by Craig Larsen
“Jason’s not my father,” she said, pulling away from him.
“I’m sorry. Your stepfather, I mean.” He glanced over his shoulder to look at her. “Hamlin was blackmailing him, I think. To win some government business.”
“What?” She sounded genuinely shocked.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure I should tell you.”
“Tell me, Nick. Can you prove it?”
Nick shook his head, his mind starting to check off possibilities. “Not yet. Maybe.” He reached forward and pulled the screen down. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Come back to bed, darling.”
“I can’t,” Nick said. “I’ve got to go.”
Nick parked his car outside a white shingle house set back from the street behind a lush, verdant lawn, partially hidden by a copse of giant elms. It was still dark, and from what Nick could see there was no movement inside the house yet. Nick knew that Laura Daly was an early riser. She was in the newsroom most mornings before six A.M. It was Sunday, though. Maybe Daly was sleeping in. Finally, at seven o’clock, Nick couldn’t wait any longer. Lifting his laptop off the passenger seat, he opened the door and braved the cold, heading up the rain-soaked concrete path to the front door. He rang the buzzer; then, when he still didn’t hear anyone moving inside, raised the knocker and gave it a few taps.
Daly looked flustered when she pulled the door open. Her hair was mussed from her pillow, her cheeks lined with a few sleep creases. She had pulled a heavy terrycloth robe over her pajamas, but she hadn’t been able to find her slippers, and her feet were bare. “Nick?” Daly squinted, trying to bring the young man into focus. “Is that you? What are you doing here? It’s barely seven o’clock.”
“I’m sorry,” Nick said. “I thought you’d be awake.”
“Normally I would be. Are you okay, son?”
The raw concern in Daly’s voice made Nick pause with regret, and he didn’t reply.
“I couldn’t find my slippers.” Daly looked down at her uncovered feet, as if to prove the point. “Just give me a moment—I feel naked without them. Come inside, why don’t you? There’s coffee on the stove from last night. Pour yourself a cup, and I’ll be right down.”
A few minutes later, they were sitting across the small kitchen table in the dim light of the early morning. The kitchen’s exterior wall was cased in glass, and even though the rain had stopped falling, drops of water cascaded from the trees, trickling in streams down the windowpanes. Nick had placed the laptop on the table between them, and Daly was staring at the screen, slowly shaking her head. “There’s no doubt about it,” she said, a hard note in her voice. Despite the situation, the editor’s posture didn’t reflect a suggestion of any hesitation. “No doubt at all. That’s him. That’s Van Gundy.”
“I took these pictures outside the massage parlor.”
“I remember.”
“We sat at your desk and discussed them when I turned them in.”
“I know, Nick. I was there. I remember.”
“You paid me for them.”
Daly looked up at Nick. Her frustration was palpable. “What are you suggesting?”
“What happened to the story, Laura?”
The editor’s eyes blazed, then dimmed.
“I’ve had so much on my mind I almost didn’t notice. You never printed these pictures. You didn’t run the story.”
Daly looked away from Nick, then, pushing her chair backward clumsily, stood up from the table, gathering her robe as if she were cold. Nick understood that his suspicions had been correct. Still, he couldn’t believe it. He followed the editor with his eyes as she walked across the kitchen to the wall of windows, waiting for her to speak the truth.
“It was Hamlin,” she said at last. Her voice was low, barely a whisper.
Nick waited for her to continue, stunned by the confession.
“This wasn’t a piece we were going to run. It was never a story at all.” The aging editor stared out into the backyard. The house was set on at least an acre, and there wasn’t another structure in sight, only a carefully tended garden. “Jason came to my office and told me about the bust. The police were going to raid the massage parlor—just like I told you, just like they did. He said he wanted pictures taken. I didn’t ask him why.”
“You didn’t want to know why Hamlin was going to all that trouble?”
The gray-haired woman shrugged her shoulders. “You took the pictures, I gave them to Jason. I didn’t want anything to do with it beyond that.”
Nick glanced back at the screen of his computer, trying to make sense of the situation. “I’ve still got the pictures,” he said at last.
“Let’s take him down, Nick.”
Nick felt suddenly cold.
“I never should have let it go this far.” The editor sounded weary. Her gaze didn’t waver. At last she turned to face Nick. “What you’ve got right there is enough.”
“You want to run these now?”
Daly shook her head. “We don’t publish them. We use them. Just like Hamlin used them to coerce Van Gundy to award him that contract. Only we use them against him this time.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Me? I’m not going to do anything. You are.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“You take these pictures to Van Gundy, Nick. Get him to flip. He won’t have a choice. You tell him we’ve got proof that Hamlin threatened to run a story in the Telegraph ruining him if the EPA didn’t award him the contract to clean up Elliott Bay. It’s up to him. He can be part of the story or part of the solution. Either way, the pictures are coming out, so he might as well join us.”
“If he cooperates with us,” Nick said, following the editor’s logic, “the story will be about Hamlin. If he doesn’t, it will be about him.”
“Exactly.”
Something was still bothering Nick. “What I don’t understand,” he said, thinking out loud, “is why the police let Van Gundy go that day.”
The editor’s eyes narrowed.
“They arrested the other two johns,” Nick said, finishing his thought. “Why didn’t they arrest Van Gundy?”
“Hamlin’s a very rich man. He’s got friends, Nick.” Daly smiled weakly. “Think about it. How did Jason know about the bust in the first place? And how did he know that Van Gundy would be there? He had a lot of good help setting Van Gundy up. There’s no telling where this thing will lead you once you start digging.”
“What about you, Laura?”
“Me?”
“You’re part of this, too. Aren’t you?”
The editor clenched her jaw.
“Aren’t you?”
To Nick, she looked suddenly like an old woman. “You let me worry about that. I’ve been waiting years for this. Years. It’s time to take that bastard down.”
Gathering her robe, she walked across the kitchen toward the study just opposite. “You wait here. I’ve got a few calls to make. It’s Sunday, but I’ll raise Johnnie and see if I can’t get a phone number for Van Gundy.”
“I need to talk to you, Sara.”
Nick and Sara were walking along the water in Seward Park a few hours later, hand in hand, making a circuit of the small peninsula in a light rain. It was late afternoon already. A cold, moist wind was blowing off Lake Washington, and it was so misty there was no sky. Nick tried to make sense of the large houses lining the opposite shore, hovering without perspective in the fabric of the air.
“I’m not sure how you’re going to feel about this,” he said, struggling for the right words.
“You know, you can tell me anything,” Sara reassured him.
“The man whose picture you saw on my computer this morning—Ralph Van Gundy—I told you I thought your stepfather was blackmailing him.”
“You told me you couldn’t prove it,” Sara said.
“We’re going to go after him.” Nick faced Sara, gauging her reaction. “I’m meeting Van
Gundy later today. I think he’s going to testify against your stepfather, even if it means going down himself.”
Sara took the information in somberly. “I see.”
“It’s going to be bad for your stepfather.” Nick wanted to make his point clear. “Hamlin’s a wealthy man, but he’s not immune. I wanted to tell you first, because I’m not sure how you’ll feel.”
“Are you asking my permission?”
Nick thought about the question. “I don’t know. Maybe. I just don’t want anything to come between us.”
“Because if you are, you have it.”
Despite himself, Nick was surprised by Sara’s reaction. As intimidating as he was, Hamlin was Sara’s stepfather. He had adopted her legally when he married Jillian. “I’ve never really understood your relationship,” Nick said carefully. “With Hamlin, I mean.”
“Are you asking me a question?”
Nick realized that he wanted to know what Sara thought of Hamlin. “Yes,” he said. “I guess I am.”
Sara walked in silence. Nick was wondering whether he had gone too far when she spoke. “People didn’t understand why my mom got involved with Jason,” she began. “There were rumors. People said that Jason wasn’t in love with my mother. They said that he married her for another reason.”
Nick had never liked the way Sara called her stepfather Jason, by his first name. It sounded so intimate. “I don’t know about any of that,” he admitted. “Those types of stories wouldn’t mean anything to me, even if I had heard them.”
Waiting for Sara to continue, he listened to the nearly still water lapping the shore, barely visible beneath the fog shrouding them. The branches of a few large trees reached toward them, suspended eerily in the swirling mist. He had the momentary sensation that he was walking through the scenery of a dream. A gigantic whirl of steam rolled past them overhead, tendrils breaking off and reaching down to caress their faces. Nick resisted the urge to duck out of the way. “If he wasn’t in love with your mother,” he prompted when Sara remained silent, “what other reason could he have to marry her?”
He felt Sara’s fingers wrap more tightly around his bicep. A sailboat emerged from the mist, gliding soundlessly across water, its tall sails billowing out above its polished teak deck. Nick became aware of the splash of its hull slicing the bay only after it disappeared once again into another bank of fog.
“When Mother met Jason,” Sara said at last with a slight tremor, “he was already engaged to someone else.” She bristled at the memory. “He broke off the engagement to marry my mother.”
Nick tried to piece together what she was telling him.
“He’s sixty. Jillian’s only forty-six. And he’s a powerful man. Physically, I mean. He’s very, very strong.” Sara’s fingers dug into Nick’s muscles, constricting the flow of his blood through his arm. “A man like Jason’s used to getting his way—everything he wants.”
“I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.” Nick’s confusion was melting into an apprehension he couldn’t yet define.
“A man like Jason doesn’t act impulsively. He’s always in control. He dominates.”
Nick knew firsthand how threatening the silver-haired man could be.
“A man like Jason doesn’t break off an engagement lightly.”
“So he must have loved Jillian very much, then.”
“People blamed me,” Sara continued, ignoring him. “They said terrible things. They said I tricked Jason into marrying Mother. They said I seduced him.”
Nick’s blood turned cold all at once. The back of his neck felt strange, as if someone were tickling his skin. Each of Sara’s fingers now was cutting into his arm.
“I didn’t seduce him, though. He raped me.”
Nick stopped walking. When he turned to face her, the thin silver chain that he had given to her glinted in the weak light, drawing his eye to Sara’s neck.
“Jason raped me, Nick. Then he married Mother.”
Nick took Sara in his arms. The white mist surrounding them had turned gray, and Nick held on tight. Her cheek was cold against his skin, then warm with tears. For the first time since he had met her, Sara was crying.
chapter 27
It was nearly five by the time Nick pulled his old Toyota to a stop in front of the high-rise Federal Building where the Washington state EPA had its local offices. The sky had begun to darken. Except for a few homeless people guarding a couple of shopping carts covered with black plastic garbage bags, the brick plaza in front was deserted. Nick switched off the engine, then craned forward to look up at the building. One or two lights burned high inside the 1950s tower, and the lobby at the base of the building glowed slightly orange. This late on a Sunday afternoon, though, the building was otherwise dark.
Nick raised a hand to his face, rubbing his mouth and his cheeks and his temples with his fingers, trying to fight the strange dizziness overtaking him. He became aware of the smell of Sara still on his fingers. He closed his eyes, transported back to their bedroom in a confused blur, almost as if he were being pulled through a wild, twisting tunnel on the spine of a roller coaster. She had pinned him to the bed. Angrily, he thought. Pull my hair. Damn you, Nick. Viciously. Choke me. Savagely. She had held him down by his shoulders. Dug her fingers into his throat. Her thighs had cut into his hips as she had pulled herself down on top of him. Hit me.
Nick opened his eyes.
Fifteen minutes had disappeared somehow since he had parked his car. Fifteen minutes. Where had the time gone? Van Gundy was waiting for him upstairs in his office on the thirtieth floor. Nick couldn’t afford to be late. He didn’t want to screw this up. He didn’t just want to take Hamlin down. He wanted to destroy him.
I don’t want to hurt you.
Slap me. Damn you, Nick. Hit me.
Nick squeezed his fingers into his eyes and rubbed his forehead, then at last pulled the latch on the door. After leaving Daly’s house that morning, he had stopped to print copies of the photographs, and he lifted them off the seat next to him and climbed the stepped brick plaza. A homeless man followed Nick’s progress through the dark, wet shadows. Halfway up, Nick briefly locked eyes with the man.
The guard didn’t look up when Nick entered the lobby. He headed straight for the elevator bank servicing the thirtieth floor and stepped into a waiting elevator. The doors slid closed behind him, and seconds later the cab began its quick ascent three hundred feet above the plaza.
Across town on the edge of Lake Washington, inside the men’s locker room at the Bellevue Tennis and Polo Club, Jason Hamlin and William Gutterson were lounging in heavy armchairs in front of a muted sixty-inch flat-panel plasma TV, thick towels pulled around their waists and draped over their shoulders. Having just finished a few games of squash, they were alone in the locker room. Except for the high-pitched trickle of a running faucet in the shower and the nearly inaudible hum of the central heating, the place was hushed, nearly silent.
Gutterson’s head was propped against the plush fabric of his chair, his eyes closed. Hamlin was studying the older man. The police chief’s body sickened him. The way his towel cut into his soft stomach. The pockets of fat that formed flabby breasts sagging to the sides of his torso. The long wet hair plastered to his chest. Even the pallid color of his skin.
Gutterson opened his eyes, as if he was aware of Hamlin’s scrutiny. “You’ve got to understand,” the police chief said, picking up their conversation. “I’ve been behind my desk for the last twenty years. I’m not as young as I used to be. I’m sixty-seven years old, for God’s sake. It’s time for me to step down.”
The news of the police chief’s imminent departure didn’t come as a surprise to Hamlin. Nevertheless, he was puzzled by the timing. “There’s something you’re not telling me,” he said.
Gutterson eyed him. He didn’t trust Hamlin any more than Hamlin trusted him. The last thing he wanted was to show weakness. What the hell, though? Hamlin would know soon enough. Her hair would begin falli
ng out. They wouldn’t be able to hide it any longer. “Martha’s got cancer,” he said.
Hamlin turned the situation over coldly in his mind. “There are different types of cancer,” he said, speaking the words without the slightest trace of sympathy. “These days the survivability rate is pretty good.”
Gutterson looked away from the businessman. “This is pretty serious, Jason.” He was thinking about how white his wife’s skin had become. “The doctors say it started in her pancreas. Now I don’t know.” Two months ago they had been planning a trip onboard a cruise ship traveling from Los Angeles to Singapore. The disease had taken them by surprise. Their lives had been thrown upside down practically overnight.
Hamlin took the information in.
“It’s good that you know. We’ve been friends for years now, Jason. You should know this before everyone else. I’m not sure. I think I may take her down to Mexico.” The night before, he had held Martha’s hand while she had vomited her guts into the toilet. She had been so violently sick that she had soiled her pants, and Gutterson had had to clean her up before putting her into bed. “They say there are some practitioners down there who’ve had success with experimental treatments. I thought maybe I’d try. We thought maybe—” Gutterson didn’t finish his thought.
Hamlin scrutinized the older man. Until this moment he had never understood how much the police chief loved his wife. He considered whether there might be any value in the knowledge.
“So that kind of begs the issue between us, doesn’t it, Jason?”
Hamlin pursed his lips, ignoring his question. “Who’s going to replace you, Bill? Any idea yet?”
“My guess is it’s going to be Dombrowski,” the old man answered. “You might want to give him a call.”
“Dombrowski,” Hamlin repeated. “Over in Homicide, isn’t he?”
“He’s not a bad guy.”
“So I hear,” Hamlin said. “A straight shooter, by all accounts.”
“I’ll sit him down before I’m gone. Have a little talk with him.”
“When’s this going down?”