Chapter Sixteen
SIXTEEN
Mac
To Mac, Mikko’s formal living room had the clinical, well-trodden feel of a doctor’s waiting area.
She suspected the cream-toned furniture and white walls were meant to be chic, a nod to the man’s Scandinavian roots, but the light wood floors were filthy, a flurry of grubby boot prints left behind by state troopers and the BCI team, and all Mac could think about was whether her sister would be the one cleaning them up.
The last half-hour had been a blur of activity, some of which Mac still knew little about.
She’d emerged from the basement at the same time as Tim and gone to the back yard to call Nicole, who’d been told to wait at home until she was summoned to the barracks.
For a time, the house had been quiet. She’d seen Tim and Solomon with the intruder through the sliding glass doors, which were grimy as well.
As she talked and paced the yard, the silence was punched through with shouts, a chorus of male voices coming from the front of the residence.
She checked the great room, but it had emptied out, and when the investigators finally returned, they looked like they’d just run a half-marathon.
“We lost the phrogger,” Tim had said angrily, his crystalline eyes ablaze. “I put in a call to zone headquarters.”
The situation, Mac knew, was about to get complicated.
It would be the highest-ranking zone sergeant who’d coordinate the effort to capture the subject.
Road patrols, the sheriff’s office, and the US Border Patrol would all respond to the area.
If the subject wasn’t found quickly, the BCI would work the intelligence aspect—not an easy task, considering they didn’t know the woman’s real name.
If they came up empty, the media would be contacted to assist, and the whole county would know they’d lost a prisoner.
An administrative investigation by the Internal Affairs Bureau was likely.
Not a great situation in an election year, but here they were.
In the study, Shana was talking to the homeowner’s girlfriend. As for Mac, she was passing the time before the shit hit the fan by listening to Tim interview Mikko Helle.
“But how did this happen?” the man asked Tim. His T-shirt clung to the contours of his chest, and Mac swore she caught him admiring his own tattooed bicep when he ran a hand through his peroxided hair. “I only moved in here yesterday. How can there be a dead body in my basement?”
At first, when Mikko had returned to find his driveway parked full of police cars, he’d reacted as if the account about the squatter and the skeleton was a joke.
Like local law enforcement had nothing better to do than prank the resident NHL star.
He’d been sitting with his ankle crossed over the opposite knee, but Mikko’s attempt at feigning relaxation was belied by the nervous edge to his voice.
His harrowing new reality seemed to be sinking in.
“It’s a bizarre situation,” Tim conceded.
“We’re hoping you can help us work some things out.
” Tim, Mac noticed, was treading carefully, conscious of keeping accusations at bay.
This was one of the things Mac respected most about Investigator Tim Wellington: until someone disappointed him by proving themselves to be guilty, Tim didn’t cast blame.
If it turned out Mikko Helle was a murderer, well.
There would be time for contempt down the line.
“I didn’t even know there was a crawlspace,” Mikko said. “And I definitely did not know there were human bones inside. Do I need someone special to clean that up?” The man wrinkled his nose. “The house is supposed to feel like new.”
If the man was playing dumb, the act was convincing.
It looked to Mac like he was processing what Tim had just told him for the first time.
Picturing a dead body in his basement, undiscovered for months.
The idea of that clearly disgusted him on multiple levels, this fastidious Finnish athlete in his lustrous house.
The presence of the phrogger was disarming, sure, but those bones?
That was a hard truth, and a difficult reality to accept.
Unless he’d had months of practice because he’d known the body was there all along.
“What about the intruder?” Tim asked. “Did you have any inkling that someone was hiding in your house?”
Mikko shook his head. “Eva said she heard some noises when we showered after swimming. She mentioned it yesterday too. I thought she must be imagining it. Old houses, yes? The intruder, this stranger who was in my ceiling, she killed someone?”
“The investigation is ongoing. Does the name Jenny Smith mean anything to you?”
“No. I don’t know anyone with that name.”
“You sure about that?” asked Tim. “She told us we should talk to you about the bones.”
“What? No. I told you, I don’t know anything.”
“Have you ever had a run-in with a stalker?”
“No,” he said again. “Sometimes people get in my face online, but that’s all. You think someone’s obsessed with me? That woman in the walls?” The idea seemed to please him.
Tim said, “The perpetrator claims she was only here four days, and the remains are much older than that. When exactly did you buy this property, Mr. Helle?”
“Last September. It was right before Labor Day.”
“September,” Tim repeated. “We’ll need your realtor’s name, and the names of everyone who worked on the renovation.”
“OK, yes. Whatever you need. Did you talk with Nicole?”
Mac had been working hard to remain invisible, a fly on the wall not worthy of a glance, but at the mention of her sister, the leg of the stool she was sitting on scraped the floor, the sound echoing through the room.
Tim’s eyes flicked to Mac, but Mikko didn’t notice, or perhaps he didn’t care. “We’re talking to everyone,” Tim went on. “You said this is your summer place?”
“I have a condo in D.C.’s West End. New construction. Beautiful building.”
A source of pride, clearly. Mikko seemed to care a lot about material things.
Mac could sense the effort it took for Tim not to roll his eyes. “I’ll need you to take a look around,” he said. “Make sure nothing of value has been stolen.”
“Yeah, all right. Of course.”
“Then I’ll need to know the dates of all the trips you took up here, from your first visit to this one. I’m afraid you’ll need to extend your hotel stay a little longer,” Tim told Mikko Helle. “This house is currently a crime scene.”