Doc shrugged. “It was just like we thought. Dude says he went out with Sophie one time last year—went to some kind of charity dinner. Sent her a Christmas card last year but hasn’t talked to her since.”
“That’s it?” Toni asked.
Doc nodded. “Yeah. Whole thing took like fifteen minutes. Took twice that long to get there.”
“Well,” I said, staring at the picture on the whiteboard, “guess we can move him off the list.”
I leaned back and a few seconds later, I heard the front door open. A minute later, Kenny walked into the conference room.
“Whoa, dude!” I said, jumping up. Kenny had a big white bandage across his nose. The skin around both his eyes was a nasty mix of black, purple, blue, and red, like a psychedelic Lone Ranger. Except with a broken nose. “What the hell happened to you?”
Toni jumped up and walked over to him, a look of concern on her face. Richard stood. Doc merely tilted his head a little to the side and leaned forward. He saw me looking at him. He gave a quick shrug of his shoulders. He was as clueless as me.
Kenny walked over to his customary seat and set his laptop case down. “I got punched.”
“Where?” I said.
“Where?” He looked at me. “Right here in the face, man. Right on my nose.”
“He meant where did it happen?” Toni said as she turned Kenny around and studied his face.
“It happened at the gym last night. Krav Maga practice.”
Toni’s eyes were wide with surprise. I glanced over at Doc. He was trying to hide the beginnings of a smile.
“Practice?” I asked. “Who did it?”
“And how?” Richard asked.
He hesitated for a few seconds, then he sputtered, “Theresa Devlin.”
At this, Doc immediately got up and walked out of the room. As he passed me, I noticed he was working hard to keep from laughing.
“What happened?” I said. “What’d you do?”
“I didn’t do anything! We were doing blocking, you know, the drill where someone stands in front of you and tries to punch you in the face? So she threw a right cross at my face. I had my hands up like I was supposed to, and I blocked the punch with my left hand like this—” He held his hands up by his face, then moved his left hand to the right, as if blocking a punch to the face. “But instead of moving my head to the left like I was supposed to, I moved to the right, and I ended up blocking her punch right into my nose. Which wouldn’t have mattered if she was running at 10 percent like she was supposed to be. But no, she was at full speed! She whacked me good! There was blood all over. And just for the record,” he yelled to the door where Doc had just left, “she’s got three inches and fifty pounds on me!”
Doc stepped back in the doorway. He’d apparently got himself under control and walked back in. “Why’d you lean the wrong way, dude?”
Kenny shrugged. “I don’t know. I was just confused, I guess.”
“Did it hurt?” Doc asked, smiling.
“Hell yeah, it hurt, you big imbecile! She practically broke my nose!” he protested. “It wasn’t supposed to be full contact.”
“She was a white belt?” I asked.
He nodded.
“And you’re a white belt?”
He nodded again.
“You know it’s possible she doesn’t have a real good handle on the difference between 10 percent and full contact yet.”
“You think?” he cried.
I nodded. “Yeah. Mistakes happen. What’d your instructor say?”
“Humph. He said, ‘block to the right, head to the left.’”
I smiled. “There you have it. They bandage you up at the studio?”
He nodded. “Yeah, but I had to drive myself to the emergency room.”
“You should’ve called, dude. We’d have come and got you.”
“Yeah, I wish I would’ve. Then maybe I wouldn’t have run into that parked car.”
“You what?”
Doc got up again and hurried back out of the room, his hand covering his mouth.
“I was so pissed, I wasn’t paying attention. I ran into my neighbor’s Prius.”
“Jesus, dude. How much damage?”
“Only a thousand dollars on the Lexus. But her Prius is all mangled.” He shook his head. “Not a very good twenty-four hours.”
I shook my head, and then I thought of something. Maybe there was a silver lining. “So, not counting the fender bender, what’d Meghan have to say about this? Not much doubt about you being a badass field agent now, right? I mean, just look at you.”
Kenny looked up and slowly smiled. “I played it cool—didn’t give her details—just said it was something at work. It worked out pretty good, actually.”
I gave a quick glance at Toni. She mouthed, “Who’s Meghan?”
As I expected, it started raining just after noon, and it was coming down pretty good when I started my training run at 2:00 p.m. Thirteen miles and an hour and a half later, I got home, tired and soaking wet. I piss and moan about it, but it isn’t as bad as it sounds—I’m used to working hard on training runs, and as to getting soaked to the bone while doing it: hey, I live in Seattle, right? Still, it felt good just standing under the hot shower, feeling the heat soak back into my body. We were due downtown at six, but I had plenty of time.
I had cranked up “Black Horse & The Cherry Tree” by K. T. Tunstall—a catchy little number that always makes me feel happy. Just as I started singing something about asking the horse to marry me, the shower curtain suddenly slid back. Surprise, surprise—there was Toni. I hadn’t heard her come in over the music, and I was startled. I reached over to the vanity and turned the music down.
“You about clean?” she asked. “You’ve been in here half an hour.”
“I been soakin’, tryin’ to get warm.” I angled myself to keep the water from spraying out into the bathroom. “And who’s counting, anyway?”
She smiled. “I wouldn’t say I was counting. More like . . . waiting.”
“For the shower?”
“No.” She looked at me, and as I watched, the edge of her lip curled upward and transformed the smile from a friendly “howdy” kind of thing into a sexy kind of thing that definitely caught my attention. Have I mentioned that, hands down, I’m the luckiest guy in the world?
“I’m done.” I reached behind me and turned off the water.
“Good. We don’t have to be downtown for a couple hours yet. That’s just about the right amount of time.” She reached down and unbuttoned her jeans. With a quick flip, she slid her T shirt over her head. “Follow me.”
I parked in the SPD garage at 6:40 p.m., compliments of a parking pass Dwayne Brown gave us last year while we worked on a case together. Dwayne either forgot to ask for it back when the case ended, in which case, shhhh!, or he took pity on us and let us keep it so that we wouldn’t have to park in a distant garage and walk three or four blocks in the rain every time we visited, in which case, “Thanks, Dwayne.”
Five minutes later, we walked out of the elevator on the sixth floor and into the lobby where we were issued visitors’ passes and led back to the conference room that was serving as task force headquarters. The inside of the space was divided into small cubicles along the wall, each holding two small desks. A large whiteboard dominated one end of the room. The board held a timeline filled in with the details of Sophie’s death. Pictures of Sophie, Nicki, Oliver, Cecilia, and all Sophie’s friends and coworkers were pinned to the board. It was very similar to the one in our conference room, only bigger.
Along with Ron and Yoshi, most of the task force members were present, judging from the fact that all the desks were filled. People stood about in small groups, talking quietly while waiting for Josh Bannister to show. Based on the number of officers present on a Saturday night, they must have been pretty excited to get hold of Bannister. They looked like a group of people who were eager for good news.
Ron introduced Toni and me around to th
ose detectives we hadn’t already met.
“Nice job on uncovering Bannister,” one woman said.
“Thanks.”
“We’re cautiously optimistic.” She smiled and added, “First time in weeks we’ve even had a good lead.”
I nodded. “We’ll keep our fingers crossed.”
After the introductions, Toni and I stepped to the side of the room and found a couple seats. Then, like everyone else, we waited. The clock seemed to drag. Seven o’clock finally came, and as if the minute hand knew it was headed downhill with less resistance, the clock seemed to speed up and suddenly, seven o’clock was gone. No Josh Bannister. Okay, I thought, no problem. Not everyone sets their clocks the same way.
But then seven fifteen passed and now people started looking around nervously, talking quietly among themselves.
At seven thirty, it was starting to look pretty much like we’d been stood up. I mean, Bannister could show up at any time he wanted, but then again, he’d been the one to specifically say seven o’clock. Where was he?
Toni leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Surprise, surprise.”
I looked at her. “Be nice.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Ten minutes later, Ron stood up and sighed. “Folks, that’s enough. I hate to say it, but it’s looking like our guy’s had a change of heart. I asked Yoshi to check around with the precincts and the other floors in this building just in case Bannister somehow got confused on the address, but he’s nowhere to be found. So Yoshi and I are going to wait around—” he looked at his watch, “—another half hour or so, but at this point, I guess I have to say I’m not optimistic. And there’s no sense in the rest of you blowing your Saturday nights, either. That said, as you know, I was able to get approval this morning for a round-the-clock surveillance effort for forty-eight hours—two-man teams, two-hour shifts. That means we each get one shift per day. We’re going to go ahead and start that tonight at ten o’clock. You’ve all been handed schedules showing your shifts.” He looked around the large room. “I know we’re all disappointed, but keep this in mind: I wouldn’t have believed it, but the guy actually showed up at his apartment last night around this time. There’s no saying he won’t do it again, so be alert.” He paused. “Anybody got any questions?”
“Yeah.” A detective in the back of the room raised his hand. “Lieutenant, we only just found out about this guy a few days ago, right? Even though he didn’t show tonight, he’s still our number-one person of interest, am I right?”
Ron nodded. “Damn right, and that’s a good point. Listen up, folks. This guy Bannister is involved in this case in some kind of way, and there’s a good chance he’s not only Judie Lawton’s killer, but Sophie Thoms’s as well. I’m disappointed we don’t have him yet, but I ain’t givin’ up. Starting Monday, this task force is going to mount a full-scale effort to find this son of a bitch. All out. I’ll be talking to the captain and with this new lead, I’m pretty sure he’ll have the ammunition he needs to keep the task force intact.” He looked over at the picture of Bannister on the whiteboard. “I don’t care where he’s hiding, we’re going to get him. If he’s not the killer, I’m betting he knows who is.”
“Lieutenant?”
A heavy-set uniformed officer had just walked into the room.
“Yeah?”
“You’re waiting on a guy named Bannister?”
All heads turned to the officer.
“We sure are,” Ron said, looking around. “Is he here?”
“No, but I just got word from a uniform in Charlie Sector, East Precinct. He called to say that they got a hit on your BOLO. Apparently, they just had a jumper from a building over on Thirteenth Avenue. Preliminary ID is a WMA named Joshua Bannister. He said to find you and let you know.”
Yoshi looked at Ron. “Bannister lives on Thirteenth, boss.”
“Is he alive?” Ron asked the officer.
The officer shook his head. “No. The report is he’s sidewalk soufflé.”
Chapter 16
IT’S ONLY ABOUT A MILE AND a half from SPD headquarters to Joshua Bannister’s apartment on Thirteenth and Olive. Ron and Yoshi flew out of the garage in their white Crown Vic, lights flashing and sirens blaring. We’d been told to follow close behind and that’s something I’m good at—I had the Jeep so close behind the police car that it looked like we were on a tow bar.
“Hold on!” I yelled to Toni. Tires squealing, we made a sharp left on James, another left on Broadway, flew across Madison, hung a sharp right on Pike, and two blocks later we were at Thirteenth before we could even catch our breaths. A quick left and another two blocks north, and we pulled up and parked alongside the curb. The entire trip took less than three minutes.
Four silver-blue SPD patrol cars were already on the scene along with a yellow paramedic van and a white CSI unit van, both double-parked in the street. Red and blue flashing lights bounced wildly off the nearby buildings, creating eerie reflections on the puddles in the street. The normal nighttime sounds of the neighborhood were masked by the engine noise from those vehicles left running and by the faint rhythmic clicking sounds of the flashing strobe lights on the cruisers as they alternated red-blue-red-blue. The SPD dispatcher’s voice suddenly crackled to life over a half-dozen portable radios simultaneously; then, with a sharp static click, dropped out again when she finished. In the background, distant sirens could be heard, all seeming to be converging on the scene from every direction.
Several uniformed officers were already working to push back the crowd of curious onlookers who’d gathered to see what had happened, and who it had happened to. Was it a friend? A neighbor? Someone they knew or maybe saw every day? Wherever I’ve been, I’ve noticed that curiosity in the face of a tragedy seems to be a universal facet of human nature. Whether it was a dead villager in a remote village in Afghanistan or a dead civilian near a military base, the curious always show up.
To the north and the south, uniformed officers had already strung yellow Crime Scene—Do Not Cross tape around the area to define the boundaries. I scanned the area within the yellow tape and noticed several officers on the sidewalk hunched over a figure lying prone and motionless on the concrete in front of Bannister’s apartment building.
Ron walked over and handed us a couple dark blue vests that said POLICE in big block letters. “Here, put these on so no one hassles you.” We slipped them on and followed him across the street.
As we approached the crowd on the sidewalk, one of the officers looked up. “Lieutenant Bergstrom. Sorry to ruin your Saturday night.”
Ron nodded. “Hey, Ryan. Good to see you. What happened?”
“Funny damn thing,” the officer said. “We just got briefed about the BOLO you issued for this Bannister guy when our shift started. Now, thirty minutes later—BAM! Here he is. Literally falls right out of the fuckin’ sky. We recognized him because he was fresh on our minds.”
“Well, I guess that’s good,” Ron said. “That you guys were up to speed, that is. Not that he fell out of the sky.”
Officer Ryan smiled and nodded. We stepped to the side so that we could see. Joshua Bannister was facedown on the sidewalk, but looking toward us. His eyes were partly open, but he was most certainly dead. A large pool of blood had formed beneath his head. Oddly, he was barefoot. A medical examiner wearing light blue gloves was carefully examining the body while CSI unit personnel took photos.
Ron turned to Officer Ryan. “You recognized him just because of his picture?”
Ryan nodded. “He looked familiar.”
The ME looked up. “Not to mention he had his driver’s license in his wallet.” She reached over and held up a plastic evidence bag with the wallet inside. She’d removed the license from the wallet so that it could be read without removing it from the bag. “Bannister, Joshua Allen. The driver’s license picture is the same as the picture on your BOLO.”
Ron nodded. “Got it. So what’s the story?”
Ryan pointed
to a man being tended to by a paramedic. “We got a witness—guy lives in the same building. Says he’d just parked right over there and was walking to the entry of the building when the victim almost fell on top of him. Landed right in front of him, right at his feet.”
Ron looked up toward the roof, then back down at the body. “Good thing he missed.”
“Got that right,” the ME said. “Otherwise, we might have had two bodies here instead of one.”
“Looks like he came off right about there, where you were just looking,” the officer said, pointing upward. Our eyes followed. There were no balconies or roof canopies of any type that the body would have struck on the way down. Also, there were no open or broken windows in any of the units directly above the body.
After a minute, Ron said, “Alright. Let’s make sure we interview everybody in all the units facing the street.”
The officer nodded. “We’re already on it. So far, none of the residents saw or heard anything.”
Ron turned and looked across the street. “Let’s talk to the people across the way too. Maybe someone was looking out their window.”
“What time did it happen?” Yoshi asked.
The officer referred to his notebook. “Six twenty-five.” He looked up. “The witness is pretty certain about the time. Apparently, he was trying to get home by six thirty to catch Geraldo on TV.”
“And he didn’t see or hear anything before? No screams? No fighting? No yells? Nobody leaving?”
“Nothing—nothing at all. One second he’s walking along the sidewalk, hustling to get home. Next second, SPLAT!”
“Classic FTF,” Yoshi said. Ron nodded.
Toni leaned over and whispered, “What’s ‘FTF’?”
“Cop slang for jumper,” I whispered back. “Stands for ‘Failed to Fly.’”
“Failed to . . . that’s disgusting,” she said, staring at Bannister’s body.
Mona Lisa Eyes (Danny Logan Mystery #4) Page 20