Fury

by G. M. Ford

Wald’s posture stiffened. The implication was clear. The SPD property room wasn’t exactly the public library. “Now why would anybody want to do a thing like that?”

  “So they could accessorize Kelly Doyle with it.”

  Wald stopped mid-munch. “To what purpose?” he asked tentatively.

  “To make damn sure she was listed as a Trashman victim.”

  “Who says she wasn’t?”

  “I do.”

  He finished chewing. Finished the coffee. Looked Corso in the eye.

  “You got somebody specific in mind? Or you just talking out your ass?”

  “I’ll tell you a little story, and then you tell me.”

  “Have at it.”

  “I talked to a woman named Paula Ziller last night. She’s a securities analyst, lives down in Portland. Used to be Kelly Doyle’s best friend.” Wald stopped swirling the dregs of his coffee and locked his eyes on Corso, as if daring him to continue. Instead, Corso pulled two pieces of folded paper from his coat pocket. Held them between his middle and index fingers and offered them to the cop. Wald pulled his head back, as if Corso was trying to hand him a weasel. Then finally reached out and plucked the pages from Corso’s fingers. Flattened them on the counter and began to read. He read both pages once and then started at the beginning and went through them again.

  “Sound like anybody we know?” Corso asked.

  “Sounds like a whole lotta people.”

  “That letter isn’t in Kelly Doyle’s file.”

  “How—” he began.

  “I’ve got a copy of the file, remember? You and I xeroxed it with our own little hands.”

  Wald went silent.

  “You know her father?” Corso asked.

  “The Doyle girl?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He was just before my time. I hear he went sideways with his piece.”

  “The Ziller woman says Kelly Doyle dated most of the known world and none of it was a problem for her mother. Both she and the mother claim they were real close. Shared everything.”

  “I’m touched. I really am, but you got a point here, Corso?”

  “Mama Doyle told me there was only one kind of man her daughter best never bring home.”

  “What kind was that?”

  “A cop.”

  Wald shrugged and turned away. “Who can blame her? I’m bettin’ my wife feels the same way about our daughters.”

  Wald winced when Corso pulled a newspaper photo from the same pocket.

  “I showed the Ziller woman this.”

  Wald looked like he wanted to close his eyes and put his fingers in his ears.

  “She says the second guy on the left is the guy she saw Kelly Doyle arguing with, a week before she died.”

  Wald shot the photo a quick glance and then pulled a napkin from the dispenser and dabbed at his lips.

  “What did I ever do to deserve you?” he muttered.

  “I want to see the property room log books for the two days between when Himes was arrested and Kelly Doyle was found.”

  Wald blew a long whistle. Scratched the back of his neck.

  “You realize what you’re asking me to do?”

  “I’m asking you to put a murderer where he belongs.”

  “Says you.”

  “We can sure as hell find out, now can’t we?”

  “There’s gotta be some other explanation.”

  “I’m all ears, Wald. What you got in mind?”

  He used his forefinger to pick at the sore on his lip. “Lotta people have access to the property room.”

  “Do they all sign in?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “And they have to sign out for specific items. Just like you and I had to do the other day.”

  “Far as I know.”

  “Then why not have a look?” Before he could object, Corso went on. “If you’re right and you have a look and his name’s not there, then we can let this whole thing settle. If you find what I’m saying you’re going to find, then it’s a grounder, right? I mean…what are the chances? We’ve got a two-day time window from the day Himes was arrested till the day Kelly Doyle was found. How many people can have signed out for that particular piece of property, within that period of time?”

  “And if it’s there?”

  “Then have a look at the sign-outs for Kelly Doyle’s file. If we get a doubleheader, then it’s a slam dunk. We explain all the ten brides stuff. We explain the missing set of clothes. We explain the missing tag and the letter. Neat as can be. End of story. Our boy inherits Himes’s seat on the gurney.”

  Wald wiped the corners of his mouth with his thumb and forefinger.

  “This is bad juju, Corso,” he said. “In case you forgot, we got a funeral for a dead cop this afternoon.” He wagged a finger Corso’s way. “A cop who, at the time of his death, was my partner.” He paused to let it sink in. “We got a general public still wants to fry Walter Himes. A million people who don’t give a rat’s ass we took the real perp down. They still want Himes dead. Period.” He waved a thick hand. “Instead, they turn on the tube and there’s Himes sitting up in Harborview on their dime. Stuffin’ his face and talking to the press about what he’s gonna do with all the money he gets from the city.” He waved again. “Downtown is like a fucking circus. Kesey tried to fire a secretary for dripping coffee on his desk. Everybody is out of their minds. Scared shitless.” Wald looked away. “I’ve got eighteen years of my life into this. I’m thirty-six hours from being promoted to lieutenant when I really ought to get fired or sent back to foot patrol and, all of a sudden, the whole department looks like a joke. A sideshow. Like we’re the fucking Keystone Kops or something.”

  “You know I’m right,” Corso said.

  “Oh…you’re a mind reader now too. You know what I’m thinking.”

  Wald’s face was blank, but the tips of his ears were bright red.

  “Holy Mary mother of God,” he said. Checked his watch.

  He threw a five-dollar bill on the counter. Pinned Corso with his glare.

  “Shift changes at twelve-thirty. I’ll have a look then, but I’m telling you, man, I hope to God you’re wrong,” he said.

  “Tell you the truth, Wald, I kinda hope so too. This story doesn’t need any more twists and turns.”

  Wald jammed his hands in his overcoat pockets. “Gimme a number. I’ll call you after the funeral.”

  Corso watched him leave. Pulled the phone from his pocket and dialed Dougherty’s number again. Same deal. Just rings forever. Unplugged.

  The counterman reappeared; he pulled a gray plastic tub from beneath the counter and set Wald’s dishes inside. “How’s the chili?” Corso asked the kid.

  “Canned,” the kid said with a glint.

  “Gimme a bowl and a large glass of milk.”

  Chapter 37

  Wednesday, September 26

  3:04 P.M. Day 6 + 4

  Butler Parking Garage. All the way down to the bottom, he’d said. Five floors. As close to three o’clock as he could make it.

  The oily grit on the floor caused Corso’s shoes to slip with nearly every step. The place smelled like they’d used urine instead of water to mix the concrete. The only parked car was a ’69 Pontiac convertible. Red. Ghetto sled extraordinaire. All fins and flourishes. The four flat tires and the inch and a half of dust suggested it had been a while since this baby had cruised the Malt Shoppe.

  Two thirds of the way down his esophagus, the glass of milk was losing a titanic battle with the chili. Felt like he had a candle in his chest. Shoulda held the onions.

  It was seven after three when a dim green bulb came on over the elevator. The door slid back with a bump, but nobody stepped out. From where he was, Corso could just make out the tip of a toe holding the door open.

  The sound of his slipping shoes ricocheted around the walls as he made his way over. Wald. Standing at the front of the elevator car. Fresh from the funeral in his dress blues. Sick expression on his face
.

  “I want two promises from you,” he said.

  “Like?”

  “First I want to make damn sure I’m clean on these.” He waved a large manila envelope. “They’re clean from my end. You make sure they stay clean from yours. It gets out I had anything to do with this, I might as well just transfer to internal affairs with the rest of the rats.”

  “You have my word on it. What else?”

  Wald stared at Corso long and hard. “I want to hear that I won’t be seeing you again. Or hearing from you. Or anything. This needs to be the last time I ever lay eyes on you.”

  Corso grinned. “You could hurt a guy’s feelings talking like that, Wald.”

  The cop stiffened. “I’m not in the mood, Corso. I buried a fellow officer this afternoon. The fact that I didn’t much like him or that you didn’t much like him or that he wasn’t much of a cop…you know…somehow, when it came to putting him in the ground, none of that mattered. He still had parents and a sister and her kids sitting there. And his dying still”—he searched for a word—“diminishes…his death diminishes all of us. Individually and as a department.” He held out the brown envelope. Grimaced. “And now I’m going to contribute to this debacle,” he said disgustedly. “As if we don’t look bad enough already.”

  Corso took hold of the envelope. Wald hung on. The envelope swung between them, like one of those old pictures of the Great White Father and the Indians signing a treaty and then holding it up for all to see.

  “I thought about lying to you. Telling you it wasn’t there. But you’re so goddamn insistent, you’d just get somebody else to check it out for you. I thought about tearing out the pages. Burning them. Telling you to go fuck yourself.”

  “So…what stopped you?”

  “I don’t know,” he said after a moment. “I really don’t.”

  Wald released his grip on the envelope. Corso let it fall to his side. Wald opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it. Punched the button.

  She picked it up on the tenth ring.

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey yourself.”

  “How you doin’?”

  “Fine. You?”

  “I’m a little sore,” he said. “Musta used a few muscles I haven’t used in quite a while.”

  She laughed. “One in particular.”

  “That one’s fine. It’s the rest of me that’s broke down.”

  “Must be middle age,” she teased.

  A crackle of static ran through the line and then faded to silence.

  “I’ve been calling—” he began.

  “I had it unplugged.”

  They both spoke at once; he heard her laugh.

  “About the other night…” she began.

  “What night was that?”

  “Don’t start with me, Corso.”

  “You always say that.”

  “I don’t generally drink that much.”

  “Do we have to talk about it?”

  “Yes, Corso…I know it’s your worst nightmare, but we do.”

  “Then let’s do it in person,” Corso said. “I’d feel better about it that way.”

  “I’ve got a lot to do today.”

  “Dinner?”

  Pause. “Where?”

  “Depends on what you’re in the mood to eat.”

  “Red meat,” she said. “And thick red wine.”

  “Metropolitan Grill. Eight o’clock.”

  “Corso…you know, just because we…we…you know…doesn’t mean we have to make like we’re going steady or anything.”

  Longer pause. “Look…if you don’t want to…”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Eight o’clock.”

  “Hawes.”

  “Corso.”

  “What—you’ve had a change of heart and want to get back into the newspaper game?”

  “Maybe we get you that Pulitzer nomination after all.”

  “How so?”

  “Maybe help your boy Newton make his bones while we’re at it.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  Except for a single “holy shit,” muttered about halfway through, he stayed that way until Corso finished talking.

  “Wait a second,” he said. A series of clicks came over the line. Two minutes passed. Then Hawes’s voice again. “Mrs. V.’s on with us,” he said.

  “And you’ve got all this documented?” she wanted to know.

  “Big as life. I’ve got copies of the evidence room sign-out sheets for both files. He signed the Mitchell woman’s file out the day after Himes was arrested. He’s checked the Doyle file nearly twice a month for over three years.”

  “Will your source come forward, if necessary?” she asked.

  “No. My source is untouchable. If we’re not prepared to go to the wall to protect the source, then we should drop a quarter and give the story away.”

  They thought it over. “What did you have in mind for breaking the story?” she asked.

  Corso told her. Hawes whistled. “You are a troublemaker, aren’t you?”

  “It’s more dramatic that way. They always field questions at the end. All the local affiliates will have a team there. That way, Newton’s face ends up all over the evening news. Get his name in the lead paragraph in every paper, coast to coast.”

  “And what do you get out of this?” Hawes asked.

  “I get to crawl back under my rock.”

  “I wish we had more,” Mrs. V. said.

  “Don’t we always.”

  “You’re doing that ‘we’ thing again,” Hawes said.

  “I’ve got an idea, though.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Let me ask you a question, Hawes. If you were stepping out on your wife, how would you handle it.”

  “I’d double my life insurance. Louise ever caught me—”

  “Seriously. If you were conducting a little liaison on the side, where would you meet your sweetie? Would you find a little love nest, where nobody knows either of you and stick with it? Meet there all the time? Or would you move around from place to place, for a little variety?”

  “I’d find a place and stick with it.”

  “Me too,” said Corso.

  “Wallingford.”

  “That’s it. Send Newton and anybody else you can spare. Have them show pictures around. Especially the hotels and motels. She lived with her mother. He was creeping around on his girlfriend. They had to be doing the hokeypokey somewhere. Chances are that if the Ziller woman saw them together, so did somebody else.”

  “You know, Mr. Corso…whether Mr. Newton or anyone else breaks the news, the smart money is going to figure the story came through you.”

  “They’ll have to find me.”

  Chapter 38

  Thursday, September 27

  9:23 A.M. Day 6 + 5

  At the Fairway buoy, less than fifty feet of water slipped beneath the hull. He reached up and set the autopilot for 3:39. Magnetic. The twin Lehman diesels purred at two thousand RPMs. Turning into the wind at a stately twelve knots, the bow plowed contentedly into endless rows of rising green waves, which curled but did not break. Overhead, the sun looked like a tarnished nickel trying desperately to assert itself in a silver sky. The water ahead shimmered with silver light.

  The depth sounder began to question itself as the bottom fell away. Sixty-five feet and then a hundred and five. One-fifty. And then suddenly the sounder lost touch. Its ultrasonic impulses no longer able to bounce off the rapidly retreating bottom.

  To the east, the Magnolia Bluffs loomed white against the haze. He lifted the binoculars. Picture windows and planter boxes. Glass-topped tables and furled umbrellas. Hawaiian torches around the patio. An empty hammock hanging thick and wet between two trees.

  The sounder chattered again at two hundred feet, began to spew random numbers and then slid into a sustained electronic beep. He reached up and switched it off.

  “What’s that thing’s p
roblem?” she asked.

  “The bottom’s too deep to read.”

  “So how do you keep track of how deep it is?”

  “You read the chart.”

  She sat and peered at the chart for a moment, then pointed with a long fingernail. “Is this where we are?”

  He bent and looked down at the chart table. “Yeah. The depth is the black numbers.”

  “Six hundred feet,” she said tentatively.

  “That’s about right,” he said. “It falls away in a big hurry.”

  She rolled open the starboard door and gazed out at the blots of half-million-dollar houses covering the side of the hill, half a mile away. “You think they know?” she asked. “You know, that they’re like sitting there and right out here under the water it’s like the end of the world. Like the abyss.”

  “Nah,” he said. “They’re just pleased to have front-row seats for the surface of things.”

  They were across the shipping channel now, pointed directly at Kingston and the Kitsap Peninsula, where a pair of ferries looped gracefully around each other. She got to her feet and put an arm around his waist, slid her hand down inside the right-hand pocket of his jeans. He moved his left hand up under her hair to the back of her neck. With his right hand, he disengaged the autopilot. Took the wheel, aiming at an imaginary point in the silver foam between the ferries.

  Chapter 39

  Thursday, September 27

  9:23 A.M. Day 6 + 5

  Dorothy Sheridan straightened the red-white-and-blue bunting, tapped the microphones one last time, and then stepped down from the stage. The interview with Taylor and Abrams had gone well. Monica had called Tuesday night to say T. and A., as she liked to call them, were going to make Dorothy an offer, but it was Thursday, and she hadn’t heard anything. A timid voice in her head kept saying that maybe it was all for the best.

  She checked her notes. First it was the kid. Robert Boyd. He was Seifort’s baby. The mayor’s Whistle-blower’s Award. Stanley’d say a few words, hand the kid the plaque and the check, and then it was her turn with the Post guy. Good Citizen Award. That was easy. She’d seen it for herself. Been there when he’d tackled poor Mr. Nisovic. Give him the check and the medal and then hand off to Chief Kesey. Promotion for Sergeant Wald and a valor commendation for Chucky Donald. She shook her head in wonder. The only thing funnier than a Seattle Sun employee getting an award from the mayor was Chucky Donald getting anointed for valor.