He scooped up a handful of the ash, parted his fingers slightly, let the remains slip through. They drifted and formed a small pile. His breathing was labored. His focus turned to the pistol. I presumed he feared what would happen next.
“You weren’t there when she died,” I said, confirming the facts as he’d laid them out.
He nodded, said nothing, looked away.
“And you never saw the body, only the cremated remains?”
He nodded again refusing to make eye contact.
“When did you get the insurance check?” I said
“The day she brought me the urn,” he said.
There were only two ‘she’s’ mentioned in this conversation. “You mean the healer? The one that resembles that woman in the photo on the table.” The picture was covered with his wife’s remains now.
He glanced at the pistol, then at me. A half-dozen wrinkles sliced his forehead into sections. “Yes, the healer. Only she was different this time. Gone was the ruse of one who could cure disease. She looked hardened and cold and pale. More than capable of killing me.”
“She threatened you.”
He took a long moment before responding. “She told me to wait before cashing it.”
“And if you didn’t?”
“She’d take the girls. Someone like you would show up at my door, and I’d lose everything. My kids, the money.” He clawed another scoop of ash, and clenched his fist. A tight line of remains cascaded to the table. “And my life.”
I studied him, wondering if that was all. What kind of timeframe had she given him? Was he supposed to receive a call from her when he was allowed to deposit the check?
“So we moved,” he said. “To this shitty apartment to wait it out. She told me that I’d know when the time was right to claim the money. And then, well, then I was to leave the country. Go someplace remote and start a new life. But that’s not going to happen now, is it?”
I stared him down, said nothing.
“Answer me, you prick!” He slashed his arm across the table, clearing it of the urn and most of the cremated remains. “Kill me now if you’re going to do it. Or are you too much of a pussy to shoot me with the kids in here?”
I’m not sure when he grew a backbone, but his tirade had zero chance of working. “You’re not in a position to make demands. And I have a couple more questions for you.”
He drew in a deep breath and sighed, dejected. “What? I’ve told you everything.”
“You sure?”
“Everything I can remember.”
“Did she give you anything else? A forwarding address or phone number?”
He shook his head.
I rose and rounded the table, keeping the pistol aimed at him. He started sobbing when I disappeared from his field of vision. This could go one of two ways. Either he’d told me the truth as he knew it, and no threat existed by letting him live. Or, he lied, was in on it from the beginning, and the first thing he’d do after I left was make a phone call reporting my presence. For all I knew, the guy had one of those security cameras hidden in a teddy bear recording the whole thing.
His sobs trailed off. Had he accepted his fate? Maybe he figured if I hadn’t done anything yet, I didn’t plan on it.
“Call your girls out,” I said.
“Oh, Jesus, no,” he said.
“Now.”
He wiped the tears and snot and ash from his face with his sleeve, called his daughters by name. A moment later the bedroom door opened and the young girls stepped out. I tucked my pistol away before they noticed it. It might’ve taken a while considering the condition of the kitchen. They stared at their father and the mess of what had been their mother’s remains. The oldest said something to her father in German. Tears streamed down her face. He reached out, pulled both girls to him and hugged and shushed them. I couldn’t understand what else he said to them but they both turned their attention to me and nodded.
“It’s OK,” I said. “Those aren’t her ashes.”
He floated his gaze toward me, confusion on his face. He ushered the girls back to the bedroom. “What do you mean?”
I raised the pistol and aimed it at his chest. “They stay, for now.”
“Girls,” he said. “Stop.”
They turned and saw me aiming a weapon at their father. I expected screams and tears. Neither child blinked.
“She’s dead, Bernd,” I said. “You can cash the check.”
He looked back at the table, then under, and around at the floor.
“Looking for this?” I held the freezer bag up, pinned between my pinky and palm. In the same hand, I fingered a lighter.
His face went slack. Soon he’d tell the truth.
“Go back to the bedroom, girls,” I said.
The room fell silent except for the air pushing through the vents. Sounded like a beach on the gulf with small waves breaking on the shore.
“Is she really dead?” he asked.
“You knew she wasn’t when you received this, didn’t you?”
He opened his mouth to speak, stopped, licked his bottom lip. Working up a story, I supposed. He held out a hand. “Listen, sometimes things are so bleak, and you are so without hope, you agree to do something that makes no sense. Because only in that state can you possibly find a rational explanation for the crazy.”
I didn’t care to listen to his garbage. “What was the plan?”
He glanced around the room. “I don’t know all of it.”
I lit the lighter, angled the flame toward the bag.
“Please,” he said, throwing up both hands. “That is my daughters’ futures. It’s all they have left of their mother.”
“How much is it really?” I knew it wasn’t ten million. With that kind of scratch, he could’ve found a way to hide. If he had wanted to.
“A million. Enough, I suppose, to get us away and start a new life.”
“All right,” I said. “If you want it, you need to tell me everything.”
He stumbled onto a chair and slumped back as though what he was about to say would drain him of all his energy and he had to be prepared.
“She was sick the entire time,” he said. “She had improvements here and there, but nothing much. In the end, the diagnosis never changed. It was a matter of months that she would live. We knew that any kind of treatment was going to drain us of everything we had. She told me that Veronica could make her comfortable. Give her a little less pain for the remainder of her life.”
Had his wife sold him a line? After all, a year had passed since she left and was murdered.
He sighed. “And then there was the offer.”
I shook the bag. He nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “They arranged for that so once she passed, the kids would be taken care of. It was the only way. She convinced me of it. So she left, and I never saw her again. That woman arrived with the urn and the check and told me not to cash it in yet.”
“And you knew she wasn’t dead yet.”
He held steady for a moment, then lifted his head and let it drop down again. “Yes.”
“How?”
“She told me.”
I couldn’t imagine that Ahlberg had let Martina keep in touch with her husband. “In secret?”
He nodded. “She’d manage to get a phone and call or message a couple times.”
“When’s the last time you heard from her?”
“Two weeks ago.” He drew a circle in the remaining ash on the table, then a line dividing it in half. “That was the last time I heard from her.”
“What’d she tell you?”
“She never went into too much detail. Just that she was getting treatment and being taken care of.”
“She send pictures during this time?”
He frowned, shook his head. “Unfortunately, no.”
I didn’t bother to tell him that his wife had undergone slight plastic surgery in order to look like Ahlberg. I also failed to mention that she had overcome the cancer. It grew more apparent in my mind that the ongoing sickness had been a ruse for the sake of the plan. For whatever reason, Martina decided that money for her daughters was better than them having her in their lives.
“Is she really dead?” he asked.
I nodded.
Tears filled his eyes, spilling over and running down his cheeks. There were no sobs to accompany them. He’d lived this moment so many times and likely awaited the ending so that he could move on.
“Anything else?” I said, half-extending the freezer bag.
He shook his head. I tossed the bag to him, turned toward the door.
“What if she comes back?” he said.
“Your wife? This ain’t the movies, man. She’s not rising from the dead.”
“No, that woman.”
I wanted to tell him what he could expect if she did. Because maybe that was Ahlberg’s plan. Set all this up in order to get the money she promised to Martina Kohl to give up her family, her life.
I opened the door, leaned out into the hall, then looked back at the guy.
“She’s not coming back.”