Soul Survivor (A Leo Waterman Mystery Book 11)

by G. M. Ford

  “What we have here, Mr.”—she looked down at my card on the counter—“Mr. Marks . . . what we have going on here is a class war. The haves against the have-nots. Those that got it against those that don’t.”

  She paused for effect. “When my husband and I moved here nine years ago, everybody in town worked for one of about five wood-products companies down on the waterfront, or they worked for Boeing. There were virtually no public services of any kind. Everybody had health insurance through the company they worked for. Doctors wouldn’t take new patients unless they had medical insurance. There was no free lunch program in the schools. No ESL classes. They just let our kids sit there in school listening to a language they didn’t understand . . . never did a thing about it . . . not ever.”

  She crooked a finger at Gabe and me. “Come with me,” she said as she pulled open the door and stood aside so we could pass.

  When I heard about the various social services Ricardo Valenzuela had started, I’d pictured them spread out all over town. But no. The place was huge. Everything was right there. Other than the methadone clinic, which, according to her, was up on Broadway for security reasons. Big pink building, she said.

  She walked us through it. The medical clinic. The day care center, job placement office, ESL classes. Parenting clinics. Housing helpers. So many services I lost track.

  Ten minutes later we were back at the door. “Boeing now makes twice as many planes with half the people. Most of the wood-products industries have dried up completely. It’s becoming a bedroom community for Seattle, and as such a service-based economy,” she said. “And, the way they see it, we’re the cause of it. They claim we’re taking jobs from the community.”

  “Jobs they wouldn’t take if you put a gun to their collective heads,” I said.

  “Change is hard for some people,” Gabe offered. “Lots of folks would be happier if everything stayed the same forever. The whole retro Return to Mayberry cracker-barrel crowd. That way their little brains would have less crap to keep track of.”

  “Racism is at the bottom of it,” Annette Valenzuela corrected.

  “That’s always the elephant in the room, isn’t it?” I asked. “We live in a racist society, and our greatest desire is to pretend we don’t, or that we’re ‘making progress’—anything except admitting who we really are and then actually doing something about it.”

  “People like that see the world as them and us,” Gabe said, “when the truth is that human beings are at the top of the food chain because of their ability to cooperate with one another.”

  Mrs. Valenzuela wasn’t convinced. “Then how come if you look at people, you find hate is right beneath the surface?” She held her fingers about an eighth of an inch apart. “About this far under,” she said. She dropped her hands to her sides with a smack. “Why’s that?” she wanted to know. “I don’t understand.”

  They were building a splashy new waterfront. Or so they said. Only problem was it wasn’t actually on the water. I mean like you could see Puget Sound and all, you know, out in the distance, over the parking lots, the boatyards and marinas, on the far side of Jetty Island, where the mouth of the Snohomish River drooled into Possession Bay. In the foreground Whidbey Island sprawled languidly across the near horizon, looking like it was being pinned in place by the majestic Olympic range grinning white toothed out at the far reaches of the sky.

  The actual waterfront consisted of a couple of semi-tony restaurants and a single-story office building, all of which were squeezed between the super-tight military security of Naval Station Everett and the upscale Everett Yacht Club. Gabe headed into Anthony’s restaurant for a Coke while I toddled over to North Shore Mental Health Services. The sign on the door read: CLOSED. Out of habit, I grabbed the knob. The door popped open. Tinkle. Tinkle. I stepped inside.

  Standard peaceful waiting room. Couches, chairs, travel posters on the wall, couple of haggard plants strewn here and there. Even had the HANG IN THERE kitty cat over in the corner. Nobody personing what I assumed to be the receptionist’s desk.

  “Hello,” I sang out.

  Nothing.

  I pulled in a lungful of air and was about to turn up the volume when the door at the far end of the hall opened, and Suzanne Bradley stepped into the corridor. Her hair was shorter than it had been in the picture, and she’d put on a few pounds, but otherwise she looked about the same.

  “I’m sorry . . .” she began. “I guess I didn’t get the door latched properly. Today’s the day we work the clinic.” She waved a white phone charger in the air. “I just came back to get this.” She pulled the office door closed and walked in my direction. “Who have you come to see?” she asked.

  “You,” I said.

  She cocked her pretty head. “And your name is . . .”

  “Leon Marks,” I said as I handed her a phony business card.

  She scanned the card and frowned. “Are you sure . . .”

  “I’m here about Matthew Hardaway.”

  The name stopped her in her tracks.

  “In what capacity?” she asked.

  “I’m a crime writer,” I said. “Doing a little preliminary research about the Matthew Hardaway murder.”

  “Not much of a mystery there,” she said.

  “You’d be the one to know, I’m guessing.”

  She made it a point not to be amused.

  “You know I can’t talk about a client.”

  “The client’s dead.”

  “Doctor-patient privilege, however, lives on.”

  “I just wanted to—”

  She cut me off. “If you had any idea of the degree to which Matthew’s father . . .” She paused to collect herself. “If you knew the lengths Mr. Hardaway has gone . . .” She gobbled air. “Mr. Hardaway’s attorneys served me with nondisclosure paperwork the morning after the shooting.” She waved a frustrated hand in the air. The phone charger flopped around like a wet noodle. “Like he already had the paperwork on hand in case something like this happened.”

  “I spent a few hours with Matthew some years back,” I said. “Nervous, squirrelly, all over the place . . . loony as hell, sure. But seems to me a long way from walking into a city council meeting and shooting somebody in front of half the town. That’s quite a stretch there.” I kept talking. “Did you think he posed that kind of danger to society?”

  She started to snap something back at me but changed her mind and clamped her mouth shut. Took a deep breath. “If I’d thought something like that was even remotely possible, I would have reported it to the proper authorities, which in this case was his parents. Matthew was a referral from another counseling service. They felt as if he’d exhausted their resources.”

  I watched as she stuffed the charger in the pocket of her jeans.

  “I have to get back,” she said.

  “Seems like nobody in this town much wants me prying into this thing,” I said as she pulled open the door and waited for me to walk out.

  “Can you blame them?” she asked as she banged the door shut and then tested it. “Nice to have met you, Mr. . . .”

  “Marks,” I said. “Matthew have any friends?” I asked.

  She turned and started across the parking lot. She sneaked a peek over her shoulder and caught me following her ass. She stopped and turned back my way. Even from a distance, I could see the wheels turning in her head.

  “You might try a young lady named Wendy Bohannon.”

  She pointed to the north, toward the side of the hill overlooking the bay. “Her parents live up there,” she said. “They won’t be hard to find.” She wagged a finger in my direction. “Just don’t use my name. I’d prefer not to spend the rest of my life in court.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Be okay if I watched you walk the rest of the way?”

  She arched an eyebrow in my direction. No smile.

  “Whatever pleases you,” she said.

  Suzanne Bradley was right. They were the only Bohannons in town. Way the hell up
on the side of the hill, with the rest of the old money, peering out over Possession Bay like a disapproving dowager aunt. We got lost looking for the house because the streets were designed in such a way as to make it difficult to cruise around the neighborhood gawking at the swells.

  If the landscaping was any indication, the house had been built at least fifty years ago. Would have taken that long to grow the boxwood hedge that shielded the house from the street. Gabe waited in the car as I let myself in the wrought-iron gate and gave the big brass knocker three sharp raps.

  The sound of running feet leaked under the door. A series of shakes and rattles and then the door popped open. The young woman seemed surprised to see me. “Oh . . . ,” she said. “I thought you were . . .”

  Looked to be about eighteen or nineteen. Real big-time Goth. Disaffected youth at its finest. Long dark hair. Dark everything except the big twitchy blue eyes that never seemed to come to rest. Over her shoulder I could see a wide hallway running off toward a set of French doors what looked to be a quarter mile away. Overhead a crystal chandelier hung a full story above the parquet floor. Somber oil paintings lined the walls. Place looked like a museum.

  “I’m looking for Wendy Bohannon,” I said.

  She looked back over her shoulder and then did it again, like the hounds of hell were hot on her trail or something.

  “I’m Wendy,” she said, without ever looking my way.

  “I’m a writer,” I said. “My name is Leon. If you have the time, Wendy, I’d like to talk with you about Matthew Hardaway.”

  Her eyes finally landed on my face like a housefly. “Matthew?” she parroted.

  “Yes” bounced off the back of her head as she checked the hallway again.

  “Wendy . . . Wendy, who’s at the door?” a voice called from the far end of the hall.

  “You should go,” the girl said, swiveling her neck back and forth like she was watching a tennis match. A second later, a silhouetted figure stepped into view and started walking our way.

  Wendy stepped in close to me. “There’s a little park,” she whispered. “Two blocks uphill.”

  That was as far as she got. The woman who arrived at Wendy’s side was maybe thirty. Looked like she took several hours to get ready every morning. Perfectly coiffed auburn hair. Sprayed-on makeup. Seriously put together and fully aware of the impression she made on men. The foo-foo woman at home.

  She was wiping her hands with a towel. “Can I help you?” she asked.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out a business card. She made no move to take it from my hand. Just stood there and looked at it like it was a dog turd. “How can we help you?” she asked with all the warmth of a glacier.

  “I was hoping to have a few words with Wendy,” I said.

  She stopped wiping her fingers. “About what?”

  “Matthew Hardaway.”

  Without further preamble, she turned her back on me and went clicking down the hall at warp speed. “Paul,” she called. “Paul.”

  “The park,” Wendy silently mouthed.

  When I looked up, a big, beefy guy in a bright-blue shirt and a pair of chinos was storming up the hall in my direction. Somewhere between fifty and sixty. Big gut wobbling out in front of him as he walked. I watched Wendy begin to shrink as he drew closer. He threw an annoyed glance in her direction.

  All he said was, “Go,” and she went skittering off down the hall.

  “What’s this about?” the guy demanded.

  “I wanted to speak with Wendy regarding Matthew Hardaway,” I said.

  “She had nothing to do with that,” he said about twice as loud as necessary. At which point he stepped way inside my personal bubble and got nose to nose with me. “Leave,” he growled.

  “I’m aware of that,” I said. “I was hoping she could—”

  “Get off my property, or I’ll call the police.”

  I took a step backward.

  “Wendy has problems of her own,” he boomed. “She has nothing to do with that nutjob. Now get the hell off my property.”

  Didn’t seem like my famous powers of persuasion were going to win the day here, so I shrugged, stepped down from the stone stairs, and headed back toward the street.

  Gabe had slipped over behind the wheel. “No lunch invitation?”

  “Supposedly there’s a park a couple of blocks up the hill.”

  Gabe started the car and dropped it into gear.

  “I take it they weren’t happy to see you.”

  “Pleased as punch. About like everybody else in this town. Let’s go,” I grumbled.

  The park was right where Wendy Bohannon had said it would be, except it wasn’t so much a park as it was a city reservoir and a couple of water tanks surrounded by a few acres of mown grass and dotted with park benches. Gabe and I got out of the car, wandered over to the nearest bench, and sat down.

  “We’re not exactly kicking ass here,” Gabe said. “We’re wearing out our welcome in a hurry.”

  I nodded but didn’t say anything. Gabe was right. The way things were going showed scant promise of a happy ending. We needed to either putt or get off the green, before the forces of darkness got hip to what was going on.

  Ten minutes later, Wendy came scooting up between houses, using one of those over-this-fence-and-around-that-yard paths that kids always seem to find in their neighborhoods. She crossed the grass and stood in front of Gabe and me, fidgety, shifting her weight from foot to foot and keeping a tense watch over her shoulder.

  “Didn’t mean to cause any trouble for you with your mom and dad,” I said.

  “She’s not my mom,” the girl blurted. The fire in her blue eyes was threatened by a sudden flood.

  “Oh,” was the best I could come up with.

  “Sheila’s the trophy wife,” Wendy said, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. “She hates me.”

  “Why would she hate you?” Gabe inquired.

  “Because she wishes my father’s life started and ended with her. She wishes he didn’t have a past . . . particularly not me. She’s a mega bitch.”

  Didn’t take Dr. Ruth to see I’d blundered into an ongoing family feud, so I shifted gears. “How do you know Matthew?” I asked.

  “From the clinic,” she said.

  She read my mind. “They send me there because I hate Sheila.” She waved an angry hand in the air. “Like I must be crazy if I don’t like that bitch or something.”

  “Don’t seem right,” Gabe said. “Don’t seem to me like hating your stepmother ought to qualify you as nuts. Lots of people hate their stepparents.”

  “It’s bullshit. That’s just what they tell people.”

  “What’s true?” Gabe pressed.

  She blinked a couple of times. “I’m the one who found Mom,” she said in a low voice. The look on her face said she wished she hadn’t told us.

  “You found your mom?” I said.

  “In the garage.” She sucked in a big gulp of air. “She killed herself,” she said, tossing her head. “They say I’m traumatized.”

  “Anybody would be traumatized,” Gabe allowed. “Nobody walks away from something like that, Wendy. Nobody. You wouldn’t be a . . . you wouldn’t be human if you weren’t damaged by something like that.”

  I could tell she’d heard it before, and as far as she was concerned, it didn’t sound any better coming from us than it had from whoever had preceded us.

  “Five months,” she said bitterly. “My mom wasn’t even in the ground five months when he married that . . . that . . . cow.” She swallowed the rest of it.

  A shout bounced around the neighborhood. Wendy rolled her eyes.

  “My father,” she groaned. “You guys better go. He knows everybody who’s everybody. He’ll get the cops to hassle you.”

  “Were you surprised by what Matthew did?” I asked.

  Another shout. Closer this time.

  “Matthew wasn’t mean. Not at all. He was confused. He didn’t like himself. Didn’t think he de
served anything good to happen to him, but he wasn’t mean. It was that fucking job. He started to change right after he got that stupid fucking job.”

  “What job?” Gabe asked.

  The job made him different. Before that the only person he ever said anything bad about was himself, and then . . . he just started to change . . . He . . . all of a sudden he hated everybody.”

  “Wendy!” The name rattled off the nearby houses. More eye rolling.

  “Bickford something or other. Up on Evergreen.”

  Without another word, she turned and sprinted for the street. About the time her father puffed up to the corner and spotted Gabe and me, she’d already ducked back under somebody’s shrubbery and disappeared from view. He pulled a cell phone from his pants pocket at started poking at it.

  We took our time getting back in the car and driving off. Moving at the speed of lava. Paul Bohannon stood on the corner the whole time, breathing hard, arms locked across his ample torso, trying to set us on fire with his most baleful glare. In the distance a siren began to whine.

  “We got maybe a half hour,” Carl announced as he motored across the room in his wheelchair. Charity and Maxie were working at flank speed. Stuffing all their computer equipment into metal cases, snapping the latches, and then rolling them out into the hall.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “They’re on to us real hard. They been probing back at us all morning. They know they been hacked big-time. We been misdirecting them for over an hour, but they’re linkin’ up with one another. I think it was the school records. Way better cybersecurity than the rest of these assholes. That’s when things started to go to shit. They’re just now trying to triangulate where it’s coming from. Won’t be long before even these dolts figure it out. We gotta be somewhere else when they get here.”

  Gabe and I joined in the exodus. Ten minutes later, Carl’s van was packed to the rafters, and Charity and Maxie were belted up and ready to go. I walked over to the driver’s side. Carl handed me an orange thumb drive. “Everything we got’s on there. Better hide it good.”