Brady shook his head once.
“In any case, he’s keeping himself informed. Don’t ask me how.”
That brought a smile. “I don’t want to know,” Brady said.
“It’s interesting to watch the various jurisdictions jockeying for position. I think they’re getting it all worked out, and I think the Pierce County detectives are in charge. At least until the Task Force moves in, if they do.”
“What’s the link? Did Tran say?” Gemma asked.
“Sex trafficking,” Mike said. “Maybe. If it’s all related, then Ned is a new element, and they’re not sure where he fits, or who’s responsible for his death, or any of the rest of the mayhem. Their syndicate likes to keep a low profile, as a rule.”
Mike looked around the campground. “Nice place.”
“I forgot how much I love camping.” Gemma took a deep breath of the pine-fragrant mountain air.
“Well, I brought some things to make you love it even more.”
With a light laugh she checked out the plastic grocery bags on the table. “Steak? Oh, Perfect. And corn!”
“Fresh picked today in Everson.”
“Everson?” The little town five miles from the Canadian border was famous for its corn and blueberries, but it was a two-hundred-mile round-trip from Seattle. “You went to Everson?”
“Marysville. I rented a car, got some groceries. Used my card. I don’t expect anyone to be tracking my movements, but on the wild chance, it will look as if I’m heading north.”
“Old habits still there?” Brady said.
“It comes back fast.”
“You talk like a field agent, not an Intel Weenie,” Gemma teased.
“‘Booger Eater,’” Brady corrected her.
“Eew!” Gemma said with a grimace.
“And damned proud of it,” Mike said. “Besides, it was all that hanging with Brady and the Black-Hearted Bastards that corrupted this pure Irish soul.”
Mike dug back into the bags. A propane stove followed the food. “Gotta have some way to cook all this, with fires verboten up here. And last, but nowhere even close to least—” he produced a bottle of brandy and a fifth of Irish whiskey.
“What’s in the box?” Brady asked.
“Stuff Ned gave his attorney. Sam Dawkins called Mark Taylor when he saw the news about Ned. Said he was holding some of Ned’s things, and since the divorce was never filed, he sent it all back to Mark—who strolled in a few mornings back and plopped it on my desk. With the break-ins, and Sam’s death, and the memorial and all, there hasn’t been a good time to bring it back. I can’t believe the stuff he’s got in here. Did you know Ned took all the documents on the house, the cars, a lot of investments, birth certificates—yours and his—your marriage certificate, even your passport?”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. If I’d known what was in here, I would have made it a point to get it to you sooner.”
“It was probably some kind of control thing. He was really big on control. I’ve given up trying to understand all the crazy things he did, the son of a bitch.”
“I don’t know about you two,” Mike said, letting her comment slide, “but I’m starving. Somebody wrap corn, and would somebody please pour me a drink if I’m going to be slaving over a hot stove?”
* * *
Justin loved paydays. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t touch the nest egg building up from his dot.com, and things got a little tight between the first of the month and the fifteenth, sometimes. Most times.
They would probably get a lot worse, now somebody had killed off his source of ideas.
It was so great, though, to be able to order fresh pizza, and finally throw out the dried, curling remains of two-week-old pepperoni special. He leaned over the kitchen sink as he bit into a slice of almost-hot Meat Maniac, letting the oily juices drip near the drain as he used his tongue to capture the strings of molten mozzarella. He should have eaten before he changed, but some days, no matter how hungry or tired he was, he couldn’t wait to get out of his work clothes and into something comfortable.
Tonight it was black jeans, frayed at the hems and white over the seams from wear, and a black T-shirt with a diagram of a caffeine molecule stenciled in white on the front.
His gaze drifted to the small window above the sink that gave a view of the “green belt” across the parking lot. He could see it from the eating area and from the small balcony where he chained his bike. Most days he biked or rode the bus to work, stretching his gas as long as he could.
He’d been looking forward all week to filling his tank all the way up and driving around, just to see what he could see. Maybe he’d see that redhead, again, just maybe get a glimpse of her. Just to look. She didn’t always close her curtains, and maybe tonight again she’d be working out on this stair-treadmill, and she wore this leotard that showed almost everything. He had to stop going there. He was going to get caught, again, but he couldn’t resist. He’d just have to be careful.
All the time he was telling himself he couldn’t keep watching, he was getting ready to go. It was as if his body and mind were two separate guys—his mind all cautious and law-abiding, and his body just going ahead and doing what it needed to do. He wasn’t crazy. Couldn’t be. He knew what he was doing, what he shouldn’t do. He just couldn’t make his body listen.
Maybe Doug Carrow had been the same way. He winced away from that one. Besides, Carrow had liked to do things to all the women he wrote about. That wasn’t the same thing at all as just watching and dreaming. Not even.
Justin raised his arms and sniffed for a quick pit-check—you could never be too careful. Especially since he’d worn this shirt a few days ago and hadn’t washed it yet.
He tapped a medicated concealer onto his zits, grabbed his keys, and launched himself into the night, cruising slowly through the streets. Turning off the main thoroughfares, he headed into residential areas, through Capitol Hill into the U District, where coeds and young up-and-comers rented apartments or houses and sometimes did things in front of their uncurtained windows.
Sometimes, a trip down an alley or two was all it took to find a woman changing clothes, all lit up and everything. Probably bathroom windows, since they tended to be small and high up, but they were plenty big enough to give him a prime view of women in lingerie, or even naked boobs as they got ready for a shower or for bed.
Boobs were the best. He loved them all. Big boobs, small boobs, droopy, perky, flat—he really didn’t care. And no matter what shape or size they were, he got the same delicious tugging and tingling feeling in his dick whenever he saw them.
It was what he lived for. He’d pull over in the darkness, turn off the car lights, unzip himself, and watch the lovely dancing boobs as he stroked, harder, faster, until he came, biting his lips to keep from making noise.
Tonight he was in luck. The woman with the stair climber was there, in full view, and she was already sweating, he could tell, because her leotard stuck to her boobs, showing the outline and even the little buds on her nipples. She was pretty with long red hair, and tonight she’d tied it back into a pony tail that flipped around as she worked out. She looked kind of like Ned Carrow’s wife, only taller, and younger. It was Mrs. Carrow—she’d asked him to call her Gemma, when he met her at the Christmas party last winter—Gemma he saw in his mind as he wrung the last drop from his pulsing dick. She’d be alone, too, now that her husband was gone.
He
let his fantasies grow into a vision of her standing in front of him—
A sudden sharp light in his eyes and a rap on the window brought him crashing into humiliating reality.
The beam of the flashlight moved pointedly from Justin’s eyes to his exposed crotch, to his hand still sticky with warm fluid fumbling desperately to cover himself.
As he rolled down the window to face the cop’s disgusted expression, Justin knew he’d fucked up major this time. Ned Carrow wasn’t going to come blasting out of the grave to bail him out for public lewdness or whatever they were going to hang on him. And as for Wheeler—he’d rather let Justin burn at the stake than risk his political reputation by associating with a—what did the cops call him last time? Oh yeah, weenie wagger. Not that Justin could blame his boss. Wheeler had warned him one more arrest, and he was taillights.
With the light shining steadily in his eyes, he couldn’t see the cops at all. Just get a sense of their presence. He put up a hand to shield his eyes.
“Don’t do that.” The voice was low, authoritative, cold.
Great voice for an Avatar of Evil, Justin thought, filing it away in his mental drawer of ideas for gaming characters. It didn’t really hit him, until he heard the metallic thunk, looked down and saw the muzzle of the automatic resting in the window.
“Whatever it is I did, officer, I promise I won’t do it again,” he babbled. The opening in the gun wasn’t very big, but he was sure it was big enough.
The man laughed. He sounded really amused. “You think we’re cops? You’ll wish we were, if you don’t pay attention.”
“Okay.” Justin’s voice was barely a whisper.
“Where do you get your information for the little stories you write?”
“Um—” Justin couldn’t think. The light was blinding him, and how did they know it was him? “What stories?”
The man sighed. Justin relaxed as the gun disappeared, and then thought he’d swallow his heart as it was replaced by a very efficient-looking knife blade. “We already know you’re stupid, kid. You don’t have to prove it by trying to lie to us. Now, Where. Did. You. Get. Your. Material?” The knife slid a little closer until he could feel the point on his throat.
“My boss. My boss’s email.”
“Good boy.” The knife didn’t move. “You’re going to close up your little side business. Tonight. You’re going to disappear from the Web, ‘Zabinder7,’ or Justin Falco is going to disappear from this earth, a little piece at a time. Just the way Carrow did. Do you understand?”
Justin was frozen. His lungs wouldn’t move, and his throat was paralyzed. They knew his screen name, they knew about Carrow. Ohgodohgodohgod...
“Too scared to say anything?”
Justin nodded rapidly, more like a vibration of his head.
“Okay. Nod once if you understand. Just—once.”
He managed to control the tremor in his neck long enough to force his head up and down.
“Good. Good boy. Now, I want to make sure you remember, so—
Justin jumped as a knife blade stabbed into the seat beside his head and ripped down nearly to the level of his shoulder.
The light snapped off. By the time the afterimage had faded, the men were gone.
When the police car pulled up behind him a few minutes later, Justin nearly had his breathing under control. He hadn’t managed to zip his pants back up, but they let him take care of that before they snapped the cuffs on and arrested him for lewd conduct.
* * *
The long Northern twilight had darkened to mauve by the time they finished dinner and cleared the plates and food away. While Mike poured brandy into clear plastic glasses and Brady took the garbage the hundred yards or so to the dumpster, Gemma lifted a handful of documents and envelopes out of the file box and flipped through them. “I didn’t know he had this stuff. My baptismal certificate? For Pete’s sake! And what’s this?”
Mike looked up. “What is it?”
“A statement from a bank I didn’t know he used.”
“How’s the balance?”
“Flush. Amazing. Judas Priest, I really am rich.”
“When the death certificate comes through, you’ll be able to get the money out.”
“There’s so much. I had no idea he was so successful. I mean, Doug told me, but I didn’t really get it. It didn’t sink in.” She dropped the paper back into the box.
“The key’s in there. Two of ’em.”
“Two?”
“The one you found—and I think you’re right. It does look like it’s for one of those small padlocks. The other one was in with all the papers, and it’s for a safety deposit box. The number’s engraved on it, but we don’t know which bank.”
“I didn’t even know he had one. But that doesn’t mean anything, obviously. Doug might know.”
Mike shook his head. “Probably not. He hasn’t mentioned it, has he?”
“No,” Gemma answered.
“So, Ned’s financial manager either doesn’t know about the box, or doesn’t want us to know about it,” Brady said, coming out of the darkness. Gemma jumped at his sudden appearance, and he sent her a slight smile of apology.
“Which would make sense only if he is a co-owner of the box and can sign on the account,” Mike said.
“So the key won’t help us?” she asked.
“Not in Washington. If we find the bank, you’ll need a death certificate. That could take six weeks. There’s probably not a lot of doubt about the cause of death, but they’re going to want the tox and all the labs back before making a formal determination. You’ll need that and the key to get in. Even a court order is iffy—the bank gets to decide whether to honor it.” Mike turned the key this way and that way. “No way to tell which bank it is, or which branch.”
“We could check the banks these statements are from.”
“I can find it,” Brady assured them.
“Why didn’t he just put all these papers into the safety deposit box?” she asked.
“No time, maybe?” Mike suggested.
“Or he didn’t want to go there very often,” Brady said. “Maybe he didn’t want anyone to know he had stuff stashed somewhere.”
“So, the key you found, Gemma? Why did he hide it if it’s just to a trunk full of sleeping bags?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Where was it?” Brady asked.
“In a CD case, in the living room bookshelves. I found it when I was packing. After the house was vandalized, I gave it to Mike for safekeeping.” She put down the papers she was holding. “Mike—”
“Yeah?”
“Doug said Mark Taylor has gone into hiding.”
“Yeah. Smart guy.”
Gemma took a last sip of the excellent brandy. “You guys, I’m done in. The brandy went right to my head, and I’m going to go sleep as long as I can.”
* * *
“So,” Brady said, “I suppose it’s too much to hope you brought marshmallows?”
Mike laughed, and glanced guiltily toward the tent and lowered his voice. He was quiet for too long.
“Spill it,” Brady said.
“Did Gemma tell you about losing the baby? About the phone call saying Ned was dead?”
A flash of cold shot through Brady. He clenched his muscles hard and let them go to ease the sudden tension. “You mean she knew before the cops showed up? I don’t believe it.”
Mike
shook his head and took a swallow of whiskey. “Not then. Two years ago.”
“No.”
“First off, I think she really only married Ned because she always wanted kids. A couple of years after they were married, she finally got pregnant, but lost the baby in the third month. When she got pregnant again, it seemed to take. Then at about four months she started to have problems, so the OB put her on the next thing to bed rest: stay quiet, stay calm. He even put her on tranquilizers so she wouldn’t get stressed. Really good drugs. She didn’t want to take them, because she was worried about what they’d do to the baby, and of course Ned was right in there with scare stories. So she was doing meditation and a lot of light reading. It seemed to be working. Then she dropped out of contact. What we didn’t know then...” he told Brady about the phony call, Ned showing up, the miscarriage.
“Son of a bitch.”
“No argument there. And afterward, he told her there had been too much damage, and she couldn’t have any more kids.” Mike slid a file across the tabletop.
“What’s this?”
“A very preliminary autopsy report. Don’t ask how I got it. Seems Ned got himself a vasectomy not quite two years ago. Now why do you suppose he did that?”
Brady thought a minute. “Maybe so he wouldn’t get one of his playmates knocked up.”
“Maybe. Or maybe not. He could always use a condom with them. And in Gemma’s photo, it looks like he’s doing exactly that. It might be harder to explain to a wife. Didn’t want her to know he’d had himself fixed because how would he explain it? If she couldn’t conceive, why would he need to worry about it? Anyway, I thought you should know Gemma’s not sterile.” Mike dropped his eyes looking uncomfortable, and his cheeks darkened in the lantern light.
He took an angry breath, and went on. “I wish you’d known her before she met that s.o.b. She was always the prettiest, the brightest. She lit up a room when she walked in. And a tongue that would slice solid oak. And he broke her. It kills me she thinks she’s such a space case. I never knew anyone more in charge of their world than she was.”
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