by Rick Mofina
According to the printout from IVIPS, the address for the license number Everett Sinclair took down was in a North Seattle community, tucked away in the Pinehurst, Northgate, and Maple Leaf area. Easy to miss on the map, Jason discovered as he kept correcting his directions to his father.
They rolled by brick Tudor-style homes and bungalows that had gone up after World War Two. There were several vacant lots with overgrown shrubs and overturned shopping carts. One lot had a discarded TV and a dryer with the door torn off. The house next to it had an eviscerated pink Pinto in the oil-stained front yard. Sidewalks seemed to be missing. Most houses had dirt patches for driveways. FOR RENT signs were common in front windows.
“There, Brimerley Lane. Turn left here,” Jason said. “It’s 444 Brimerley Lane.”
A few houses on the street had well-kept yards, tended gardens, and flower boxes at the windows. The place they were looking for was at the far end and backed on to 1-5. Except for the buzz of the freeway, the enclave was tranquil when they stopped in front of number 444. It was a light green bungalow sitting way back from the street. Not a bad-looking place, Jason thought when they arrived at the front door.
The doorbell’s chime echoed through the small home. His old man nodded to the flyers and junk mail clogging the metal mailbox. A few moments later, Jason pressed the bell a second time.
No response.
They looked back to the street.
Empty.
Jason knocked. Hard. Loud enough to wake anyone inside who might be sleeping. He placed his ear against the door. Not a sound, not a bird, not even the scratch of dog paws on linoleum.
“Nothing,” he told his dad, who nodded to the single-car garage.
It was at the end of a dirt driveway, at the side but back of the house, canopied by a couple of tall alders. Paint blistered its wood sides and double doors. Jason scanned the small backyard. A trash can, some lawn chairs. Nothing beyond that. His old man, shielding his eyes, was gazing into the garage window.
“There’s a Toyota Corolla in there, color matches IVIPS.”
His father scanned discarded papers in the trash can while Jason tried the side door of the garage. It was open.
“Let’s go in,” he said, “check the plate, then we’ll leave.”
Reluctant, his father glanced around.
“It’ll only take a moment, Dad. And you dragged me all this way.”
Jason stepped into the darkened garage and waited a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the light. After finishing with the trash can, his father followed. Dust particles danced in the light shafts. The car took up most of the garage. Garden tools hung from the side; so did a hose, extension cord, a ladder. A bicycle leaned against the wall. Adult-size. Jason squeezed himself to the front of the car, noticing a fine layer of dust on the hood as he crouched down before the front bumper.
“It’s gone. There’s no front plate.”
“No back plate either,” his father called from the rear of the Toyota.
Jason had a mini-penlight on his keychain and used it to examine the screws that secured the plate. They had fresh scrapes.
“Don’t touch anything!” his father said. “Let’s get back outside.”
They returned to the rear yard to consider the matter. “The address is correct. The car’s correct. The plates are gone and witnessed on a van in Ballard,” Jason mused.
“Obviously stolen,” his old man said. “What do you think?”
Jason stared at the house and pulled out his cell phone.
“What’s the telephone number for here?”
“Why? What’re you going to do?”
“Just give it to me.”
Jason called the number and could hear the phone ringing inside the house. With each ring he stepped closer to the rear door, staring at it. It wasn’t closed all the way. He pulled out his pen and, using the capped end, pushed on the wooden door. It creaked open wide, allowing a small squadron of flies to leave while inviting him to enter.
“Hold it right there,” his father said. “I think we should call Seattle PD.”
Jason held up his hand to stop that idea. As the phone continued to ring, he called out.
“Anybody home?”
He waited for an answer. None came. He stepped close enough to poke his head into the house and was hit with a powerful smell that repelled him. He’d glimpsed something. What was it? Ignoring his father’s calls to step back, Jason ended his call, covered his face and nose with his hands, and stepped inside.
In that instant, Jason glimpsed a pair of feet in white socks, jeans, legs on the floor. His view blocked, he pressed on slowly, staring at the legs until they became a lower torso then evolved into something.
Something that was moving.
A huge mass, sort of quivering in unison. A furry, feverish mass that looked—holy Christ—that’s a big fucking ball of rats! They were feeding on decomposing entrails splayed in every direction on the floor.
Was that a hand? Was that human?
The body was swollen, the head a pulpy mass, the face blackened and bloated beyond recognition.
Two huge rats scurried over Jason’s shoes.
His scalp prickled, his skin tingled with gooseflesh. He crushed his hands to his face to prevent the stench from penetrating his nostrils as it reached the back of his tongue, working its way down his esophagus, triggering a small geyser of bile to gush up the back of his throat. He was paralyzed until someone clamped his shoulder, yanked him out of the house back into the fresh air of the yard just in time for him to vomit.
As he doubled over, he heard his old man calling 911.
31
Across the city in Ballard, Maria Colson’s condition had deteriorated and her family was talking to a priest.
Detective Grace Garner bit her bottom lip and said a private prayer as she watched them. They were down the hall from the lounge where she’d taken her turn keeping vigil for Maria’s dying declaration.
Come on, Maria. Fight. Lee needs you. Dylan needs you. And I need you to tell me who did this.
Grace was alone, reviewing printouts of tips and leads. She checked her watch when her cell went off, displaying the number for Stan Boulder, her sergeant.
“Grace, we’ve caught one in North Seattle.”
“Is it Dylan?”
“No. An adult. You’re the primary and this one’s pissing me off already.”
“Stan, I can’t. It’s not looking good here at the hospital. Her family’s asking about last rites. I am going to be jammed up.”
“Listen, this fresh one may be linked to the Colson case.”
“What?”
“I can’t go into it now.”
“Do we know who the victim is?”
“No, but we know Wade made the find.”
“Jason Wade? The reporter from the Mirror?”
“That’s what’s pissing me off. How did that jack-off find out?”
“He’s a good digger and likes playing detective,” Grace replied.
“Well, he’s playing with fire. He faces obstruction, if he’s holding back information on this case.” Boulder paused. “I’ve got somebody from Vice relieving you now. The scene is 444 Brimerley Lane. You copy that?”
“Got it.”
“Get rolling.”
The sky had darkened as sector cars from the SPD’s North Precinct sealed the bungalow on Brimerley Lane. Uniformed officers stretched yellow tape around the yard.
Officer Kyle Scheel, the first responding uniform, and his partner protected the primary scene inside, then escorted Jason and his dad to wait in the back of their patrol car. Scheel took careful notes, collecting initial statements and information.
Grace arrived, parking her unmarked Malibu amid the tangle of vehicles that had grown to include an ambulance, crime scene investigation vans, satellite trucks and press cars bearing station call letters and newspaper logos. A few residents came to the tape. Mothers kept small children close as they gossip
ed softly, their faces etched with curiosity, concern, and fear.
“Grace.” Perelli waved her over to the responding officers. After they talked, she started a case log in her notebook and coldly eyed Jason in the backseat of the car.
“I’ll get to you later,” she told him, then headed for the bungalow’s back door with Perelli. Holding up the tape for her, he said, “The uniforms think they chased away most of the rats.”
“Not the two-legged one in the car.”
They tugged on white latex gloves and shoe covers. The usual gagging stench of a corpse that had been undiscovered for a long time was prevalent. The victim appeared to be a female. Maybe in her late twenties or early thirties, it was hard to say. Decomposition had distorted the face into a grotesque death mask.
A small pond of blood had spread everywhere, laced and smeared by the work of vermin. The bacteria that had built inside the corpse’s internal organs had caused the body to swell and discolored the skin tissue. The rats had gone to work on the intestines, which were webbed over the corpse and pulled into every direction on the floor.
Fortunately the rats were gone.
Grace and Perelli sketched the scene and took notes. Using a small digital camera, Grace took scores of photographs of the victim without moving the body.
They looked for a purse, bag, or wallet, anything to suggest who the victim was, but found nothing. She would have to wait for CSI to process everything, Grace thought, taking more photos. Perelli looked around for a wallet or bus pass, anything that might indicate who she was.
“Nothing. At least the hands look good for fingerprints,” he said. “Jaw looks good too.”
Perelli moved to the mail and bills on the kitchen counter. “Could be one Dorothy M. Hall.”
“What do you make of this, Dom?”
“Given the terrible state, I wouldn’t put any money on a cause, but it sure as hell looks like someone wanted something pretty bad.”
“And how did Clark Kent and his father, the private dick, really know about this place?”
“You don’t buy the dad’s statement that he was following up on a client’s hit-and-run fender bender and took Junior along for the ride?”
“There’s got to be more to their story.”
Taking stock of the scene, Grace shook her head.
After they’d finished in the house, Grace went into the garage, careful not to further contaminate that scene. When she came out, she talked to David Tanaka and Al Sprung’s crew from the King County medical examiner’s office and Seattle CSI detectives about gathering evidence from the house and processing the garage for any other evidence.
In the backyard, Boulder approached Grace.
“I’ve got the team going hard on the canvass,” Boulder said, paging through his notes. “Not clear who resides here. The property owner is Dorothy Mae Hall, who is eighty-nine, has a severe case of Alzheimer’s, and lives in a nursing home a little west of the campus.”
“Anything else?”
“Neighbors say over the years, they’ve seen a younger woman come and go, sometimes stay. They think she takes care of the place. Got people going over records. The 1998 Toyota Corolla in the garage is registered to this address to Dorothy Mae Hall.”
“She’s not our victim, you think?” Perelli asked.
“Only if the vic is eighty-nine,” Boulder said.
“That’s not an eighty-nine-year-old woman in there,” Grace said.
Boulder nodded to the patrol car with Jason Wade and his father in the back.
“The discovery is tied to them, Grace. I want to know what they know.”
32
Grace Garner stepped into the dirt driveway at the side of the bungalow and pointed a white-gloved finger at a uniformed officer.
Detectives were now ready to question Jason Wade and his father. Officer Scheel escorted them to Grace, Dominic Perelli, Stan Boulder, and FBI Special Agent Kirk Dupree, who’d just arrived and insisted on being present. They went to the backyard, to a shaded corner and a wooden picnic table that was in sore need of refinishing.
“How you holding up, Jason?” Grace asked.
“I’m fine. How much longer are you going to keep us? I need to get back to the newsroom.”
Signaling that he was in charge, Boulder positioned his right foot on the bench seat next to Jason, invading his space as he stood over him. Boulder’s jacket opened, revealing the butt of the gun in his shoulder holster.
“We’ll keep you for as long as it takes.”
“As long as it takes for what?”
“For you to tell us everything you know about this case,” Grace said.
“We already told you everything.” Jason’s father looked at her, then at Boulder, who was flipping through his notes.
From the picnic table they saw the medical examiner’s team and the crime scene detectives working inside the house. From the thin line of sight they had on the front, Jason noticed the crowd had grown. He saw several lenses at the yellow tape, TV and still cameras trained on him and the others at the picnic table. Above them, a helicopter was approaching.
“Henry, I see you’re working toward your three years for licensure as a private investigator in the state of Washington,” Boulder said.
“Yes.”
“You’re with Don Krofton’s agency.”
“Yes.”
“I know Don, he used to be on the job.”
“That’s right.”
“Come to think of it, didn’t you used to be on the job, Henry? Long time ago, like when Jesus was a toddler?”
Jason watched a shadow cross his old man’s face as he turned away from Boulder’s question and looked off at nothing.
“Yes.”
Boulder’s expression changed almost imperceptibly, with a trace of melancholy, as if he was attempting to place Jason’s old man somewhere in a buried corner of his memory. A silent moment passed until Jason’s cell interrupted it.
“Jason, it’s Spangler—what the hell is happening?”
Boulder grimaced; the volume of Jason’s phone was high enough for the conversation to be overheard.
“I can’t talk now.”
“One of our shooters at this homicide just called and says he sees you, inside the crime scene? What the hell is—”
“I can’t—I—”
Jason’s phone vanished from his hand. Boulder shut it off, then slid it into his breast pocket.
“Hey! Give me that!”
“You better think over how to report this,” Boulder said.
“I’m going to report everything I know.”
“You might consider holding back on publishing every detail, because the killer might be interested in knowing if they’ve made any mistakes.”
“My job is to report the facts, Sergeant Boulder.”
“I’m warning you not to fuck up this case any more than you already have.”
“How? By reporting the truth?”
“Let’s start there,” Grace said. “What exactly were the circumstances that led you to this address?”
“I was investigating a hit-and-run car accident,” Henry Wade said. “This was the address that came up for the plate the client provided.”
“And why did you bring Jason?” she asked.
“The drive was a chance for us to talk. Father and son.”
Boulder smiled after quickly analyzing the statement Henry Wade had given to the responding officer.
“Let’s see, it’s got nothing to do with Jason’s story on the front page of his paper? Got nothing to do with the client’s alleged hit-and-run involving a van that occurred in the same neighborhood and at the same time as when Maria Colson was run over and her baby son was abducted?”
Jason’s father said nothing.
“Who’s your client, Henry?”
“All of our investigations are confidential.”
“Horseshit,” Boulder said, “I’m going to take you back to when you filled out that application
for your private investigator’s license, the one that Don Krofton’s agency had to sign before employing you.”
Jason looked at Boulder, then Grace, for a clue as to where they were headed.
“That first question they ask you on the form there, see if memory serves, goes something like, ‘Have you ever been found guilty of divulging confidential information obtained in the course of an investigation to which you were assigned?’”
Boulder grinned and nodded at Jason.
“I bet your agency has access to IVIPS—that’s confidential. You’re working for a client, Henry, and your boy here makes the find. It appears like something confidential got divulged here. He gets a scoop and you risk losing your license, as a trainee. Not the best career move for a man of your years, is it, Henry? But there’s a way out of your predicament.”
“What do you want?”
“Your client,” Boulder said. “Don’t make us waste time to get a warrant. Pass it to us now, so we can maybe try to catch a killer—or should we just leave that to you and Jimmy Olsen here?”
Taking in the hard faces of the detectives, Henry Wade nodded. He’d thought about calling them from the get-go. Something to be said for first instincts.
“I want to cooperate. Let me make a few calls. My file’s in my truck. Can I get it?”
“Go with him, Dom,” Boulder said, then turned to Jason. “It’s been quite a morning for you, hasn’t it, sport? You got a little breakfast on your chin there.”
33
In Detroit, outside an imposing twenty-first-floor boardroom, a young secretary, her face drawn with worry, rapped on the oak doors. Her voice a whisper, she said, “Excuse me. I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Sinclair—”
She had interrupted Everett Sinclair’s key presentation on the final stages of applying the company’s El Paso scenario to Detroit-Windsor.
“What is it? Can’t you see I’m engaged here?” Sinclair snapped.
“Two gentlemen are here—”
“Who are they?”
“They’re FBI agents and they want to talk to you about a major crime in Seattle. They asked for you specifically.”