Murder One

by Robert Dugoni

  Alex had reached Blume’s father but he refused to make his son available. Unlike Oberman’s receptionist, Richard Blume offered no excuses for his reticence. It wasn’t going to happen. Cerrabone said he would do what he could to arrange the meeting, but Sloane knew he’d have to get a court order and depose Blume under oath.

  As Sloane sipped cold tea and reviewed the police file, Pendergrass entered the conference room holding a sheet of paper and looking puzzled. “Did you see this?”

  Sloane reviewed the document. Pendergrass had highlighted a name. Julio Cruz. “They found his fingerprint on the sliding-glass door. The report from the latents unit confirmed a ten-point hit when the print was run through AFIS,” he said, meaning that the fingerprint had ten characteristic points that matched a fingerprint in the system. “I cross-checked the name with the list of people who signed in at the scene—uniformed officers, detectives, CSI, people from the medical examiner’s office. Julio Cruz is not on the list. He’s also not on the witness statement list I made.”

  Sloane looked up from the document. “Maybe an associate of Vasiliev?”

  “Maybe, but if he was, and he was in the system, one would expect him to have a criminal record, right?”

  “One would think,” Sloane agreed.

  “Which is why I had a friend at Fort Lewis run a criminal history for me,” Pendergrass said, referring to the military base where he had been a JAG officer. “He didn’t find anything.”

  “No criminal record?”

  “Not even an outstanding parking ticket.”

  “Then why would he be in the system?”

  “I don’t know. I know that AFIS includes civilians who have submitted to background checks for their employment, and federal and state law enforcement, but like I said, he’s not on the sign-in sheets. You want me to ask Cerrabone about it?” Pendergrass asked.

  Sloane considered it. “No,” he said. “Get it to Alex. See what she can pull up on the guy.”

  Alex had set up in one of the unused associate offices down the hall from the war room. She and Charlie had moved to the Washington Athletic Club during the weekdays, cutting their commute from an hour and a half to five minutes. For the time being, Jenkins’s mother had flown out from the East Coast to take care of CJ and the dogs. Given Alex’s proficiency on the computer, and her connections in the cyber world that even Charlie professed to not fully know, Sloane had tasked her with finding and talking to the witnesses who provided police statements. Hers was a gentler voice on the phone, and her physical appearance didn’t immediately evoke fright and intimidation, as Jenkins’s did.

  As Jenkins walked into her office, Alex was finishing a phone conversation. He waited for her to hang up. “I’m sure Carolyn could come up with a poster or something for you to look at,” he said. The walls were unblemished by even a nail hole.

  She looked to the rectangular-shaped window. “Million-dollar view is enough for me. That was the alarm company. My phone charm didn’t get me far. They need a subpoena to produce any records.”

  “Let Pendergrass know, that’s his territory.”

  Jenkins smiled at the considerable amount of paper Alex had already managed to accumulate. It overflowed her L-shaped desk to stacks on the floor. “Didn’t take you long to jump back in.”

  “Did you doubt me?” she asked.

  “Never.”

  “Where are you off to?”

  “King County jail. David wants to talk to the guy who sold Barclay’s daughter the heroin, see if he knows anything about Vasiliev’s organization.”

  “Give these to David for me.” She handed Jenkins a series of articles printed from the Internet. The headlines gave him a good idea of the content—statements from the U.S. attorney’s office after the raid on Vasiliev’s used-car business.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  He looked up from the documents. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “No, but you just did that thing when you’re frustrated. You blew out like a whale spouting.”

  He closed the office door and lowered his voice. “SODI?” he said, referring to the acronym for “Some other dude did it.”

  “Every street punk in America knows that defense, Alex. ‘I didn’t do it. It was some other dude.’”

  Alex walked around to the front of the desk and leaned against it, arms folded. “Do you think she did it?”

  “I don’t know, but it seems like a real coincidence that she makes plans to go to that dinner that very day, then just happens to run into him.”

  Alex shrugged. “That kind of thing happens all the time.”

  “You know I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  “How could it have been anything but?”

  “He was the speaker. The organization promoted the event.”

  “And she’s a lawyer,” Alex said.

  “Which means she likely gets all the legal publications and, given her stature, all of these kinds of invites. She would have known he was going to be the speaker . . .”

  “But your theory assumes she knew all along she was going to kill Vasiliev. Now, that would take a lot of foresight, don’t you think?”

  “All I’m saying is we both know that ninety percent of all homicides are solved because they were committed by family members or someone with a motivation to kill. She had the motivation, the opportunity, and the weapon. And now the weapon is missing.”

  “David’s convinced she didn’t do it.”

  “David is too emotionally invested to know how he feels.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “She says she bumped into her husband at the symphony benefit.”

  “You want me to look into it?”

  “It’s like the dinner at the Rainier Club, right? I mean, there has to have been a registration list, people who signed up, paid to attend? So if she signed up months ago, paid for the tickets, maybe I’ll start believing in coincidences again.”

  “And if she didn’t?”

  “Then it’s something else to consider, isn’t it?”

  KING COUNTY JAIL

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  Sloane and Jenkins sat shoulder to shoulder in one of the attorney rooms of the King County jail. With a phone call to the public defender’s office, Sloane had learned that Scott Parker, nineteen, was a high school dropout with a long history of drug use and arrests, including his arrest for selling the heroin that killed Carly Oberman. Parker had fired the public defender assigned to him and was, at present, representing himself. His former public defender said Parker had been uncooperative with the police and with her, and he was just as unlikely to talk to Sloane, though since Parker was representing himself, Sloane was free to try.

  The kid who shuffled into the broom closet wearing baggy red jail scrubs slumped into a chair with the bored indifference of a high school letterman to a poetry class. His dirty-blond hair hadn’t seen a comb in years, and red acne scars and whiteheads pocked his skin beneath wispy blond facial hair. Multiple tattoos colored his forearms, weird images of a naked woman with flowing hair, the head of a lion, and some celestial planet. Three Asian letters ran vertically down his neck from his left earlobe. All he needed was the baseball cap twisted sideways on his head and the large silver chain around his neck. Jake referred to kids like Parker as “wangsters,” slang for “white gangsters.”

  “Mr. Parker, I’m David Sloane.”

  Parker made eye contact long enough to smirk. “I know who you are.”

  “Yeah, how’s that?”

  “What, you think I live in a deprivation chamber here? I know Vasiliev is dead, and I know that girl’s mother killed him. And I know you’re representing her. It’s on the freaking news, dude.” He raised his shackled hands and shook them like Marley in A Christmas Carol rattling his chains. “You’re the attorney who doesn’t lose. Ooooooh!”

  Sloane bit his tongue. “I’m told you don’t have an attorney.”

  “Don’t need one.”
>
  “Seems like you do.”

  Parker grinned, his teeth yellowed and crooked. “I’ll be out of here in no time.”

  Sloane couldn’t fathom the source of the bravado. This kid was not going anywhere. Not for a very long time. Maybe not ever. It made him recall the public defender’s statement that Parker wouldn’t cut any deals, that he had some fantasy the charges were going to be dismissed and he was going to walk.

  Sloane turned to Jenkins. “What do you think? Old Scotty here getting out any time soon?”

  Jenkins stared at the kid with the menacing glare that made grown men cross the street. “I’d say that a typical drug bust, nobody gets too worked up about. A guy like Scotty here is back out on the street doing probation after promising to do better. Not this time. This time somebody died.” Parker looked up from under his bangs. “And not just anybody—the daughter of a well-known and well-connected attorney. And this woman is seriously pissed. She’s on a crusade to shut down guys like Vasiliev and old Scotty here.”

  Parker put his forearms on the table and leaned forward, talking slowly. “And Vasiliev still walked.” He sat back in the slump, a fingernail between his teeth, grinning. “So will I.”

  “Let me know when you do,” Jenkins said. “I’ll send flowers to your funeral.”

  Parker’s eyes narrowed, but he otherwise didn’t respond.

  Sloane spelled it out for him. “Let’s assume for a minute, Scott, that my client didn’t kill Vasiliev.” The grin disappeared. Scott apparently hadn’t considered that possibility. “Let’s assume that, if the feds made their case, Vasiliev was looking at going away for a very long time.”

  “Just like you,” Jenkins said.

  “So while ordinarily, guys like Vasiliev wouldn’t be inclined to cut a deal . . .” Sloane let the thought hang.

  “So?” Parker clearly wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.

  Jenkins picked up the ball. “So? So maybe the organization thinks that this time Vasiliev might just try to save his own butt, and not wanting to take that chance, they send someone to put a bullet in the back of his head before he can even think about talking. So when pigs fly and you do get out of here—and I’m not betting on either happening in the next thirty to forty—I’d watch your back.”

  “I’m not making any deals,” Parker said, the bravado absent from his voice.

  “Neither was Vasiliev.” Sloane shrugged. “So I wonder why they killed him.”

  Parker fidgeted in his chair, gnawing on a fingernail.

  Jenkins tapped Sloane’s arm. “Let’s go. I told you he’d be too stupid to figure it out.”

  Parker thrust out his chin. “You think so, King Kong? You think I’m stupid? So let’s say I do know something. What’s in it for me?”

  “Depends on what you know,” Sloane said.

  “Oh, I know something. Something good.”

  “If that turns out to be true, then I go to the assistant U.S. attorney and tell her you might be willing to help with her investigation, and she starts talking to the prosecutor about a deal, maybe getting you in a witness protection program, give you a new identity and a new chance at life.” Sloane didn’t bother to tell Parker that with Vasiliev dead, there wasn’t going to be any further investigation.

  Parker sat back, legs extended in front of him. “I want you to represent me.”

  Sloane laughed. “Think about it, Scott. I represent the mother of the girl you’re accused of killing.”

  “I didn’t kill nobody.”

  “It’s a conflict of interest. I can’t represent you.”

  He sat up. “But you probably have friends who could, friends who are as good as you, better than that freaking PD bitch.”

  Jenkins tapped Sloane on the shoulder. “He doesn’t know anything. Let’s go.”

  They stood.

  “Wait. Look, I don’t know anything about Vasiliev’s organization. I got my stuff from one of the car guys that worked for him. That was it. That was the only guy I ever met.”

  “Then I can’t help you,” Sloane said.

  They made it as far as the door.

  “Wait.”

  Sloane turned. “This is getting monotonous, Scott.”

  “You have to get the prosecutor to make a deal first.”

  Jenkins asked, “If your informant is so good, why didn’t you have your attorney cut a deal?”

  “Get the wax out of your ears. She don’t know nothing. That’s why she’s a fucking PD.”

  “You got to give me something to whet the prosecutor’s appetite,” Sloane said.

  Parker shook his head like a defiant kid. “I want to know what they’re offering first.”

  Jenkins grabbed Sloane’s shoulder. “Told you he’s full of shit.”

  Sloane thought so, too. Another dead end.

  “Am I?” Parker yelled. “Am I really, you big son of a bitch? Then why don’t you tell the fucking U.S. attorney that I know how they keep getting off.”

  Sloane got two steps into the hall when he remembered his first meeting with Rebecca Han. She said Judge Kozlowski had been flat-out wrong in his ruling. When he walked back into the room, Parker sat grinning as if he’d just laid the girl tattooed on his arm.

  “Hell, yeah . . . you tell them that, Mr. Attorney who does not lose.”

  LAW OFFICES OF DAVID SLOANE

  ONE UNION SQUARE BUILDING

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  Back at his office, Sloane relayed the information aloud to those sitting around the conference table eating the box lunches Carolyn had ordered.

  “He said he knew how Vasiliev got off ?” Barclay asked.

  “Not just Vasiliev,” Sloane said. “He said they. He said he knew how they keep getting off.”

  “Who are ‘they’?” Barclay asked.

  “You think he’s just blowing smoke?” Pendergrass asked between bites of a turkey sandwich.

  “He was smiling like the Cheshire Cat,” Jenkins said.

  “The public defender said Parker wouldn’t cut a deal, that he had some fantasy he was going to walk.” Sloane walked to the white chart hanging on the wall with the names of Vasiliev’s crime organization partially filled in. Han’s office had sent it over.

  “He knew he was going to walk,” Reid said, which drew the attention of everyone at the table. She put down her sandwich. “That day in federal court, after Kozlowski granted the motion to suppress . . . Vasiliev looked at his lawyer and said, ‘I told you. No worries.’”

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean he knew anything,” Pendergrass said. “A lot of guys are cocky after the fact.”

  “No,” she said. “You had to be there. He was smug. He knew.”

  For a moment no one spoke. Then Sloane said, “Maybe he had someone on the inside, a cop . . . someone in the courthouse feeding him information.”

  “Or maybe”—Pendergrass put down his sandwich and looked at Alex—“a federal agent.”

  Alex handed Sloane a document. “Julio Cruz is a former DEA agent.” Sloane read as she spoke. “Apparently, he worked out of Miami in the 1980s. I called Rebecca Han. She did not recognize the name; said he was not one of the agents she worked with. I called the local DEA and got the SAC. Guess what he said?”

  Sloane shook his head.

  “‘No comment,’” Alex said. “Which means Rowe and Crosswhite probably already raised the same questions we’re asking, and this guy doesn’t have the answers.”

  “Like what was he doing at Vasiliev’s home,” Jenkins said.

  Alex said, “I got someone looking into it. I asked him to try to find out what this guy worked on, why he might be out here in the Northwest.”

  “Last known address?” Sloane asked.

  “His federal pension is a direct deposit. Mail goes to a P.O. box in Miami.”

  Sloane stared up at the chart. “See what else you can find out about anyone else on this chart,” he said, pointing to names in the rectangular boxes. “See if any of them have b
een arrested recently, whether there’s any common denominator—same prosecutor or arresting officer, anything.”

  SEVENTEEN

  FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

  LAW OFFICES OF DAVID SLOANE

  ONE UNION SQUARE

  SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

  Three days later, late in the afternoon, Sloane walked into the war room to find Jenkins and Alex smiling. Multiple white cartons sat open on the table, napkins and chopsticks beside them, along with several green bottles of Tsingtao beer. Sloane had spent much of his time out of the office lining up and meeting with potential expert witnesses. Today he had met a man who at one time had been a part of the King County sheriff’s special operations unit before going into business for himself providing professional tracking services.

  Sloane draped his sport coat over the back of a chair and dropped his briefcase with a thud. “Either the two of you just had a quickie, and I’m hoping not on the table, or you have something good to tell me. I hope it’s the latter, because while the former might have put the smiles on your faces, it won’t do much for me.”

  “If it was the former, I probably wouldn’t be smiling this much,” Alex said, maneuvering chopsticks through one of the cartons. “And he’d still be fighting for oxygen.”

  “As Jake would say, TMI.” Sloane picked up a carton—P. F. Chang’s spicy beef—and split apart a pair of fresh chopsticks.

  “What do you want first? The good news or the good news?” Alex said.

  Sloane spoke as he chewed. “Best offer I’ve had all week.”

  She put down her carton. “According to my source, Julio Cruz worked on a drug task force in the 1980s called Centac.”

  “Which was what?”