by T. E. Woods
“I enjoy Paul,” she said finally. “You’re right. He’s a great guy. Great cop, too. One of the really good good guys. So you and I both know there can be nothing more between the two of us than a casual hookup now and again.”
“Don’t limit yourself, Liddy. You’ve changed.”
“How often do you tell yourself that, Mort?” Her whisper had an edge. “Is it some kind of mantra you feel the need to repeat several times a day? Maybe to justify your decision to let me go? Or maybe you think if you tell me that enough, it will somehow magically be true?”
“Easy, Liddy. There’s no threat here.”
She inhaled long and slow, held her breath for a few heartbeats, then blew it out softly. “Think about what you and Edie had. That great marriage. You and Edie together. Ready to take on whatever the world wanted to pitch at you, knowing there’d be no surprises. Just pure love and openness. You know I can’t offer that. I can’t burden Paul or any man with the truth about who I am. What I’ve done.” She surprised him by chuckling. “And if I did, can you imagine the eggs he’d be walking on for the rest of his life? Can you think of any man wanting to tell me my cosmetics were taking up too much bathroom space or maybe I put too much salt in the spaghetti, knowing I’ve got more than thirty notches on my holster?”
“It’s a lonely life you’re building.”
She nodded. “But it’s mine. And it’s safe.”
He reached over and patted her hand twice, knowing it was about all the human touch she could handle. It had taken him two years to earn even that small intimacy.
“Thanks for coming up,” he told her. “And make sure you give Bauer my regards next time you have one of those hookups you mentioned.”
“I will. Now talk to me about a topic other than me. There’s something more you want to tell me.” Lydia took a sip of wine, still looking straight ahead at the loveliness of Lake Union after dusk.
Mort heaved a weary sigh. “It’s been a long, quirky day. Marked with little elements of pure hell.” He brought her up to date on Carlton Smydon’s murder case. He shared his concern that he’s frequently stepping on Rita Willers’s toes. “I don’t mean to offend the chief. It just seems to be something I do naturally around that woman.” He told her about Bilbo Runyan, the sixty-year-old man hopelessly lost in the toked-up world of his youth. “And I got to meet the great Abraham Smydon. I’ll never see his commercials in the same light again.” Mort finished by telling Lydia about Larry’s discovery of Helen’s letters and his wish that he could hear Edie’s voice, even if it was only speaking to him from a handwritten page. Through twenty minutes of Mort’s recollection of his day, Lydia listened. She nodded and smiled when it was appropriate. But she asked no questions and interjected no comments. She waited a full minute after he finished before speaking.
“There’s more,” she said. “A bad day would have you sharing a beer with Micki and Jimmy. A rotten day would mean you’d take them out for steak. Instead you called me.”
For a moment Mort wondered if it was Lydia’s training and experience as a clinical psychologist that made her so skilled at observing the unspoken. Or perhaps it was the six years she spent as The Fixer. Did she need to attune more to what was below the surface in order to carry off her executions so invisibly? He decided it didn’t matter. There’d be no hiding anything from her.
“I saw Allie today.”
Lydia didn’t react to the startling news with anything more than a slow nod. She wanted to know the facts. When? Where? She turned toward him in her chair when Mort described seeing his daughter from across a crowded soccer field, one hand on each of his granddaughters’ shoulders.
“Did she hurt them?”
Mort shook his head. “I think they were more curious than anything. About her, for sure. And I’m certain the car ride home was filled with questions about why Daddy and Papa ran straight through the second half of the fifth-graders’ game to get to them.”
“What does she want?”
Mort tilted the bottle to his lips and thought while he sipped. “She says she’s lonely. Says Tokarev’s dead. She misses her family. Wants to know her nieces.”
“Is she back in Seattle full-time? Is she free to travel?”
Lydia knew everything. Allie had been the mastermind behind a prostitution ring here in Seattle. Though it was locally run by a scheming thug named Chris Novak, Allie pulled the strings from wherever in the world she and Vadim Tokarev happened to be. That operation had led to a series of snuff films resulting in the deaths of three women, one of them a patient of Lydia’s. When Chris Novak was arrested, he laid responsibility for the snuff films on Vadim Tokarev. He swore he had to make the girls available or the Russian would kill him. Novak said the prostitution operation was run by Tokarev’s mistress. She was angry, Novak said, when her employees started turning up dead. Warned him to stop the films.
Mort remembered Novak sobbing after his arrest, describing how Tokarev gave him no other option than to provide another girl to the Hollywood asshole producing the snuffs. Novak was a defeated man, broken to the point of madness, as he described the revenge the woman he called Tokarev’s whore exacted from him. He showed Mort a film she’d made. Mort watched it in horror and saw a giant of a man playing with a young girl in a pool. Novak identified her as his daughter, Maria. Mort watched Maria laugh as the giant romped with her in the pool. He watched her joy turn to terror as the giant man Novak knew as Staz held her under the water until she died. Novak said he’d been promised his sons and wife would meet the same fate if he ever crossed her again. Mort had hoped, while watching the innocent young girl pay the ultimate price for her father’s betrayal, that his daughter wasn’t involved. When Novak told him he’d heard Tokarev refer to his whore as Allichka, Mort learned his daughter was a murderer.
And Lydia was the only other person who knew Allichka was his daughter.
Novak was in jail now, due to be sentenced next month to life without the possibility of parole for his role in the snuff films. Mr. Hollywood, the man starring in the films, was dead. While the world thought he drowned while on the run eluding the warrant for his arrest, Mort feared it was Lydia who had found him. He had nothing but his intuition to base his fears on, and he didn’t plan to ever compromise her by asking.
But the nagging pull was still there in his gut.
“There are no outstanding warrants for her arrest,” Mort told Lydia. “So that wouldn’t bar her travels. According to Allie, Tokarev’s dead. If that’s true, he can’t stop her.”
Lydia displayed a calm Mort wished he could feel himself. But every time he tried to take a deep breath he saw a split-screen image in his mind. On the left he saw his beloved daughter, so beautiful on a September day, kneeling and embracing Hayden and Hadley. On the right side of the screen he saw Staz, holding young Maria Novak under water, just as Allie had ordered.
“Did she say where she was staying?”
“I told her to stay clear of the family until she was ready to walk away from the life she’s living. Told her Robbie and I would stand with her as she faced whatever she needed to in order to atone for what she’s done.”
Lydia turned to face the water again. “That didn’t set well with Allie.”
Mort felt a sharp knife of guilt stab at his gut. Lydia knew Allie better than he did. She wasn’t blinded by his history of loving Allie for more than three decades. The weeks Allie had stayed with Lydia, brought to her home by Mort in an effort, once again, to keep his daughter safe while he tried to protect her from the consequences of her reckless behavior, had given Lydia insights into Allie that no doting father’s eyes could ever see. Despite it all, Lydia had stood ready to die in order to keep her promise of protecting Mort’s daughter.
“No. No, it surely didn’t,” he said. “She didn’t say a word when I told her I knew about Maria. Left me standing there in the middle of all those kids with a veiled threat.”
“What exactly did she say?” Lydia’s clipped
tone let him know she wanted to hear it word for word.
“She told me I must think she’s a monster. And that if it’s true, I ought to be careful of how I dealt with her.”
Lydia was quiet for several moments. “What’s Robbie think?”
“I haven’t spoken to him since this afternoon. He was mighty pissed. Got the girls right out of there. He loves his sister, but he’s not going to let her anywhere near the twins until Allie makes changes.”
“Can he keep his family safe?”
Mort’s stomach tightened. His instinct was to challenge Lydia for even suggesting Allie posed a threat to Robbie, Claire, and the girls.
But she saw Allie more clearly than he did.
“He can.” Mort cleared the catch in his throat. “I can.”
“Then that’s all you can do.” Lydia stood. She set her nearly full wineglass on the table. “I’m going to head back. I’ve got a full day tomorrow. First patient at eight o’clock. It’s good to see you, Mort. Good luck with your case. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
He thought of her bunkered basement. She had computers and communication equipment that rivaled the NSA’s. “Thanks, Liddy. I don’t think we’ll be needing your bat cave for this one.”
“Get some sleep,” she said. “Like they say, tomorrow’s a new adventure.”
“You take care of yourself. Don’t give me any reason to worry.” He watched her walk down the pier, well aware she hadn’t promised him anything.
Chapter 15
“Missed a good one last night, buddy.” Jimmy DeVilla walked into Mort’s office without knocking. He tossed a pastry bag onto his desk. “Swung by Jeanine’s on the way in. Man, that place is getting popular. There was a line out the door. Got you a jelly and a glazed.”
Mort peered inside the bag and inhaled the heavenly scent of sugar and grease. He set the bag aside and clapped his hands to bring Bruiser to his side. “So what happened last night?”
“I’m down at the Crystal with Schuster. We’re enjoying a little brew and chat and who should walk in but Three Finger Louie.”
Mort struggled to keep from choking on his coffee. “Louie McMiner? Bail bondsman from Renton? I thought he was dead.”
“Not dead,” Jimmy said. “Just wished he was. He didn’t die when his girlfriend caught him doing the nasty with his wife. Took four bullets to the thigh and points central. He pees out of a hose or some such now. Anyway, I’d heard he and the missus patched things up and were living down in Florida.”
Mort rubbed that spot between Bruiser’s ears that always caused the giant dog to lean into him. “He was shot about four years ago, right?”
“Correct,” Jimmy said. “The girlfriend got five to seven and Louie got surgery and rehab. Anyway, in he walks with a boisterous party of ten following right behind him.”
“His wife still with him?”
Jimmy chuckled. “That’s just it. Louie walks in, fatter than hell but still with that swagger of his, and who’s on his arm but the redhead who shot him. I tell Schuster the story and he, of course, doesn’t believe me. So I grab that vice cop by the arm and take him over to Louie’s table. Louie takes one look at me and Bruiser and it’s like old home week. Gets all teary introducing me around, telling everybody stories about the old days when we’d slam the bad apples into the jail cells and he’d bail ’em out. Said you and I were his cash cows back in the day.”
“What about the girlfriend?” Mort asked.
Jimmy shrugged. “Seems she made her date. With good behavior she was out. Released the week before. No papers or anything. Free as a bird. Guess she and Louie had been pen pals the whole time she was locked up. She gets released, Louie leaves the wife in some trailer park in Ocala, and heads up here. Says he and the girlfriend are gonna make it legal as soon as he divorces the wife.”
Mort chuckled at the memory of Three Finger Louie. “Well, he better be careful. He’s running out of body parts to lose. What did Schuster think?”
“Who gives a flying fig? He paid up the beer he bet me. That’s all I care about.”
“I hope I’m not interrupting.” Rita Willers held a file folder up. “I don’t have an appointment, but I have some information.”
Jimmy stepped aside and eyed the small woman in full police dress blues. He offered his hand. “You’re chief down in Enumclaw. I met you when I gave a talk. Convention a while ago. Nice to see you again.”
The two exchanged names and pleasantries about the drive up and the difficulty finding parking. Jimmy turned toward Mort and whistled. Bruiser trotted over to his partner, sat, and raised a paw to the lady in front of him. Mort saw Chief Willers’s professional mask melt as she cooed over the showboating behemoth.
“Gotta go, Mort,” Jimmy said. “Looks like you’re on the clock. Let’s catch up later.”
Mort promised they would. He thanked Jimmy for the doughnuts and waved Rita Willers into his office.
“It’s just seven o’clock,” he said. “You hit the road early. Can I get you a cup of coffee? I can’t promise it’ll be hot, but it will be bad.”
Willers declined and took a seat opposite Mort’s desk. “We have a lead on one of the killers.” The chief’s statement explained why she’d made the trip from Enumclaw so early. “He was spotted in Seattle. That’s why I’m here instead of calling.”
“Tell me.” Mort cleared a spot on his desk for her file and leaned in.
Rita Willers told him about Officer Dalton Rogers receiving a call the night before from Cindy Easton, aka Blue Dancer. Mort recognized the name from the file he’d reviewed prior to meeting Willers for the first time. Easton worked at the lodge where Carlton Smydon had been staying. She’d driven the participants to the sweat lodge ceremony.
“Blue Dancer was pretty shaken,” Willers continued. “She said she’d seen the guy who was missing from the sweat lodge while she was up here on her day off. I had Rogers escort her in. I took her statement last night. It’s here for your review. Along with photos of the man Easton identifies as one of the Andrews brothers.”
Mort picked up the clipped stack of four black-and-white photos. Two were wide angle. Two were enlargements of the wider shots. Each focused in on the head and shoulders of a white male. Stocky build. Dark hair. Three-day stubble on his jaw.
He looked up. “She sure?”
“Sure enough to ask for police protection. Blue’s not stupid. She figured out if this guy was delivered to the sweat lodge and wasn’t dead, he most likely had a hand in killing those folks.”
“She take these photos?”
Willers shook her head. “Blue Dancer was in Seattle visiting a friend. Weather was good yesterday. They were outside, down by the water. Blue says she and her friend were heading back to their car after dinner at Stanley’s on the Wharf. That’s when she saw him. Stanley’s is in a popular tourist area. Lots of bars and shops. Blue was able to pinpoint the time she and her friend would have walked toward the parking lot. I contacted the businesses in that area. Sent a couple of patrolmen up to pull the film from security cameras. I stayed with Blue down in Enumclaw until the guys got back. It took a while, but Blue was able to make him out from the security camera footage outside a hotel. She’s certain that’s the man she delivered to the sweat lodge the day those people were killed.”
Mort was impressed. Chief Willers had acted quickly and was smart about getting to those cameras before they automatically erased and reset themselves. “You could have called me. I live on Lake Union. It would have taken me a hell of a lot less time to get to these cameras than for your patrolmen to drive from Enumclaw. A Seattle shield carries a lot of clout with the store operators around here.”
Chief Willers squared her shoulders. Something flared in her eyes. Anger? “This is my investigation, Mort. And I’m sitting here with photos. Seems my small-town shields carried enough clout to get the job done.”
Mort glanced at the clock. Seven twenty. It had taken less than half an hour for him t
o make his first insult to the chief that day.
“That’s not what I meant.” He realized it was exactly what he’d meant and she knew it. “I’m just saying we’re a team. Let’s work together like one. I’ll take these photos and run them through the NCIC database and see if we can grab a name. Folks don’t typically cut their criminal teeth on murder. If this guy’s been arrested before, maybe we can get a match comparing these photos to a mug shot.”
“Thanks for the lesson on criminal development. I scanned these photos off to the FBI around three o’clock this morning. They’ll let me know if they catch a match.” Rita Willers tapped the file folder on Mort’s desk. “These are duplicates for your records. I want to keep you informed on my progress.”
Mort glanced again at the clock. Seven twenty-two. At this rate he might set a new personal record for the number of times he could offend a woman in one day.
“Tell me how it went on your end yesterday,” Rita Willers said.
Mort told her about his and Larry’s trip to Carlton Smydon’s house. “Larry’s been named executor of Carlton’s estate.”
A fleeting smile softened Chief Willers’s face and Mort saw how lovely she could be when she wasn’t holding herself with rigid authority. “Good choice. Larry seems more than trustworthy.”
Mort nodded. “I’d trust him with my life.” He paused. “Hell, I have. On more than one occasion, actually.”
“Did you two find anything that might be of use to the investigation?” Willers had returned to her all-business attitude.
“Carlton Smydon had a housemate. An old friend from childhood. Bilbo Runyan.”
Willers jotted the name on the pad she rested against her leg. “Anything noteworthy about this Runyan?”
Mort considered that for a moment. “He’s a lifelong stoner. Dependent on Smydon for room and board. Seems Smydon promised to take care of him forever. There’s a trust Larry’s overseeing to make sure that happens.”