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“I’m Korina Farber,” she says and shakes my hand. “David’s aunt. Why is Europol interested in his case?”
The inside of the store is stiflingly hot and I get even hotter as I struggle to take off my huge coat. Or maybe that’s because I don’t have an answer prepared for that question and she sounded very stern asking it. I don’t want to say the wrong thing and scare her into not wanting to talk to me.
“We’re looking into it because of a possible connection to other, similar cases,” I tell her. “Do you know why David was out alone at that time of night?”
He had been killed between three and four in the morning on a Wednesday night and his body was found on the river bank a good half a kilometer from where this store is located.
She shrugs. “Could be he was walking home from a card game. Maybe he owed someone money, the wrong someone, and it came due. I already told the police all this.”
She did. I read it in the report. And in her case, the cold and colorless way it was written up seems to be accurate.
“Did he often get in trouble because of gambling?” I ask.
She scoffs. “Yes. About three years ago, he stole half the stock in this store to pay off his debts. He stole items that belonged to customers and were just in for repairs. We’re still making reparations for that.”
“And you let him live above the store anyway?” I ask.
She walks over to the counter and turns off the light on the magnifying glass. The brooch she was working on when I interrupted her looks at least a hundred years old and priceless.
“It was his mother’s, my sister’s, apartment, and it was her dying wish that we help him in any way we can. She died last autumn. For a while after he moved in, it seemed like he was holding it together. He even got engaged to his long-time, on-again, off-again girlfriend, and they were trying to have a baby. But then she left him, and he spiraled.”
The girlfriend works at an antique shop not far from here and she will be my second stop.
“I didn’t know his mother had died recently,” I say. “It wasn’t in the report.”
She shrugged. “No one asked and we didn’t tell. I don’t believe it had much bearing on what happened. He gave her nothing but grief while she was alive and that didn’t stop after she died.”
She sounds as stern as she looks. Cold, unfeeling, stuck in her ways and her opinions.
“Look, don’t get me wrong. I loved my nephew,” she says. “But we, meaning the whole family, had run out of ways to help him. All we could do lately was pick up the pieces. But this time, sadly, there’s nothing to pick up.”
Finally, some emotion colors her voice.
“Was he on any medication for depression or anxiety?” I ask.
She nods. “I think so. He had been in therapy of one kind or another all his life. His trouble started early in elementary school. He was diagnosed as being slightly autistic, and it made him violent to others when things didn’t go his way and hyperactive. Medication didn’t work, but therapy seemed to help for a while. Until he discovered online poker. By the time we found out about his addiction, he was too far gone for us to help him easily.”
I see now why the detectives investigating this case are so focused on finding whoever David owed money to. His family seems convinced that is what killed him.
“Was he in the habit of staying out all night?” I ask.
“He was more in the habit of staying up all night and gambling on his computer, I think,” she says. “As far as I know, he did not like live games. But I could be wrong. I didn’t keep tabs on him. You should ask his girlfriend about that.”
“Was he seeing a therapist now?” I ask and she shrugs.
“I don’t think so. He had a habit of burning through therapists, only going to each a few times before deciding they weren’t a good fit. The only one he stuck with was the doctor he was seeing in elementary school and the beginning of high school. But that man doesn’t see adult patients. David must’ve been to more than half of all the therapists in this city at one time or another.”
“It sounds like he needed help though,” I hear myself say. I wasn’t planning on saying it. But the way she’s speaking, it just makes me feel so sorry for David. I doubt he ever had much real support from his family, no matter what she claims.
“My nephew, he wasn’t very nice or easy to be with,” she says and sighs. “He also didn’t want any help and wasn’t gracious about accepting it. He was always determined to fight his own demons and unfortunately, he lost more often than he won.”
Her voice cracked as she said it, so there’s that for showing emotions. But right after she finished speaking, she whisks past me and takes hold of the door handle.
“If you’ll excuse me, I have a customer coming to pick something up soon and I need to finish the work,” she says in a brusque, firm voice as she holds the door open for me.
The freezing, damp air starts flooding into the small space immediately, unwelcome in my current over-heated state. I have a hard time regulating body temperature lately.
I was going to ask to see David’s apartment and have a look around, but I’m standing outside the store before I know it, and the glass door is firmly shut again, the sound of the shrill chime still echoing in my ears.
I’ll have to come back here and I’m already not looking forward to it. Korina is back at her workstation, fiddling with the brooch as calmly as she did before I interrupted her. I get the eerie feeling that I wasn’t there at all, that I have yet to knock and speak with her, which is quite unsettling. But I don’t think she’s really as unfeeling as she seems. I think she’s just very good at hiding her emotions.
My legs and feet are starting to swell, so even the size too large, lace-up boots I’m wearing are starting to get tight, but I have more stops to make and I’m not going to let that hold me back. Hopefully the girlfriend will be more forthcoming.
If David was the victim of this killer I’ve been profiling and tracking then his gambling debts didn’t have anything to do with his death. But what did? His sour demeanor? But that doesn’t seem likely either. The connections between the victims are tenuous at best, practically non-existent. But they have to exist. I know they exist.
