Retribution ("M" Mystery) (4 page)

When he returned he sat in the captain’s chair facing the monitor and let his robe fall open. His fingers danced across the keys until he had the desired video on screen: “Sisters Team Up for Boyfriend.” As the scenario played out on the screen he dropped a hand and imagined Amy Kitting expressing her gratitude.

   He knew she liked him, but there was that incident at the crime scene. He’d saved her job, but did she thank him? She would have stumbled backward, probably fallen, destroyed evidence. He could just see Tessu leaping across the floor, firing her on the spot. He’d warned her, kept her from getting fired. He replayed the incident in his mind for the hundredth time.

“Hey, hey, lookout!” he yelled at her. She turned around, but not to say “thank you for saving my job,” but to embarrass him, reward him with sarcasm.

“I don’t see anything, what am I looking out for?”

Things would have been different if she’d known of his powers of seduction, how well endowed he was and that he knew how to use it. Bitch, he’d show her, he’d make her love him, and she’d love it. She’d want to move in, he’d have to fight her off.

Platte opened his eyes, rocked the chair forward. Spent. He put the computer to sleep. Rocking slowly, he searched his memory. Amy had said where she was going, if he could only remember. She was going to unwind, catch some sun and surf. The beach. It didn’t take him long to figure out the exact location. It had to be close, and secluded. Whaler’s Cove.

He was waiting for her, waiting a long time. There was only one road into the beach. She couldn’t see him there in the shadow of the dunes, but he spotted her. Watched her pull onto the softer sand, out of sight of the parking lot. He waited until she was out of the car reaching in through a window for a small picnic basket. When she bent over to reach in, Platte let his gaze descend, follow the seam of her white tennis shorts. She must be wearing shorts underneath, or maybe just a thong. Sure that’s why she pulled out of site from the parking lot. She didn’t want any tan lines. He’d find out soon enough.

The wind and the sand masked his approach.

Chapter Ten               

M watched Mark
put some dumbbells back on their rack. “Hi Mark, you still need the afternoon off?”

He turned around, “If you don’t mind, I told a friend I’d help her move, if I could.”

She glanced at the clock. “It’s nearly twelve, why don’t you take the rest of the day off. Andy will be here at three, but I expect you to open tomorrow morning at six, bright eyed and bushy tailed.”

“Great.” He turned and jogged to the door, stopped, turned back and executed a quick bow, not remembering the note about the homeless man in the alley. “Thanks, Sensei.”

“Don’t forget to punch out,” she yelled after him, and then returned to the task of putting the rest of the free weights away.

 Finished with the dumbbells she looked around, pleased at how clean the equipment was. She picked up the sanitizer spray and a rag and headed for the big room with the older pulley machines; she’d be relieved when the new ones arrived. She began examining the cables for wear when the doorbell rang, indicating someone had just entered.

 The dojo was in the last four rooms at the back of the Malmstrom building. The gym occupied two large rooms filled with strength training machines and one smaller room containing a variety of cardiovascular equipment. She walked through the weight rooms to the front desk. But there was no one waiting to be checked in. The doorbell only rang when someone came in, and they had to go through a turnstile past the front desk. “Sensei?”

Surprised, M whirled around to face a smiling student, one of her brown belts. “I just saw a man hop over the turnstile. You must have just missed him.”

“Thank you,” M said.

Bells and whistles went off in her head. This was just the reason she’d had the turnstile installed. When she stepped back into the room containing all the weight machines she noticed that the door leading to the smaller free weight room was closed. Walking over she pushed it open and around, pressing the door into its latch on the wall. She stepped back into the larger weight room in time to hear her apartment door close.

“What the hell?”

 No one else was in sight. She walked up the stairs, stepping close to the wall to avoid squeaks, then stopped in front of the door to her apartment and listened. She could just make out the sound of someone walking around.

In one quick move M twisted the doorknob, shouldered the door open and dove into the room. She came up into a fighting stance in the center of the living room, kitchen on her right. She was too late.

He’d sensed her presence before she entered. When she placed her hand on the doorknob he turned. He took the time to gauge his kick, and watched passively as she rolled into the room.

The sound of a footfall alerted her to the figure in the kitchen, but as she turned there was no chance for fight or flight, his kick was already launched. She was struck solidly on the side of the head, and staggered. Her vision blurred and she dropped into a crouch hoping to avoid another kick until it cleared. No such luck.

But this time she got a glimpse of her attacker just before he struck her again on the opposite side of the head with another kick, and then again, and again. A punch, a ridge hand, M’s vision began to fail as she dropped to her knees. Her fear escalated when she saw the glint of a knife, then there was darkness.           

  The man stood stock still, listening, feeling. Maybe no one heard. Kneeling down next to her inert form he reached over and grasped one side of the top of her karate uniform pulling until it came open to reveal her bra. Sliding the dull side of the knife against her skin and underneath the garment he pulled up, slicing through the material until it fell away revealing her breasts.

“I ought to carve my fathers name into your chest,” he said.

Instead, he ran the tip of the blade between her breasts, along her sternum, careful not to press to hard. When the thin red line widened into a tiny stream of blood, he followed its flow with his index finger. Standing, he walked to the refrigerator. He made the trip, dipping his finger in her blood and going back to the refrigerator, three times. Then he stood facing his work, transfixed. The image of the Japanese character he’d drawn passed through the optic nerve stirring old memories in his mind.

He’d played his father’s story through his head so many times he believed that he had been the one standing before the new foundation for the hospital all those years ago. The wet cement quivered like Jell-o, still in its forms, smooth and seamless except where it bore the signs of frustration of a small child. The large Japanese character etched with a tiny index finger translated into English as Retribution. The camp director looked down at the small shivering child.

“What does this mean?” He knew what it meant but wanted a confession. The child stood mute. 

“You will tell me what this means or your family will do without.” When the boy continued his silence the director removed a bandanna from his pocket and handed it to the terrified child. “Wipe it off.”

The cement had started to set and the character wouldn’t rub out. The more the child rubbed without results the more infuriated the director became. He couldn’t remember how the story ended and he hated himself for that.

A searing pain ran down her chest driving away the darkness. M exhaled with the effort to open her eyes as she instinctively pushed her self up. But the groan gave her away. 

 The story of the hospital foundation incident rattled around in his head like a loose marble. His agitated mind drifted to the memory of coming home from school, entering the house to his mother’s screams, but his revere was shattered by the sound of M’s groan. He turned, executing a kick, with such speed that blood seeped from his ears. M rose to a crouch but was suddenly slammed with so much force that she was driven to a full standing position, then seemed to lurch to her right until her feet danced in thin air. She hit the floor like a rag doll, flung aside by a restless child, and lay crumpled in a heap, unmoving.

Chapter Eleven

Her sense was that she was floating
; consciousness blurred, then vanished. She could feel the rise and fall of every wave and suddenly M knew where she was. Her father’s three-masted schooner was rolling and yawing in the rough seas, and she was a little girl again watching the crew reef the storm jib. The skies were an unbelievable black and seemed to settle over the ship, then all was dark until a sliver of light, of consciousness, blurred then dissolved to nothing and she was on her father’s ship again. This time as a teenager, confined to her cabin for her own good as the schooner climbed to the top of twenty-foot waves then raced down the other side to the trough below, and into the dark. Suddenly the blackness of lost consciousness took over, but then she was back on ship arguing with her father. He claimed that she was no longer a tousle-haired, flat-chested teenager who the crew could embrace as a working mascot.

A curtain of darkness draped across her mind as M’s breathing slowed even more. Her body responded to a lack of oxygen, her chest began to heave and her brain responded to the oxygenation by rewarding her with more memories, memories of pain and abandonment.

“Daddy, don’t leave me. Waving. “Daddy, don’t leave me.” Crying. Fifteen-year-old Mary Margaret Malmstrom is alone. Why am I being put ashore, where is this place called Dungeness Bay?

Chapter Twelve

Andy Neal Looked at his watch
, fifteen minutes until his shift began. “Tour de France here I come.” He doubled his effort. Andy crested Pirate’s knoll and down shifted as he raced toward the street below. Leaning into the corner, he managed to stay in the bike lane as he turned onto Main, shifted again and powered along the relatively level street toward the corner of Bay and Main, and Dungeness Bay Fitness and Martial Arts.

Two blocks away he pulled up short, braking to a near stop.

“Holy shit!”

A crowd gathered in front of the fitness studio. Standing up on the peddles he raced up to the edge of the gathering. People were lined up at the front desk waiting to get in. Lifting his bike up he barged through the crowd, set it down against the front desk and vaulted over the counter. Grabbing the ledger he began checking off names and passing members through the turnstile.

It was a full thirty minutes before the crowd was gone. Andy used the paging system but neither Mark or M responded.

“Hey Andy, I heard the page,” said a young brown belt. “Is Sensei up here? I’m supposed to help her teach the 3:30 green belt class.”

Andy looked over at the brown belt.

“No, she didn’t answer the page. No one was at the desk when I got here, do you know what’s going on?”

The brown belt glanced around as though his Sensei might emerge from some shadow at any moment.

“No, I saw her about 12:30. Told her I saw some guy jump over the turnstile, but haven’t seen her since.”

Andy stepped out from behind the desk. “Can you watch the front for minute? I want to check her office and apartment, maybe she left some kind of note, you know, and forgot to post it at the front desk. Could be some kind of emergency and she had to leave.”

The brown belt looked a little reluctant.

“It should be slow. Just check membership cards and let them through. If anybody wants to join, page me,” Andy said.

He sprinted through the two weight rooms and the connecting door into the dojo, skirting around the mat to M’s office. It looked dark but Andy grabbed the doorknob and gave it a twist. Locked. But when he knocked it swung open. He turned on the lights and stepped in but stopped without taking another step.

“Oh my god!”

He slowly turned his head from left to right taking in everything. The room was a wreck. All of M’s certificates were piled on the floor, torn from their frames. Even the trophies were taken apart. The drawers were pulled out of the desk and their contents scattered. He’d seen enough and ran from her office back to the gym. A few students turned and looked at him. Andy ignored the stares and bolted up two steps at a time to M’s apartment. When he reached the landing at her front door he grabbed the doorknob fully expecting it to be locked; it was, but the door opened with a push. Turning he ran down the steps, through the gym and burst into the workout area. He scanned the students on the mat.

“You,” he pointed. “I need you to come with me, right now.”

The black belt walked to the edge of the mat, bowed off and jogged over to Andy.

“What’s the problem?”

Andy directed a white belt to go to the front desk and call the police.

“Someone has broken into Sensei’s apartment.”

Without another word Andy led the way to the landing at M’s front door.

“Look at the door jamb,” Andy said.

The black belt ran a finger over the splinters where someone had used a crow bar. “What do you think, Andy?”

“I think we need to go in and look around.”

The black belt hesitated. “Shouldn’t we wait for the police?”

“You can wait for them, I’m going in.”

Andy was one foot through the door when the black belt pulled him back by the shoulder. “I’d better go first.”

It took a minute for them to find a light switch; it took another couple of minutes to recognize the rumpled heap on the floor.

“Jesus Christ,” Andy said.

Driven by pure adrenaline Andy grabbed M by the shoulders and raised her into a sitting position. Her exposed breasts and the blood on her chest and stomach brought Andy to his senses. But before he could lay her back down her head lolled to one side, blood dripping from either temple. He gently lay her down.

“Sensei can you hear me? He bent down closer to her ear, “It’s Andy Neal, can you hear me?”

He kneeled down and put his ear next to her mouth, listening for a breath, then rolled back onto his haunches with tears in his eyes.

Chapter Thirteen

No one had seen the
man as he made his way down the stairs, through the gym and out the front door. As he stepped onto the sidewalk he descended from a posture of stealth, into a bent shuffling homeless man. He didn’t try to hide or make himself small. Instead he dragged a foot as he jaywalked across the street. Pitifully bent for all to see he made his way to a rusting AMC Gremlin filled to overflow with newspapers and cans, and climbed in. But no one noticed. Drivers sped along, tourists crossed the street. The sound of the grinding starter and the engine coming to life filled the air and in a puff of purple smoke the Gremlin drove away.