Hit and Run (12 page)

I knew exactly what he meant.

“Why would anyone want to kill her, Mike? What Riel said makes more sense, right?”

Didn't brake. Didn't swerve.

“Right, Mike?”

“Right,” I said. But I kept thinking about it. How impaired did you have to be to not even see a person in the street right in front of you and to not even react? And if you were that impaired, then how could you vanish without a trace?
No one heard anything. No one saw anything. No one noticed a vehicle speeding in the area.
How could you be so messed up that you couldn't see where you were driving and what you were about to hit, then so on the ball that you managed to get away without a trace?

I thought it would be hard to find him, but it wasn't. He was right there in the phone book. Riel, John. The address listed was a house north of Danforth, a couple of blocks east of Greenwood. I was nervous as I approached it. There had only been one John Riel in the phone book and no J. Riels, so I figured it had to be him. But as I was going up the walk it occurred to me that maybe I was about to knock on the wrong door. I mean, he used to be a cop, right? Maybe cops kept their numbers unlisted, you know, for security reasons.

I started to turn back—call me a coward—when I saw someone coming around the side of the house, carrying a bag of groceries.

“Mike?” After Riel got over his surprise, he smiled. “What's up?”

“I need to ask you something.”

“You had supper yet?”

I hadn't, but I lied and said I had.

“Well, I haven't,” he said. “Come on in. If it's okay with you, we can talk while I cook.”

I followed him up the steps and into the house. The place wasn't much bigger than my house, but it was a whole lot neater—a whole lot emptier, too. All the walls were painted white. There wasn't much furniture—a couch and a couple of chairs in the living room, a stereo set and a couple of well-stocked bookshelves, a table and chairs in the dining room, another smaller table and
some chairs in the kitchen—and all of it was either black or chrome or both. The floors were bare—black and white tile in the front hall and the kitchen, hardwood everyplace else.

“Haven't lived here long, huh?” I said.

“A couple of years.”

You could have fooled me. It looked like he had just moved in and hadn't got around to doing any decorating.

I followed him through to the kitchen.

“Have a seat,” he said, waving to one of the black and chrome stools at the counter that divided the kitchen into a cooking area and an eating area. He started to unpack the bag of groceries—a couple of steaks, some potatoes, some lettuce, tomatoes, and a cucumber. Then he opened the fridge. “Soda?” he asked.

“Yeah, okay.”

He pulled out a Coke for me and a beer for himself, opened them both, and shoved the Coke across the counter to me.

“You talk to Vin?”

I nodded.

“And it's all good?”

“Yeah.”

Riel actually smiled.

“So, what can I do for you, Mike?”

It took a moment before I could get out the few words.

“It's about my mom.”

He pulled up a stool, sat across from me, and waited. He didn't say anything while I told him what I was
thinking. He didn't say anything for a little while after I had finished, either. He just sipped his beer.

“So,” he said finally, “what you're saying is maybe your mother was killed on purpose.”

I nodded, grateful that he hadn't laughed.

“Do you know of any reason why anyone would want to do that, Mike?”

“Well, no,” I had to admit.

He took another sip of beer.

“See, that's the thing about murder,” he said. “In almost every case, the person who does it has a reason. He wants revenge. He's angry. The victim has something he wants badly. He's trying to stop someone from telling a secret. Stuff like that. What it means is, there's usually a link between the killer and the suspect—which is how we have a shot at solving cases. Pretty much we're successful, too. The ones we don't solve, and by that I mean, we don't make an arrest—” I wondered whether he noticed he was saying
we
, like he was still a cop. “In most of those cases, one of two things happens. One, we know who did it, but we can't prove it. We just can't get the evidence. Or, two, someone else knows who did it, but they won't tell. Gang killings are a good example. A lot of times a lot of people know who did it, but they won't tell because they're part of one of the gangs involved or they're citizens who are afraid of repercussions if they tell.”

“What about serial killers?” I asked. “They don't usually know their victims.”

“True,” Riel said. He seemed kind of surprised, though. “But with serial killers, there's usually a pattern that helps you connect the dots. The killer picks the same general type of victim. He strikes in a particular geographic area or at a particular time of night or day. He uses a similar M.O. None of those things apply in the case of your mother. And I've got to tell you, Mike, I've never heard of a serial killer using an automobile as a murder weapon. That's not how they operate.”

Okay, so maybe that was all true. But no matter how you looked at it, there was still one fact. “Someone was driving the car that killed my mother. Okay, so you have way more experience than me.” A rookie cop first day on the job had more experience than me. “But I still don't see how someone could be so drunk or whatever that they couldn't see my mother in the street and then be so alert that they could get away without anyone seeing or hearing anything.”

Riel took another sip of his beer and was quiet for a few more moments while he got up and scrubbed a couple of potatoes. He seemed to like to think things through before he answered. Then, finally, he said, “I hear what you're saying, Mike, but in the absence of any motive, there was no reason for us to think it was murder.” He put the potatoes onto an aluminum pan and slid the pan into the oven. Then he stood with his back to me for a few moments while he washed the cucumber and the tomatoes. When he turned back to me, he said, “Suppose you tell me everything you remember from
before it happened.”

I frowned. “You mean, the day it happened?”

“The days before, the weeks before, whatever you can remember about what your mother might have done, where she might have gone, who she might have talked to, any arguments you remember her having with anyone, anything you can recall about her daily routine.” He handed me the cucumber and the tomatoes. “And while you're at it, slice these nice and thin for me, will you?”

What did I remember? Everything, and nothing much at all. It had happened four years ago.

At quarter to eight every morning, five days a week, Monday to Friday, my mother left me with Mrs. McNab, a woman who lived across from my school. Mom had to be at work by eight-thirty, and school didn't start until a quarter to nine, so I spent an hour in Mrs. McNab's living room, quietly watching cartoons while Mr. McNab slept. After school I went back to Mrs. McNab's and had a snack—usually crackers and milk—until Mom came to pick me up again, which she usually did by about a quarter to six. Then we went home, and Mom made supper and I did my homework, and if there was any time, we read together.

On Fridays we went to Mr. Jhun's restaurant for supper. Mom did Mr. Jhun's books for him. Mr. and Mrs. Jhun really liked her. If Mrs. Jhun wasn't too busy—and
even if she was—she would come and sit with us for a while and talk to Mom. That ended about a month before Mom died, though, when Mr. Jhun was killed.

Riel perked up when I mentioned Mr. Jhun.

“The Korean guy, right?”

I nodded.

“You knew him?”

“Sure,” I said. I told him that we always sat at the booth closest to the cash register—that was our spot on Friday night. If we were ever late coming in, there was always a little reserved sign sitting on the table. From there, Mom could chitchat with Mrs. Jhun, who ran the cash register whenever the place was busy, and it was always busy on Friday night. Because we sat close to the cash register, Mom and I noticed one night that Mr. and Mrs. Jhun seemed to be having some kind of disagreement. In Korean, of course. This was unusual. Most times they got along pretty well. But one night there was no mistaking the fact that Mrs. Jhun was upset about something and that Mr. Jhun wasn't agreeing with whatever she was saying. After a while Mrs. Jhun came over and sat in the booth next to Mom. Mom took one look at her and sent me over to the counter. She knew I loved to spin around and around on the stools and, for once, she didn't object. The two of them talked for a long time, until I had spun around so many times that I thought I was going to throw up. On the way home, I asked Mom what Mrs. Jhun had been so upset about. She wouldn't tell me—she said it was none of my
business—but later that night, when Billy came over, I heard Mom telling Billy about it. The fact that she was even talking to Billy about Mr. Jhun told me something. She knew Billy didn't care about the old man. She'd got mad at Billy a couple of times because he had made jokes about foreigners, especially the Chinese, even though Mr. Jhun wasn't even Chinese.

“It's bad enough he keeps that gold coin right on top of the cash register where anyone could walk away with it,” Mom said. Mr. Jhun's gold coin sat in a little glass case. He called it his good luck charm. Sometimes he used to let me play with it. It was smooth and cool and heavy in my hand. “But the main thing is, he has far too much cash around,” Mom went on. “It should be in a bank, but he doesn't like banks. She tries to reason with him. So do I. I tell him that I keep all my money in the bank.” I heard a little laugh and could imagine what was going through her mind—
all
my money, like she was loaded. “She's so upset, and I don't know what to do about it. She said she had a bad-luck feeling about the restaurant. The place that was there before burned down. You remember, Billy, almost the whole block went up in flames five or six years ago. And apparently the man who owned the place before that had a heart attack and died in the walk-in freezer.”

“Yeah, that's bad luck, all right,” Billy had said. He sounded like he was only half-listening to what Mom was saying.

“It's not that this is a bad neighborhood. It isn't. But
it's just not smart to keep so much cash lying around.”

“How much money are we talking about?” Billy asked. It was his favorite question, along with, “How much do you think that cost?”

“A lot,” Mom said. “More than I'd know what to do with.”

“From that dump?” Billy said. “A lot of people around here must have bad taste.”

“He does everything in cash,” Mom says. “Pays all his suppliers cash. And he runs that catering business on the side. You'd be surprised how well a person can do when he works hard, Billy.”

It was a gentle dig. From where I was sitting on the stairs, I could hear Mom sigh. “Now Mrs. Jhun has me all worried. Maybe I should have a talk with him. Maybe I should take him down to my bank and introduce him to the manager.”

Billy laughed. “You're Mike's mom. You're always acting like you're my mom. That's enough, don't you think? This Mr. John—”

“Jhun,” my mother corrected.

“Whatever,” Billy said. “I'm sure he can look after himself.”

Billy turned out to be wrong. Mr. Jhun's restaurant was robbed less than a week later. The restaurant had been closed at the time, and the Jhuns were in their upstairs apartment. Mr. Jhun had gone downstairs, where he had surprised a robber and got himself killed in the process.

“A couple of weeks later, Mom went to say good-bye to Mrs. Jhun,” I told Riel, “and she ended up getting run over.” My throat got tight and I felt my eyes sting the way they always did when I thought about that night. “I don't know, maybe Mrs. Jhun was right, maybe it was all just part of the place's bad luck.”