The Mia Quinn Collection

by Lis Wiehl

  “The atmospheric pressure would kill you long before you reached the bottom. And around here, even if you floated, you’d die from hypothermia in an hour or two.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You know, Charlie, that doesn’t actually make me feel better.”

  “Sorry,” he said. Sometimes being around Mia severed the connection between his brain and his mouth. “Anyway, I called Puyallup County this morning, asked them to reopen Scott’s case. I told them about the Suburban’s brake line being cut.”

  Mia bit her lip. “Did you tell them about what we found in the basement?”

  “I mostly said they should look at the medical evidence again. Between that and the brake line, I think that’s more than enough for them to start with.” Charlie had begun by contacting the traffic division, but they hadn’t been very responsive. He had finally asked to be transferred to the sheriff, who had listened without much comment. He had promised to look into it himself and get back to Charlie.

  “Before we get to her house, you should know that I went to see Tamsin today,” Mia said.

  “What? Why?” Charlie asked. “Is she conscious?” Mia couldn’t conduct interviews on her own, because she couldn’t put herself on the stand to testify about what she had learned.

  “I just wanted to see her for myself. And I also wanted to get out of the office. I couldn’t get any work done. Everyone wanted to talk about what happened yesterday, and right now I don’t want to think about it.” She pressed her lips together. “But looking at Tamsin was hard. Her head’s all stitched up, her face is puffed up, and they had to take out part of her skull until the swelling goes down. They ended up kicking me out of the room because her heart started beating too fast.” She sighed. “When I think about Gabe, I know that kids make mistakes. But when I think about Tamsin in that hospital bed, I feel like these boys deserve the maximum.”

  When Charlie saw the Merritts’ house, he let out a low whistle. Although if this was called a house, then what Charlie lived in would be considered a hovel. A cardboard box.

  It was four thousand square feet, easy. Charlie’s house could have fit inside twice, with room to spare. But in this neighborhood, which he was pretty sure had once been a Seattle Street of Dreams project, the sprawling two-story house with its four-car garage was not even the biggest house in the development.

  When he pressed the doorbell, it played a snatch of something classical. He and Mia looked at each other, eyebrows raised, and then the door opened. He was half expecting a maid in a starched black dress and white apron, but instead it was a tall man Charlie assumed must be Tamsin’s husband. On the rare times Charlie was home, he was usually dressed in gray sweatpants and a T-shirt, but this guy was wearing a navy-blue suit cut close to his athletic body.

  Mia had said Wade worked in investments, and although she hadn’t been sure what that meant, to Charlie it was clear: lots and lots of money.

  “Charlie Carlson,” Charlie said, putting out his hand. “Seattle police.” He left out “homicide.” No need to spike the guy’s worry about his wife.

  “Wade Merritt.” His grip was a little too firm.

  “And I’m Mia Quinn with the King County prosecutor.”

  Charlie noticed that Mia didn’t wince when Wade shook her hand, so he had either taken it down a notch or she was good at hiding pain.

  They followed him into the living room, which had a gleaming pale wood floor and floor-to-ceiling windows. In the middle of the space, two brown leather couches flanked a matching love seat and ottoman. It took Charlie a second to figure out what was missing. Instead of a big-screen TV, the furniture was grouped in front of a stone fireplace.

  Unlike Charlie’s house, the space was totally uncluttered by half-read magazines and newspapers, dirty dishes, teetering piles of mail, takeout boxes, or discarded clothes. But it also didn’t seem to be a place where people actually lived.

  “You have a beautiful home,” Mia told Wade as he sat down on one couch and they took the other.

  “Thank you.” He sighed and nodded. “All Tamsin’s doing.”

  “Is she a homemaker?” Mia asked. The word sounded so old-fashioned, but in this case it certainly fit. Something this beautiful could not have happened by itself.

  “She’s that, but a lot more.” Wade’s breathing hitched for a second. “She’s also something of a philanthropist. She’s very passionate about her causes. Health care for the homeless, low-income housing, helping single moms go back to school, cheering up kids with cancer . . .” He squeezed the bridge of his nose and was silent for a long moment while he blinked rapidly. “She says we’ve been given so much that we have to give back. She has a soft heart.”

  “Your wife sounds like a very generous person,” Charlie said.

  “She is.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Not only with money, but with time. You want someone on your board, it’s Tamsin. And I’m not just talking about schmoozing with folks like us. No, she’ll plan the event, arrange the venue, write the newsletter, photocopy it, fold it, and stick the copies in the envelopes.” He took a long, shaky breath. “She’s helped so many people, and then those two punks go and drop a shopping cart on her.”

  Mia leaned forward. “The reason that we’re here, Wade, is I’m the prosecutor assigned to your wife’s case. We anticipate that the boys who did it will be arrested in the next day or two. After they are, I’ll need to decide whether to charge them as adults or juveniles.”

  “They’re not boys,” Wade said. “They’re not kids.”

  “They’re not?” Charlie echoed mildly.

  “They’re animals.” The word exploded out of his mouth.

  Mia sat back in her chair, as if to put some distance between them. “I’ll need to do some investigation to understand their frame of mind,” she said as if he hadn’t spoken. “What they were thinking. How well they understood the consequences of their actions.”

  “What is there to understand?” Wade’s face was red. “Animals like that aren’t capable of thinking. They just wanted to hurt someone. Wanted to destroy. They didn’t care what damage they did. They dropped nearly fifty pounds of metal onto my wife’s skull from four stories up. Even an idiot, even an animal, would know what that would do.”

  “The law hinges greatly on intent,” Mia said carefully. “A person who means to run someone over is treated very differently from a drunk who hits someone accidentally.”

  “But either way, my wife is still lying in a hospital bed with part of her skull in a freezer. At my company we make decisions based on the bottom line. The intention doesn’t mean squat. The only thing that matters is the results. And the result of their actions is that my wife is in a coma in intensive care.”

  “We understand that this is devastating, Wade,” Mia said.

  Charlie nodded. If it were his wife, he would feel the same.

  “It’s a lot more than that.” Wade took a ragged breath. “It’s my duty to speak for Tamsin now. So I will say what she would not be able to, because of her soft heart. I want them tried as adults and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Those punks destroyed my beautiful wife. Even if she lives, she’ll never be the same.”

  “Thank you for telling me how you feel.” Mia’s words were even. “That’s exactly why we came to see you. I also went to see your wife a few hours ago.”

  Wade jumped to his feet and grabbed his keys from his pocket. “What? She’s conscious? Why didn’t they call me!”

  CHAPTER 20

  Silently, Charlie swore to himself. Wade Merritt thought his wife was awake.

  “No, no,” Mia said hastily. “Your wife is still in the medically induced coma. I just wanted to get a better understanding of what happened. That’s why I visited her in the hospital, that’s why we’re talking to you, and that’s why we’ll also be talking to those boys’ teachers and counselors. Maybe the kids themselves, if their lawyers will let us.”

  Merritt sat back down heavily.
“When I first saw her, I didn’t even recognize her, and we’ve been married for seventeen years. Her face is so swollen, and they shaved off half her hair.” He raised his hand to touch his own dark hair, threaded with silver.

  “It must have been a terrible shock,” Mia said softly.

  “She was actually dead. Did they tell you that?”

  They both nodded.

  “If it weren’t for that doctor, the one who was shopping in the store, she might have stayed dead. As it is, she is never going to be the same. They can’t even tell me if she’ll ever be able to walk or talk. She could be lying in a bed like that for the rest of her life.”

  It was Charlie’s worst nightmare. To be neither dead nor alive, but something in between. The legs drawing up to the chin as the muscles stiffened and contracted, the hands curling into claws, the skin breaking down from bedsores.

  “Our son, Luke, was standing right next to her.” Merritt’s mouth folded in on itself. “It’s only sheer chance that he wasn’t hit. As it was, he’s traumatized.”

  “We’d like to talk to him too,” Charlie said. “Just for a few minutes.”

  “No.” Merritt’s jaw clenched as he shook his head.

  “Trust me, your son is already thinking about what happened whether anyone talks to him or not,” Charlie said.

  “He’s also a witness,” Mia said. “He’ll be called to testify. I need to know what he will say, and it’s better if I talk to him now.”

  Merritt was silent for a long moment. Finally he nodded and got to his feet. They followed him down miles of hallway. Most of the doors were closed, although Charlie did catch an envious glimpse of a home gym that looked better than the one he paid a monthly membership for and kept swearing he’d visit.

  Merritt stopped in front of a door with a poster of a wolf taped to it. Some kind of rap music was playing, but it stopped abruptly after he knocked.

  The kid who answered the door was in that awkward stage, lanky and slumped, cheeks stippled with red acne. “What?” He stood so that his body blocked their view of his room.

  “This is Detective Carlson from the police department and Ms. Quinn from the prosecutor’s office. They’re here to talk to us about what happened to Mom.”

  “Actually, we’d rather talk to him alone,” Charlie said. “It won’t take more than five or ten minutes.”

  Wade looked at his son and back at them. “I guess that’s okay. I’ll be just down the hall if you need me.”

  Or, Charlie guessed, right outside the door trying to listen.

  Luke stepped back to let them in.

  “Luke!” Wade said as he caught a glimpse. “Your room is a pigsty. You have to clean it up.”

  “I will.” He said it with just enough conviction that everyone could pretend they believed he was telling the truth.

  It was true that his room was far more lived-in looking than the rest of the house. The bed was unmade. Cast-off clothes lay in a pile next to a hamper. His desk held an open laptop, a skateboarding magazine, a copy of The Catcher in the Rye, a half-eaten slice of pizza, three open cans of Monster energy drink, and a crumpled bag that had once held Doritos. The room smelled like feet.

  The kid sat down at his desk, but there were no other chairs in the room. Rather than perching on the edge of his unmade bed, Charlie and Mia remained standing.

  “We wanted to talk to you a little bit about what happened,” Mia said. “We believe the boys who did it are about your age, maybe a year or two older. It’s my job as the prosecutor in charge of this case to decide whether to try them as adults or juveniles.”

  His nod was almost imperceptible. His eyes—and even his fingers—were on his computer, which was open to Facebook. He was scrolling through status updates.

  “Can you tell us more about that day?” Mia said in a soft voice.

  “Me and my mom went to the store.” His fingers stilled, but he kept his face angled toward his computer. “They were having a special on T-shirts. Three for the price of two, plus she had a store coupon.”

  Charlie couldn’t help but think of the beautiful house that surrounded them, the Lexus and the Audi in the driveway. He was willing to bet that Tamsin had grown up poor.

  “And then what happened?” he prompted.

  “We were walking across this, like, little road. I heard some kids shouting above us, but I didn’t pay any attention.” He pressed his lips together until they turned white. “I didn’t even look up. And then one of them like yelled something, and I heard a scraping noise and all of a sudden this big metal thing came crashing down out of nowhere. I didn’t even know it was a shopping cart at first. And Mom got hit by the bar in front—you know, on the bottom? She got pushed to the ground and there was, like, like a dent on her forehead.” He was choking back tears now, his face as red as his zits. “And she wasn’t moving. I was afraid to touch her. Afraid it would make things worse.”

  Mia stepped forward and cupped her hand over Luke’s shoulder. He looked down at it, but he didn’t move away.

  “And then this dude in a dark hoodie ran up. He was crying so hard there was snot running down his face. He just kept saying how sorry he was. He was going to touch my mom, but I shoved him and made him get away from her. Some lady kept yelling that she had called 911. And then there was a guy who said he was a doctor, and he started helping my mom. And when I looked around for the kid in the dark hoodie, I didn’t see him anymore.” His voice broke. “Is she going to live? Do you know? Dad won’t tell me. He took me to see her yesterday, but she looks like she’s dead.”

  Mia and Charlie looked at each other. Her eyes looked panicked. Was she picturing Gabe in a similar situation? He leaned in. “She’s made it this far, buddy. I think that’s a pretty good sign.”

  The boy’s shoulders loosened a little.

  “Could you identify either of the boys who dropped the cart?” Mia asked.

  Luke bit his lip. “I don’t think so. Not even the one who ran up. I maybe saw one of them look over the edge after it happened, but it just happened so fast it’s like a blur. I was mostly just wanting to help my mom.”

  Charlie had been afraid of this. Between the kid’s testimony and the fuzzy videotape, they just had to hope that Manny’s testimony would put both boys firmly on the scene.

  “The thing is, what I heard before the shout? I think it was the sound of them laughing.” Luke blinked and tears ran out of his eyes. “Laughing.”

  CHAPTER 21

  For the past few weeks, Eli Hall had been looking forward to watching Mia go after a witness. Not just because she was by far the most attractive woman he had met since moving to Seattle. But he had also heard that Mia Quinn was an excellent litigator, smart, fast on her feet, and good at coining turns of phrase that stuck in a juror’s head like advertising jingles.

  Eli and Mia were both adjunct professors at the University of Washington’s law school. This evening they would be modeling cross-examination for the law students, using “facts” provided by Titus Brown, the program’s director, for a fictitious case about the murder of a clerk at a grocery store. First Eli would do a direct examination of his witness, a memory expert (really a student playing the part). Then it would be Mia’s turn. Using the same set of imaginary facts Eli had been given, Mia would try to take the witness apart.

  But when he saw her in the staff break room before class began, Mia seemed less than present. He touched her arm. “Are you sure you’re okay to be teaching today? After what happened?”

  “I’m fine.” The blue shadows under her eyes put the lie to her words. “They got that guy off me right away and he didn’t hurt me.” After a moment’s hesitation, she added, “There’re some other things going on, though.”

  “What’s wrong? Is it Brooke or Gabe?” His Rachel was sixteen. Eli knew what it took to raise a teenager on your own.

  “No. It’s not the kids. It’s my, my”—she stumbled over the words—“my husband. There’s a possibility his death wasn�
�t an accident.”

  “What do you mean?” As soon as he said the words, Eli wished he could call them back. Of course she meant suicide.

  “It’s possible he was murdered.”

  He blinked. “I thought he died in a car accident.”

  “Supposedly the injuries don’t add up. It looks like he was beaten after the accident.”

  “Do you think it’s really possible he was murdered?”

  “I don’t know.” She sighed. Her eyes looked wet, and Eli had to resist the sudden urge to put his arm around her shoulder. “I honestly don’t know.” She looked at her watch. “I guess we should go in.” She turned toward him. “Don’t say anything to anyone, okay?”

  Eli nodded, but that didn’t stop him from wondering. In the classroom, he half listened as Titus began to lecture about cross-examination.

  “The purpose of cross is to corroborate your case.” Titus had a preacher’s cadence. “If you’ve watched too many movies, you might think your goal is to have the witness dramatically break down on the stand and admit his own guilt.” He wagged a finger. “No. Because that will never happen. Instead, you use the cross to tell your story to the jury. You highlight inconsistent statements, suspect motivation, and lack of truthfulness. On the direct, the witness is the star. But on cross-examination, it’s the lawyer.

  “Remember that you control the witness.” He pointed at the students. “You must maintain the upper hand. Keep the cross brisk. Don’t give him time to think. Lead the witness by getting him to agree with you. Then build one fact on top of another, like bricks. And remember to ask short leading questions. Now, I know it’s not easy for a lawyer to ask a short question, but you must.

  “Learn to use your head. No, not by thinking, but by simply moving it up and down.” He demonstrated. “Humans are hardwired to mirror each other, so if you nod, the witness will too. And never get into an argument with the witness. There’s an old saying: ‘Don’t argue with a fool, because the jury may not be able to tell the difference.’ ” Laughter rippled through the students. “Whether you like it or not, the truth is that many times the jury is looking for form, not substance. If you can make a witness backtrack, babble, or even just look confused while you look calm, you’ll have the upper hand.”