25
W hat’s up?” Gunner asked when he poked his head in my office. I messaged him earlier, asking him to see me the next time he comes to the club. He arrived two hours later wearing a black baseball cap and black hooded sweatshirt, and I clenched my teeth in frustration. We had a standard at Savile, and even when the club was closed to members, I still preferred whoever stepped on my premises to uphold the standard.
Ronan, Betty, and Freddies understood this; Gunner, on the other hand, did not or chose to rebel. If his father was still alive, I'm sure he’d have a few choice words to say.
“Take a seat,” I beckoned him, and he pulled up the chair on the other side of the desk.
“Has something happened?” he asked, looking concerned.
“No. How’s school?” I started by asking him to relax.
“I don’t know. It’s all right.” Giving nothing away. I knew he didn’t like college, but his mom wanted him to be introduced to a life outside our way of doing things, so he had no choice.
“Got a girlfriend?” I pressed, again, small talk, even though I knew he was consumed by the girl he suspected was Annika, even though Ronan was convinced she probably wasn’t.
He shrugged. “Is that why you wanted to talk to me?”
“When was the last time you spoke to your mom?” I persisted, moving closer to the crux of the issue and the real reason I asked him to come in.
He groaned and made a face, then folded his arms.
“That’s a no?” I asked, sliding an open box of chocolates to him – a birthday gift to me from Freddie. I shared the cupcake from Betty with Ronan, so Gunner was welcome to demolish the rest of these chocolates.
“She…you know,” he took a chocolate-covered almond and chucked it into his mouth, “always reminds me of Larsson, and Larsson reminds me of what happened to Dad, so-”
“You’ve got to grow up and face your demons sometime, Gunner,” I interrupted. Holding so much anger and resentment couldn't be healthy, but it explained why he was anti-social and wore his grievances on his skin. I held the same eagerness for revenge, but it wasn’t my father who was murdered right under my nose.
His eyebrows cocked as a mischievous smirk slid across his face. “Wait. Are you calling my mom a demon?”
I chuckled, “I wouldn’t dare.” I reached across the table to grab a chocolate, annoyed that my tastebuds for fine food and alcohol had been ruined by what we were served in prison.
“I know Ronan updates her frequently,” Gunner added.
“Yeah, I know. Worth his weight in gold,” I exclaimed, relaxing in the chair. “Seriously, I wouldn’t know where I’d be without him, but he’s not blood-related, and it’s not his job to appease Sylvie and keep her happy because her son refused to talk to her.”
My nephew flinched, and his eyes dropped to the floor. He looked ashamed and fidgeted in his seat, eager to fly out the door. Even if he tried, I’d refused to let him leave until I was done.
“So, are you going to call her?” I pressed.
“Fine,” he answered, unenthused, pent up, and angry, probably trying to devise every excuse imaginable as to why he couldn’t call her.
“Great. Get her off our backs,” I stated lightheartedly, then leaned forward, placing my elbows on the desk to ask him a direct question. “Did Sylvie, your mom, go out that night?”
The frown vanished from his sullen face. “What night? The night Dad died?”
“Yes,” I urged him to take another chocolate. “Danny Lam, the PI I hired, spoke to Sylvie, and she said that she went out for an hour to collect groceries. Do you remember that?”
He hesitated and picked a spot on the desk to stare at, and I could almost see his brain churning over the memories of that night. “She was definitely at home when the shots were fired,” he stated, but the confusion on his face was in contrast to the words he spoke.
“How do you know?” I persisted, watching him closely as he struggled with the images flashing in his mind. He was sixteen when this happened, only a kid, and his father was his fucking world.
“Because I remember her screaming, ‘ He’s been shot. Someone shot Lars. ’” He waivered a few beats to gather more thoughts. “Then I ran down the stairs to find the front door wide open, and mom was on her knees over my father…bleeding…so much blood.”
“Where was Annika?” I almost faltered as I said her name for how much harm she caused to the only people on earth I’d burn a fucking city down for.
“She was there. Upstairs. I think,” he cringed, finding it hard, or maybe he was second-guessing himself. It was too damn easy to question what you saw when the event occurred three years ago.
“You think?” I pressured him, and he was looking uncomfortable.
“I ran out the front door to help mom, but she screamed at me to call the police. When I turned around, Annika was there behind me, looking terrified. I remember the look on her face like it was yesterday. It was genuine fear, Mikky. Like she didn’t see that coming.”
My finger tapped on the desk irritably, and once I realized I was doing that unconsciously, I stopped and laced my fingers together. “Maybe she was unaware of your father’s murder, but someone coached her into lying to the police and in the courts. Was it possible for her to be a witness?”
He nodded and rubbed a small red patch that looked inflamed on the line of his jaw. “Her bedroom was on that side of the house, looking out onto the front yard, so yeah, she had a good view. If she had happened to stand at the window at that very moment,”
“IF she happened to stand at the widow at that every moment,” I reiterated.
“Exactly,” he squirmed as his mind traveled to that place again, raising pain and unresolved anger. “But when I stood at the window trying to replay the scene…” he held his hand up at a 60- degree angle, “I don’t reckon she’d be able to see inside the van at that angle.”
“Didn’t the neighbors say they were wearing masks?” I argued, “So, how the fuck could she ID anyone?” I shook my head and exhaled. “How could she claim to ID me as the one who shot Lars?”
“I know,” he agreed. “But we’ve been over this a thousand times, Mikky, but we’re never going to discover the truth until we find Annika.”
This subject evoked a lot of tension, so I paused for a minute to allow the heat to settle. “How is it going with that? Are you Finding Annika?”
He groaned and rubbed that red mark on his jaw again. “The girl that I’m kinda seeing-”
“Stalking,” I cut in, and his nostrils flared as he shot me a warning look that cracked me up. “You think she might be Annika?”
“I don’t know yet,” he replied impatiently.
“Wouldn’t she recognize you?” I asked curiously.
That’s when he rubbed that red mark again. “No. I wear a mask.”
I snorted, imagining the scenario. “She goes out on a date with you in a mask?” I laughed. “Is that why you’ve got a red mark on your face?”
“Yeah, it’s a ski mask,” he said with a half smile. It makes my skin itch when I get hot.”
I leaned back in the chair, cracking up, and laced my fingers behind my head. “How did she…how does it work, though? Does she think you’re a fucking weirdo?”
“I pretend to have bad burns scars on my face,” he explained, but a dark cloud floated behind my eyes as I remembered the day I was arrested.
“Ah, some girls are captured by a sob story. And do you genuinely believe she might be Annika?” I pressed again to see if he’d give a different answer.
“Riley has no history that we can find,” he said, which I found interesting, so I urged him to keep talking. “She’s from a little town called Luton, population six hundred, but we can’t find any trace of her ever living there.”
“Different surname?” I suggested, knowing he would’ve thought of that.
“Maybe I have to go easy with her so I don’t scare her off,” he stated without realizing the irony. If the girl wasn’t scared off by a man wearing a mask every time they saw each other, then I doubted she’d get scared off by him asking for intimate details.
I had qualms about this Riley girl, but maybe he should invite her here so Ronan and I could meet her and make our minds up. “Invite her here for dinner,” I suggested.
“Are you fucking insane?” he hissed, and I cracked up laughing again. Gunner was so entertaining, reminding me of life at nineteen. “What if she was Annika, and she recognized you?”
“Well…problem solved,” I relaxed. “Isn’t that what we want? To find her. So we can chain her to the desk until she squeals.”
“She’s the same age as me, Mikky. Nineteen,” he stated firmly.
“Yeah, I know,” I sighed, conflicted with wanting to pit revenge against her and needing to understand why. “Someone screwed her over too, but that’s no excuse to betray us. She should’ve told your mom if something was bothering her or if police were pestering her or whoever wanted to set me up.”
“She should’ve told me,” his voice sounded strained, holding back the hurt as his hand pressed against his chest. “I was her best friend, you know, I was…”
“Gunner, it’s not your fault,” I asserted since he wore the burden of his father’s death. “She was a messed-up kid.”
“Yeah, I know, but…I was right there in the same house as her. I was only a few feet away from her. Why didn’t she come to me?” His eyes burned in suppressed rage as his hands clenched into fists, ready to strike someone.
“Why would your mom lie?” I threw the question out there while he was raw and pissed off.
“What do you mean?” he snarled hotly.
“She told police that she hadn’t left home that night, but she told Danny Lam that she did. So why would she lie?”
He remained quiet, thinking it over.
“Am I reading into this, Gunner? She’s lying about not going out when she did, or she told Danny that she went out when she didn’t.”
“I can’t honestly remember her going out.”
“It was only an hour to buy food, dinner, or something.”
“Oh,” as if something dawned on him. “Maybe she did. We did have takeout that night because I remember her asking for orders, but I assumed she’d get it delivered.”
“Where were you the entire time?” as if I didn’t already know.
“I was in my room listening to music and playing Xbox, and Annika was there too, well…she came and went like she normally did. I heard a loud bang and screaming and went downstairs to see what was happening.” He gazed up at the ceiling, piecing it together. “I don’t know. It seemed like a normal evening, Mikky, until that happened. I didn’t notice anything strange, but you know what he was like…a workaholic like you and Ronan. He didn’t stay home long.”
“He was a man of routine, your father. I expected him to arrive at the club at 7.15 PM like always. He’d work in his office from 8 AM until 5 PM and go home to see you kids; then he’d return at 7.15 PM until midnight. Every day. Guaranteed. So when he didn’t show up at 7.15 PM, I instinctively knew something went down.”
“So…” Gunner exhaled as his shoulders relaxed and something lit up behind his eyes. “They knew his tight schedule. He spent only a few hours at home before returning to the club. And the men who killed him knew this.”
“Exactly,” I replied. “And that’s what’s been pestering me for the last three years in that prison cell. They knew there was a window of two hours, maybe less, to kill him in.”
“Then they somehow lured him outside,” Gunner added, which was another mystery yet to be solved. “He wouldn’t go out unarmed to a random stranger, would he?”
“No. Never.”
“Maybe I could talk to Mom about it,” he offered, exactly what I wanted him to say.
I downplayed it to make it seem like it was his idea when the purpose of the entire conversation was to reach this point: for Gunner to talk to his mom about that night to see if her story changed again.