When Dead in Greece (7 page)

Alik grabbed my shoulder. “Are you prepared for what we might find in there?”

“Yes.”

I turned the knob and pushed the door open. The room smelled like decomposing flesh. It made me gag. I had to back up and swallow air before entering. I shoved my light into the gap and pulled the cloth away from the lens. There were three black trash bags on the floor in the middle of the room. Nothing else.

Alik moved in, grabbed one, and dumped it on the floor. Loose trash spilled out. Flies buzzed. Maggots withered on the ground. He poured out the second bag, then the third. There were papers, rotten meat, left over food, paper plates. Some of the stuff could have been there for months.

But no body.

We left the room and shut the door, both of us with our forearms up to our mouths to silence the coughing and gagging.

“No way someone’s here,” I said. “They’d have come out already.”

Alik forced himself to swallow as he headed toward the last door. He opened it a crack and held his pistol in the gap.

“Whoever’s in there, we have you surrounded,” he said.

No one responded.

He placed his flashlight above the pistol and kicked the door open. I waited a few feet away as he entered the room. I prepared my mind for the worst. Alik would come out, shaking his head, avoiding eye contact. He would tell me they killed her, sparing the details of how.

And like a fool, I’d rush past him to see for myself.

The door creaked open. I aimed my light at it. Alik stepped out, shaking his head, taking a deep breath. He looked up at me.

“Spit it out,” I said.

“Empty,” he said.

“Shit.” Relief washed over me. The sweat on my skin felt cold for a second.

I stepped around him and peered into the room. Four plain walls and the bare subfloor, blackened with mold. The carpet had been ripped up and tack strips left behind. Nails poked out like a medieval torture device. Other than that, nothing. Where was she? We had cleared the house and found nothing. I turned and walked past Alik and stood in the middle of the room. Alik was looking up.

“Attic?” I said.

“Didn’t see an access,” he said.

“I didn’t check the room we came in through.”

We headed back the way we came in. I was swinging my flashlight across the floor, up the walls, over the ceiling. Maybe we had missed a lot stalking through the house.

Alik entered the room ahead of me. His light lit it up. He spun to meet me.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Figures,” I said. Then I thought of something else. “Come with me.”

I went back to the middle of the main room and stopped and waited for him.

“What is it?” he asked.

I lifted my knee and held it in the air a moment. My hip tightened with pain. My right leg hurt like hell. Figured I had re-injured one of the fractures. But it didn’t affect my balance, so I stood still for a second, then I drove my foot to the ground like I was trying to break through the planks of wood we stood on.

The sound was hollow and soft. If we were on a slab, it would have been solid. The floor reverberated under the force of my kick.

“Hear that?” I said. “Feel it?”

Alik nodded, slowly, as though he got it too.

“There’s a space below us,” I said.

“Where’s the cellar access?” he said.

I retraced our steps around the house. We hadn’t split up. Our lack of firepower prevented it. I hadn’t seen a door outside leading underground, and neither had Alik. The only two doors were in front and back and from where I stood in the middle of the room I had a sight line to both.

“Could it be out in the field?” Alik said.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” He leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling like the answer was spray painted there. “Can’t think of any reason someone would want a tunnel into a basement.”

“Only one going out,” I said. “But if that were the only method of ingress and egress, it would defeat the purpose.”

“Which is?”

“A way to get away. Think about it. These men, they aren’t exactly lined up on the right side of the law, right? So it makes sense they would want some kind of way to escape sight unseen. A tunnel leading out of the basement makes sense, then. Right?”

“But how do they get down there?”

“Exactly.”

“OK, scratch that idea, then.” Alik walked into the kitchen area. He moved chairs, pushed the table to the wall, stomped on the floor. “What are we missing?”

“Dunno. Place ain’t that big.”

I walked up next to him and stared at the cooking area. There was a two burner stove. Counter space. A single sink. Grime coated the fixtures. A couple cabinets had been nailed in haste to the walls. Someone had painted them black at some point. The paint was streaked and faded.

Alik opened the cabinets. They were empty.

“The fridge,” I said.

He moved in front of it.

“It’s crooked,” I said.

He grabbed hold and pulled it back. “Son of a bitch.”

Chapter 13

“THERE’S OUR ACCESS.”

THE DOOR was five feet high, and two and a half feet wide. It had a deadbolt, a chain lock, and swung inward. Alik checked the handle and the door didn’t budge.

“Help me move this fridge out of the way,” Alik said.

We dragged it across the floor and left it next to the table. Alik rushed forward and delivered a front kick that landed next to the knob. The door and frame splintered and cracked and separated. The hunk of wood swung hard into the wall. The hinges creaked as it floated back toward us.

Alik descended the weathered stairs first. I was on his tail. The air smelled musty. My fingers traced the wall, slick with condensation. Alik’s light aimed down. Mine to the side. By the time I cleared the ceiling, Alik was on the ground. I took the remaining steps two at a time.

“Where the hell is she?” Alik said.

The narrow space between the stairs and exterior wall wasn’t big enough for the both us, and Alik wasn’t moving. So I pushed him forward and then past him as we stepped into the cellar. The floor was concrete in some spots. Dirt in others. The air was stagnant. Water trickled down the walls in a couple spots, turning the floor into mud where it fell.

In the middle of the room was a tipped over chair. Rope was tied to the back. It had been sawed through. But that wasn’t the worst of it. A few feet away, underneath where the back door stood above us, I saw a shirt. A white blouse with red thread woven down the buttons. Buttons that weren’t attached to the shirt anymore. Buttons I saw scattered around the room as I panned my light on the floor. The thread wasn’t the only thing red on the blouse, either. There were blood streaks and spatters. I picked it up and held it to my face and inhaled.

“Lavender.”

“What?” Alik was walking toward me.

“Isadora wore lavender perfume. Or, rather, it was in her shampoo, but her hair hung over her shoulders. Left the fragrance behind on her shirt.”

He nodded and turned and shone his light in the space under the stairs. He took a few steps, bent over and picked something up.

“What’s that?” I asked.

He turned and held out a dirty, yellow, folded piece of paper. I took it and held my light over it.

“A pamphlet?”

“Looks that way.”

“It’s written in Greek.” I handed it back to Alik. “What’s it say?”

“I can barely speak the language. You think I can read it?”

“Better than I can.”

He studied the paper for a few moments, unfolding and refolding it. He tapped on the front of it. “Something medical. Some kind of clinic, I think.”

I took the pamphlet back and unfolded it, studied it, refolded it. There was something scrawled in pencil on the back.

“Any idea what that says?” I asked him.

Alik shook his head. “I can’t make out most of the print. You think I can figure out the handwriting?”

We were getting nowhere, so I folded the pamphlet in thirds and stuck it in my back pocket. Looking around the room, I wondered if we’d seen Isadora for the last time. The blood on her shirt had dried. They’d torn it off her a while ago. We were a couple hours behind, at least. And we had no idea where they might’ve taken her.

Alik led the way up the stairs. We rigged the door so it wouldn’t fall open and repositioned the fridge in front of it. We walked through the house one last time in search of anything that might indicate where they had gone next. But in the end we found nothing.

Exiting through the back door, I was hit with humid air and the soft hum of insects. Thought I might’ve heard waves crashing. But it only happened twice. And it came from north. Which was the wrong direction considering we were on the southern side of the island.

“Cars,” I said.

“I know,” Alik said.

We stayed in the field until we reached the brush. It was too thick to walk through, so we took the dirt road and stayed close to the side until we reached the main road. It was pitch black. We took turns looking back in hopes that we could spot a car coming before they saw us. The thickets might hurt going in, but it was better than being caught by the guys who had taken Isadora.

I couldn’t help but think allowing that to happen might be the best option, considering we had no idea where they had gone.

Take me to her. Please. I’ll make you pay.

The car remained where we had left it. My window was cranked down an inch. Alik’s up all the way. We got in and eased our doors closed. They weren’t latched, but we’d do that while moving to reduce the effects of the sound in the still night.

Alik turned the key in the ignition. The little engine revved high then settled in. He eased off the clutch and pressed the gas and we pulled away. But the movement was jerky, and it sounded like a herd of horses galloped behind us.

“Shit,” he said, stopping on the side of the road.

I opened my door and had a foot on the ground before we’d halted. I directed my light toward the rear of the car. Got out, checked the front. Walked around the bumper and checked the driver’s side. The front was OK.

But the back driver’s side tire not so much.

Alik had rolled down his window and hung his head out the opening.

“Flat?”

“Yeah.” I walked past him and knelt by the tire and worked my hand around it. “I could be wrong, but feels like someone slashed it.”

Alik got out. He slammed his door shut and then kicked it. “Think it was them?”

“Maybe.”

“They drove by, saw a car out there, maybe knew it was Esau’s?”

“I think if they knew it was Esau’s, we’d have been paid a visit.”

“Kids, then?”

“Maybe.”

“We heard a couple cars passing when we left the house, right?”

“I preferred to think of them as waves, but, yeah, we heard them.”

“Think they could have done it?”

“Maybe.”

“Can’t you think of anything else to say, Jack?”

“What’s to say, man? Someone slashed the tire. We didn’t see them. As far as I can tell, they’re gone. If it had been someone with mal intent, they’d have slapped us while we were standing here bitching at each other.”

“Shit.” Alik kicked the side of the car again, then reached inside and pulled out the keys. He popped the trunk and pulled out a small donut wheel and a tool bag.

By the time we finished changing the tire, sweat was dripping down my face. My mouth felt parched. Didn’t matter the air had a cool bite to it. The humidity overpowered it.
 

“What now?” Alik said.

“Guess we return the car.” I rolled down my window and leaned into the wind rush as Alik whipped the car around and accelerated. “And give Esau the bad news.”

Chapter 14

ESAU HADN’T TAKEN THE NEWS well. He had opened the door and saw the two of us standing there. He rose on his tiptoes and craned his head side to side. Then he settled back and his eyes went wet and his shoulders slumped. He looked down at the floor.

“Sorry, Esau,” I had said.

He was shaking his head when he’d closed the door on us.

We took the car back into town and left it on the street near the cafe. Then we slept.

I woke up after sunrise, wearing the same clothes from the night before. My body was stiff and full of aches. My ribs were visibly bruised. So was my hip. Black and blue and painful to the touch. I stretched it out and after a few minutes lumbered from my room to the living room. The window was open, but the air was still. Alik stood at the counter, drinking coffee and turning eggs over in a pan.

“Felt like cooking this morning?” I asked.

“Cafe’s closed still,” he said.

“Mind making a few of those for me?”

He lifted the pan and tipped three eggs with their yolks intact onto a plate. Steam caught a band of sunlight and rose in swirling wisps.

“These are for you.”

I poured a cup of coffee and grabbed the plate off the counter while the ceramic mug burned my fingertips. I set both on the table and eased into a chair. A few sips of the brew and the fog lifted. A couple bites of food and the ache in my stomach faded. The rest of my pains remained.

Alik sat down and buried his face in his hands for a moment. Then he looked up at me and asked how the food was. I nodded and grunted as I took a bite. Alik nodded in response.

“I’m worried about Esau,” he said.

“Me too,” I said, perhaps with too much egg in my mouth. I felt a piece hit my chin on the way to the table.

He was shaking his head as he looked away for a moment. “What if they were out there, Jack?”

“Where? The house?”

“The road. Just far enough away we wouldn’t see them, but they could watch the car. Watch us. See us changing the tire. Then follow us back to his house.”

“Crossed my mind, too.”

“And now Esau’s not here. He’s always here early.”

“Situations dictate behavior.” I washed my mouth with coffee, set the mug down. “I’d say things are different now. His focus is on Isadora, not his business.”

“Think we should check on him?”

Scooping the final scraps of eggs into my mouth, I nodded. “I need to change first.”

Alik rose, grabbed the keys. “Hurry.”