by Karen Dionne
The man didn’t respond. He also didn’t take Sarah’s hand, keeping his hands pointedly by his sides.
“I understand that Tiffany Crane works here as a waitress,” Sarah went on in the same pleasant tone, as if they were having a normal conversation rather than what was beginning to feel like the start of a confrontation. “Yesterday, her boyfriend was found murdered. We’re trying to locate her.”
“You think she did it?”
“We just want to talk to her.”
“This is Indian land. You don’t have authority here.”
“I’m aware of that… Mr. Franks.” Sarah read the man’s name off the gold plastic tag pinned over his jacket pocket. “I was hoping for your cooperation.”
Sarah could have argued that Tiffany wasn’t a member of the Kulamish tribe, and therefore didn’t need the tribe’s protection—she wasn’t even Native American, for that matter—but she doubted it would make any difference. Either the man would say yes, or he would say no—even though there was no valid reason to refuse Sarah’s request other than sheer contrariness.
To Sarah’s surprise, however, the man seemed to relent. He nodded curtly and spoke into a walkie-talkie, then led Sarah through the casino’s cavernous main room and down a narrow hallway. He stopped in front of a door that read, “Megan Crowd, Casino Manager.”
“Come,” a voice said in answer to the security guard’s knock. The guard opened the door and stepped to the side so that Sarah was forced to enter first, then stepped into the small room behind her and closed the door. Boxing her in. Sarah felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. There was no reason to believe that she was going to come to any harm. So why had her instincts skyrocketed to high alert?
Behind her desk, Ms. Crowd was all business, wearing a white, open-collared shirt under a dark leather jacket, with her black hair cropped short. The only concessions to her gender were a dash of lipstick, and an ornate pair of turquoise earrings.
She stood up and extended her hand. “Megan Crowd. And you are?”
“Detective Sarah Linden. Seattle Police.” Going through the motions even though she had clearly heard the guard relate both Sarah’s name, and her purpose via the walkie-talkie.
“You’ve already met my head of security, Charles Franks,” the manager went on. “Please. Sit down. What can I do for you, Detective?”
“I understand that Tiffany Crane works here as a waitress,” Sarah began as she sat down in the extra chair. “I’d like to talk to her.”
“Worked here,” Ms. Crowd corrected. “We had to let her go about a month ago.”
So Tiffany had been fired. “May I ask why?”
“You may. However, I’m sure you’ll understand that I’m not at liberty to reveal the details. What I can tell you is that coupled with a previous incident, her latest infraction made her continued employment with us out of the question.”
“You’re referring to the incident with the Cartier watch,” Sarah said. “I’ve read the report. Frankly, I’m surprised you kept her on at the time.”
“Tiffany was one of our more popular waitresses. The men in particular liked her. Besides, everyone deserves a second chance. Just not a third or a fourth.”
Sarah could understand why the men who visited the casino would have been attracted to Tiffany, with her blond hair, elfin frame, and her tough-yet-vulnerable punk rocker look. Some would see hooking up with her as a walk on the wild side. Others would be drawn to her because they saw in her their wayward daughters. Affirmative action in reverse.
“So you’re saying the incident with the watch’s owner, Desmond Whittaker, wasn’t an isolated case?” Sarah asked. “That Tiffany made a habit of getting in tight with the high-rollers?” Thinking of Lance and his hundreds of thousands. Their Odd Couple pairing wasn’t looking so peculiar after all.
“I’m not saying anything of the sort.”
Of course she wasn’t. And yet she was. Sarah understood the game the manager was playing, dropping pieces of information into the conversation without admitting that’s what she was doing. It wasn’t hard to imagine the scenario: Tiffany taking note of the gamblers who seemed to be particularly lonely, targeting them, flattering them, getting close to them in the hope that some of the cash they were throwing around so carelessly would fall in her direction. Sarah couldn’t fault her. Taking advantage of lonely men for financial gain wasn’t a crime. Tiffany was only doing what she thought she had to in order to survive. In Tiffany’s place, Sarah might well have done the same.
“What about friends? Is there someone Tiffany was close to who I can talk to?”
“No one,” Ms. Crowd said.
Sarah seriously doubted that was true. If Tiffany had been as popular as the woman claimed, surely she would have had at least one girlfriend in whom she confided. But Sarah let it go. If the manager had decided to stonewall her, there was nothing she could do to compel her to talk. Besides, there were other ways of getting the answers she wanted that were far easier than sitting in this woman’s office like a puppy begging for table scraps.
Sarah stood up. “Thanks for your time,” she said pleasantly, as Ms. Crowd and her security chief took the cue and got to their feet as well. “You’ve been very helpful.”
A statement all three of them knew wasn’t true.
As she was escorted back to the gaming floor, Franks at her elbow, Sarah heard the click of a phone receiver being lifted. After a moment the manager spoke.
“Chief Jackson please… yes, I’ll hold.”
She wasn’t going to get anything else out of the Kulamish tribe. But not everyone who worked at the casino was Indian, Tiffany was proof of that. She turned to Franks.
“Where’s the nearest restroom?”
The big man nodded in the direction of a large neon sign with a picture of a squaw, her feathered skirt picked out in bright yellow. Sarah smiled her thanks, and left him standing in the middle of the gaming floor, hands clasped in the usual “security” stance. Once inside the restroom she counted off three minutes, then looked out. Franks was back at his post by the entrance. She glanced round the floor, until she spotted a waitress collecting discarded glasses and paper mugs, her light brown hair swept up into a ponytail. Sarah walked over to her.
“Excuse me ma’am, I’m Detective Sarah Linden. I’d like to ask you a couple of questions about Tiffany Crane.”
The waitress looked up from her tray, startled. “What about her?”
Sarah tried to smile placatingly. “Were you two friendly?”
The woman shook her head. “I’d only been working here a couple of weeks when she got sacked. I never really spoke to her.” She lowered her voice, looking past Sarah as if worried that she was being watched. Sarah resisted the urge to turn her head, to check whether Franks was coming over. She’d better make this quick.
“Do you know who she was friendly with?”
The waitress shrugged her shoulders. “I saw her hanging out with Jaycee a few times, like they had plans after work, getting changed together, that kind of thing. But Jaycee’s not on today.”
No matter. “And do you know Jaycee’s last name?”
“Timberwolf. Jaycee Timberwolf.”
16
According to her employment records, Black Bear Casino employee Jaycee Timberwolf was a twenty-six-year-old Native American, unmarried, and currently living with her mother and two sisters. The Timberwolf home was in the right-hand side of a wood-frame duplex in one of the older, established neighborhoods in Seattle. Sarah sat in her car, scanning the street. Compact houses set back from the sidewalk. Maples in the front yards grown so large they dwarfed the houses they had been planted to shelter; there would be dense green foliage in the spring and summer that turned every shade of red, orange, and yellow in the fall; now bare winter branches reached toward a gunmetal sky like blackened fingers.
Sarah locked the car and walked between a border of empty flowerbeds and up the wooden steps to the front porch. As near as
she’d been able to determine by comparing Jaycee‘s and Tiffany’s Facebook postings with their IRS filings, it appeared that the women had worked together at the Black Bear Casino for just under two years. And they weren’t just Facebook friends; judging by the many photographs both women had posted in which they appeared together, they had clearly socialized in the real world.
The thump of a heavy bass beat could be heard from within the house. Sarah knocked on the front door. The thumping stopped. A few moments later, Jaycee herself came to the door wearing a fringed pink T-shirt that stopped six inches above her low-rise jeans, revealing a butterfly tattoo on her stomach identical to the one Sarah remembered Tiffany sporting in the photograph of her and Lance. The women were clearly close to have gotten matching artwork.
Sarah flashed her badge and stated her business, taking care to keep her voice low and gentle. No need to spook the girl. Would Jaycee mind answering a few questions about her friend? Jaycee nodded. “I’ll be right back!” she called over her shoulder, then stepped coatless onto the front porch and closed the door behind her.
“Would you like to talk in my car?” Sarah asked as Jaycee rubbed her bare arms and shivered. It wasn’t snowing, but it felt like it should be.
“Sure.” Jaycee trailed Sarah down the sidewalk and slid into the front passenger seat. Sarah got in the driver’s side. She turned the engine on and the heater to “high,” then as the car interior grew warm again, she unbuttoned her coat.
“Got a smoke?” Jaycee nodded toward the overflowing ashtray.
Sarah reached into her jacket pocket, held out the pack to Jaycee, and took another for herself. “What can you tell me about Tiffany and her boyfriend?”
Jaycee took a drag, blew it out. “Oh, man—I swear, if he told her to jump off a cliff, she’d do it. She’d do anything he asked her to. I told her he was bad news, that he was going to bring her down, get her in trouble again. Looks like I was right.” She waved her hand to take in the fact that she was sitting outside her house in a cop car answering questions about her friend.
“What sort of trouble did you think she’d get into?”
“Same as before. With the fancy watch she got given by the old guy from the casino. Whittaker I think he was called. Only that wrinkly lying bastard really did give her that watch. Tiffany wasn’t a thief.”
“Did he give her other things?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Jewelry. Money. Clothes.”
“Well, sure. That was the point. He took her to his country house, too. Man, that place was rich! A mansion on the other side of Magnolia Bridge with all kinds of fancy things in it. She took a bunch of us out there for weekend parties even after he threw her over. An ‘up yours’ for the watch charge. Whittaker wasn’t smart enough to take the spare key off her, and word is he’s been out of the country for a while.” Sarah made a mental note to check on Mr. Whittaker’s whereabouts.
Jaycee shook her head. “He gave her some nice things, while it lasted. But she never kept any of them. That was part of the deal. She always turned everything over to her real boyfriend.”
“I’m not sure I understand. The watch’s owner—Desmond Whittaker—wasn’t her boyfriend?”
Jaycee laughed. “That old dude? Please. He was like, seventy. Tiffany let him think she was in love, but she was just using him. You know, to get stuff. He was just a dupe in a line of dupes. He was nothing.”
“Does this ‘real’ boyfriend have a name?” Sarah asked.
Jaycee laughed again. “Only a dumb one. He called himself ‘Archimedes’. Like he was a genius or something. Never knew his real name. The guy was basically a crook. I didn’t care to know.”
She cracked open her window, stuck her cigarette outside the gap, and tapped off the ash. “’Medes always gave her a percentage. For her help, you know. Because he couldn’t have done it without her.” Looking at Sarah and raising her eyebrows to say that she too should be compensated for her assistance.
Sarah pulled a twenty from her wallet and gave it to the girl. She probably could have gotten away with a ten, but she wasn’t yet ready to end the conversation.
“So let me get this straight,” she said. “Tiffany’s boyfriend ‘Archimedes’ paid her a share of the take she got from coming on to high rollers like Whittaker at the casino.”
“It’s not illegal, you know. And the casino knew what she was doing. It happens a lot. The casino doesn’t care, as long as the gamblers are happy. It’s not, like, prostitution, you know,” she hastened to add. “Most of the time, sex isn’t part of the deal. But yeah, that’s what a lot of the girls do. And Tiffany’s good at it. All the men liked her because she was different.” She made her point by flipping her long, black hair over her shoulder.
“Including Lance Marsee? The man who lives with Tiffany in her trailer.” Was this “Archimedes” actually Marsee? Had he been hanging out at the casino to keep an eye on his girl working the clientele?
Jaycee laughed. “You bet he did. He was the mark after Whittaker. Tiffany let him get close, let him buy her things, the usual. He came to a couple of the parties at the country house. Then the cash ran out.” Jaycee’s expression suddenly became serious. “We all thought she’d cut him loose. But she didn’t. Hell, she let him move in with her. Like she wasn’t playing the game anymore, like she’d really fallen for him. We told her it was a dumb thing to do. The guy’s lost all his money gambling, and sold everything else, so what’s the point in letting him stay? All he does is lie around all day and eat her food. And then she got fired because of it. Even the casino people don’t want their girls going that far. I sure wouldn’t have traded everything I had for him.”
“I presume the ‘real’ boyfriend, Archimedes, didn’t like that Tiffany brought Lance home to live with her.”
“’Medes was pissed. She wasn’t supposed to fall for a mark, you know. To be honest, I don’t know exactly what the setup was with Lance. I know he thought she was his girlfriend… But after Lance moved in, Tiff didn’t talk about ’Medes anymore. And it wasn’t like she’d moved on, didn’t care about him. More that she was afraid of him. Afraid of what he might do.”
“Afraid of what he might do to her?”
“Her, him, both of them. That dude is not the kind of person you want to mess with.” She shrugged, rolled down the window, and tossed the cigarette onto the frozen grass. Casually, as if dangerous boyfriends were a fact of life.
Jaycee opened the car door and swung a leg out, but Sarah placed a restraining hand on the woman’s arm. “One last question,” she said. “Do you know where Tiffany might be now? It’s important that we find her.”
“I don’t have a clue. After she got fired, we really didn’t talk much anymore.” Her voice trailed off, and she blushed.
Sarah could fill in the rest. Jaycee was ashamed because she didn’t stay in touch, didn’t want to risk her own job by continuing to hang out with Tiffany after the casino let her go. There were friends, Sarah reflected as she watched the girl squirm, and then there were friends.
“Okay, thanks,” Sarah said. “You’ve been a big help. If you think of anything else, give me a call.” She handed the woman her card.
Jaycee took it, clearly relieved that Sarah hadn’t pressed further. She shoved the card in her jeans pocket and ran back inside the house.
17
Holder turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. His eyes stung as he groped blindly for a towel. It was almost noon. He was just now dragging himself out of bed after a late night with the Trailer Park Tweakers, but that was okay. The crowd he was hanging with wouldn’t recognize a sunrise if he painted them a picture of one and hung it on their wall.
He toweled off his face and chest and roughed up his hair. Slicked in just the right amount of gel to make it look like he didn’t use any. Wrapped the towel around his waist and leaned over the sink to brush his teeth. Just because he was pretending to be a homeless guy living out of his car didn�
��t mean he had to smell like one. Besides, homeless people had resources. A person could take a shower at shelter, or at a park that had a beach with changing rooms, or at a gym. The idea of a homeless person having a gym membership probably sounded ridiculous to some people, but not everyone was on the streets because they didn’t have any money. For twenty bucks a month, you could get a gym membership with a locker where you could store your valuables, plus you got to work out, keep in shape. Only the loonies living in boxes didn’t take a shower. But they could have if they wanted to.
He walked barefoot into his apartment’s small kitchen and sat down at the table. The first aid supplies were still laid out from the night before. He unwound the wet gauze from around his hand and examined his palm. The skin was intact, so that was good, though it was white and wrinkly from the shower. Tender as hell and gonna hurt even worse when the dead skin peeled away, but Holder didn’t regret what he’d done for a second. Imagine what would’ve happened to Campbell’s little man if he hadn’t come along.
Neil Campbell. Dude was in a bad way, for sure. All Holder had to do was flex his right hand to understand why they were keeping him under. Full body burns were no joke. Campbell was going to have a bad time of it from here on out, but he hoped for the little guy’s sake that he made it. Wasn’t his fault his pops was a cooker. And a loser pops was still better than no pops at all. Especially when your moms was completely out of the picture. Holder remembered asking Campbell about it; you had to get close to your potential informers, find their push buttons. According to Campbell, he’d got custody after the mother left. At least she’d stuck around long enough to sign the boy over. Done it properly. Some moms dropped their kids at school and never came back. Still, she could have found a nicer guy to have a kid with. Campbell wasn’t a nice guy, except to his kid.
He flexed his hand again and pulled out a strip of gauze. Anchored one end with his elbow on the table and started wrapping. Held the gauze taut with his teeth while he cut off a piece of tape and wrapped the tape around his hand. The burn was going to leave a fair-sized scar, but it wouldn’t be the only identifying mark on Holder’s body. Some his dad had given him when he was a kid. Some he’d earned on the job. Some he’d added by choice: the word “SERENITY” tattooed across his chest in large Gothic letters, and the cross on the back of his neck. If Holder ever ended up on a slab in the morgue, the M.E. wouldn’t need fingerprints to put a name to his body.