It never ceases to amaze me how people think they can get away with blatantly stealing from their employer, barely making even the slightest attempt to conceal their larceny. Sooner or later, the employer wises up. And sometimes, even a polite gentleman like Nandi Vaman gets pissed when he’s ripped off and then he wants to hire us to not only gather evidence against the guilty person for use in their termination but also for their prosecution as well. Fifty grand’s worth of plumbing parts was going to be a pretty big felony. Hope whoever did it had a good time while it lasted because I was going to see that they got busted, the scumbags.
Vaman gave me all the details and asked me to provide a quote for installing cameras off-hours, late at night. In addition, I was to build in some surveillance time as well—a pretty typical job for us, the kind that was not very exciting or spectacular, but that helped pay the bills. Following on the Sophie Thoms case, Vaman’s job couldn’t have come at a better time. I explained that we could start Monday morning. Vaman was happy. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I was happy. And relieved.
“Try the unagi,” Gus said. “It’s cooked.”
I watched as a plate of meat of questionable origin, apparently smoked judging by the dark brown color, drifted past on the little conveyer belt that ran past our seats. Toni and I were having our regular sushi torture-fest with Dwayne Brown and his partner Gus Symanski. I’m not fond of sushi. Of course, Dwayne and Gus and Toni know this, and they take great delight in force-feeding me the stuff once a month or so at Marinepolis in Queen Anne.
“What is it?” I studied it closely as it conveyed past. Part of the reason I don’t like sushi is that I recognize hardly anything, and I’m not much into experimenting with what I eat.
“It’s eel,” Gus said, beaming.
I nodded and pursed my lips. “Pass.” I looked back up the line and saw something I recognized. “I’ll just have a couple of those.” I pointed to something that looked like the California rolls I was familiar with from the grocery store.
Dwayne laughed. “Way to take a walk on the wild side, Danny.”
“Yeah, well, I’m a red-blooded American, and I keep waiting to see something that looks good. I mean, what? Don’t they have chickens in Japan?”
He laughed again. “Yeah, I imagine they do. But this place? They call it ‘Sushiland.’ You won’t be finding any buffalo wings here.”
I’ve known Dwayne for several years, extending back to when I was in the U.S. Army CID stationed at Fort Lewis and Dwayne was an SPD detective. We worked several cases together and got to know each other. Then, last year, we met his partner Gus when Toni and I worked with them on a missing-person case. We keep in regular contact.
“Oh, by the way,” Dwayne said, “before I forget.” He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket. “They’re changing the parking passes at the garage. Your old one won’t work after the end of the month. This is an official new one.” He pulled out a pass and put it on the table.
Toni looked at me, and we both started laughing.
“What’s so funny?”
I explained. “All this time we’ve been using the old one, we thought you’d forgotten you gave it to us. We wanted to thank you, but we were afraid if we reminded you then you’d want it back.”
Dwayne tried to act indignant. “Forgotten? What do you mean, forgotten?” He looked from me to Toni, then back. “And what, you just weren’t going to say anything?” His act was weakened by the smile he couldn’t keep hidden.
“He’s full of shit,” Gus said. “He did forget. That is until the bean counters sent around the notice last week. Turns out they keep track of all the passes and who they issued them to. When Dwayne got the notice that they were upgrading, and he saw how many passes had been issued to him, he thought I had ’em. I had to remind him who he’d given them to, including the fact that he gave you guys one of ’em during the Fiore case last year.” He paused for a moment before continuing, “Of course, I knew all along.” He smiled at Toni. “I just couldn’t bear the thought of you, my dear, being forced to walk several blocks in the pouring rain every time you wanted to come see me.” Gus is a big Toni Blair fan. “And along those lines, my offer still holds.” He nodded toward me. “If this skinny guy here so much as pisses you off even just a little bit, my door is always open.”
Toni beamed. “Why thank you, sir. Who knows?” She gave me a sly grin, and then turned back to Gus. “One of these days I may have to take you up on your offer.”
“Can you imagine? A bean counter whose job it is to count parking passes,” Dwayne said, working on a piece of something that had tentacles. “We’re up to our asses in the Katherine LaRue case, and they come in with an announcement from on high saying we got to audit our parking passes. Our damn parking passes! They’re cutting our operating staff and increasing our workload, but they damn sure gotta have the dude who counts the parking passes. Betcha’ that sucker won’t ever get cut.”
“Katherine LaRue?” Toni asked.
“Yeah,” Gus said. “That nurse who got abducted from Virginia Mason hospital last week. We’re all over it.”
“Leads?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Nothing that’s panned out yet. Woman walks to her car in broad daylight in a parking lot full of her coworkers and she gets snatched, right in front of a dozen people. All we got is that we’re looking for a dark blue van. Know how many dark blue vans there are to check out in Seattle?”
“A whole lot,” Dwayne said, “but we have to pull off and go count the damn parking passes.”
I inspected the food on my fork before pulling a piece of what appeared to be seaweed off and setting it aside. “Since you brought up the brass, you’re aware of the fact that they’re in the process of closing down the Sophie Thoms Task Force?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I heard. Same problem: not enough money to keep it going.” He paused. “Besides, word is, the Sophie Thoms case is solved. Bad guy took a flier off the roof or something.”
“That’s the story.”
He looked up at me. “You don’t sound very convinced.”
“We’re less convinced the more we work it,” Toni said.
“So, knowing you guys, you must have another theory?” Gus asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Bits and pieces, anyway. If it wasn’t Bannister, then someone else did a pretty thorough job of setting him up and making it look like it was him. The trouble is, we haven’t been able to figure out how.”
“Or who,” Toni said. “Or why.”
I nodded. “That’s right. Or even ‘if,’ for that matter. It’s hard to get over the fact that what evidence does exist all points more or less toward Bannister. Without knowing the motivation of this bad guy, we’re kind of chasing our tails with regards to figuring out who it was.”
“I understand,” Dwayne said. “Maybe you should consider this: if the evidence points to Bannister, like you say, and if even you guys, smart as you are, are having trouble filling in the blanks on your theory, then it’s small wonder why mere mortals with average IQs like the SPD brass might not be on board with you.”
I shook my head. “Yeah, I guess.”
“And don’t forget,” he added. “It might be just what it seems. You could be overthinking it.”
I nodded. “I’ve heard that before.”
“If the guy were being framed,” Gus said, “what are the possible motives of the real bad guy? Why do this? Who go through all the trouble?”
“We’re in the dark there,” Toni said. “But we keep coming back to something to do with drugs—it seems to be a common theme. The problem is, from what we’ve been able to learn, other than her connection with the other two, Sophie Thoms wasn’t really into drugs at all. We can’t figure out how she’d have been caught up in this. We can’t see the linkage.”
“Ah, linkage,” Dwayne said. “Good word. Let me tell you something about linkage—the proverbial connection. Sometimes, that connection is hard to figure o
ut. Just because you see it, that doesn’t mean it’s real. And just because you don’t see it? That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”
I tilted my head.
“Remember, grasshopper,” he said. “You’re on the outside trying to look in. You gotta put yourself on the inside. You want to find that linkage, sometimes you gotta look in unexpected places.” He looked down at the conveyer. “Damn, almost missed it. Danny, pass me one of those takos would you?”
I looked at the conveyer. “They have tacos?” I looked up and down the conveyer. “I don’t see any tacos.”
He laughed. “Not t-a-c-o-s tacos. Japanese tako. Octopus, man.”
I looked around at my team for a moment as they waited for me to get started. I think they knew what was coming. “Well,” I said, “D—day. Today’s the ninth, last day of our contract with the Thoms. We have a new job lined up with Nandi Vaman starting Monday morning. We all feel that there’s something wrong with Bannister as the killer, but then again, we don’t have anything solid. As of tonight, our contract expires, and we’re officially off the case.”
“That means we’ve got tomorrow and the weekend before the new case starts,” Toni said. “That’s three more days. We can use these last few days to keep pounding away for Sophie.” She looked around the room, hoping to see support from the other guys. “And if that doesn’t finish it, then we can just squeeze it in between paying jobs until we settle things. I don’t like not finishing something we started—especially if it means that some asshole out there is getting away with murder.” Her voice was firm—passionate, but firm. When she gets her mind set, Toni can be a very determined woman. We’d had this very discussion between the two of us earlier this morning. It ended when I reminded her that even though I was willing to give up my free time and she was willing to do the same, that didn’t necessarily mean the other guys would as well. After all, they had their own lives. The choice was theirs.
“Or we can take the weekend off,” I said. “You’ve all been working your butts off. You’ve earned it—the choice is yours.” I looked around the room, waiting for the guys to respond.
I didn’t have to wait long. “Boss, I’m with Toni. It’d be a shame to bail out now,” Kenny said. “I don’t mind volunteering my time if we have to.”
“That’s right,” Doc said. “I’m in.”
I smiled and turned to Richard. “Your thoughts?”
He smiled. “Danny, for me, it’s easy. I don’t get paid anyway. The concept of ‘free time’ for me means: Do I have anything else I’d rather be doing? As it so happens, the answer is no, and my schedule is free. There’s nothing I’d rather do right now than see this case to a conclusion and see the killer—the real killer—brought to justice. Count me in.”
I nodded. “Alright, then. I appreciate all of you being willing to step in. It means a lot. The problem, though, and I’m sure you all recognize this, is that I don’t know what we can hope to accomplish in the three days left before we move on to Vaman’s paying job. We have hunches, right? Not much more. Unless we get really lucky—and that’s something we have not been up to this point—it’s going to take more than three days to wrap this thing up. And as to beyond that? You guys know how hard it would be to solve this case working part-time on it. A couple hours here, a couple hours there? That’ll be a real bitch. Realistically, I don’t think it could work.”
The room was full of long faces; they each knew I was right. A full-on surveillance job like Nandi Vaman’s would suck the most productive hours right out of the day. It was hard enough solving Sophie’s case full-time. Trying to work it after we were done with Vaman for the day? Good luck.
I leaned back in my chair and took a deep breath, then turned and looked at the case board. I spent a couple minutes pretending to look at the timeline, the photos, our notes, all a cover as I tried to figure our next move. Or, should I say, my next move. The guys might be willing to volunteer a couple days of free time. But I couldn’t ask them for more. The next step was mine alone.
I looked at Sophie’s picture. She stared right back at me, just like she always did when I came into the room. I bit my lower lip and considered my options.
When all was said and done, though, there really wasn’t much to consider. The company couldn’t afford to go uncovered for very long—that’s a sad fact. My reserves were low. Then again, the reserves weren’t completely empty, and I, as much as the rest of the crew, loathed the idea of allowing someone to get away with Sophie’s murder.
I spun my chair back around. “Okay. What the hell,” I said. “Part-timing this thing won’t work. I’ll talk to Nandi Vaman and try to push him back a week. Two if I have to. We’ll go uncovered on Sophie Thoms next week.” I shook my head. “I’ll just pull it out of reserves.”
I looked at Toni. She was flat beaming: full-strength smile, reserved only for yours truly. She mouthed the words “Thank you.” This was good. She was right, of course. Money was important, but it wasn’t the most important thing around here.
I smiled back at her and nodded. “We keep working, but this time for ourselves.”
“And Sophie,” Toni added.
I looked over at the picture of Sophie on the whiteboard for a moment. I nodded. “And Sophie.”
PART 3
Chapter 19
WE WERE GATHERED IN THE CONFERENCE room the following Monday morning, and I was laying out my strategy. “You know, up until now, we’ve either approached this case by following the task force’s lead, or else we’ve used pretty much traditional methods—round up the usual suspects, conduct interviews, that sort of stuff.” I shook my head. “And it hasn’t worked. Didn’t work for SPD for three months before we came on, and it hasn’t worked for us. I don’t like to think we’ve been wasting our time, but the fact is, if you don’t buy into the story that Bannister killed Sophie and Judie Lawton, then it’s pretty obvious both methods have failed. We’re nowhere.
“Toni and I had lunch with Dwayne Brown last Friday, and he said something that really got me thinking over the weekend. He was talking about connections. He said ‘sometimes you’ve got to look in unexpected places to find the connection between two things.’”
“Connections between people or events?” Richard asked.
I shrugged. “Both, I suppose. Either one.”
Richard thought for a second, then he said, “In other words, if we can’t solve Sophie’s murder by going straight at it, and if we can’t solve Judie Lawton’s murder by going straight at it . . .”
“But we know there’s at least some kind of connection because of the rope,” Doc added.
I nodded. “Then we look for some common element between the two—some connection—and use that to work a new angle.”
“Interesting approach,” Richard said. “Might work if we can find the link.”
“Isn’t that what Josh Bannister is?” Kenny said. “A connection between the two.”
I nodded. “Yeah, it looks that way. But that’s a connection we haven’t been able to figure out yet. So I’ve been thinking: we need another connection—something we haven’t focused on yet. I think we need to spend this last week looking outside the box. Could be we’ve allowed ourselves to get a little tunnel-visioned with this Josh Bannister approach.”
“You got something in mind?” Doc asked, ready for an assignment.
“Glad you asked,” I said. “We need to find a new connection. Doc, I want you to follow the money. SPD sent you all their financial background reports, right?”
He nodded. “Yeah. SPD says they’re clean. I looked at ’em, but I’m no expert.”
“I know. But David and George are. I want you to set up a meeting with them. If greed is our bad guy’s motivation, then let’s check our list of players and see if any of ’em are living beyond their means. Let’s get a legal eye and a CPA eye on them.” David O’Farrell is the high-powered lawyer we keep on retainer. He’s one of the top criminal defense lawyers in the city, and he’s
earned the privilege of being highly selective in the cases he takes on. Fortunately, I did a favor for David once, and ever since he’s allowed me to pay him an exorbitant retainer in exchange for his immediate attention when required. The few times I’ve needed his help to get out of a jam, he’s dropped everything and blasted in liked a tornado. He’s a strong presence in our corner.
George Conners is our CPA. George used to do forensic accounting for the FBI, and he’s a whiz at looking at a financial statement and being able to read between the lines.
“And Doc,” I added. “Tell those guys not to even think about stopping at the stuff SPD provides. They’re both pros. Tell ’em to dig as deep as they can.” He nodded. I turned to Kenny. “Next step, designed especially for our newest special agent. We have all the phone records, right?”
“Yep. Cell phone and home phone. SPD was through ’em and I went over ’em last week. Nothing popped out.”
“Okay, I’m afraid this will be work more like what you’re used to doing. I want us to broaden the time frame of the search of the phone records and go through ’em again. Let’s go back three weeks before Sophie was killed. I want to check every single number—cell phone and home phone—for the entire time. Let’s ID every damn one of them. Maybe a pattern will pop out, maybe some new contact that we’re not aware of.”
He nodded. “Broaden the dates. Got it.”
Finally, I turned to Toni.
“And for me?” she said, smiling.
“For you, I saved the best for last,” I said. I hadn’t talked to her about it before; in fact, the idea just hit me before the meeting. “I want you to get ahold of the police reports for all the Puget Sound jurisdictions for the entire time period from three weeks before through three weeks after Sophie was killed. Let’s look at every major reported crime and see if we can find a link. We know this crime took place in at least two parts—Sophie and Judie.”
Mona Lisa Eyes (Danny Logan Mystery #4) Page 23