I smiled. “Three, actually. My partner up there also carries. She just never had a chance to draw her weapon.”
He laughed. “Perfect. Three.” He shook his head, then leaned it back against the column. “Told him it was a shitty deal.”
I considered the situation. Ideally, Brownell would pull through and answer questions about what had happened and why. But if he didn’t, then I still needed information from him. It was quiet for a few moments, then I thought “what the hell,” and I went ahead and asked. “You’re the one who killed Sophie, aren’t you?”
He turned his head a little and stared away from me. Several seconds passed. “Didn’t want to—kill her, you know.”
“You didn’t want to? So why did you?”
He continued as if he didn’t hear me, then he shook his head slowly. “She was nice—never talked bad about anybody. But she got herself dragged into this fuckin’ mess, and she learned too much. Plus she had that stupid fuckin’ disc. Said she was going to blow the whistle on us.” He shook his head slowly. “Couldn’t let her do that. Had to get that disc and shut her up.”
I stared at him. “Blow the whistle on what? The Southern Star Relief Fund?”
He smiled. “Very good. Yeah, Southern Star.”
“So you killed McKenzie too?”
“Humph,” he said, which started him coughing again. More blood came from his mouth. He spit it weakly onto the ground beside him. “Fuckin’ little shrew. He’s the one who started the whole thing. He should have left well enough alone. But no-o-oo, he couldn’t do that. I tried warning him off, but he was too tunnel-visioned to recognize the danger he was in, the dumb shit.” He shook his head slowly. “So he dragged Sophie into it. Had her to carry the water. Little fucker.” He rolled his head toward me. “How’s Linda?”
“I don’t know.”
He nodded. “Silly bitch. She was in it with us from the start. She made a shitload of money on this thing. She’s been freaked out ever since Sophie. I didn’t want to shoot her, but she was starting to get too squirrelly. We couldn’t let her talk about Southern Star.”
“That’s why you were here tonight? To kill Linda?”
He nodded again. “Yeah. It was supposed to look like a robbery again—just like McKenzie. I was going to take that folder.” He shook his head. “Stupid, huh?”
I nodded, trying to hurry now. “What about Judie Lawton? You kill her too?”
He nodded.
“Why the hell did you torture her?”
He flicked his eyes up to me. “The fuck you talking about?”
“Cigarette burns on her arm.”
He laughed quietly. “Jesus, she was already dead, man. That was for show.”
I pictured the burn marks on Judie Lawton’s arm. “For show? What do you mean? So you could pin it on Bannister?”
“Yeah—needed to make it look like she was ripping him off—like he burned her so she’d give up the drugs.”
“That you planted?”
He nodded slowly.
“So then you killed Bannister too. How’d you manage to get him off the roof without a fight?”
“Makes you think there wasn’t a fight?”
“All the gravel on the roof was smooth. There weren’t any scuff marks.”
He suddenly went completely rigid for a moment, his eyes shut tight, arms straining and fists clenched. “Damn, that fuckin’ hurts,” he said, tears rolling down his face. “Thanks a lot.” After a couple of seconds, he relaxed again. Suddenly, the cell phone in his coat pocket rang.
I reached for it. “Here—allow me.” Brownell was too weak to argue as I reached into his pocket. I looked at the phone. The caller ID said BLOCKED. For a second, I considered answering it, but I thought better of it and let it ring. Better that the caller think that Brownell was busy than know for sure that he was either captured or killed. I slipped the phone in my pocket. “I’ll just hold on to this.”
He didn’t respond. His eyes were closed, but he was still breathing, although his breaths were shallow and labored.
“Brownell? You all right? Stay with me now.”
He opened his eyes and looked at me. “Truth? I been better.”
“Hang in there. The ambulance will be here in a minute.”
He smiled. “It’s too late. You know it. I know it. Besides. I don’t give a shit. I sure as fuck don’t want to go to jail. Rather be dead. We had a pretty good run, made some good money, had a good time.” I looked down and noticed the blood was still pooling beneath his arm on the right side of his body. There must have been a hell of an exit wound.
“Tell me how you got Bannister off the roof.”
“We were going to kill him—hide the body, but the little fucker found Judie and got scared. He went underground. But we lucked out and saw him by his apartment. He put up a hell of a fight for a minute, but there were two of us. I whacked him upside the head with a leather sap and it knocked him out cold. Then we took our time—straightened up inside, left a few goodies for the cops to find. Carried him up to the roof—good thing he was a little guy. Took his shoes off to make him look like a jumper, then flipped his ass over the side. Fucker went to sleep and never woke up. Easy. We scooted out the back. We were long gone time the cops ever got there. He was our backup plan in case someone got close. Pretty lame, wasn’t it? Not my idea.” He paused for a second, then he muttered, “Always thought it was fuckin’ stupid, actually. I figured that it wouldn’t end well. A step too far.”
“If it was so stupid, then why’d you do it?”
He glanced up at me. His blue eyes were deeply sunken and had somehow lost their bright glow. His face turned grayer by the second. “We’re all good little soldiers, right?” He paused and took a ragged breath before continuing. “We all follow orders.” He tried to draw a breath and as he did, he started to fall over.
I reached out and lowered him to the ground. “You’re going to be alright.”
He gasped in pain and squeezed his eyes tight for a second. “Bullshit,” he managed to say. “I’m almost done.” He coughed again, a nasty hacking thing that brought up a mouthful of thick bloody material. I turned his head to the side so that he could try to hack it out.
“Who is it? Who’s giving the orders, Brownell? You may as well do the right thing here and put an end to this.”
He gave me a short quick laugh. “What? Since I’m about to die anyway?” he gasped, just above a whisper. “Fuck you, Logan. I never snitched on anyone. I’m checkin’ out and I’m fuckin’ well going to do it with a clean record.”
I looked down at him. Great, I thought. You’ll be the most stand-up man in hell, psychotic bastard.
He stiffened again, eyes wide-open this time. “Oh, shit.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “There’s water. Everywhere. Always wanted a house by the ocean.” Then, still staring straight up, he relaxed as the breath slowly eased out of him.
Chapter 26
“HE HAD HELP. HE WASN’T ACTING alone—he wasn’t even the top dog,” I said to Ron. We were still in the parking garage. Shortly after Brownell died, the Bellevue Police had arrived in force and not long after that, Ron showed up. I’d spent the past hour going step-by-step through everything that had happened, leading right up to them charging through the elevators and finding me sitting beside Brownell’s lifeless body. The fact that there were witnesses upstairs along with two shooting victims who’d already been transported to the hospital made my part of their investigation move pretty quickly, for a police investigation, that is. No question about self-defense. Still, the interrogation only ended when Ron arrived with a friend of his who just happened to be a captain on the Bellevue PD.
Brownell was still in the garage too, still slouched against the pillar, head bowed slightly, lifeless eyes staring at the floor. The ME team appeared to be wrapping up—they’d soon release the body for transport to the morgue. I’d just finished walking Ron through the events of the evening. “Someone else is sittin’
back there calling the shots.” I said. “Brownell said he was just following orders.”
“You still think the boss—the guy behind the curtain—is Eric Gaston?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I do. The rope . . . the financials . . . the connections . . .” I shook my head. “He’s at the top of the list. I sure as hell think it’s time to bring him downtown.”
“We’re going to need a more solid link between Gaston and Brownell.”
I nodded. “I know. What’s the latest on Linda Ramos?” I asked. “I think she knows everything.”
“Surgery,” Ron said. “Don’t know yet.”
“Hopefully, she’ll be okay. Then we can just ask her.” Suddenly, I remembered the files Linda’d brought. “Wait a second, Ron—she brought some stuff, a file folder. She said on the phone she was going to get some information for me. I’ll bet whatever’s in that folder could help us.”
“Where they at now?”
“Toni has ’em. I talked to her on the phone a few minutes ago. She picked ’em up off the ground outside before she went to the hospital with Kenny.”
“Good. But we need to know what’s on those files, man.”
I nodded. “I’ll call her, tell her to hurry back here.”
“And here’s something else,” I said. I told Ron about the phone call Brownell had received. “I’ll bet it was Gaston, checking to find out how the little operation went tonight. You know, as soon as he finds out Brownell’s dead, he’s likely to freak, maybe even run. If he has any evidence we don’t know about, he’s going to have a chance to get rid of it.”
Ron nodded. “Then we’d better go knock on his door, right now, before he gets the chance.”
We loaded into Ron’s car and took off. While he drove, I called Toni and after making sure Kenny was alright (he was—he really had just fainted), I told her we needed the files. We agreed that since we were more or less an equal distance away, we’d meet up at Gaston’s house. “Hold on!” Ron yelled as he cut a car off and jumped onto I-405 at Eighth Street in downtown Bellevue. We headed north for a mile or so until we hit I-520 where we turned west, back to Seattle. He had his red light and his siren on the whole time, so we were able to make pretty fair time until we hit the floating bridge that crosses Lake Washington, where traffic slowed us right down. The bridge is two lanes in each direction, but unless you’re making the trip in the wee hours, the bridge is either busy or it’s real busy to the point of being stopped. Tonight, it was just busy. The traffic is compounded by the fact that there’s road construction going on as they widen the bridge and absolutely no shoulder for people to pull onto to make room for emergency vehicles. When they saw the flashing lights behind them, most drivers had the sense to slow down and pull to the right, but if they were in the left lane and the right lane happened to be already occupied (or sometimes, even if it wasn’t), then they tended to hit their brakes and slow down, unsure how to proceed.
Ron’s response was to race up right behind these confused drivers an inch or so off their back bumper and then lean on the horn, I suppose just to make sure they were good and panicked. “Move out of the way, you asshole!” he’d yell from the privacy of the car. Then, he’d turn on the PA switch on his radio and calmly say, “Pull over, sir!” if he saw a space opening up on the right or “Keep it moving!” if he didn’t. Eventually, the drivers figured out what Ron wanted them to do, and they picked up speed until they were able to pull to the right, allowing us to pass. We never actually had to resort to weaving back and forth.
“Ain’t this a kick in the pants?” Ron called out as we approached the western side of the lake. He actually seemed to be in his element and having a good time. I don’t know how he managed to do it, but somehow he yelled at poky drivers, put his call into the DA’s office, explained the situation regarding Eric Gaston, and got their agreement that talking to Gaston was a good idea—all while steering with one hand and holding both his cell phone and the radio microphone in his other. He even managed to turn and talk to me from time to time. When he was done with the DA, Ron checked with the squad car he’d radioed into position near Gaston’s Laurelhurst home: there’d been no movement in or out since they took up position. Ron told them to hold in place while he radioed in and called up another patrol car for additional backup.
Meanwhile, I braced myself for the collision that I felt was sure to happen any moment. I held tight in the passenger seat and called Doc. Toni had already called him earlier and told him about Kenny being wounded. Doc and Kenny are tight, so Doc was just pulling up to Harborview when we spoke.
“Pri just called,” he said. “She saw him. She says he’s fine.” We’re lucky in that Doc’s girlfriend Pri—Prita Dekhlikiseh—happens to be a very talented emergency physician at Harborview. Doc met her last year when he was a patient. She’d take good care of Kenny for us.
“That’s good to hear, man. Tell Pri thanks.” I asked him to break off his trip to the hospital for the moment to instead go check out the Beatrice Thoms Memorial Foundation office. I explained what was going on.
“We’re afraid that Gaston might get jumpy because he hasn’t heard from Brownell. We want to make sure he doesn’t try to bounce.”
A second later I hung on as Ron exited the bridge onto Montlake Boulevard and turned us north. We flew northbound past Husky Stadium and hung a right on Forty-Fifth Street, now headed east again. I leaned into the turn as Ron swerved hard to the right when Forty-Fifth split into Sand Point Way just past University Village. I had to hold tight to the armrest to keep from ending up in his lap.
“Almost there!” he said.
Thank God. Ron turned off his siren, and we slowed down as Forty-Fifth changed from an arterial into a much narrower neighborhood street. Another half mile and Ron hung a left on Forty-Ninth Avenue. Gaston’s house was six houses up on the right.
The two patrol cars Ron had sent over were parked at the curb, just down the street from the house. We zipped past, and the officers hopped out to meet us. I hadn’t been to Gaston’s house before, but at first glance, the place was pretty grand. The theme was red brick. House, gate pilasters, even the driveway itself—all brick. Ron pulled up and swung his Crown Vic right up into the home’s circular drive. We got out just as the uniformed officers walked up.
Two of the officers accompanied us to the door while the other two proceeded to bring their car up but hang back at the driveway. If Gaston tried to sneak out the side or through the garage while we were going in the front, they were to block him and radio us.
We walked up to the tall double doors, and when the patrol car was in position, Ron knocked. Nothing happened, so he rang the bell and knocked again, more forcefully this time. A moment later, we saw through the glass door a woman with white hair walk around the corner. She looked us over carefully. When she saw the uniformed officers, a look of concern appeared in her eyes. This I could understand—there’s hardly ever any good news to be had when a bunch of cops show up at your front door.
Ron held up his badge. “Seattle Police Department, ma’am. Please open the door.”
She looked at the badge, then reached down and opened the door. “Can I help you, Officer? Is something wrong?”
“Ma’am, we’re here to see Eric Gaston. Is he available?”
The woman’s face took on a look of alarm. “He’s my son. Has anything happened? Is he alright?”
“I take it he’s not here, then?” Ron asked.
The woman shook her head. “No. Eric’s not here. What’s this all about?”
Ron smiled. “We need to talk to Eric about some things. Do you know where he is? When he’ll be back?”
She shook her head. “He won’t be home until late. He’s gone to a party—a football party. Monday night football.”
Ron shifted his weight. “Would you happen to know where?”
She nodded. “Yes. He told me. It’s a party at his boss’s house.”
“Oliver Ward?” I asked.
The
woman looked at me, then she nodded. “Yes. Oliver. That’s what Eric said. A Monday night football party at Oliver’s house.”
Ron chuckled and then dropped his head in frustration. Then he lifted it back up and smiled at the woman. “What’s your name, ma’am?”
“Camille. Camille Gaston.”
Ron nodded. “Sorry to bother you this evening, Mrs. Gaston.” He handed her a card. “When Eric gets home, would you give him my card? Tell him I’d like to speak to him and ask him to give me a call?”
She nodded. “Yes. Of course.”
We started walking back down the driveway. “Oh, good. Another stop.” He looked around. “Where’s your partner?”
“Here I am!” Toni jogged up the driveway, waving the file folder. “Had to park up the street.”
“Good,” Ron said. “Just in time.” He turned to the rest of us. “You ride with us. Okay, guys. Let’s saddle up. Let’s go crash a football party.”
Ron turned us around, and we started to retrace our course in reverse: west on Forty-Fifth Street and then a left turn onto Montlake, headed south this time. We flew past the stadium again and just as we reached the intersection with Pacific before the drawbridge at the Montlake Cut, my phone rang. Caller ID: Doc.
“Dude, I’m here,” he said. “But it doesn’t look like anyone else is.”
“Place is dark?”
“Yeah. It looks empty.”
Ron swerved around a Subaru, and I leaned into the turn. “Sounds like you’re back in the car,” Doc said. “He’s not there?”
“No. He’s supposed to be over at Oliver and Cecilia’s house.” I thought for a second, then I told Doc, “Okay. Just hang out there for a minute. Matter of fact, call me in ten minutes, so I don’t forget.”
“Move out of the way, asshole!” Ron suddenly yelled to a slow driver.
Mona Lisa Eyes (Danny Logan Mystery #4) Page 31