Greywalker

by Kat Richardson

  I looked at him sideways.

  His smile limped with exhaustion. “I don’t think there’s anything medically wrong with you or your pills. I think you’d be just fine without them, to be honest. I can’t do anything else for you except make some suggestions and tell you to be sure to go to your follow-up exams. Whatever’s causing you these problems seems to be outside my purview.”

  I took the card, skeptical, and dropped it into my bag. He watched me hitch the bag onto my shoulder and stand.

  “You probably should switch to a backpack if you always carry that much stuff,” he commented. “A load like that can hurt your back if you carry it on one side.”

  “I don’t like backpacks. Too casual and they’re hard to get into in a hurry.”

  Skelleher shrugged. “You have to make choices. But be good to yourself, you know? Try to sleep. Eat red meat to restore your blood count and proteins. Put wet tea bags on your eyes to reduce the discoloration. Get some regular stretching and exercise. You’ll heal faster and feel better. And call me if you have any more trouble.”

  I said I would and he gave me another crooked, coffee-deprived smile as I left.

  Dead. Except for a few family funerals, a required course in forensic science, and a couple of bodies on a case that went nuts, what did I know about death? Bodies are just the leftovers, not the real event of death. I’d never seen anyone die, never been intimate with death—except for that moment in the elevator when it just seemed like a very inviting kind of nap. I wanted to sit and think about that and yet, I really didn’t.

  I left it to stew in the back of my head, and my brain bumbled around it like a bee in a rhododendron. Dead.

  Chapter Two

  Foiling gray mist flooded across the floor, pushing against the walls. Lucent wisps spiraled up from the mass, forming a columned portal supporting a hot-white door. My vision clouded, like snow on a television screen. Vertigo gripped me.

  The door drifted open on an endless whiteout storm, swarming with almost-seen shapes and moving light. I crashed to my knees in the thick cold, gasping in the sickening death smell of it. Hungry fog boiled out, muttering, whispering, clawing… I started awake with a racing heart.

  Nerves vibrating, I stalked through the entire condo, throwing open cabinets and closets, daring the mist to stream out at me. The ferret watched me from the safety of her cage as I found nothing. My head buzzed from getting up too fast, and black dots fringed my vision. I lay back down, but I could not fall back to sleep.

  I gave up and stumbled through my morning routine. The sun struggled up through the early-morning Seattle gloom. I looked out the balcony windows, but I couldn’t face the prospect of another fog-haunted run.

  I showered and faced off to the bathroom mirror, my pulse ragged as I wiped it clear of steam. In spite of the best efforts of the salon gnomes, I still looked thrashed. Pillow creases and morning puffiness didn’t help, either.

  Chaos, the ferret, made a pest of herself as I dressed, rumpling up my impress-the-client suit, stealing shoes, stockings, and jewelry, and throwing dancing fits of sound and fury when I took them back. Finally, I tucked her back into her cage. She glared at me as I slipped my pistol into the clip holster in the small of my back and hid it under a suit jacket that almost matched my skirt. I would not be taken by surprise again.

  I was in my office before seven, coffee in hand. I started catching up on old business and billing and prepping for my meeting at nine.

  My first day out of the hospital, I’d called my answering machine. Most of the messages were old business, crank calls, and hiss, but two had sounded like work.

  The first had been a male, accented, bad connection: “Miss Blaine. Grigori Sergeyev. You have come to my attention to recover a family heirloom. I must call again. I have no phone number to give now.”

  I’d made a note, but still no second call had come in.

  The second was a female, controlled, with a mature, Eastside girls-academy voice: “Ms. Blaine, my name is Colleen Shadley. My son is missing. The police have been condescending but no help. They suggested I hire a private investigator, and Nan Grover recommended you. Please call me as soon as possible.”

  I had called her back and agreed to look into it. I’d have preferred later, but Mrs. Shadley had set the time and place for the meeting. I thanked the gods for coffee. At eight thirty, I shut down my computer and locked up the office.

  The morning fog hadn’t thinned much, giving Pioneer Square

  a watercolor look as I headed for the bus stop on First. There was no point in moving my Rover just to pay for parking six blocks away.

  As I was crossing Occidental, a man shambled out of the alley toward me. He was draped in layers of dark, shaggy rags that spun vortices off into the mist around us.

  He muttered as he approached. “Can you see? Can you see?” He waved his hands, one of them clutching an empty shape, gesturing around like a tour guide.

  I could smell him, wafting the odor of dirt and attics. I started around him, peering through the sulfurous mist.

  His hand darted out and grabbed my upper arm. He hauled on me and shoved his face near mine. “Dead lady? Are y’dead, lady? Y’see ‘em?” He waved his clenched-open hand at me and demanded, “Looka! Can you see this? Huh? Can y’see?”

  I twisted, pulling my shoulder down and shoving him with my other hand. The layers of his clothes were warm and furry and gave under my hand, but he stumbled back and I spun away, putting a couple of paces between us.

  I shook the smell out of my head, saying, “I think you should back off.”

  He stumbled another step back, muttering, “No? Can’t y’see? No?” He whimpered, confused.

  I made an aggressive feint forward, leaning in and glaring at him, my hands coming up, curling.

  He darted in, trying to grab for me again, but I roared at him and swung one hand hard over his nearest ear.

  He yelped and turned, skittering off into the alley and sliding away in the shredding fog that swirled and sucked behind him.

  I let out a breath and hurried for the bus, shaking off a shiver.

  I was a fashionable five minutes late. I hate to be fashionable.

  Colleen Shadley had picked an espresso bar with pretensions of clubhood, paneled in cherrywood and dark green leather, with clots of business-suited men and women muttering together among the big armchairs and glossy mission tables.

  I spotted a lone woman in the rear right corner and headed for her. She was paging through a copy of Wine Spectator at a desultory rate and ignoring a cup of coffee.

  Her hair was styled in a soft, chin-length bob that curled smoothly forward at the ends, the color a gentle beige. She wore an Audrey Hepburn sort of black silk dress as if it were armor. A sleek leather attaché case leaned against her chair legs.

  I stopped in front of her. “Mrs. Shadley?”

  She looked up at me. Her eyes were violet.

  “You’re Ms. Blaine. Please sit down. And call me Colleen.” She waved to the chair at an angle to hers, studying me. I expected to be graded on the grace of my transition from upright to seated. “You’re not what I expected, but Nan did recommend you very highly.”

  Nanette Grover does not give gushing reviews. In two years of running legal backgrounds for her, the best I’d heard was “This is good.” I wondered what she had said.

  Colleen continued. “Where did you get that blackened eye?”

  “Complications of a now-closed case. I can recommend a less scrappy investigator if it makes you uncomfortable.” My offer was a little stiff, I admit.

  She smiled. “That won’t be necessary.” Then she beckoned over my head.

  I pulled my notebook and pen from my purse. “Let me recap what you told me on the phone. Your son, Cameron, is a student at U-Dub—the University of Washington. He disappeared recently, has not, apparently, been attending classes, and has not been paying his bills, though his ATM card seems to be showing regular use in the Seattle a
rea. You’ve filed a missing persons report with the Seattle PD, but you don’t expect any satisfaction from that quarter.”

  She nodded. “Very concise. We have a joint account into which I deposit funds to cover his expenses every two weeks. I didn’t know anything was wrong until I got a call from his landlord. Cameron has not paid his part of the rent for a month and, since I’m a cosigner on the lease, the landlord contacted me. When I called to speak to Cameron’s roommate, the boy told me he hadn’t seen Cameron in six weeks or more. He also said Cam had been sick the last time he did see him.

  I remember that Cam seemed rather pale and said he’d had the flu the last time I saw him. That would have been just under six weeks ago.”

  Her recitation was interrupted by the arrival of coffee, preordered.

  “According to Richard—his roommate—Cameron left most of his things behind, so it didn’t seem that he was going away for any prolonged length of time. I haven’t been by to talk to Richard myself, though I suppose I should have done. I just kept thinking Cam had finally caught a wild hare and would turn up again anytime. Then I got the latest bank statement. No checks had been written for any bills, and all the transactions were for cash taken from ATMs in Seattle.”

  “Is this his normal pattern?” I asked.

  “No. He writes checks for almost everything—bills, groceries, clothes, and so on—and only takes out cash for entertainment.”

  “A joint account is a little unusual for a kid over fourteen or fifteen.”

  Colleen waved it away. “It was set up a long time ago. When my husband died, we created a very large trust for Cameron until he completed his college degree. I am the executrix of that trust, and it was easier to establish a joint account into which to put his stipend and expense money than to try to set up an individual account. When he got a little older, he chose to keep the account rather than open a new one. I always kept the account records for tax purposes.”

  She frowned, her mask of expensive makeup creasing like heavy paper. “But now he appears to have left school. As the trust executrix, I must find out if he really means to quit school and give up the money, or if he’s just taking a quarter off, which would only put the payments into suspension. Of course, as his mother, I need to find out what’s happened to him. This is… unlike him.”

  I sipped coffee and braced to be rude. “How much money are we talking about in this trust?”

  She didn’t flinch. “Just under two million dollars.”

  “That’s a nice trust.”

  She shrugged. “Daniel and I wanted to be sure the children were taken care of if anything happened to either of us.”

  “What becomes of the trust now?”

  “If Cameron goes back and finishes his degree, he’ll get a set percentage of the trust to get started on after he graduates, and the rest will be divided among a list of persons and charities. If he doesn’t go back to school, he gets nothing and the entire trust is divided.”

  “Among whom?”

  “Well, myself, our daughter Sarah, Daniel’s old business partner, Dan’s two brothers, and a list of charities.” She shifted uncomfortably and bit the inside of her lip.

  I just nodded and made a note. “Let’s go back to the bank statement,” I suggested. “Do you know the times, dates, or locations of any of the transactions, or the amounts?”

  She looked startled. “I forgot to bring the statement with me.”

  She didn’t strike me as the scattered and forgetful type. I’d bet she was the president or treasurer of three or four charitable boards around town. A flicker of her mouth and the shadow of sudden small lines gave a hint of unaccustomed anxiety, which she shut down as quickly as I spotted it.

  I continued. “What’s your son’s full name, Colleen?”

  “Andrew Cameron Shadley. He prefers to go by his middle name.” She reached into her case and brought out a large manila envelope. “I brought some photos and a list of friends and relatives who may be able to help you.”

  I took the envelope and pulled out two photos and a sheet of typed bond—the thick, cottony stuff that costs forty dollars a box. One of the photos was an eight-by-ten color studio print, the other a standard snapshot.

  The portrait showed a beaming Pre-Raphaelite angel in a black crew-necked sweater. His long, pale gold hair would have hung in Shirley Temple ringlets if cut to shoulder length. His eyes, fringed with thick, dark gold lashes, were deep violet like his mother’s. Only the vaguest blond down of a mustache kept him from being mistaken for a girl.

  Colleen pointed at the portrait. “That picture was taken after his high school graduation. He’s lost a little weight since then, and that dreadful mustache finally grew in.” She sighed. “He was the most adorable child, but, of course, he hated it.” Which I’d figured. “That other picture is from this past Christmas. That’s what he looked like when I saw him last.”

  In the snapshot, Cameron and a girl were standing next to a hearth that was decorated with cedar garland and red-and-green-plaid ribbons. Thinner, his face had lost its cherubic plumpness, and a silky blond mustache draped over his mouth. His long hair was tied back. Now his smile was secretive. The girl looked about the same age, but sullen at having her picture taken. Her hair was asphalt black, but whether it was natural or from a dye bottle was impossible to tell in such a small picture. She had cultivated the trendy, Gothic vampire look. Surrounded by the Christmas theme, she looked like a witch left over from Halloween.

  “Is this Cameron’s girlfriend?” I asked.

  “Oh, no. That’s Sarah. My daughter.” Her lips tightened a little; then she reached for her coffee and took a sip.

  “Would Sarah have any idea where Cameron is?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know. We don’t talk. Her address is on the sheet. Maybe you’ll have better luck with her than I do.”

  I made a mental note while I sipped coffee and looked at the list. It was short. Each name was annotated “friend” or “relative,” followed by contact information—except for Sarah’s, which had only an address.

  “I wish there was more for you to start from,” Colleen said. “Cameron didn’t socialize at home much anymore. He was always very independent, but he was never reckless. When I didn’t hear from him, I assumed that he was busy with new projects and studies. It wasn’t until he missed his birthday that I began to worry. He’s the one who always calls. He participates. He’s a good son.”

  Her tone said someone else was not a good daughter. “How old is Cameron?”

  “He turned twenty-one on the seventh of March.”

  “And how long has he been studying at U-Dub?”

  “Three years. Though it will take longer than four years to complete his degree.”

  “Oh? What’s he studying?”

  “Majoring in human factors engineering and minoring in Japanese.”

  I made a puzzled face. “Human factors engineering?”

  “Ergonomics,” she clarified. “He always knew what he wanted. He started college straight out of high school. I thought he would want to go to Europe for a while with some of his friends, but he said he’d rather ‘get a jump on them.’ ” She smiled her pride. “Who could say no to that?”

  “When did you see him last?”

  “The end of February or the beginning of March…” She flipped open a datebook and glanced through it. “The first of March. Yes…” Her mouth turned down as she paused, remembering.

  “You said he had been ill,” I prompted.

  “Yes. He looked very pale. Distracted. I remember he told me he was just getting over the flu and he didn’t want me to catch it. He kept his distance from me all night and picked at his food. He didn’t talk much, either.”

  “I see. Do you have his class schedule?”

  She flushed red. “I seem to have left that with the bank statement.”

  “I’ll get them from you later. Can you think of any places he might hang out?”

  “He is fond of
Waterfall Garden Park, but it’s in such a grubby neighborhood. I can’t imagine him ‘hanging out’ there. Of course, he spent a lot of time around the campus and the U-district. He saw art films at the Grand Illusion once in a while. His roommate will be more help on that.”

  I knew Waterfall Garden Park. It was only a few blocks from my office. Most of Pioneer Square

  was grubby, but so were parts of the U-district. The tiny garden was locked at sunset, so I wondered where Cameron was really hanging out when he went slumming in Pioneer—especially since he’d been underage for the primary nightlife down there until March seventh.

  “Does Cameron own a car? Do you know where it is?”

  “No, I don’t. Richard said he hadn’t seen it in the parking lot, so he must have it with him.”

  We could hope that was the case. I kept my mouth shut on the other possibilities.

  Colleen continued. “It’s some horrendous old sports car, but I can’t remember the type.” She made a moue of distaste. “He and some friends went to California for a week after their high school graduation, and he drove back in the thing. A money pit.”

  Colleen interrupted herself with a raised finger. “Wait… I may have that.” She flipped open her attaché case and riffled through some envelopes, then pulled one free and handed it to me. “Cameron’s registration” was penciled on the flap in a precise, copperplate handwriting.

  I took it, looked it over, nodded. “Dark green, 1967 Camaro, license: CAMSCAM.” I didn’t roll my eyes.

  I shut my notebook. “I think I can get started with this. I’ll return the photos to you once I’ve made some copies. Tomorrow, if that’s convenient. And I can pick up the schedules and bank statement from you at the same time,” I suggested.