“Take it slowly,” he said calmly.
“I’m good,” I assured him, stepping to the window and looking onto the road.
“Take a deep breath and try to remember what the first sound that alerted you was,” Danny began softly.
“A gunshot,” I answered, seeing the black van in my mind pull up. “No. Wait. It was my father’s voice that I heard first talking to the people in the van that lured me to the window. It happened fast. I don’t know how long he was talking to them first, before they shot him, but there were a few seconds from when I went to the window and when the gun fired.”
“Then what happened?” he asked, filming me as I stood at the window, before scanning the view outside.
“I ran downstairs…no, wait, I came out here into the hall and Anni,” I swallowed over a lump in my throat. Annika came out of her room simultaneously, wondering what the loud bang had been.
“So, she wasn’t in your room when your father was shot?” he reiterated. “Because the police transcripts said she was here with you and heard loud voices outside and saw Mikael in the van window pull a gun on your father.”
Anger thudded in my chest, and I breathed deeply to ease the ache. “She was one hundred percent not with me. As I said, when I stepped out of my bedroom in a panic, she emerged from her room simultaneously. Our eyes met in the hallway.”
“There’s no way you were mistaken,” he asked, and I felt I was back in the courtroom again, testifying, and the prosecution lawyer was asking the same questions. They do that so you doubt yourself and muddle your memory, and then they can’t use your witness statement because it seems flawed.
But I was sure and answered with conviction, yet somehow, they still imprisoned Mikael on little evidence, Annika’s testimony of lies, which was also why our lawyers got him released three years later.
“There was no way in hell she was in my bedroom,” I asserted. I was nuts over Annika; if she were near me when my father was shot, I’d remember.
“Okay. Let’s walk through it. What happened next?” he urged me to retrace my steps.
“Annika followed me down the stairs,” I stated, pausing at her room, where I twitched to go inside, but there was no point. Every last speck of her would be gone. Vacuumed and dusted away, painted over…gone, leaving no trace, but a memory that haunted my young mind.
Turning away from the closed door that led into her room, I ran down the stairs to the kitchen, where the lady was waiting, her hands clasped together. “I walked out the front door to find Mom standing over him, screaming.”
I screwed my face up and stalled at the front door, seeing the scene played out before me as if I was living it in real time. But I came all this way to tell him what he already knew. I doubted that I added anything new.
“And was Annika still following you when you came outside?” Danny asked, standing on the spot where my father lay, trembling violently in the last few seconds of his life as blood poured from his wounds.
“I think so, although I can’t entirely remember as I was focused more on dad…” I told him as he gazed up at my window.
“In the court transcripts, the prosecution stated that it would have been impossible for you to see the crime scene from your bedroom window because the tree would block your view,” he explained, flicking his dark eyes from the tree stump to my window.
“I know,” I assured him. “But I could. I could see the van but not the people inside the cab. I could see my father falling backward as the van drove away, but I missed the registration plate number.”
“They dumped the van anyway,” he pointed out.
“Really? They found the van?” I was surprised by this. “I thought they didn’t have enough details on it.”
Danny replied, “They discovered a van of the same description, dumped on the side of the road outside of town, that was reported stolen the day before.” Unfortunately, we didn’t have a description of the van thieves, so it came to a dead end.”
“Did they screen the van for DNA at least?” I questioned, knowing what the answer was.
He shot me a tight smile. “No.”
“Because they had someone else in mind to arrest, right?” I insisted. “Do you think the cops ignored evidence and witness statements because they wanted to pin it on Mikael?”
He shook his head. “I prefer to have evidence that occurred before I admit to anything,” he replied professionally, but he must find it baffling that my father’s phone was allegedly damaged. He glanced down the road at the large houses behind fences. “Neighbors are too afraid to talk. On Mr. Kaiser’s demand, I called the daughter of the neighbor who witnessed the shooting and offered her money, and she still won’t speak.”
“Isn’t that enough evidence that this whole thing was a police setup to pin it on Mikael?” I pushed for him to agree with me so I didn’t feel like I was going insane.
“No, it just tells me that whoever killed your father was prepared to do whatever it took to protect themselves,” he replied, shrugging.
It wasn’t until rain poured into my eyes from my hair that I realized I was getting wet. This subject did weird things to my senses, made me distant and unaware of my surroundings.
“I’m just going to talk to the homeowner,” he stated, walking back inside as I stood next to the tree stump, measuring the distance in my mind from my window to the scene, with the tree’s limbs in the way. The more I thought about it, the more I questioned the reliability of my memories.
There were inconsistencies. Mom said she went out for an hour, which I didn’t remember, probably because I was in my room with my earphones on, gaming, I think. So, how did I hear the gunshot, then? Maybe I was wrong.
I combed my fingers through my wet black hair, eager to leave this shitty town and head back to Gothenburg. If I were a good son, I’d visit my mom while I'm here. But I wasn’t a good son, so my plan was to head back to the airport to catch my flight.
Danny emerged from the front door, thanking the homeowner, then pointed to his rental vehicle as if he had something on the tip of his tongue that he wanted to tell me.
“She’s putting the house on the market,” he told me once inside the car. “She hadn’t lived there in months, because she thinks the place has bad juju vibes.”
I chuckled under my breath as he started the motor. “We were happy in this house, mostly, until the end, so there shouldn’t be bad juju vibes like a house where a serial killer lived and buried the bodies under it.”
“I never thought of checking the basement for bodies,” he joked, keeping his tone serious as he went along with the story.
“You’d find nothing,” I mumbled as we approached the end of the street, and he turned left.
“Anyway, she said that the police visited after she bought the house on two occasions,” he started.
“Why?” This wasn't very clear to me. Her only association with my father’s murder was that she bought the house at a bargain. “She had nothing to do with my father’s shooting, did she? She wasn’t there, was she?”
“No. As far as I could tell, she had no involvement in it. He was driving in the opposite direction from the airport. “Where are you going?”
My flight wasn’t for another three hours, so I had plenty of time, but he should have told me if he wanted to take me somewhere else. This sort of shit creeps me out.
Ignoring my second question, I showed her the picture of the woman I believed was the Larsson Police Officer.
“Yeah, the blond cop?” I asked as he drove deeper into the city's heart, and my heart sank further. “What did she say?”
“Correct. Two different groups of officers – plainclothed and uniformed - asked the same questions. Which was whether she had received any threats or seen anyone sniffing around?”
“And had she?”
He shook his head. “No. The only people harassing her were cops.”
“Huh,” I grunted. “Typical. And where the fuck are you taking me?”
“Oh,” he replied, “The club.”
I groaned. “My mother’s club? Fuck, dude why didn’t you tell me.”
“Mr. Kaiser said you’d jump out of a moving vehicle if I told you I was taking you to the club. I guess he was right.”
“Is seeing her part of this investigation?” I snarled at him.
“Yes,” he affirmed. “And don’t worry, we’ll only be an hour or so.”
“An hour?” I balked. “That’s about an hour too long to spend with my mother.”