“You gotta be kiddin’ me,” Miguel said.
I stood there, my mouth slightly open. I glanced at Doc and he at me.
“They were here,” Doc said. “No question. They were definitely moving stuff.”
“You heard them clearly?” Miguel asked.
I nodded. “We both did. We’ve got like, twenty-twenty hearing. Especially Doc.”
“But you couldn’t see them.”
“No. I told you, we were next door. But they were here. For more than half an hour. I couldn’t open our door. If they’d had someone outside standing guard, we’d have been nailed.”
“Well then, there’s only one explanation.”
“You thought they were moving stuff around, bringing shit in.”
I nodded.
“They were taking it out,” Doc said.
Miguel looked at him. “Exactly. Whether on purpose or not, those bastards are still one step in front of us.”
Chapter 14
A light Seattle drizzle fell on the sidewalk in front of the Sylvia Lyon Gallery. It was nearly 6:00 p.m.—it had taken almost six hours to excavate the body, and the police and medical examiners were wrapping up and preparing to load the remains into an ME van. Toni was with us now—she drove Doc’s car over so that he could drive straight home from the scene. We stood to the side and watched.
“We ended up finding more than three hundred ounces of gold,” Brent Czerlinski said. Brent’s a friend of ours on the CSI Unit. “Our metal detector was going apeshit. Almost twenty pounds, all in nuggets. We figure most likely, the gold was either stuffed in some sort of fabric bag he was carrying or maybe just tucked into a coat pocket. The fabric broke down over the years, and the gold just fell out around him.”
“What’s it worth?” Steve asked.
“We were talking about that,” Brent said. “One of our guys has an app on his phone. He checked, and gold’s going for a little over $1,300 an ounce today, give or take. At that, three hundred ounces comes to about $400 grand, maybe a little less. But still, a lot of money.”
I nodded.
“I wonder who he was?” Toni asked.
“Now there’s a mystery,” Brent said. “He’s old, that’s for sure—maybe a hundred years, maybe even a little older. The crime lab will run some tests, try to narrow that down. There was no wallet—no ID. There’s a few scraps of clothes we can try and date, but not too much. But we found something interesting that might turn out to be a good lead.” He turned to another tech. “You guys ship it out yet?”
“No.”
“Hold on,” Brent said. He walked over to where the remains were packaged up, then returned carrying a small box. “Check this out.” He opened the box, reached in, and lifted up a clear plastic evidence bag that held a dusty silver pocket watch with the initials “G. T.” engraved on the outside. “Look inside,” he said. Through the plastic bag, he unclasped the watch, and it popped open. The inside cover was engraved: “To my darling George—with love always, Felicity.”
“So this was George T.,” I said. “Do you mind if I get a few pictures of this? We’ve got a guy back in our office who’s a genius at figuring this kind of thing out. He—”
I was interrupted by a group of men standing across the street near the entrance to Occidental Park suddenly bursting into laughter. We turned to look at them and, of course, it was the Russians, including Pavel Laskin and Freddie Sokolov. They were watching us, telling jokes, having a good time despite the rain. When Sokolov saw me, he rubbed his eyes, pretending to wipe away mock tears, which brought another round of laughter to the men. Except for Laskin. He stood a little off to the side, watching. The whole time, he never laughed, never spoke, never even smiled. He just stared. Right at me.
Miguel looked at them and then said, “You know, lookin’ at those idiots? It reminds me that Pavel Laskin’s clearly a guy who doesn’t seem at all reluctant to use violence to protect himself.”
“Yeah,” Steve said. “And what makes him even more dangerous is the fact that he doesn’t seem too worried about getting caught.”
“What are you saying?” I asked.
“What I’m saying,” Miguel said, “is that even if he doesn’t figure out we were snooping around in his secret space down in the areaway, he’s standing right there looking at you—he's got to wonder what exactly you and Doc were doing down there in the first place. He keeps seeing you around here, pokin’ around like you are, he’s going to start to wonder. And if he wonders about it long enough, eventually he’ll get to the point where he feels threatened. And when that happens, he’s going to resort to violence. And then it might not be someone else he wants to dump into your trash can. He’s a violent guy—it’s what he knows. My point is that about the time Laskin decides that you’re a threat to him, there’s no telling what he might try and do to you.” He turned to Toni. “Or to her.”
“To me?” Toni said.
Miguel nodded. “Hell, yeah. This guy doesn’t play by any rules.”
Miguel didn’t know Toni too well, but her response was predictable. She looked across the street, right at Laskin. “We’ve faced down tougher guys than him. If he wants to come after us, let him. Bring it on.”
Chapter 15
Next morning on my training run at 6:45 the gun went off—pow!—just as I was getting ready to turn toward home on Dexter off Denny, right there at Denny Park.
Large caliber, right behind me. The shot was close—I could feel the compression in my back. I pictured Laskin’s fierce glare from the night before. I’d thought about Miguel’s warning about the Russian threat, and I’d already started to take action. Although I’d changed up my normal route this morning, I hadn’t actually expected anything this fast. I was a little surprised they could miss from that range, but I wasn’t complaining, and my reaction was immediate: I dove headfirst, right over the top of a short hedge and into the park. The euonymus bushes wouldn’t stop a bullet, but then again, if the Russians couldn’t see me, it would at least take a lucky shot to hit me. To bolster my odds, I immediately scooted forward on my stomach ten feet or so. Unfortunately, I was unarmed, dressed in runner’s garb as I was, so stealth and deception were all I had.
“Pow!” Another shot. I was sinking into the grass, trying to make myself as small a target as I could, when I heard a motor roar to life. Cautiously, I raised my head and looked through a small gap between the bushes. An old Ford Bronco was blocking early morning commuter traffic on Denny, revving its engine, kicking out a cloud of smoke behind it, when suddenly a six-foot tail of blue-and-yellow flame shot out its exhaust pipe, followed immediately by a third “Pow!”
I jumped—I couldn’t help myself—but the Bronco chugged off down Denny, backfiring three or four more times before I could no longer hear it. Holy crap! I dropped my head onto my outstretched arms in relief, took a deep breath, and waited for my heartbeat to return to some semblance of normal.
“Man, you okay?”
I quickly turned my head and saw two homeless men, both wrapped in blankets, lying along the inside of the hedge just past me. I hadn’t noticed them, focused as I’d been on my efforts to escape what I’d thought was a gunman.
I looked for a second, then nodded. “Yeah. That thing scared the shit out of me.”
One of the men gave a wheezy laugh. “Don’t it, though? We’re used to it by now. Sum-bitch comes by this time every morning, Monday through Friday, just like clockwork. Kind of like one of them wake-up calls, ’cept now I find myself waking up even ’fore he gets here. That really sucks.”
“Needs a tune-up,” the other man said, rubbing his eyes.
I stood up and brushed myself off before heading on home. Wake-up call. Maybe he was right.
* * * *
“I found him!” Kenny said as he bounced into the conference room two hours later.
“Who?”
“You sent me the pictures of the dead guy’s watch. I figured out who it is!”
I looked at
him. “Really? What’s it been, like twelve hours? What took you so long?”
He shrugged. “I worked on it last night. Man’s name was Tanner. George Tanner. He was from Wausau, Wisconsin, and he was just back from spending almost a year and a half in the Yukon.
“How the hell’d you find him so fast?”
He smiled. “I’ve got skills, boss. We knew his first name from the watch, and we also had a woman’s name, most likely his wife. Guy had gold nuggets, right? So I started looking for old newspaper stories about gold and missing people in the Klondike era. I started with the SS Portland on July 17, 1897, because that was the first boat back from the Klondike with miners who struck it rich. I figured with twenty pounds of gold on him, he had to have been a miner. The timing also works with what the ME told you. Anyway, before the Portland, there’d been no word of a big strike. So I decided that odds were good that our guy came on or after the Portland. I started my search then and bam! Right off the bat, there it was: George Tanner. I actually thought it would take a while because I had to scan papers the old-fashioned way—no database there. Check this out.” He handed me a printout of an old newspaper article.
GOLD! GOLD! GOLD! GOLD!
–––––-
Sixty-eight Rich Men on the Steamer Portland
–––––-
STACKS OF YELLOW METAL!
I scanned the article and when I was done, I said, “Dude, this is a little weak. You’re basing all this on the fact that you matched up a miner with the first name of George? I’d bet maybe twenty-five or thirty percent of all men were named George back then.”
He smiled. “Yeah, but did they all have a wife named Felicity?” He handed me another article. “And did they all go missing at the same time?”
S.S. PORTLAND MINER DISAPPEARS
–––––-
Misses Rendezvous with Wife
–––––-
SHERIFF SUSPECTS FOUL PLAY
“This article in the Seattle PI ran three days after the Portland landed. It says George was missing. His wife, Felicity, and their young son, George Junior, were supposed to have met him the day after he landed, but he wasn’t there. Can you imagine that?”
“I’ll be damned,” I said, as I scanned the article. “Felicity looked all over for George and the whole time, he was lying there at the bottom of that trench.” I handed the article back to him.
“Tell you what. Let me talk to Dwayne and Miguel after our meeting. I’ll give ’em what you already found, but I want the five of us to huddle up before we start passing out assignments. Great job.”
He nodded. “Thanks.”
* * * *
“He has an alibi.” Inez sounded disappointed over the phone. I was bringing her up to speed on events, even though I knew Miguel was also keeping her updated.
“He does?”
“Yes, unfortunately. We’re checking it out now. We had him in on Monday for an interview. He brought his lawyer. Laskin said he was with a girlfriend all night the night Markovic was murdered.”
“The girl’s solid?”
“So far. John’s digging into her.”
“You’ll like this,” she said. “He said Markovic was a good friend and a good employee. He said he thinks you killed him.”
“Me? Why?”
“Because his body was in the Dumpster at your apartment.”
“That’s because he put it there!”
“Most likely. But we have to prove it. And right now, I’ve got nothing. No witnesses. No bullet. No evidence at all.”
I took a deep breath. “Miguel said the guy was good at covering his tracks.”
“I know. He told me that, too.”
“Miguel’s worried that if we keep pushing, Laskin’s likely to explode in a violent fashion.”
“He might be right. I think you guys should be careful.”
* * * *
In my dream, I was running. Someone, I think it was Laskin, was chasing me, but then, a few moments later, it wasn’t Laskin. It was someone with a skeleton head and big empty holes for eyes. I tried to get away, but it was one of those dreams where you’re running on ice in a bowlful of jelly—a whole lot of action and very little results. Panic begins to build. Of course, Mr. Skeleton Head had no such handicap. He closed on me rapidly, his bones rattling against one another as he approached. As he drew near, he gave me a wicked grin, his sockets seeming to cut right through me. (I’m not sure how I could see this, running away as I was, but I did.) Just as he reached a long, bony hand in my direction, just as the terror reached a climax, some kind of “system override” circuit got tripped in my brain, and I woke with a start. Holy shit! Thank God for system override, and thank God it was just a dream.
I lay there in the dark, feeling my heart rate slow down. I reached for Toni and felt her sleeping easily beside me, and this comforted me. Even though I lay on my right side, facing away from the window, I could tell the night sky was mostly clear—a welcome relief this time of year. Bright beams from a full February moon blasted through the sheers Toni had installed on the sliding glass door and cast shadows across the room, all the way over to my side. My heart rate returned to normal, and memories of the dream receded. Then, as I watched, one of the shadows moved across the window and stopped and, for just a moment, the terror was back.
But only for a moment. I might have a little trouble fighting a skeleton in a bowl of jelly, particularly in my sleep, but if I’m wide-awake, I can deal with things. I quietly rolled over and looked out the sliding glass door to see the silhouette of a man on our patio.
I didn’t think he could see inside, but he surely could hear, so I moved quietly. I rolled over to Toni and whispered in her ear. “Toni!”
“Hmm.”
“Toni, wake up! There’s someone outside.”
“What?”
“Shhh! Not so loud. There’s someone on the patio.” I felt her tense up. Now she was awake. “Grab your Glock and stay here. I’m going to circle through the living room and go out that door. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. As soon as you hear me, call 9-1-1.” I rolled back over and reached beside the bed, where I keep my Benelli M4 at night. I carry a .45 during the day, and they’re great. But given the choice, I’ll take a good semi-auto 12-gauge in a house fight every time—a lesson learned compliments of some not-so-nice fellows in Afghanistan.
Unlike in my sidearm, I don’t keep a round in the chamber of the shotgun—another lesson learned in the Middle East. Which meant that I was going to have to rack it in order to chamber a round before it would fire. Of course, the good news is that the sound of racking a shotgun is not only unmistakable, it’s guaranteed to strike terror into the heart of any bad guy with half a brain. The trick is to do it at just the right moment. Too early, and you’ll scare him off. Too late and, well, you don’t want to be too late. The element of surprise is everything—flank the bad guy and then rack the shotgun. Pull it off right, and the fight’s over before it starts. You rarely have to fire.
I kept to the edges of the walls and crept stealthily out of the bedroom into the living room, being careful not to do something brilliant like kick a lamp over and make a noise that would alert whoever was out there. Once out of the bedroom, I was out of sight from the patio, and I hurried toward the sliding glass patio door. Carefully, I pushed aside the sheer and looked outside. Then I pushed it a little farther and looked again. The patio was empty.
“He’s gone!” I called out to Toni. “Don’t call.” I was not in the mood to stay up another two hours and try to convince a skeptical SPD officer that I thought I saw someone standing on my patio. Through the sheer blinds.
Toni joined me in the living room, carrying her sidearm. “You sure?”
I nodded. “That he’s gone? Yeah. Have a look.”
She did, and then she unlocked the door and slid it open.
We stepped outside and scanned the direction from which the intruder must have
approached. Our unit was on the corner, and it wasn’t hard to hop up on the retaining wall and then step right over our balcony rail. I looked over the edge of the patio. All was quiet now, but there were many ways a person could have escaped.
“You sure someone was here?”
I double-checked the patio, but I knew what I’d seen. “Yep.”
Toni nodded. “Okay. Should we check the front?” she asked.
“Yeah. He’s probably long gone, but let’s throw some clothes on and have a look.”
A minute later, we went outside. We spent twenty minutes checking out the building and the parking lot with flashlights, our weapons ready. As expected, we saw nothing.
“He was quick,” Toni said. “And quiet.”
“Yep. If it was Laskin, maybe that’s why they call him the Ghost.”
She gave a little shudder. “That’s a pleasant thought.”
I nodded. We looked around for a few more minutes, then walked back upstairs, me getting madder by the minute. Toni could tell.
“What’s the matter?”
“What’s the matter? He’s crossed a line, out there on our patio. There’s no way I’m going to sit around and let that son of a bitch pick the time and place he comes after us. Fuck that. Starting tomorrow, it’s time for offense.”
Chapter 16
I walked into the office at 8:45 a.m. carrying a bouquet of flowers for Toni. My offensive campaign against Pavel Laskin was going to have to wait because it was Valentine’s Day, and today was set to be a big day. I wanted to make an impression. Truth is, I’d actually been planning this day for two weeks. I’d made reservations at Daniel’s Broiler for the night, a classy restaurant on the south shore of Lake Union. I’d ordered the flowers. I bought two cards—a sexy, funny one plus a romantic one. I was ready. Then, right after I got out of the shower, at a quarter after seven, the flower shop called and said that one of their drivers quit because he’d been reading the paper and had seen that the city wanted to raise the minimum wage. If everyone else was getting fifteen dollars an hour now, he wanted it, too. The subsequent disagreement led to a parting of ways. The shop said they’d do their best to get the bouquet delivered late this afternoon. Great.
M.D. Grayson - Danny Logan 05 - Blue Molly Page 12