Tears of the Furies Read Free Page B

surprised at
the pallor of the veteran detective. Despite the summer heat that brought beads
of sweat out on his forehead, the man shivered as though in a fever. "Niko,
tell me the story."
    The tiny man shook his head. "It’s useless to tell you."
He spoke the Greek of a born Athenian, with the edge of the city in his voice. "Come
and see for yourself."
    His partner hesitated. Keramikous gestured to him,
indicating that he should stay with the owner. The stooped old man seemed about
to weep, his eyes red and moist, the skin beneath them swollen. The expression
on Dioskouri’s face was enough to embarrass even Yannis. He had never seen a
man look so grateful.
    Coward, he thought.
    But that was before he saw what was in the breakfast room.
    Keramikous led the way. It wasn’t a very large room, just
broad enough for half a dozen small tables and a sideboard laden with milk and
juice, a bowl of fruit and boxes of dry cereal. There were pastries as well. This
wasn’t breakfast as far as Yannis was concerned, but it was enough for
tourists.
    The glass floor-to-ceiling windows in the rear of the
breakfast room looked out upon the guest house’s one bit of beauty, a large
courtyard garden. The flowers were in full bloom, and their scent traveled in
through the shattered windows on the breeze. Somehow the sunlight touched the
garden, though it would not bless the street outside.
    The only reason that Yannis had even a moment to notice any
of these things was that at first his eyes could not make sense of the things
that he saw in that room. His mind simply did not comprehend. Two of the
tables, it appeared, had been given over to some strange artistic impulse. Seated
in chairs were a trio of granite statues, intricately carved, startlingly
realistic. There were cracks in the stone. One had a finger broken off and it
lay on the floor. Another had a real coffee cup raised to its lips.
    Yannis frowned, shaking his head, confused by this oddity. What
sort of attraction did the owners of this place think this would have for their
guests.
    It was a matter of a second or two, only, while these
thoughts capered in his brain. Then he frowned, deeply.
    Where’s the body? Where is the murder that brought me
here?
    Next to the sideboard was another statue, this one of a
young girl, perhaps ten or eleven. It had broken into half a dozen pieces, but
mentally he rebuilt it, picturing what it would have looked like before it had
broken, standing up.
    It would have appeared to be reaching for something with its
right hand. In its left it clutched an orange.
    A fresh orange.
    Understanding dawned on him. These were his bodies. The
murders. Niko Keramikous must have seen it in his eyes, for the younger
detective nodded in confirmation, unable to speak the words, his revulsion plain
on his face.
    Yannis’s stomach churned. He thought he’d seen everything.
    "Niko. Go and get the owner. I want to speak with him."
    Keramikous sped from the room and closed the door behind
him. Yannis cursed under his breath, the filthiest words he could dredge from
his mind. He turned his back on the murdered family, on their stone faces, and
reached into his pocket. The sweat on his back and under his arms was worse
now, in spite of the breeze from the courtyard.
    He withdrew his cellular phone and glanced around the room. There
was too much sunlight in here. In a corner there was another door, and he
opened it to find a closet used to store extra chairs. There were shelves of
plates and glasses and silverware, but there was just enough room for him to
step inside. He closed the door behind him, cloaking himself in near total
darkness . . . in shadows. And he dialed a number.
    Yannis Papathansiou had been on the job a long time and had
seen much of what lay within and beyond the surface of this ancient city. The
Athens police wouldn’t have the first clue how to deal with something like
this. But he knew someone who would.
     
     
    Every shadow was a doorway. Not