Chapter 75: The Return of the King
[Scene: The Midori driveway, shortly before dawn. Chief Midori pulls up in his squad car. He looks around before opening the car door and drawing his backup gun from his ankle holster. He holds the gun out as he surveys the scene. The lights are on, the front door is ajar. Everything looks the same as he has left it, except the two Blackmoon corpses are missing from the front lawn.]
[He backs his way to the front door and lets himself in closing the door behind him.]
[He might be walking into a trap. It hardly matters. He saw Zoi safely to the airport. He saw the plane take off. His son should be safe with his mother in Phoenix by now. The Blackmoons are out for blood and he hopes they will be satisfied with his own.]
[Now that he knows the Blackmoons can be killed with bullets, he intends to shoot on sight. He has no intention of falling back under their spell and being used as an unwilling pawn.]
[He enters the kitchen. The room is thoroughly tidy. The Blackmoon corpses are gone. The blood has been scrubbed off the walls and floor. The chair Chief Midori had used was replaced at the table. The only sign the room had been used by anyone is a crisp manila envelop in the center of the table.]
[All of Chief Midori instincts are telling him to follow procedure. To seal off and photograph the room before touching anything, then don gloves before opening the envelope and photographing its contents, before placing both the envelope and its contents in evidence bags.]
[Every instinct but his instincts as a father.]
[He grabs the envelope and tears it open. Inside is a color photo of his son folded up and tucked into a suitcase, with the words, YOUR SON IS DEAD scrawled over it in black marker.]
[Chief Midori's heart seizes up in his chest. He has to force himself not to look away. There can be no doubt the photo is genuine. Zoi is wearing the same clothes he wore to the airport.]
[Chief Midori looks at the back of the photograph and searches the envelope for addition contents. No demands, no threats, no instructions. No warning not to contact the FBI… Just a statement of fact scrawled in black marker.]
[Only it is not a fact. Chief Midori knows his son is not dead. He's seen enough corpses in his line of work to know his son was still alive when the picture was taken. Thank goodness for high resolution cameras and the Blackmoons' ability to afford them.]
[He drops the photo onto the table and rushes up to his son's room. There is no reason to be cautious anymore, the worst thing that can happen has already happened. He goes to his son's desk and searches the surface of it before pulling open drawers. It had been stupid to throw out Zoi's phone. He didn't want Zoi calling Kunzite, but it should have occurred to him that he might need that number for himself.]
[Knowing Zoi, he would have written it down somewhere, just to be safe. He just needs to find where.]
[The desk and its contents provide no help. He sees a scrapbook near the bed with the initials Z & K on the cover. He opens it to the front, thinking that would be a logical place to keep Kunzite's number. It is not there. He leafs through the pages, the photos shot in improbable cities, then stops short. He is struck by how happy Zoi looks. Kunzite seems happy as well. Yet at the same time something deep within his eyes seems haunted. Haunted and concerned. It's almost as if Kunzite knows Zoi's life will be cut tragically short, and there will be nothing he can do to prevent it. His is the look of a guardian angel.]
[Chief Midori still can't forgive Kunzite anything, but he realizes now how grossly he had misjudged him.]
[Yet, oddly, the most devastating thing of all, more painful that the photos of Zoi in happier times, more painful that the blissful expression on his son's face, is the tiny sampling of flower petals or dried flowers on each page and the little calligraphied note he put next to them.]
[Chief Midori fights back his tears as he stares at a tiny flower with dozens of needle-thin petals. Zoi added a little paper next to with an arrow and the words "Seaside Daisy (Erigeron glaucus)"]
[That was so Zoi. It was such a grown-up little-kid thing to do. Nobody else would have done that, and it's unbearable to think he may never do it again.]
[At last Chief Midori sees the box with the red ribbon. He opens it, flips past the photo and sees a folded slip of paper. He unfolds it to see Kunzite's name and number.]
[He immediately dials it.]
[Almost at once Kunzite appears. He looks around, then stares back at Chief Midori with a look of pure malevolence.]
Kunzite: Where is Zoisite?