MY FATHER'S KILLER: Kayla's Story

by Cassandra V. Wyatt

  “You need to slow down mom.”

  “I wish I could but it’s so hard. I am so tired of having to keep going back to the precinct. Sometimes I just want to quit.”

  “You can’t give up now mom. Dad deserves justice.”

  “I know he does,” she said softly, “but what about the toll it’s taking on us?”

  “Toll or not, we have to do it. If we don’t who will?”

  “Kayla,” her mother said softly, “You think going back every week is going to push the police to do more than what they have already done. Your father’s case went cold years ago. If there was anywhere else they could look or anything else they could do, don’t you think they would have done it already?”

  “I’m sorry mom but I don’t care. How can we give up now? If the roles were reversed and we were the ones killed, do you think that dad would give up?

  Her mother didn’t answer. She merely picked up her bag and said, “Let’s go.”

  Two hours later Kayla and her mother returned home. Not surprisingly, there were no new leads and no new evidence. The case had pretty much come to a standstill; no surprise there, it was three years old. Barring a miraculous act of conscience which resulted in a confession, the officers weren’t really sure what they could do next. The case had long since been cold which both Kayla and her mother knew. They went hoping against hope that something would change.

  “I’m tired mom, I’m going to bed. I have to go in a little earlier tomorrow to prepare for a meeting.” Kayla said as she kissed her mother on the cheek.

  “Alright. I just want to finish cleaning up down here before I go to bed. I’ll see you in the morning. Goodnight Kayla.”

  “Goodnight mom.”

  Kayla took a quick shower then put on her comfiest jammies. She laid out her clothes for the next day, turned out the light and snuggled deep within the warm comforter. She was sound asleep in minutes.

  Downstairs, Kayla’s mother puttered around aimlessly, cleaning everything and nothing. She knew that she was just spinning her own wheels but felt powerless to stop. She walked over to re-clean the sink and the counters. As she reached the sink, a wave of dizziness overcame her to the point that she had to hold onto the edge of the sink to steady herself. When it passed, she visibly shook herself. She knew she had to slow down. It didn’t happen all the time but it seemed that lately whenever she got back from the precinct, she would always have these dizzy spells.

  “Just nerves,” she thought.

  She looked out the kitchen window and inhaled deeply of the cool night breeze coming through before exhaling with a sigh. When she was sure that she was steady, she closed the window, latched it, and then turned to go to her room.

  What she didn’t see was the figure step out of the shadows created by the line of trees across the street to stand directly across from and stare at her window.

  Chapter 3

  Kayla’s alarm went off at 5:15. She sat up and stretched, trying to shake off the remnants of sleep that kept trying to tempt her back into the bed. Kayla’s mother wasn’t up yet as she prepared for the day and Kayla knew why. Her mother had stayed up for quite a while after she had gone to bed. She heard her downstairs puttering around in the kitchen. It was well after 2:00 a.m. when Kayla woke up and heard her mother in her room, crying; a symptom of how devastated and alone her mother felt since her father’s death.

  Kayla’s mother was the type of woman who got things done as effortlessly as water flows down a mountainside. For the first time ever, her ability to function seemed impaired. She still functioned but with much more effort as though with every move she was navigating some sort of obstacle that only she could see.

  For Kayla it was a no-brainer; she gave up her apartment and moved in with her mother. This way she could keep an eye on her and it also gave Kayla something else to do while she went through her own mourning process.

  “No one should ever have to die like that,” she thought, If someone had told me on my 25th birthday that 24 hours later you’d be gone, I would never have believed them.” Kayla thought to herself as she struggled to fight back the tears. Her father was a good man, a strong man. He was kind and he was always quick to help someone if they needed it. From Kayla’s point of view, he didn’t have a malicious bone in his body. And he was handsome. At 6’3” tall, he towered over the shorter women in his life. His skin was smooth like a river of milk chocolate. His brown eyes twinkled with a combination of mischief and merriment. His salt and pepper beard and mustache were always carefully and meticulously groomed. He had a headful of curly black hair which he kept trimmed short and close to his head. He worked out regularly to maintain his well-muscled frame.

  Her father’s idea of casual dress didn’t consist of sneakers or jeans, he despised both. Instead he would wear a pair of straight fit khakis with either a sweater or a button-down shirt. A pair of well-shined loafers would grace his feet. He figured as long as he wasn’t in a jacket or tie, he was casual. No matter what he wore, he always looked like he just stepped off of a magazine cover.

  Unintentionally, her mind went back to the day they found out her father was dead.

  It was the day after her 25th birthday and her dad told her mother he was going to make a quick run to the shop. The shop just happened to be a neighborhood discount store he had opened just 5 years before when Kayla was 20. Opening a store had been a lifelong dream of his and he had finally done it. She still remembered the gleam in his eye when he announced that he had gotten the business grant he had applied for and had already picked out the perfect location for the shop.

  The day of the grand opening, Kayla’s father pulled her aside and told her to remember this day. He told her to never give up on her dreams because anything was possible and he was proof of that.

  At about 8:00 on the night he was killed, her father told her mother that he needed to go back to the shop. He promised her he wouldn’t be gone long, no more than 45 minutes. But then 45 minutes became an hour and an hour became two. When three hours had passed, Kayla’s mother picked up the phone to call the shop. Several phone calls to both the shop and his cell phone produced nothing. Worried, Kayla and her mother finally decided to head over to the shop to see what was going on. When they arrived, he wasn’t there. There was no sign of him. They went into different stores in the area to ask if anyone had seen him and they all said no.

  “Where could he be?” Kayla’s mother asked, her voice rising in direct relation to her panic.

  “I don’t know mom. Maybe he decided to make another stop.” Kayla said, not quite believing it herself.

  “No, he wouldn’t do that without telling me,” her mother’s face looked stricken.

  “No one’s seen him and his car isn’t here. I have a bad feeling about this Kayla. We need to go to the police.”

  “Okay, you get back in the car, I’m going to go around the corner and look around some more. I’ll be right back.”

  Kayla’s mother nodded and head back to the car, her face clouded with worry. Kayla went around the corner and saw nothing. She stood there for a few minutes looking up and down the block and across the way. Her stomach suddenly felt heavy. There was no one left to talk to, no one left to ask so she walked back to the car and got in. Her mother looked at her hopefully. She shook her head, started the car and head to the precinct.

  The fact that Kayla’s father was gone longer than expected, had made no mention of another stop, and no one had seen either him or the car in addition to the absence of any indication that he had even been to the store made it possible for them to file a missing person’s report right away. The officer said if he should happen to turn up to just call the precinct and they would cancel the report.

  Several hours later, a police car pulled up in front of the house. Kayla rushed to the door thinking that maybe her father had had some type of car trouble and he was with them. When she saw the expressions on their faces, she knew her fantasy was not going to be a reality.

/>   The police came in and told her mother that they found a car matching her husband’s. What came next blew them both away. The car was found near the abandoned warehouse down by the river. They had also found a body and wanted Kayla’s mother to come to the Medical Examiner’s office and try to make an identification.

  The emotional floodgates opened and Kayla found herself wracked with pain. She could no longer control the flow of tears. The pain of his absence slammed into her like a ton of bricks. The reality of how he had died crushed her spirit. Because no one had been charged in his death and there were no leads, Kayla was filled with nothing but grief and questions. “Was it someone he knew or was it just random? Why was he down by the river? If it was someone he knew then who could have hated him that much and why?” she wondered.

  The agony of her own grief was nothing compared to what her mother felt. Though she often tried to put on a brave face, Kayla knew that every day her mother spent without her husband was sheer torture. She would have given anything if she could stop her mother’s pain. But grief was something you had to go through. It was a journey that had to be travelled, each individual reaching their own conclusion and destination. Kayla also knew that not knowing how her father had met his end or by whose hands just deepened the pain.

  Fighting the urge to climb back into bed and cry herself back to sleep, Kayla took her shower and got dressed. She stopped by her mother’s door on the way out; the sounds of soft sobbing reached her ears and pierced her heart. Instead of going in, she left her mother to her sorrow and left for work.

  As usual, Anita was there before her. Sometimes Kayla pictured Anita just sitting up all night, not getting any sleep, just waiting for a new work day to begin.

  “Anita, how do you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Always and I mean always, get here before me?”

  “A good assistant is nothing without dedication.”

  “Are you trying to say that I’m not dedicated?”

  “Well, if you really put forth more effort you actually could get here before me. After all, you’re the boss and you are supposed to be my example not the other way around,” Anita said with a playful glint in her eye.

  “Oh is that so, Miss Smarty Pants? So on top of being undedicated, I’m a bad example. I’ll give you three guesses who’s going to be real disappointed when raise time rolls around this year.” Kayla said nonchalantly while she tried not to laugh.

  “So now you’re going to penalize me for being on time and truthful? Just give me a minute, I think I’ve got a resignation letter and two week notice to type and hand in,” Anita plopped herself down into her chair and got ready to type.

  “You can hand in your resignation all you want. Don’t say anything when it magically disappears and I innocently pretend as though I have no clue what you’re talking about when you ask me if I’ve read it.”

  “Then I’ll just give you a copy, because you know I keep copies of everything,” Anita told her.

  Kayla laughed. Anita had an almost mystical way of making her laugh; especially when laughing was the last thing she felt like doing.

  Anita’s face grew somber as she closed the door.

  “What’s up with you? I can see it all over your face. I know you’ve been crying.”

  That was another thing; Anita could read her like a book with startling accuracy.

  “You know we just hit the three year anniversary of my dad’s murder. When I woke up this morning, I felt fine but then I guess it all just hit me at once. Besides, mom and I made our usual trip to the precinct last night to see if anything new was happening.”

  “And?”

  “The usual, absolutely nothing. No new leads, no new evidence, nothing. I mean it’s crazy. My father was as close to a pillar of the community as you can get. He owned one of the most prolific shops in town and nobody knows anything.” Kayla looked at Anita with exasperation.

  Anita seemed momentarily thoughtful. “Kayla, have you ever considered what you would do if they never found anything?”

  Kayla stared at her but didn’t respond.

  “I mean, what if your father’s case stays cold? I’m not trying to be insensitive here but how long are you going to make your mother keep going back to the police asking about the case? That whole process has got to be as tough on her as his death.”

  Kayla remained silent.

  Anita sat down. “Kayla, listen to me. I get the fact that you want justice for your father, believe me I do. And there’s nothing wrong with hope but after all this time isn’t it more like just constantly picking at a scab so that it just won’t heal? I love your mother as if she was my own and sometimes it just kills me to see how shattered she is after one of those precinct visits.”

  Anita watched Kayla’s face to see if she was getting through to her. Kayla had swung her chair around to face the window and was staring into space.

  Anita continued, “I know you want closure and I know you want his murderer to pay for what was done but every time Mama Ann goes to that precinct, she goes desperately hoping that there will be some news. That they are going to tell her something that she can walk away with and not feel so empty inside. But they never do. And that only makes her feel even emptier and more crushed inside.”

  A few minutes passed before Kayla swung her chair back around. She looked Anita dead in her eyes; but still she said nothing.

  Kayla knew that she was right and she hated that she was right. The pain of her father’s murder had not lessened one bit. Part of it came from not knowing why it happened or who was responsible, the other part came from constantly going to question the detective in charge of the case only to hear the same thing they had heard the week before. As much as they dread going, they both secretly went with so much hope in their hearts that this would be the one time that the police had some definitive clue or lead but once they arrived, they were met with the same old news. Each and every time their hopes weren’t just dashed but destroyed. They would come back feeling demoralized, dispirited and even more depressed than before. They never really healed because they never really gave themselves a chance.

  Kayla had lost her father, this was true enough and the pain of it was indescribable but her mother had lost a lifemate and soulmate. They had been together since her mother’s freshman year in high school and her dad was a junior. After high school, her mother went to college while her father enlisted in the Army for an 8 year term. He chose to go to college after he got out. Once they were firmly established in their respective careers, they got married. That was a lot of years and a lot of love. She was his queen and he was the love of her mother’s life. “He was and still is,” Kayla thought.

  “Great,” thought Kayla, “on top of everything else I get to feel guilty.”

  Anita knew Kayla well enough to know that she wasn’t ignoring her, just inwardly processing everything. So she waited quietly and gave her time to do so.

  “You’re right.” Kayla finally said. “As much as it kills me to admit it, you are absolutely right.”

  Anita looked at her sympathetically, “Listen, I’m not saying let it go entirely but just don’t go every single week. If you feel like you just can’t slow it down, at least don’t put Mama Ann through it every time. I’ll go with you if it comes to that but she needs to be able to just breathe a little. No matter what kind of brave face she puts on, she’s just not really as brave as she appears to be and all she’s really doing is suffering through it.”

  “Yeah, I know. I think a part of me just didn’t want to go alone and I was kind of using her as my emotional crutch. Having her there just made it easier for me. She’s already told me she thinks about quitting.”

  “Then let her. You let her know she doesn’t have to keep going anymore and from now on, just say the word, and I’m there.” Anita reached over and took Kayla’s hand; her eyes were soft and filled with compassion.

  Not for the first time that day, Kayla fought back tears.r />
  “You are absolutely remarkable. What would I ever do without you? Thank you Anita.”

  “No thanks necessary but if you really feel like you have to thank me, I could really go for an extended lunch at that steakhouse down the block paid for by my favorite boss and best friend.”

  Kayla looked at her and shook her head. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Don’t think too long. Now that I’ve said it, my mouth is all worked up and ready for a big, juicy sirloin. If I’m going to have to settle for a burger, I’m going to need some advance notice to try to quiet the disappointment of my taste buds.”

  “Fine, lunch it is. Now can we please get some work done?” Kayla laughed.

  “You’re the boss.”

  Meanwhile in another part of town

  “How long are you going to drag this thing out?”

  “As long as I deem necessary.”

  “Haven’t three years been long enough?”

  “It’ll take as long as it takes. We have to go slow and be careful with this. We have time. You just keep an eye on them.”

  Chapter 4

  By the end of the work day, both Kayla and Anita were exhausted. Anita walked into Kayla’s office and dropped some papers in her In box.

  “If you’re going to keep working me like this, I may need some additional perks.”

  “Having me as a friend is all the perk you need.”

  Anita’s expression turned somber. “Are you okay?”

  “No. No I’m not. But one day I will be. Hey, you feel like going to The Raven’s Nest for a drink. I don’t really feel like going home right away.”