As White as Snow Page 7

  There was no turning back now that the door was open a crack.

  “No, it wasn’t that . . . ,” her mother said.

  Just then, Lumikki heard footsteps on the gravel path. Lenka. She came running up, out of breath, her eyes red, clearly upset.

  “I have to go. Let’s talk later,” Lumikki said quickly, hanging up the phone.

  The timing wasn’t working. There was this secret being uncovered from two directions, but the revelations were colliding and interfering with each other.

  “Jaro is dead,” Lenka announced.

  “Jaro?”

  “One of our family members. A car hit him and he died instantly. He was the one you saw yesterday in the window.”

  Tears began trickling from Lenka’s eyes. Lumikki handed her a crumpled tissue from her pocket, and Lenka took it with the same submissive yet natural gesture with which a child would take a handkerchief from a parent.

  Lumikki remembered the man, his narrow shoulders and the grim, piercing gaze of his dark eyes. And as her memory of his face appeared clearly in her mind, she also recalled where she had seen him today. In a café, talking to a young man writing in a notebook. Lumikki had walked past their table on her way to the restroom. She had observed that someone was doing an interview, but hadn’t connected the older man’s face with the one she’d seen in the window. Until now.

  An interview and a deadly accident on the same day. Lumikki had a feeling it wasn’t a coincidence.

  About five feet, ten inches tall. Hair dark brown, almost black. Eyes brown. Light-colored, slightly worn jeans that looked like they’d seen just the right amount of wear to signal that they were expensive and also like the designer sold them that way. Light-colored shirt, maybe plaid? Maybe not. Lumikki wasn’t sure. Age somewhere between twenty-two and thirty. It was hard to tell with boyish men.

  Lumikki gnawed on her cheese baguette as she sat by the river and tried to focus her memory. She knew it wasn’t going to be enough. Even if she remembered more, that wasn’t going to give her any way to find Jaro’s interviewer in such a big city.

  And why would she even try? Someone who was a complete stranger to her had been hit by a car. It shouldn’t affect her in any way. But it did. Because if Jaro’s death wasn’t an accident, then it was possible that Lenka was in danger too somehow. And Lenka might be her sister.

  Lumikki hadn’t said a word to Lenka about having seen Jaro being interviewed. It was better she not know, at least not yet. There was no point making Lenka any more scared than she already was. And Lumikki could see that she was scared. They’d talked for less than half an hour before Lenka had needed to go back. And most of that time had been taken up by Lumikki doing her best to comfort Lenka, who kept sobbing and repeating illogically that Jaro wasn’t supposed to die yet but that it didn’t really matter but that everything was still going wrong. Lumikki hadn’t managed to get anything more sensible out of her than that.

  Lenka had also apologized for not having known what to do to get her family to welcome Lumikki. They still would, though, she was sure of it. Lenka had gone too fast, trying to rush things, even though she should have learned to be patient. All in good time. The family would welcome Lumikki with open arms. Lumikki didn’t tell her how creepy that idea sounded.

  Everything got interrupted again, though, when Lenka had to leave. Apparently, she wasn’t even supposed to be outside, but seeing Lumikki had felt so important that she’d snuck out.

  When Lumikki had asked whether Lenka had a cell phone, since that would make staying in touch a lot easier, Lenka had said, “Of course not. That’s just vanity.”

  They had agreed to meet the next day on Petřin Hill. When Lumikki had asked why they constantly had to keep changing meeting places, Lenka said that it was good not to get too connected to any one place. Lumikki hadn’t pushed. She’d learned by now how strange Lenka’s behavior was. She was sure that the odd behavior had an explanation and that she’d eventually find it.

  Day began to turn to evening around Lumikki. The air was still hot, and she could faintly smell her own sweat wafting up from her sleeveless shirt. Tonight, she should at least rinse it in the small bathroom at the hostel and lay it out to dry overnight. She’d packed as light as possible, and now that was coming back to bite her as her clean clothes ran out. And the thought of shopping with the thousands of other tourists in Prague wasn’t terribly inviting. Besides, this trip was turning into something completely other than your normal relaxing vacation.

  Lumikki weighed her options. She couldn’t go to the Prague police, because what could she say? Hey, this guy got hit by a car and died and I saw him earlier that day maybe talking to a reporter? No, I don’t know anything about him other than that his name is Jaro and he lives in a big wooden house. The people who live there are kind of strange, but I don’t know why they’re all living there together. There’s a girl who lives with them who might be my sister, or actually, my half-sister, but maybe not. Lumikki would get laughed out the door. Or she’d be thrown in the drunk tank until her hallucinations wore off, or they’d send her out to wander the streets like all the other harmless crazies.

  She could have called home and done her best to explain the situation to her father and mother and ask their advice. Any normal person probably would have. Lumikki wasn’t normal though, and her family wasn’t either. That wasn’t how they handled things. And besides, she was pretty sure that her mother would have collected herself after their previous phone conversation and realized she’d said too much. Worst-case scenario, they might force Lumikki to come home and she’d never get to the bottom of any of this.

  So the only option left was to try to figure things out on her own, relying on her own intellect. That’s what she’d been doing for most of her life.

  Lumikki struggled to remember more. She had to think of some characteristic of the interviewer that would help her find him. Lumikki knew that her brain was constantly recording even the smallest details. She just had to dig them out. No, the interviewer hadn’t been wearing a ring. So he wasn’t married. That information didn’t really do anything for her. His grip on his notebook had been sure and familiar. This hadn’t been his first interview. He was probably an experienced journalist.

  Lumikki closed her eyes and returned in her mind to the moment when she came out of the restroom. She’d passed right by the table. Her gaze had swept along the surface of the notepad. She’d thought how even if she knew Czech, she wouldn’t have been able to read the notes because the man’s handwriting was so messy. It had just been a fleeting thought, meaningless in the moment. But as a counterweight to the messy handwriting, there had been something well-defined in the notebook. Lumikki had noticed it because of the contrast. What had it been?

  Think, think, Lumikki urged herself. A laughing clutch of tourists walked by her. Lumikki kept her eyes shut tight. She couldn’t let her mind relax even for a second because she was right on the verge of remembering.

  The upper corner of the notebook page. Something tiny. A logo. Of course. It was a company notebook. Lumikki could see the logo’s orange color and rounded shape. And something else? A symbol? A number. That was it. The number eight. The logo had seemed familiar. She’d seen it somewhere before, but where?

  Lumikki opened her eyes.

  An orange number eight. Now she saw it clearly in her mind, but she couldn’t connect it to anything. She took a long swig from her water bottle and headed off. Maybe she would remember if she walked a bit. Lumikki climbed the stairs from the riverbank to the bridge. At the end of the bridge was a rotating advertisement. A smiling woman advertising a new, long-lasting deodorant was just turning away, revealing a poster for yet another cop show. Apparently, people never got tired of watching night after night as someone killed someone else while other people investigated how it had happened.

  Lumikki was already walking past when the upper edge of the poster caught her eye. An orange circle with a number eight in the middle.
r />   Of course. Channel eight.

  Lumikki knew where the reporter worked.

  There was so much glass that the building almost looked unreal. The surface reflected the pink, purple, and orange of the evening sun, which burned even brighter and more deeply than in the logo. Finding the headquarters of Super8 Media in downtown Prague hadn’t been difficult. The rotating logo on the roof of the glass office tower was visible for miles. Lumikki looked through the glass wall into the lobby, where a receptionist was intently focused on painting her nails. Most likely, some of the shifts ran late into the night.

  Lumikki had done some quick homework by Googling the company on her phone. She’d found out it was actually a media conglomerate that not only had a TV station and news production facilities, but also owned a tabloid, several magazines, and a boatload of websites. Super8 lived up to its name. It had clout.

  Lumikki hesitated. She didn’t actually have a plan. So she decided to do what she had always found best when she was unsure: feign complete confidence. It worked in about ninety percent of cases. Straightening up, she walked through the revolving doors.

  The receptionist doing her nails was obviously nonplussed to see a girl standing in front of her with a backpack who had been outside sweating all day. Just her expression asked Lumikki to leave immediately without the woman actually having to open her mouth and say it out loud. Lumikki didn’t let the look bother her.

  “Excuse me, I’m looking for a man,” Lumikki began in English. Now the woman’s expression changed to one that seemed to say, “Aren’t we all, darling?”

  “Unfortunately, I can’t remember his name, but I know he works here. We have a meeting scheduled,” Lumikki continued with assurance.

  The receptionist looked her up and down, seeming to consider whether to call security. Then she sighed and said, “You’ll have to give me a little more to go on than that. We have quite a few men working here.”

  Lumikki described the man with the notepad as precisely as she could. The receptionist’s brow wrinkled. Lumikki tried to guess her age, putting it at somewhere between twenty-five and thirty. She looked like a woman who didn’t date nearly as much as she wanted, but paid close attention to good-looking men and their marital statuses.

  So Lumikki bit her lower lip and leaned over the desk, lowering her voice confidentially.

  “He was kind of hot. And no wedding ring.”

  The receptionist’s eyes brightened.

  “Then it has to be Jiři! But he’s probably already gone for the day. Are you sure that—oh, wait. Here he comes! Jiři, you have a visitor.”

  Lumikki saw the young man stepping out of the elevator. Yes, he was the same one Lumikki had seen earlier. He looked at the receptionist and Lumikki in confusion. Then he said something to the receptionist in Czech. The receptionist motioned in Lumikki’s direction. The man’s brow furrowed. Lumikki knew she had to act fast before they really did call security and have her thrown out.

  “I have some news for you about the man you interviewed today. He’s dead,” Lumikki said.

  That did the trick. Lumikki saw surprise and interest in the eyes of this man called Jiři.

  “Let’s go someplace we can chat,” he said, taking Lumikki by the arm.

  Looking after them wistfully, the receptionist sighed with a shrug and then went back to her nails.

  A man put a phone to his ear. He had to call immediately. Those were the instructions. The answer came instantly.

  “A young girl just came to get him from the office.”

  “A young girl?”

  “Yes. She spoke English. Looked like a tourist.”

  “Could it be one of his one-night stands?”

  “She didn’t look right for that. And besides, she said she knew something about Target One’s death.”

  The other side of the line was quiet for a few seconds.

  “Are you following them?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. Let the girl tell him what she knows. That might be just the right move at this stage.”

  “And after that?”

  “We don’t know who this girl is. We can’t afford to let anyone screw up the plan now. When they separate, eliminate the girl.”

  “Understood.”

  The man was about to hang up when the woman gave him one more instruction.

  “After you hang up, take a picture of the girl and send it to me and Father. If the girl gets away from you, we’ll need to know what she looks like.”

  Then the woman hung up before the man could say anything. He stifled the irritated grunt that was already on its way up his throat. “If the girl gets away from you.” He wasn’t in the habit of letting targets get away. His job was to make sure that when a client wanted to stop a target permanently, the target got stopped permanently. He didn’t have a reputation as the most reliable contract killer in the city for nothing.

  But reliability also meant not getting on edge about how on edge the client was. He always followed instructions precisely, and so, he lifted his phone and pretended to take some pictures of the old buildings and their ornate architecture, although in reality he was photographing the girl with the short hair. He got three good pictures that would make identification easy.

  The girl looked young and determined, but not the slightest bit dangerous. Elimination felt excessive. The man’s profession did not include questioning orders, though. He felt no pity or compassion for his targets. If he had, he couldn’t have done his work.

  The man sent one of the pictures to his client and the man called the Father. Now if they wished they could see how the girl had looked when she was still alive. She wasn’t going to be for long.

  Two hours later, when Lumikki sat down on her bed at the hostel, her head was full of thoughts and questions, and her sweaty clothing felt unbearable. She had to get in the shower. Now. Under the cool water it would be easier to think about what Jiři Hašek had told her and contemplate her next steps.

  She went into the bathroom and pulled off her shorts, shirt, panties, and bra. Pushing the rusty metal plug into the sink drain, she tossed in her clothes, covered them with water, and squirted some hand soap on top. That should deal with the worst of the body odor.

  Lumikki already knew the shower pressure stunk, so she didn’t let it bother her. The cool, almost cold water felt good against her skin. It cleared her mind.

  Jiři had said that—

  Suddenly, Lumikki heard a strange sound. She turned off the water and listened. It was like someone was trying to get into her room using the wrong key. Had some drunk forgotten his room number again? But she didn’t hear any grumbling or swearing. Grabbing a towel and wrapping it around herself, Lumikki was just about to march out and deliver a few choice words to whoever was messing with her door when she heard the lock click and the door open quietly. Lumikki froze in place and listened.

  Someone was in her room.

  The steps were steady and muted. As if someone very purposeful was trying to keep quiet.

  A cleaner? Not at this time of night. And besides, cleaners yelled “cleaning” or “housekeeping” before they came in.

  A burglar? That felt more likely. Lumikki hoped he would just take her money and not her passport.

  There was no window in the bathroom. No escape. Lumikki focused all her hope on the thief just grabbing whatever he was after and making a run for it. Lumikki knew that hope was in vain when she saw the door handle start to turn.

  A tall, burly man with tanned skin whipped the door open and almost tripped on a towel lying crumpled on the floor. He pulled the shower curtain aside, but there was no one behind it. The man touched the clothing soaking in the sink. He stank of cheap aftershave and man sweat.

  Lumikki looked down at the top of his head. He had started balding. He probably didn’t even realize it yet himself since the bald spot was still so small in amongst his black hair. Lumikki didn’t hold her breath. She knew that, at some point, holding your b
reath always backfires when you have to exhale uncontrollably, which makes much more noise than steady breathing.

  Lumikki held herself perfectly still in the air duct above the bathroom. Fortunately, the one-and-a-half-star hostel had invested just enough in the bathroom ceiling that they’d put up a couple of boards to protect the duct. Lumikki had been able to pull herself up between them.

  The man looked around. He even tapped on the walls. He didn’t look up. Not yet, at least.

  Who the hell was he and what did he want in Lumikki’s room?

  Lumikki felt a line of water run from her wet hair down her forehead to the tip of her nose. There, the water formed a droplet and dangled precariously. With her hands busy holding herself up, Lumikki had no way to wipe it away. She knew that when the droplet fell, it would hit the man’s head, right on his bald spot. That’s when he would look up.

  Lumikki’s hands and legs trembled with effort. Staying still was hard. She had to stay still.

  Suddenly, that familiar singing started coming down the hall. The partiers from the room next door.

  The droplet fell from Lumikki’s nose.

  The man turned and stepped over to the bathroom door to listen.

  The droplet fell without a sound on Lumikki’s crumpled towel.

  The man waited until the drunken revelers had passed and then slipped out.

  Lumikki waited as the man’s footsteps receded, long enough to be sure he was gone. Then, shaking, she climbed down out of the air vent and collapsed for a few seconds onto her towel on the floor.

  The smell of the man still hung in the air, stinging her nostrils.

  When Lumikki finally got back on her feet, she went to inspect her belongings. Nothing had been taken. The intruder wasn’t a burglar. He had only been looking for one thing, and that one thing had been Lumikki.

  Lumikki knew she wasn’t safe here anymore.

  SUNDAY, JUNE 19, EARLY MORNING

  Drip, drip, drip, drip.