Hasan was lying on his belly with his arms crossed, his face red with anger. He'd been asking the police what they were looking for in the basement for hours, but he wasn't getting any reasonable answers. He wanted to ask Adnan, but he didn't have the courage. He saw disgust in Adnan's eyes. He stopped the uniformed officer coming up from below.
"Officer, this is my place, my home, don't I have the right to know what's going on?" The officer, tired of being stopped by Hasan every time he went up and down, replied, "Patience, this doesn't concern you. It's about Muhsin, the real owner of the building. Don't block my way again!" and left through the main door. Hasan had no idea that Muhsin was dead. He thought, what did Mr. Muhsin do? He hasn't been around for a while. As a myriad of thoughts swirled in his mind, he saw a firefighter entering with a concrete drill next to the officer who had just gone out. Hasan jumped in front of them.
"What are you going to do with that? If you intend to bring the building down on us, let me know," he said.
The officer, exasperated, said, "For heaven's sake..." and went down to the basement with the firefighter, bypassing Hasan. Adnan had sent everyone except Tarık upstairs. The last thing he wanted in a confined space was a crowd.
"We're here, sir," said the officer when he saw him. Adnan turned to the firefighter, "Let's start right away," he said. He showed the spot Tarık had indicated and watched the drill break through the concrete. Tarık, standing silently on the bottom step of the stairs, found the noise of the drill overwhelming.
While Adnan was busy with the excavation in the apartment, Ali İhsan had been interrogating the neighbors. Though what they told him was a mystery to those who didn't know, Ali İhsan had no trouble putting the pieces together. When he called his superior to report his findings, he had to move the phone away from his ear because of the noise and only brought it back when he got used to it. Amid the noise, he could barely hear Adnan's voice like a whisper.
"Sir, I can't hear you, what's going on there?"
"We're looking for the bodies of two children who died twenty years ago, Ali."
"What bodies, what children, sir?"
Adnan climbed the steps to the lobby to make himself heard by Ali İhsan and sat down on the couch placed in the middle.
"It's a long story, what did you find?"
"Sir, according to the neighbors, Şakire, Sinan, and Hüsrev disappeared suddenly. I think Hüsrev killed the two and dumped them in the basement."
"Who are the other two then?"
"Sir, there are four skulls. According to the forensic expert, two died in the same period, and the other two many years later. It shows from the color of the bones and the rate of decay, something like that."
"Then Hüsrev killed Şakire and Sinan first, but who are the others and when did he kill them?"
"The other two are very likely the mother and son from the neighboring house, sir. According to the neighbors, the mother and son have been missing for twenty years. They had no close relatives to look for them."
"Why did he kill them? Something must have happened for Hüsrev to kill them and dump them in the basement."
"We found burned clothing pieces upstairs. It seems Ömer found and exposed the pieces. If Hüsrev escaped the fire and came here, and the neighbors saw him, he might have killed them to keep his cover."
As Adnan listened to Ali, he was thinking at the same time. Ali İhsan's theory was logical and had credible evidence.
"Give the names of the missing neighbors to the station, and have them conduct a detailed investigation. They might have relatives."
"The woman's name is Kerime, and the son's name is Fatih. The neighbors don't know anything else. I sent a three-person team to the house earlier; maybe they'll find something."
"Keep me updated on any developments," he said, hanging up the phone. He started towards the basement, stepping on the stairs without realizing he was being watched.
While Ali İhsan was overseeing the collection of the bones for transport to the forensic lab, he joined the team he had sent to the neighboring house. There wasn't a spot as small as a needle left unchecked at the crime scene. As he walked in the door, he felt the eerie similarity to the other house. The floorboards, the ceiling, even the color of the door were identical. The stifling air had lessened with the windows open, but the odor embedded in the walls was still noticeable. When he asked, "Have you found anything?" the officer kneeling in front of the couch, taking a sample from the carpet, looked up. He paused his work for a second, "There are blood stains, but very old. We could only see them with Luminol. It's impossible to see with the naked eye," he said and returned to his task.
Ali moved to the kitchen where another team was working. The dusty table and the moldy, swollen cabinets emitted a heavy smell. "What about you guys?" he asked. The officer, also in protective gear, examining the cabinets, paused. "Finding anything here is hard..." he stopped mid-sentence. He saw something on the shelf he was inspecting. "I was going to say, but look," he said excitedly. "Someone has recently been in this house. A glass has been taken from the shelf. Look," he pointed to the round mark on the dusty shelf. Ali approached the shelf, "Indeed, the surrounding area is dusty, but the circular spot, just the size of a glass, is clean."
"I'll check for fingerprints, sir," said the officer, reaching for his kit. Meanwhile, the officer in the living room called out excitedly, "Sir, look at this!"
Ali quickly returned to the living room to see the officer holding a medicine bag and a syringe. He swallowed hard; the first thing that came to mind was Ömer.
After several hours of excavation, a pit nearly five meters deep had formed. Adnan was pacing back and forth, beginning to think Tarık was seeing things when the firefighter shouted, "There's something here," and set aside his pickaxe. He had switched to the pickaxe after breaking through the concrete and reaching the soil. Adnan, Tarık, and the other officers approached the pit.
"Get out of the pit," Adnan told the man and put on rubber gloves. As the firefighter climbed out, Adnan jumped into the pit without hesitation. Fearlessly, he dug through the soil with his hands, uncovering the object the pickaxe had hit. Under his hands, in front of his eyes, lay bone fragments.
Ali put the syringe and medicines into evidence bags and sent them to the forensic lab with an urgent code. He was examining the few fingerprints the officer in the kitchen had found. He suspected they might belong to Ömer. As the samples were being prepared for forensic analysis, he was jolted from his trance by his ringing phone.
"Yes, sir!"
"Ali, announce that we are looking for a taxi driver named Fatih throughout the city. That's our guy."
As Adnan said this, Ali's hair stood on end. The plausibility of what came to mind was staggering.
"He came here, killed the woman and her son, and lived under the man's identity. For years, without anyone knowing, he lived as Fatih."
"Yes," said Adnan, "all the pieces fit together."
"He hid for twenty years, smartly moving until he killed Muhsin," said Ali, seeing the full picture with absolute clarity.
"Who knows how many people he killed that we don't know about?" said Adnan.
"We'll find out once we catch him," said Ali.
Hours later, teams throughout the city were questioning taxi drivers everywhere. They were checking names, backgrounds, and family information and showing Hüsrev's composite sketch, drawn with Süleyman's help. So far, only one person resembling Hüsrev had been found, but it was a false alarm. The man had two children, was named Yahya, and was much younger. While Adnan and Ali İhsan worked in coordination, Tarık and his team were not idle either, combing the bus terminal, checking taxis, and asking drivers about Hüsrev. Adnan called the forensic lab hourly to check on the fingerprint results. The whole city was mobilized, searching for the guard.
As Adnan and Ali entered the small office of the last taxi stand in the city, Ali's phone rang. Evening had turned to twilight, the darkness setting in. Ali, tired, exhausted, and hopeless, pulled out his phone, his mouth agape with shock. Adnan gave him a questioning look.
"Sir, Ömer is calling."