The Truth Berries

XXXV

       If there was one talent which Miguel had that he was not proud of, it was probably his expertise in hacking into anyone’s files. It was something that he possessed but he rarely used unless the situation required him to. And that day, Miguel set all his moral conscience aside as he hacked into his partner’s files.

       He always knew that his former partner was a lousy man when it came to keeping records and that he never secured his own data vault after every case he held. Miguel could not thank him enough for that at the moment for in just five minutes, he was in. But it was also for that same reason that it took him more than an hour before he found Nadia’s files. Alex never labeled every file he was saving except for a simple case number. Hers was Stabbed Woman case #1309. He opened it and saw all her bloody pictures as she lay lifeless on the floor. Miguel felt the same anger and pity haunt him all over again with every picture of her. But he tried to steel himself for he needed to know what really happened. He searched through the files and saw the copy of the autopsy report from the department’s own coroner.

       She suffered a fatal stab from under her right breast. The blade penetrated her ribs and the two and a half inch of it punctured her heart. The autopsy report indicated the secondary cause of her death was massive blood loss and that her death was instant. Miguel closed his eyes and recalled as much as he could. He knew the last part was not entirely true for she said something to him just before she was gone, before his partner Alex came through the door and hit him unconscious.

       They want the chest.

       But there was nothing in her files that mentioned anything about it. Alex did not realize that still. Or if he did know, he did not see it as the cause of Nadia’s death. Miguel buried his face in his hands and he tried to think about anything. He kept on rocking back and fro as he analyzed everything the files could give.

       “It was just one stab but he knew what he was doing.” Miguel mumbled.

       Her death was not a simple case of stabbing, of that he was sure. Whoever he was, he was trained at this. The power it required to punch through the human ribs and the accuracy of him hitting her heart all suggested one thing. The man was a trained assassin and Miguel knew that only training can teach you how to do that. He should know because he was taught about that when he was part of an elite police force formed some years ago for numerous covert operations. He had looked in his enemy’s eyes each time he drove his knife the same way he did it to Nadia. But they were vile men who committed heinous crimes, not unsuspecting civilians who knew nothing about anything. He gritted his teeth in disgust as he tried to imagine her killer’s cowardly act against a helpless woman.

       The next thing he noticed was the nature of the stab wound on her and the angle of the penetration. He stood in front of one of the narra posts at the corner. Helen was quite a tall woman and he estimated her height against the post. Then, as though he was her assailant, he tried to reenact the whole incident alone. The stab wound suggested a slightly upward thrust so he angled an imaginary blade in his hand and inclined it at forty-five degrees. Miguel looked back at the computer’s monitor which displayed the close-up picture of her stab wound. Then he took a knife from the kitchen and went out to find a banana tree. He found one not far from the house and went near it. Little did he know that her aunt was watching him silently from the small kitchen window overlooking the banana trees.

       He estimated her wife’s height again on it and when he was sure that it was close enough to her actual height, Miguel held the tree’s body with his left hand and drove the knife deeply with his right. Then he pulled it out as the tree’s watery sap came out of its fresh wound. He waited for it to partly stop ‘bleeding’, and then he examined the wound that it made. Miguel was not satisfied with the results. He went to another tree that was growing close his first victim and tried it once more. But this time, he switched his hands. He held the knife in his left hand as he grabbed the tree for counter-acting force with his right. Then he drove the knife deeply again and pulled it out. When Miguel examined the wound it made, there was a satisfactory glint in his eyes. He never noticed her aunt walk behind her as he did his second test kill.

       “So, what does my poor banana trees taught you about your current case?”

        Miguel turned around to see her watching him with a smile.

      “I’m sorry about that. I needed to confirm some theory of mine.”

       “Do you mind enlightening me about it?”

       He hesitated for a while and she felt it.

       “No, don’t bother, Miguel. I’ll just leave you to it.”

       She tapped him softly in the chest and started going back to the house.

       “She wasn’t killed by some ordinary guy. She was assassinated, Auntie.”

       She wheeled around and faced him. She listened attentively with her arms crossed in front of her, never bothering to ask any question. He knew he was the expert between the two of them.

       “The way he did it, it was military-grade skill. No petty robbers or rapists or whatever devil they were knew that technique except men in uniforms and paid assassins. Only trained men can do that one. Also, he managed to enter the house without her noticing him. She wasn’t like that, not Nadia. Even I cannot go inside the house without her noticing my arrival. This man knew his every way.”

       She listened to his remorseful explanation as he pointed out several evidences that the police never bothered to take in consideration.

        “This man was left-handed, I’m sure of it now. That’s the reason why I tried stabbing two different trees in two different ways. The first one was if the killer was right-handed, like I am. The wound it made did not match her flesh wound so I tried to do it left-handedly. Sure enough, when I pulled it out of the body, it left an identical wound with hers. And this man was quite tall too. Nadia was a tall woman, as you know it, and I’m a little taller than her. But this man was even taller than me. Maybe almost a foot taller than I am. I can tell that through the angle the blade penetrated her flesh. This man was no joke.”

       After a dead silent minute, his aunt asked him something that never crossed his mind.

       “If given a good lawyer and an expert that could explain all of that in a courtroom, can the wrongly-accused person prove his innocence with that?”

       Miguel looked blankly at her for a few seconds before she smiled and turned her back.

       “Don’t worry about the bananas. They’ll live. And . . . I never said it was you.”

       Miguel could not suppress a smile. The woman was still sharp and he never thought it that way. How blessed he was to have her by his side and bless his smart aunt for that. He went back to his computer to dig more that might suggest Alex’s current movements so that he could always keep a step ahead of him. Then, he saw something that caught his attention.

        It was some usual complaint about trespassing and attempted assault the night before. The complainant was a woman in her early thirties and was wearing nothing but a wet bathrobe. She came to the station by riding somebody else’s car as she escaped her own house, leaving the suspect behind after hitting him with a frying pan. The case was handled by their Women and Children’s desk but after a couple of minutes, the complainant went back home never bothering to finish her complaint. They did not check her house anymore for she got out of the station immediately, but they still wrote down the blotter report for record purposes. Miguel found nothing unusual with it until he read the complainant’s name. Her name, according to the report, was Helen Sandoval. She was staying a few blocks from where Nadia breathed her last.

        Miguel quickly stood up and looked for a big travel bag inside the house. He found a black one hanging from a nail at the house’s wooden post. He tucked several shirts inside, a leather pants and a pair of clean underwear. He put in his wallet and never forgot his pack of cigarettes and his stainless Zippo lighter. The woman watched him dart around the house all the time but she never asked him where he was going. All she knew was that it was looking very urgent for him. When Miguel had already packed his bag with all his essentials, she faced her and asked her if she knew somebody who could lend a car for a week a most.

       “I’m sorry but I can’t help you with that. Since you and your mother left, I spent most of my time staying here. So I don’t know anybody that well to lend us a car for a week.”

       “It’s okay, Auntie. I just thought I should ask. I’ll just call some car rent company and asked one. I might be out for a week, but I will surely come back. Will you be okay here?”

       “Don’t worry about me. This has been my home for a long time already. Besides, I might start practicing my own skills with knives with those bananas”, she said kiddingly.

          Miguel admired her aunt’s confidence and wittiness. He kissed her on the cheeks before he went out. The woman asked him to be careful at all times and he promised him he would. Miguel went out of the house in a hurry but he stopped at the middle of the dilapidated stairs. Then he rushed back into the house and looked for her Auntie. He stood before her hesitating for a while.

       “What is it? Did you forget something?”

       “I don’t know if this is the right thing to ask from you, but do you know where I can get myself a gun?”

       She smiled at him.

       “That I can help you with.”

       She took a shovel and asked Miguel to follow her. She led him to an old rotting avocado tree and told him to dig deep. Miguel took of her shirt and dug. At a meter deep, he hit something solid. He cleared all the loose soil on top of it and found a small chest buried underneath the ground. He lifted it and smashed the small padlock to open the chest and his eyes shone with delight at what he saw. Miguel lifted the content of the wooden chest and admired it. It was a classic Magnum .357 revolver. He asked her whose was it and he was stunned by her reply.

       “It was your father’s gun.”