by Elle Gray
“What else can you tell me about him?”
“He’s probably white. Late twenties to early thirties. He’s going to be physically fit. Strong,” I tell him. “He’s also likely going to be handsome and be very sociable. He’s smart, but there is definitely going to be something off. If you’re paying attention, you’ll see that something’s not right about him. You’ll see that he’s faking any emotion. That he’s acting a part.”
“That describes half the white men in Seattle,” he points out with a laugh.
I frown at him and he holds his hands up in mock surrender.
“I haven’t personally run across anybody like that,” he says. “But I’ll ask around. Like I said, ketamine isn’t fashionable these days, so perhaps that description will stand out.”
“Thank you, Fish. I appreciate it,” I say. “And I owe you one.”
“Of course,” he replies, then his smile brightens. “I meant it when I said I was going legit, Blake. And my first business is going to be a museum.”
I arch an eyebrow. “A museum?”
He nods eagerly like a child who’s dying to show off his new toy. “For the last couple of years, I’ve been collecting serial killer memorabilia. You wouldn’t believe how much is out there.”
“Actually, I would,” I tell him. “Freaks come in all shapes and sizes.”
He chuckles. “Well, I’m going to be displaying it in my own museum. I would love it if you’d come to the grand opening.”
I laugh softly. “I’m surrounded by this stuff every day.”
“Not like this,” he replies. “I think you’ll be surprised. Come as my special guest.”
I think about it for a moment and realize how much Maisey would love to see something like that. It would give Annie heart palpitations, but Maisey would die of excitement. I look up at Fish and nod.
“All right,” I say. “We’ll set it up.”
Twenty-One
Golden Sun Restaurant; Downtown Seattle
On my way back to the shop, Detective Lee called me and asked that I meet him at his family’s restaurant, the Golden Sun. I’ve eaten there before, and the food is actually pretty outstanding. The restaurant is done in light woods and bamboo with rows of red and gold Chinese lanterns hanging from the ceiling. Everything is well kept and tidy, and the aromas wafting out of the kitchen are making my mouth water.
A short, stout Chinese woman in a gray chef’s coat and black pants approaches me. Her dark hair is shot through with gray and she’s got dark eyes in a smooth, tawny face. She’s wearing a white apron over the coat and has her hair tied back beneath a black skull cap with the restaurant’s logo emblazoned on the cuff. I remember her from the last time I was here.
“Ms. Wilder?”
“Yes, it’s nice to see you again.”
She gives me a small smile, then turns and walks away, apparently expecting me to follow. Which I do. She leads me to one of the rooms in the back, pulls aside the rice paper door, and ushers me inside, closing it quickly after me. Detective Lee is sitting at the table sipping a glass of hot tea. I give him a smile as I take a seat across from him and he pours me a glass of tea. I pick it up and blow on the surface, scattering the tendrils of steam rising from the cup.
“Still ashamed to be seen with me in public, huh?” I ask with a grin.
“More like afraid to be seen with you,” he replies—sans the grin. “You’re toxic, Wilder.”
“Yeah, listen. I’m sorry about what happened in the park—”
“Frankly, I wish you would have knocked him out. Might have been better if you had,” he says. “Maybe it would have humbled him.”
“Things bad around the precinct?”
He nods. “Real bad. And you’re the main topic of conversation,” he replies. “He’s not real happy with the fact that your YouTube clip is nearing a million views. And do you know how I know it’s nearing a million views?”
“How?”
“Because Torres keeps reminding us of the count,” he says. “He’s obsessed with it. Checks it constantly. He can’t get over the fact that you made him look like a chump. And he’s furious about it.”
“I didn’t make him look like a chump,” I protest. “We argued. Loudly. But there was nothing that made him look like a chump. He’s either delusional or he’s way too sensitive.”
Lee looks at me, one corner of his mouth quirked upward. “Have you actually seen the clip?”
“Just what’s on the news. Why?”
“I’m sure it’s selective editing, but it seriously looks like he’s flinching away from you,” he goes on. “The video makes him look like he’s cowering in front of you while you’re going all caveman on him.”
“Shut up,” I chuckle. “That’s not even true.”
“Wish it weren’t,” he replies. “But it is and ever since that video dropped, everybody at the precinct is walking on eggshells, trying to avoid the next explosion. Torres was on a warpath before, but now he’s a total nuclear meltdown. And that’s all thanks to you.”
I shrug slightly. “You’re welcome?”
“I just wanted to meet to give you a heads up. Torres is coming for you.”
“He has been for a while. And I’m no more afraid of him now than I was then.”
“You’d be foolish to not take precautions.”
“I never said I wasn’t taking precautions,” I say. “I just said I wasn’t afraid of him. He’s been threatening me for a while now.”
I relay the conversation I had with Torres after he’d pulled me over as well as a few things he said to me at the park before everything went sideways. Lee listens to it all, sipping his tea and nodding along with me. And when I’m finished, he sets his teacup down. He sits back in his seat, his gaze fixed on mine.
“About ten or fifteen years ago, Torres was transporting a prisoner from prison to his precinct to await trial in the morning,” he starts. “Everything’s goin’ fine, but somewhere along the way, somethin’ happens, and the prisoner ends up shot. Thirteen times. Four times in the back. All while still cuffed. That’s a pretty neat trick, huh?”
“I’ll say,” I nod.”
“Anyway, Torres’ story is really vague and unconvincing. But he’s got friends in high places. Namely, the Internal Affairs unit, as well as the Office of Police Accountability. They run a dog and pony show investigation and voila, no charges are filed. They ruled the suspect somehow managed to get hold of a gun—while his hands were cuffed behind his back, mind you—and Torres acted out of fear for his life. They ruled it a good shoot.”
That’s a story I haven’t heard before. It chills me to the bone. To think that Torres murdered somebody in cold blood and got away with it is monstrous. And to think he’s got enablers in both IA and the OPA who signed off on this extrajudicial execution is even more so. No wonder Torres thinks he’s bulletproof. He apparently is.
“That’s not even the best part of the story,” Lee continues.
“There’s more?”
He nods, his expression sober. “Torres’ partner at the time, Peter Light, is the one who blew the whistle. He disappears. He just vanished without a trace,” Lee goes on. “There was no investigation into it. Nobody even batted an eye. Everybody just went on like he never existed.”
I shake my head. “How does this happen?”
“Connections. Power. Influence. Torres has them and you don’t,” he says. “That’s why I’m telling you that you really need to watch your ass, Blake. Torres can kill without fear of consequences.”
Lee’s words rattle around in my head, and although I’m not naïve enough to not think that things like these happen, I still don’t want to believe it. That this man murdered one, possibly two people, and not only got away with it but was still able to keep his job—and move up the food chain to the point that he’s one heartbeat away from being the most powerful man in the city of Seattle? It’s unbelievable to me.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Lee
says. “And just because you’re in the Bureau, it doesn’t mean you’re protected. You don’t get to where Torres is without making friends in even higher places. You may think you’re safe, but you’re not.”
“This can’t be happening,” I say.
“It not only can, it is,” he replies. “Torres is going to be gunning for you. He’s obsessed with you now that the world thinks you showed him up and made him cower to you. And when I say obsessed, I mean Fatal Attraction-type obsessed. I think—no, I know—he hates you more than he hates Paxton now.”
I drain the last of my tea, letting both my fear and my anger swirl around inside of me. I set the cup down and lean back in my seat, still not sure if I’m more scared or pissed off right now.
“I’m telling you this because even though we have our differences, I like you, Blake. I respect you,” he says. “And I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“The way you’re talking, it doesn’t sound like I’m going to be able to stop it. Between Torres and the cops who do his dirty work for him, to hear you tell it, I don’t have much of a chance,” I reply with a wry grin on my face.
“Just keep your head on a swivel. Make sure you are aware of your surroundings at all times,” he tells me. “And if you have the ability, don’t go anywhere alone. Don’t let him catch you out by yourself, Blake.”
“Is this the way I’m supposed to live the rest of my life? Looking over my shoulder?”
Lee shrugs. “At least until he finds something new to obsess over. And he will,” he says. “It’s just going to take some time to blow over.”
“Great.”
The door to the room slides open and Lee’s mother comes in with a cardboard box filled with plastic bags and containers. She sets it down in front of me and offers me a smile. I look at the mountain of food and feel my mouth watering. It’s amazing that Lee just told me his boss put a greenlight on me and I’m thinking about food.
“Thank you, Mrs. Lee,” I say as I reach for my bag.
She waves me off. “No. You enjoy.”
“Thank you very much. That’s very kind,” I say. “And I will definitely enjoy.”
She walks out of the room, leaving me alone with Lee again. I look from the box to him and grin.
“I guess if this is my last meal, this is a really good one to end things on.”
Twenty-Two
Wilder Residence; The Emerald Pines Luxury Apartments, Downtown Seattle
There’s something about waiting for the Grim Reaper to show up and snatch the life out of you that makes you feel a little nostalgic, I suppose. Mark is at work tonight, so I’m all alone. And with nothing better to do, I started to pull the boxes containing the last of my family’s things that I kept, out of the closet.
I held on to a lot of their things for a long time. I kept an entire storage locker filled top to bottom with things. It’s really only been over the last couple of years that I’ve started to purge a lot of stuff that I probably shouldn’t have kept to begin with. Bed sheets. Plates and dishes. My mother’s old perfume bottles. My dad’s cologne. My sister’s hair ties. I finally made the decision to part with things that made no sense for me to keep and things I haven’t looked at in years.
So I spent a weekend down at the storage facility and started to sort through everything. I had a keep pile and a toss pile and had to make some really difficult decisions. But I did it. I got through it all and pared everything down to the boxes I store in the closet of my spare bedroom. Eight total boxes, and most of them are filled with photo albums and envelopes of pictures. There are, of course, some personal things I wasn’t able to part with, but what I kept didn’t even fill half of one of the boxes.
I open one of the boxes I know contains photos and indulge myself with a trip down memory lane. There are pictures of the whole family from the time we went to Disneyland. All of us at the top of the Space Needle. A smile crosses my face as I look through all the pictures and remember happier days. It fills me with a sense of joy, but also a sense of longing. I can’t help but wonder what my life would be like if my parents hadn’t been killed. If my kid sister hadn’t been taken.
Would I be working for the FBI? Or would I have chosen to pursue another career path? Would I have become an artist or a chef? What would I have done had they not been killed?
I push those thoughts away, but that void is immediately filled by thoughts of Torres. The stories Lee told me today. He said they happened ten or fifteen years ago, which means Lee wasn’t on the force at the time. So those are stories he heard second hand. Which means it’s possible they’re not entirely true. I don’t doubt that some elements are true. But all of them? Would Torres really have been allowed to get away with two murders? Or one murder and one disappearance?
I run out to the living room and grab my laptop, then dash back to the bedroom. My service weapon sits in the holster nearby—just in case. I won’t lie. Lee’s stories, as well as his insistence that Torres is coming for me, got me spooked. Who wouldn’t be? To know that the Deputy Chief and all his minions are gunning for me is a terrifying thought. I’m only one person. And if Lee is right, I’m facing at least half of the SPD. Maybe more.
I crack open my laptop and do a search for Torres’s former partner. There are a couple of articles detailing the disappearance, but the slant of the pieces make it seem like he’d simply had enough and had gone off the grid. None of the articles I skim even raise the idea of foul play. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t any. It simply means either the SPD covered it up that well, or there really was no foul play. And after reading several pieces, I have no idea which one is right.
I clear out of that and run another search. This one for the prisoner killed by Torres. And there is a lot. Most of the articles from back in the day just tow the company line—the prisoner had gotten hold of a weapon and Torres fired in self-defense. A few of them raise the questions Lee mentioned. Specifically, the fact that the prisoner had his hands cuffed behind his back and the official story stank to high heaven. But those were written off as cranks and conspiracy theories pretty quickly.
I search and search, but can’t find anything conclusive. I can’t find anything to support or refute the accusation that Torres murdered the man. All I have is the official findings, but to me, they still leave open-ended questions I can’t answer. I don’t know if Torres killed the prisoner and his partner. What I do know is that he’s an out-of-control loose cannon who thinks he can do what he wants and get away with it. What I do know is that he is coming for me. Of that, I have no doubt.
I set all of that aside and go back to all the photos, trying to recapture those feelings of happiness that enveloped me before. I pick up one of the photo albums and look at it for a moment. It’s not one I remember seeing before. Back when I was culling the stacks and getting rid of everything, it’s not like I went through everything in detail then and there. I probably threw this one in there without thinking about it.
I open it and see photos of my mom and dad. My vision blurs and my eyes well with tears. I flip through photos of them when they were dating, smiling, and even laughing. Gosh, they were so young. Not to mention their goofy clothing. The book moves from their dating life to the wedding. I have to believe my mom was telling their story as she put this book together. It’s adorable and so sweet, and I can’t help but wonder if I’m ever going to be able to put a book like this together. I can’t help but wonder if I’m ever going to find a love as pure as the one my parents had for each other.
I flip the page and a couple of pictures fall out, so I set the book down and pick them up. The first is another picture from their wedding. This one is a candid shot of them staring into the camera, laughing hysterically. I trace the tip of my finger along the edges of their faces.
“I miss you guys. I think of all three of you every single day,” I whisper.
The second picture is stuck to the back of the wedding picture, so I carefully pry it loose and hold it up, frowning a
s I try to place the faces I’m seeing. Other than my parents and Mr. Corden, I don’t recognize anybody else in the photo. But they’re all obviously good friends; they’re having the time of their lives at somebody’s backyard barbecue. And that’s when it hits me: these people must be my parents’ work family. This must be their NSA work group.
I flip the picture over and feel a lump rise in my throat when I see my mother’s neat handwriting on the back of the photo. She lists out all their names. It’s almost like she knew I would be at this point someday, and she wanted me to have a signpost to guide me.
“Thank you, Mom,” I whisper.
Pulling my computer back into my lap, I type in the first name on the left. Gary Rodgers. A quick search shows me that he passed away. I don’t see a cause of death in the obituary I’m reading, but I note that he died about a week after my parents. The next name on the photo is Lindsey Haskins. I search her online and find an obituary for her as well, dated about a month after my parents died. As I look up the third name on the photo, Michael Pratt, I get a sinking feeling in my stomach. That feeling is confirmed when I pull up the obituary for him—two weeks after the death of my folks.
“What in the hell is going on?” I whisper.
I look at the list before me in stunned silence for a long moment, trying to comprehend what I was seeing. Trying to understand what was going on. Of the eight people I don’t recognize in the photograph, seven of them are dead. Seven out of eight of my parents’ NSA work group are dead. And all of them within a year of my parents’ murders. Eight out of nine, if you count Mr. Corden’s death a few weeks ago. I don’t know what the others died of; I haven’t done a deep dive yet. For now, it’s enough for me to know that practically every person in this photo died within a year of my folks. It’s a coincidence of staggering proportions. As far as I’m concerned, it strains the bonds of belief.