by G. M. Ford
“The rev’s old lady’s a knockout though,” he said. “That broad could raise the dead . . . among other things.” He squinted up at me. “You’re sure? Same parents in both wedding pictures?”
“I’m sure.”
“Not sisters? Or stepsisters, some shit like that?”
I told him what Mrs. Peterson said about Theresa being an only child. “And that South American missionary parents stuff . . .” I was shaking my head. “I mean . . . now that nobody’s having a heart attack in my lap, what’s the chance of that crap being true?”
Carl nodded. “Real convenient, if you don’t wanna be found,” he said.
“Too friggin’ convenient,” I said.
“You know the rev’s wife’s maiden name?”
I shrugged. “No idea, but they had a big public wedding at the Bellevue Mount Zion church,” I said. “Musta been in the papers.”
Carl began pushing buttons. Screens began to roll and blink as sheets of information floated across the monitors.
“Maiden name . . . Alice Brooks,” Carl said after a moment. “Parents . . . Tom and Annette Brooks . . . Huánuco, Peru.”
“That South American shit again.”
“How old you think she is?”
“Thirty-something.”
Carl went back to pounding on his keyboard.
“There’s sixty-three Alice Brookses born between nineteen seventy-five and nineteen eighty-five.”
“How many with parents Tom and Annette?”
“Can’t tell,” he said. “I’d have to search each of them individually and even then not all the parents are going to be on record.”
“Alice Townsend have a Washington driver’s license?”
“Let’s see.”
A Washington driver’s license appeared on one of the overhead screens.
“That’s her,” I said.
Carl shook his head in mock disbelief. “Anybody looks that damn good in a driver’s license picture gotta be some sweet piece.” He banged a final key and sat back in his chair. He pointed at the screen. “Issued four years ago last week,” Carl said. “About six months before she married Aaron Townsend. An initial.”
“Initial what?”
“Initial Washington driver’s license, rather than a renewal.”
“Didn’t she have to turn in her old license?”
“That’s how it usually works,” he said and went back to pushing buttons. Carl barked out a short, dry laugh. “It figured,” he muttered.
“No previous driving history,” I ventured.
“You got it.”
“So what did she use for ID?”
“Birth certificate.” He sat back, folded his arms across his chest, and waited as the screens did their thing. “Born Alice Anne Brooks. Nineteen eighty, Bakersfield, California. Mercy Hospital Southwest. Five pounds seven ounces. Parents, Thomas J. Brooks and Annette no middle name Rivera.”
“Can we—” I began.
Carl held up a gnarled hand. “You’re gonna love this,” he said as he went back to pushing buttons. A woman’s haggard face appeared on the screen, with a number under it. Clark County Police Department, Number 139830. July 7, 2009.
“Who’s that?”
“Alice Brooks.”
“Well that’s not even close to—”
Carl pointed at the vital statistics. “Five foot three,” he said. He tapped the mouse and Alice Townsend’s driver’s license came up.
“Five foot nine,” I read out loud.
“Helluva late-life growth spurt.”
Carl pointed at the screen on the far right. “Alice Brooks was reported missing in April of twenty ten.” Several of the upper screens suddenly filled with data. “She’s got a rap sheet as long as your arm,” Carl said. “Coupla minor fraud beefs, but mostly solicitation.”
“You don’t say.”
“Yep. Five foot three Alice Brooks is a missing Vegas hooker.”
“Who reported her missing?”
“Doesn’t say,” Carl said. “You know the drill, Leo. Missing hookers don’t exactly give the boys in blue an urge to work hard.”
“There’s got to be some way . . .”
The front door opened. Charity walked in, carrying a white Styrofoam food container. Not Charity the virtue, but a dreadlocked Jamaican guy who worked as Carl’s part-time caretaker. Charity was also an underground IT specialist. Carl had never gotten specific about it, but I got the impression Charity specialized in things reputable geeks frowned upon.
“Hey Leo, mon. How’s you been?”
“Fair to middlin’,” I said.
He looked over at Carl. “Got soma Pam’s jerk chicken for you, mon.” He waved the container enticingly and then headed for the kitchen.
I turned to Carl. “What if—”
Carl cut me off. “You come up with any bright ideas, you know where to find me. Right now, I’m gonna have a little bite to eat.”
As he rolled off toward the kitchen, I thanked him, and headed outside to my car.
I hopped into the driver’s seat and sat there for a moment, trying to remember if I’d ever put this much energy into a case and come up with less useful information. On the passenger seat lay the tinfoil packet of cookies. As I started to reach for some sweet solace, my hand stopped in midair, and I smiled for the first time in a week.
“Can I borrow an evidence bag?” I asked.
Rebecca arched an eyebrow at me. “You ask that of all the girls?” she inquired as she reached down, opened a desk drawer, and produced a one-gallon Ziploc.
Using the tips of my fingers, I wiggled the package out of my jacket pocket and laid it on her desk.
“What’s that?” she wanted to know.
“Cookies,” I said. “Chocolate chip.”
The eyebrow got higher. “Maybe you ought to fill me in.”
So I did.
“What does this have to do with the two guys in the trunk?” she asked.
“Both of them were, at one time, married to Theresa Calder.”
That stopped her for a minute. “And you’re sure it was the same set of parents in the wedding photos?”
“Positive. The mom was wearing the same dress in both pictures.”
“Weird.”
“No kidding.”
“Sisters?”
“No way.”
“What, then?”
“Not a clue. You figure out what killed them?”
“Nope,” she said. She checked the clock on the wall. Ten to five. “I’ve got a staff meeting in ten minutes. What do you want from me?”
“I want you to send that piece of aluminum foil there through IAFIS. See what comes up.” The Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System contained more than seventy million sets of fingerprints. If you weren’t in their files, you’d never been arrested, never applied for a teaching certificate or a government license of any kind, never served in the armed forces. The list went on and on. Wasn’t going to be long before everybody on the planet was going to be on file.
“There’s going to be two sets of prints,” I said. “One is going to be mine. The other is from the woman called Alice Townsend.”
“Aaron Townsend’s wife?”
“The very same.”
She took a moment to digest the information. “As I recall, your prints are already on file.”
“Regrettably.”
She thought it over. “What’s in it for me?”
“The cookies.”
“Why don’t you sic Carl on her?”
“Already did. On both her and Theresa Calder. Theresa has no past history prior to marrying Charles Stone. Apparently, she just appears out of the ozone, marries one guy, divorces him, marries another guy, and then walks out on him too. The same day Theresa Calder walked out on Blaine Peterson, she transferred a substantial pile of money out of the country and then, as far as we can tell, disappeared from the face of the earth.”
“Out of the country where?”
“South Korea.”
The brow again. “Plastic surgery capital of the universe.”
“Plastic surgery, I get. But Theresa Calder had a jaw like a linebacker. Could they do anything with that?”
“If you had enough cash, they could make you into a nine-year-old Hindu boy.”
I tried not to work up an image of that. “Which brings us to the other one. Alice Townsend. Maiden name supposedly Brooks. Lots of past history, none of which actually belongs to our Alice, but lots of history. The real Alice Brooks is or was a Vegas hooker who went missing in two thousand and ten. Half a foot shorter and I’ve seen her picture. It’s not Theresa Calder, and it’s not Alice Townsend.”
“I’ll put a rush flag on it. Call me tomorrow.”
I watched in silence as she pulled a dissection kit from her top drawer and, using a pair of forceps, unfolded the package sufficiently to free the cookies, then dropped the foil into the evidence bag and sealed it.
She got to her feet. “I’ve gotta go.” She swept all the cookies but one onto a paper towel and into her top drawer. Took a big bite of the remaining cookie. Her eyes narrowed with delight.
“These are great,” she pronounced.
I was halfway back home before I figured out what was gnawing at my gut. It was Aaron Townsend, or more specifically, how different he’d turned out to be from what I’d imagined. Everything I’d heard had led me to expect some wild-eyed despot, spouting hellfire and damnation, treating his browbeaten wife like an indentured servant.
The love and cookies act could have been conjured for my benefit, but I didn’t think so. The affection I’d seen among the three of them had been genuine. What I saw was a nice guy with a nice family, and as unlikely as it seemed, I actually liked him. I couldn’t help thinking that there was probably a lesson for me in there someplace.
Technically speaking, the days were supposed to be getting longer, but you’d never have known it from this afternoon. Out over Puget Sound, steel wool clouds squeezed the horizon flat, leaving nothing but a narrow band of uncertain light to keep the rumor of daylight alive.
It hadn’t been a particularly arduous day, but I was full-scale whipped. I require a certain amount of gratification in order to function effectively. Futility wears me out in a hurry. I left the car in the driveway. On my way inside, I glanced out at the gate. Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to roll it closed.
Wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Poco’s small enough to wiggle between the bars. He was standing in the drive, out by the street. No sign of Janet. Poco made a feint for the street, stopped and came back my way, and then yelped at me twice.
I felt like I was in one of those old Lassie TV programs, where the dog comes running into the barnyard, barks twice, and little Timmy miraculously discerns that Granny Smith has crashed her Buick into Franklin Creek and is about to drown.
I heaved a sigh and started walking in his direction. “What’s going on, little fella?” I said as I ambled closer. He dodged left again, out into the street. I followed along. I was halfway to the Morrison house next door to mine when I noticed a hint of color down by the bottom of their carefully tended hedge. I walked over.
Janet Seigal was sitting on the ground next to their driveway. Her yellow raincoat and matching boots made her look like the Morton Salt girl. She heard me coming and turned her face away.
“You okay?” I asked.
She managed an unconvincing nod, but didn’t say anything. Poco climbed into her lap.
I held out a hand to help her up, but she ignored it.
“You don’t want the Morrisons to find you camped out in their driveway, do you?”
She looked at me for the first time. She’d been crying.
“Did he . . . ?”
She waved me off. “No . . . nothing like that. I stepped in a hole while I was walking Poco.”
I offered my hand again. She set Poco on the ground and took me up on my offer. I pulled her to her feet. She ran the backs of her hands over her tears. Poco bounced around her feet as she straightened herself out inside the raincoat.
“You always seem to show up when things are at their worst,” she said, steadying herself on my arm.
I flexed my muscles and grinned. “Captain Magnolia to the rescue.”
She looked at me like I was speaking Turkish.
My attempt at levity having tanked, I segued back to serious.
“Really . . . can I help you in some way?”
She shook her head. “You’ve already been too kind.”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
I didn’t think she was going to tell me, but before we ever got to that point, the squeal of tires tore a hole through the air. And then again, in the nanosecond before Richard’s Lexus roared into view, zigzagging up the hill at about twice the legal limit.
“Oh great,” she whispered under her breath.
We watched as Richard pulled the wheel hard left and went screeching into their driveway. The car came to a shuddering stop about three inches from the garage door.
Ten seconds passed before Richard came lurching out of the car, looking like he was learning to ice-skate. He tried to kick the car door closed but missed, sending him pinwheeling to the ground. “Fuck,” he screamed. And then again. We watched as he used the fender to lever himself upright.
Janet’s fingers dug into my arm as Richard finally noticed us standing across the street. He blinked, ran a hand over his face, and stumbled out from behind the car.
“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” he shouted.
“Richard—” Janet began.
“Don’t talk to me, you fucking whore,” he bellowed. He started our way, his face strawberry red, his gait uneven.
Janet felt me twitch. “Please,” she said. “He’s just drunk.”
I’d already made up my mind. If he got this far, drunk or sober, bad hand or no bad hand, I was going to kick his ass, for no better reason than I really wanted to.
He tripped over the curb, sending him stumbling closer. About the time he negotiated the street and was fifteen feet away, I said, “You probably ought to just stop where you are.”
“And why should I do that?” he slurred.
“Because if you get within arm’s reach I’m going to slap the shit out of you.”
He kept coming.
“Oh you think so?” he smirked.
“Yep,” I said. “I do.”
He stopped, unsteady on his feet, waving around like a palm tree in a hurricane, then reached into his jacket pocket, rummaged around for a second or two, and pulled out a small silver automatic. “Gonna bitch slap me now, asshole?” he demanded.
“Yep,” I said. “And maybe stick that popgun up your ass while I’m at it.”
“You think I don’t know what’s going on?” he bellowed.
“There’s nothing going on,” Janet said.
“I’m not blind,” he blurted. “Standin’ over here in the dark playin’ grab ass. I see what’s going on.”
“Your wife fell down. I helped her up. That’s it.”
He pointed the gun in our direction, waving it around like a conductor’s baton, as he struggled to maintain his balance.
Janet Seigal stepped in front of me. “Stop it, Richard. Just stop it.”
“You fucking cripple whore,” he shouted and then turned his attention to me.
“You like cripples? That your thing? Like to prop ’em up and—”
That was as far as he got. Whatever common sense I had went out the window right then and there. I stepped around Janet and lunged for him.
Fortunately for all concerned, his reflexes were just about shot. I was nearly on his shirtfront before he started to raise the gun. I grabbed his wrist and pushed his gun hand straight up. BANG. A flat report fractured the silence.
I kneed him in the crotch with everything I had. He let out a deep, shuddering groan, bent at the waist, and began to crumple. I kneed him again, just for good
measure.
As he began to collapse, my hands slid up his arm until gravity pulled the automatic from his hand and left it in mine. I had a strong urge to kick him in the face a couple of times, but resisted. “Hooooooo. Hoooooo,” he groaned as he rocked back and forth on the grass, holding his crotch with both hands.
I snapped the magazine out of the gun and then jacked the one in the chamber out onto the ground. Then walked over and dropped the magazine and the little automatic into Janet Seigal’s raincoat pocket.
That’s when I noticed the car out in the street. Wilson Harvey, my neighbor from three doors down, was sitting there in his Cadillac Escalade taking it all in like it was a movie. When he saw me glaring at him, he took the hint and drove off.
Janet opened her mouth to speak, but I cut her off. “I was you, I’d throw that peashooter in the Sound,” I said. “We’re way past the Richard’s-just-an-asshole stage of things. Somebody’s going to get hurt here.” Her cheek was beginning to quiver, but I kept talking. “I was you, I’d call the cops and charge him with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Might be an introduction to the criminal justice system is just what he needs to get himself straight.” She wanted to say something, but I wasn’t in the mood for listening. “Treating him like a spoiled seven-year-old doesn’t seem to be working. It’s time to try something else. But I’m gonna leave that to you.”
Richard was on his hands and knees now, scrabbling across the pavement at tortoise speed.
“He’s going to leave me,” she said.
“Are you kidding me?”
“I heard him talking to his lawyer.”
“Best thing he could do for you,” I said quickly. “Take him for his shirt. This is a community property state. Judges here are real hard-nosed on spousal abuse. By the time the state gets through with him he won’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.”
“Invalids aren’t part of Richard’s life plan,” she said.
“He points a gun at me again, and he’s not going to need a life plan.”
She wanted to meet at Vito’s. Made me feel like I’d somehow come full circle. Back in the sixties and seventies, Vito’s had been the social center for Seattle’s movers and shakers. Most of my old man’s nefarious day-to-day activities were conducted within the friendly confines of Vito’s Madison Grill. Vito’s was the kind of joint where the walls have ears.