A Blind Eye: Book 1 in the Adam Kaminski Mystery Series Page 2

  “And I think I know who each of you are. I have been reviewing your details. Angela Tarallo, with the Philadelphia Commerce Department?” Sylvia asked.

  Angela nodded and shook Sylvia’s hand.

  “And you must be Ray Pagano.” She smiled at Ray, who winked back as he shook her hand. “I’m glad that Philadelphia was able to include a local business owner on this trip.”

  “It’s always a pleasure to meet such a beautiful woman.” Ray held her hand longer than necessary.

  Sylvia simply smiled, then turned to Adam. “I believe you will be Jared White, no?” She smiled engagingly at Adam, but Jared jumped in.

  “Nope, that would be me.” He thrust his hand out and greeted Sylvia with enthusiasm. “Jared White, at your service.”

  “I am sorry.” Sylvia seemed unsure of herself for the first time since Adam had noticed her. “You look very much alike.”

  Adam wasn’t surprised. If Sylvia had only a physical description to go by, instead of a photograph, their similar size, hazel eyes and chestnut hair would make him and Jared hard to distinguish. Though he was pretty sure his ears didn’t stick out like that.

  “That’s okay.” Jared’s broad smile showed all of his teeth. “Not a problem at all. It’s a pleasure to be here. I’m really looking forward to this visit and to learning more about your fascinating country. I’m sure I’ll learn a lot I can take back to my students in Philly.”

  “Adam Kaminski.” Adam spoke at last. “Pleasure to meet you.”

  Sylvia shook his hand with a smile. “Then we are all here. Wonderful. I will take you to your hotel. We will take a scenic route, I think. A chance for you to see this beautiful town for the first time.”

  She started walking as she spoke, and the rest of the team followed. Passing quickly through the station, Adam and his colleagues were soon seated in the small van that had been arranged for them, Sylvia sitting up front next to the driver.

  The luggage barely fit into the storage area in the rear of the van. Every time they hit a bump in the road, Adam felt the back of his chair pushed forward by the shifting bulk of it.

  Captivated by the history around them, Adam hardly noticed the discomfort. Narrow winding streets carried them through the medieval town. Many of the buildings were of brown brick, topped with distinctive orange roofs. Closer in toward the historic market square in the old town, the architecture became even more vibrant and joyful, with building fronts painted in yellow, orange and green.

  As they drove through the centuries-old city, Sylvia narrated their journey, pointing out twelfth- and thirteenth-century buildings, the home of Copernicus, a castle built by Teutonic Knights. Jared and Angela listened attentively, their eyes seeking out the details Sylvia described. Ray seemed less captivated, his head drooping, eyes closing. Whenever the van hit a bump, his head would jerk up, his eyes fly open.

  Adam watched the cobblestoned streets around them, pedestrians and motorists going about a typical twenty-first-century day in a thirteenth-century town. He couldn’t help but wonder what his life would be like if his grandfather hadn’t left Poland. If he had been raised in this country. Maybe this trip wasn’t such a bad thing after all. He could try to look up his cousins, find out what had become of the Polish side of his family. It could be nice to take his mind off crime for a while.

  Angela turned from the seat in front of him, adjusting her glasses as she shifted. “Beautiful, huh?”

  “It is.” He nodded. “Makes me think about my family. They came from Poland.”

  “Oh, yeah? Not me, this trip is purely professional for me, a way to learn a few things and build up my resume.” She gave Adam a flirtatious look. “But I could be inspired by this place, I think.”

  Adam laughed. “I thought you were keeping this trip purely professional? Focusing on your career?”

  “Hey, nothing wrong with networking.” Angela grinned and winked at Adam, then sat back in her seat.

  Adam smiled, forgetting his dimples as he turned his attention back to Sylvia’s melodic voice and her commentary about Toruń.

  The van pulled up in front of a large stone mansion. “Ah, we are here, your hotel,” Sylvia said as she opened her door.

  The others stepped out of the cramped van, stretching their legs.

  “We have booked rooms in the Hotel Bulwar for your stay here. It is an excellent hotel,” Sylvia explained.

  “Of course, what a perfect idea,” Chris smiled. “Does this street look familiar to anybody?”

  Ray, Angela, Jared and Adam all looked around, but nothing struck them as familiar, and they said so.

  “This is Philadelphia Boulevard,” Chris announced triumphantly. “Named so after we first became sister cities in 1976.”

  The others made unintelligible sounds that could have been amazement, sarcasm, or complete disinterest. Adam followed the group into the hotel, his mind dancing around the idea of seeking out his lost cousins.

  3

  Łukasz Kaminski sat behind his simple wooden desk, his hands resting, fingers splayed, on the scuffed surface. He took a deep breath, shutting his eyes and shutting out the familiar sounds of the newsroom outside his door.

  It was all familiar, and the thought comforted him. He heard the distinctive tread of young Marcin, dragging his feet as always. With each ring of the phone, he knew another lead was coming in, another story being followed up by one of his eager colleagues. Even Michał, who walked so silently, left his own trail. Łukasz caught the odor of Mocne, the familiar brand of tobacco that lingered in Michał’s coat and sweater as he passed by his open door.

  With a crack that resounded into the hallway, Łukasz slapped his hands onto the surface of his desk, venting his frustration as he opened his eyes. He could remember so much. Why could he not remember everything?

  Dissociative amnesia, the doctor had said. It would clear with time. Had he suffered an injury, the doctor had asked. Or perhaps suffered an emotionally traumatic experience? Yes, and yes, Łukasz now knew. He should have been at home, healing. But the fastest way for him to heal was to figure out what happened.

  He turned his attention back to the box of files on the floor to his right. Half the folders that had been resting comfortably in the file box were now strewn about the floor around his desk. He didn’t care. These were the files he’d already reviewed and discarded as useless. They gave him no clue as to what lead he had been following when he was attacked. What dangerous secret he’d unearthed.

  “Ahem…”

  Łukasz sat up from the file box at the sound of the gentle cough from his doorway. “Michał.”

  The other man smiled at Łukasz. The sad kind of smile reserved for the sick or the bereft.

  Łukasz consciously avoided looking at the framed picture on his desk. It didn’t help. He knew every shadow and line in the photograph anyway. He blinked.

  “Łukasz, I’m so sorry. We all are.” Michał gestured vaguely at the newsroom behind him. “She was a beautiful girl. Please, if there is anything I can do. Anything at all…” Michał let the words hang in the air, where they blended with his smoky aura.

  “I know, Michał, thank you.” Łukasz’s response was gruff, but he meant it. He knew how much his colleagues wanted to help. He looked at last at the picture of Basia, smiling up at him from a bench in the shade on the Warsaw University campus. Perhaps he wasn’t alone, after all.

  Looking up, Łukasz opened his mouth to utter the words that would call on his friends for help when another familiar figure loomed in the doorway, blocking out the rest of the newsroom.

  “Łukasz, Łukasz.” His editor spoke loudly, as if wanting everyone to hear. He rested a well-manicured hand against the door, the other deep in the pocket of his silk trousers. “You poor, poor man. You should not be here today. What can we do to help you? What can any of us do?”

  The words were kind, but the eyes behind them cold, calculating. Or so Łukasz told himself.

  He turned back to the box of
files on the floor. “Nothing, sir. Thank you. I’m just getting back to work. Trying to forget. There’s nothing anyone can do to help now.”

  With a nod, Łukasz’s editor left the doorway. Michał lingered a few seconds longer. When Łukasz failed to look up, he, too, walked away.

  Alone again, Łukasz picked up the next file in the box. Another half-written story about corruption in the government. A government official taking bribes in return for helping a private company navigate Poland’s complicated tax system to its advantage. Łukasz placed this file on one of the two piles on his desk.

  A few minutes later, three more files added to the mess growing on the floor around him, Łukasz paused with a folder in his hand. Another file about the previous regime. Why had he been researching the Soviet era? What could he hope to find from such dated information? With a shrug, he added it to the second, smaller pile on his desk. Then turned back to the box.

  It didn’t take long to work through all the folders in the box. These were all that remained of his notes. A box left behind accidentally, now his only tie to the leads he had been following before he was attacked. Everything he had taken home with him — the most important notes he wanted to spend more time on — had been stolen from his apartment while he lay recovering in the hospital.

  If only he could remember more. Who had he been talking to? Who had attacked him? Why had he been left for dead in that alley?

  The attack had left him without any memories of most of a day. But it hadn’t blunted his memory of the thing that mattered most. The death of his daughter, Basia. The determination by the police that it had been a suicide. Łukasz’s own determination to prove it wasn’t.

  The police refused to take the attack on him seriously, insisting he had just been in a drunken fight. What nonsense. A drunken fight that left him without memory and his apartment ransacked? Only days after his daughter died?

  It didn’t matter what they said. He wasn’t letting them off the hook that easy. They were the only people he could trust at this point. Assuming he could even trust them. He would continue to haunt the station closest to where Basia was killed, reminding them every day that he wouldn’t let the case drop. And at least now he had a lead — if he found the person who attacked him, it would bring him that much closer to finding the truth about what happened to Basia.

  Muttering under his breath, he kicked at a piece of paper lying on the floor near him and it took off, floating three or four feet before settling again on top of another piece just like it.

  Breathing deeply, he closed his eyes again. His memory would come back. He just needed to be patient. To wait. And to keep searching.

  4

  Eyes still closed, Adam reached for the bedside lamp. His arm hit the wall. Hard.

  He opened his eyes but lay still, confused for a moment, not recognizing the bed or the room. As his mind cleared the swamp of sleep, it all came flooding back — the flight, the train ride, their first afternoon of meetings followed by a formal dinner.

  A pale orange light crept around the edges of the thin curtains that hung over the window. A stronger light would have come right through them, but the sun was still warming up, not yet ready for its big entrance.

  Adam reached for his watch on the night table, carefully this time so as not to hit the wall again. Six thirty. In the morning. He groaned and rolled over in the bed, pulling the warm goose down duvet up over his naked shoulders, covering the eagle tattoo. Shouldn’t he be jet-lagged? Sleeping until ten or so?

  But Adam had always been an early riser. The first rays of the sun were all the alarm clock he usually needed. Plus the group was meeting for breakfast at eight to start another busy day of tours and meetings. With a final groan, he rolled out of bed and into a hot shower.

  Clean and bundled up against the chilly October day that awaited him, dressed in his standard uniform of khaki pants and button-down shirt, Adam needed one more thing before this day could really begin. A good cup of coffee. With an hour to kill before breakfast, Adam stepped out into the newborn day.

  Philadelphia Boulevard twisted and turned as it followed the path of the river. Adam turned right, walking briskly toward the ruins of the Teutonic castle. The frozen air burned his nose and he felt his chest constrict against the cold, but he tucked his hands deeper into his pockets, his head lower into his collar, and kept walking.

  A light mist was gradually burning away from the surface of the river to his right as he walked, and he could see its last tendrils creeping up over the banks then fading into nothingness. A few stores stood opposite the river and women in smocks and babushkas worked in the doorways of these, sweeping up and preparing for the day ahead.

  The aroma of fresh baked bread carried across the boulevard. Adam turned to see a shopkeeper busy laying out baskets of tomatoes, fresh bread, dill, and the ubiquitous root vegetables any household could store safely through the winter.

  An orange-gold light lit the walls of the ruins as he stepped into a small cafe looking out over the castle. The owner stood behind the bar, sweeping out a back room. He nodded as Adam took a seat at the counter that ran along a window, facing the water. From here, he could see the morning sun glinting off the river as the mist finally cleared, the castle ruins standing tall and golden in the early light.

  He ordered an espresso and when it arrived he sat for a few minutes simply enjoying the bitter aroma before he swallowed it and signaled for another. A Warsaw Weekly lay farther along the counter, and Adam reached over to grab it just as a blast of cold air blew in with another customer to the cafe.

  Published on Saturdays, the Warsaw Weekly was an English-language newspaper for the large expatriate and English-speaking community in Warsaw. And in the rest of Poland, too, apparently. It was a few days old already, but Adam browsed through it, reading about gallery openings, theatrical productions, and general gossip that would be of interest to anglophones in Warsaw.

  The story came toward the end, a short piece tucked away at the bottom of a page. Up to that point, he had simply been skimming, mostly reading headlines and only glancing over the articles. This one caught his full attention.

  The subject matter was grim. A young woman had drowned, killed herself, by jumping from the Most Łazienkowski, the Łazienkowski Bridge that crossed the Wisła River at the end of Aleje Armii Ludowej, a main avenue that crossed the heart of Warsaw. A student at Warsaw University, she had just started interning on the staff of a member of the Polish legislature, the Sejm.

  It wasn’t the subject matter alone that caught Adam’s attention. It was the name of the young woman. Basia Kaminski. She smiled up at him from a photo attached to the article, a beautiful young woman bundled against the Polish winter in a heavy coat and high laced boots. Her hair was dark but something about her smile, the joy in her eyes, brought Julia to mind.

  Kaminski must be a common name in Poland, Adam told himself. Purely a coincidence. It nevertheless sent a chill down his spine, and he focused his attention on the story the article had to tell.

  As he read, he turned his trained eye to the details included in the article, though not a lot of information was available. Perhaps there simply weren’t that many details to tell. Adam wasn’t even really sure why this story made it into the English-language newspaper, unless the editors thought their readers might have seen the sad event. Or seen the aftermath.

  The young woman had jumped in the early hours of the morning, before there was any traffic on the bridge. No witnesses had come forward. Her body had been found in the river by a local man walking his dog along the banks. More exactly, her body had been found by the dog.

  Adam read the few details the paper had to offer, then placed the paper down next to him and leaned back in his seat. He shuddered at the thought of dying by falling from a height. It made his healthy respect for heights seem reasonable. Cautious, even.

  He shouldn’t be reading this, shouldn’t be focusing on this. He was here to strengthen the relationship b
etween Philadelphia and Poland, helping the department’s budget in the process. Not to solve crimes. Crimes that weren’t even really crimes, as the police had determined it had been a suicide.

  The door opened again, and another blast of cold air rushed across him. He breathed in deeply and caught the reedy scent of the river over the strong aroma of coffee that pervaded the cafe. Looking out at the water making its turbulent way to the Baltic Sea, the same river that ran through Warsaw, Adam thought about the young woman, Basia Kaminski, and what she had been through.

  He could picture it. The dog walker braving a chill morning, much like this one, to walk his dog down by the water. The river would have been shedding its mist, just as it had for Adam today. The body would have floated near the banks, perhaps getting caught in the long grasses that lined the water. The dog, sniffing for small animals or ducks or the scent of another dog had caught a whiff of something unexpected. Something recognizable but unusual.

  He would have barked and his owner would have come running. Calling to it to stop barking first, perhaps, but then coming to see what was creating such excitement in his animal.

  The man would have seen her at that point. Facedown in the water, most likely. Corpses usually were, in Adam’s experience. The dead man’s float. Her shoulder-length brown hair would be fanned out around her head, stretching off into the water, waving with the rhythm of the tide.

  She had been wearing a winter coat, the article stated, which made sense. It was a cold time of year, and even someone contemplating suicide would instinctively have bundled up against the freezing temperatures of the night. Someone contemplating jumping into the even more frigid water that ran below the bridge.

  It wasn’t a tall bridge. Someone could jump off it and survive, the journalist had been good enough to explain.