Utah: A Lucy Ripken Mystery (The Lucy Ripken Mysteries Book 7)

by J. J. Henderson

  “I found the other staircase,” said Jack, sidling up next to her. “But I didn’t see her.”

  “I bet she’s down there somewhere,” Lucy said, staring down into the crowd. “But it is so thick with bodies I can’t make her out.”

  “Is that where your friend Saw is going to perform.”

  “I would guess so. Seems like a pretty high level of anticipation, wouldn’t you say?”

  “You’d think he was John Lennon, reborn.”

  “Not quite, but he’s a real talent,” Lucy said. “Just think, most of these kids weren’t even alive when Lennon got killed.”

  “Yeah, but they got their own dead guy—Cobain.”

  “Let’s go down there. I want to find her, and I just bet she’ll be right upfront when Chain—I mean Timothy—makes his appearance.”

  “You mind if I stay up here?”

  “No, I guess not. But why?”

  “Look, people hate me when I sit in front of them in movie theaters. I’m too tall and I get in the way. They’ll hate me here, too, if I go up front.”

  “Hey, you’re right. I’ve actually hated a couple of tall guys myself, in theaters. OK, I’ll look out for you. And if you should see her before I do—well, I’ll keep making eye contact, and you can point the way.”

  Across the street from the entrance with its large jack-in-the-box canopy, two men in suits sat in their government issue sedan, watching the crowds mill around the door. “No way we can go in there. I don’t care if my name is Moe too, I ain’t goin’ into a rock club wearing a suit and tie.”

  “Oh, and if you had your civvies on you’d blend in? Like a sore thumb, old timer.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t see a heavy African-American FBI agent contingent hanging round the door either, señor.”

  “So let’s just sit a while and see who comes out with Ripken. No way we’ll lose her with that overgrown lawyer at her side.”

  “Yeah, but there are two more doors around the corner. Who’s going to watch them? You’re the one called everyone else off this case. You want to go stand in the rain? Why’s it always rain in this burg anyway?”

  “Fuck this. Why the hell would Ripken and Yates be coming here if they didn’t expect to find her? I bet you next week’s expenses she’s in there. Let’s go for it,” said Larsen, whipping off his tie abruptly. “Come on, Moe, it’s just a bunch of kids, for Christ’s sake!”

  Larsen stepped out of the car, and a second later Devereaux followed. They flashed their badges to get through the crowd—pissed-off kids giving way with sullen glances and muttered curses—and did so again at the door. The multi-pierced, raggedy-ass kid checking IDs looked at the badges. He wore a t-shirt that read, “I’m not playing with myself, I’m adjusting my jewelry.”

  “FBI,” he said. “Holy shit! What do you guys want?”

  “FBI business, son,” said Devereaux. “We’re looking for a fugitive.”

  “In here? Get real, man. Nothin’ but a bunch of rock n’ rollers in here.”

  “Why don’t you let us find that out for ourselves, junior,” said Devereaux. “Make our lives easier.”

  “I can’t let you in here without a...”

  “What seems to be the problem?” A slender fortyish guy with spectacles and long, thinning hair appeared in the door.

  “Yo Graham,” said the door guy. “These dudes are from the FBI, say they need to look for someone inside.”

  “FBI. Jesus,” said Graham. “You have any idea how badly you’ll fuck up the atmosphere if you go in there?” he said, but the feds could detect a hint of sympathy in his voice.

  “Look, man,” said Larsen. “We’re not trying to, you know, make a problem for you. There’s a teenage girl, a runaway from another state. She’s been accused of murder. And we have reason to believe she’s in here tonight.”

  “Big fan of Shard, eh?” Graham grinned. “Oh, by the way, my name’s Graham. Graham Slam, that is. I’m one of the owners.”

  “Agent Jack Larsen, FBI. This is my partner, Moe Devereaux.”

  “Hey, Moe Devereaux! Cool name.”

  “Yeah, I know. Thought it might get me a free entry,” he said.

  “So who’s this kid s’posed to have murdered?” Graham said.

  “Her father,” Devereaux said.

  “God damn,” said Graham. “Now that’s pretty scary.”

  “We think she had pretty good reasons, actually. But hey, that’s not your problem. It’s ours, and you could help if you let us in here.”

  “Yeah, yeah, OK. Come on in. Just don’t bust anyone for smoking dope, please. I don’t encourage it but I can’t always, you know, police the whole place. And don’t make a scene in the music room once the band starts, OK? You spot her in there you guard the doors and wait till the band’s done or whatever but don’t fuck up the concert. Deal?”

  “Yeah, OK,” Larsen said. They went in. The air felt heavy and the ambient noise roared overwhelmingly. Larsen almost immediately spotted the tall lawyer in the restaurant area, starting up the stairs, but he didn’t see Lucy or the kid. They circled the bar and restaurant, then paused at the back of a very dense crowd for a look into the music room. From there, Devereaux spotted Lucy elbowing her way through, searching the crowd.

  The loud recorded music suddenly dropped off in volume, and the crowd calmed expectantly. The stage lights came up, and a spotlight played over a single chair. “And now, folks, Moe is proud to present the Seattle debut of Shard, featuring Timothy “Chain Saw” Yarber.”

  He came out on stage alone with a guitar, and sat in the chair. Tapped the mike. Lucy thought he looked far more than two years older. He’d gotten strung out and then kicked heroin since the last time she’d seen him. His hair was super-short, Michael Stipe-style, and he wore black jeans and a white t-shirt. No earrings or other body piercings. He still looked beautiful, she thought. He tapped the mike again. “Hey, Seattle, it’s good to be here. And by the way, my name is Timothy Yarber. Forget Chain Saw. I gave that up with some other stuff I used to do.” He smiled. “So here’s one of my new tunes.” With that he strummed a few chords, and started singing, quietly, a song that turned out to be about a friend who died. At the end of this first tune, he was given not adulation but respectful applause.

  He did three more on his own. Ellen beamed, lost in his songs. She loved him. She was up close, in the second row of bodies, not more than ten feet from Chain. Timothy. She’d seen Lucy and knew she had to talk to her, figure out what to do, but she didn’t want to miss this concert for anything. He sang about all the things she’d lived with, every day, since she started figuring the world out for herself.

  “Man, this kid is miserable,” Larsen said to Devereaux. “I mean, nice voice, not bad tunes, but Christ, things aren’t that bad.”

  “Hey, try bein’ twenty again, Johnnie. Might change your tune.”

  “Tell the truth, I hardly remember 20. Lost in the fog. But I do remember my man Jimi, and Sly. Those guys were all fucked up, but they celebrated, they didn’t whine.”

  “Here comes the band. Time to break out the earplugs.”

  Lucy watched from her spot at the left edge of the crowd as the other members of Shard filed out on stage. A girl with a cello, and two guys, one carrying an electric guitar and the other an electric bass. Roadies brought out a couple of snare drums and amps, and within five minutes Shard had set up. They did their “testing, testing” number, and twanged a few strings and banged a few drums, getting in tune. And then they launched into a song. As they did so the crowd surged—and Lucy spotted Ellen, a couple bodies in from the stage, jumping up and down in a rock n’ roll frenzy. She wore a black t-shirt and a watch cap and shades, just another one of the slacker kids jammed in close to the stage. The energy there seemed to be notching up fast—Lucy hoped a mosh pit wouldn’t start up. Not the kind of thing a pregnant girl wants to get tossed into. Lucy glanced up at the balcony, and caught Jack Yates’ eye, then snapped a look at Ellen. Yates nodde
d, then leaned out and looked down, towards the back of the music room below him. Lucy peered in that direction, and spotted Larsen and Devereaux behind the surging crowd. She looked back at Yates, rolled her eyes, flicked five fingers out twice then mimed a steering gesture. Ten minutes, car out front. He nodded, and disappeared from the balcony.

  Halfway into the next tune, while the crowd thrashed with Shard, Lucy began working her way towards Ellen. She crouched, bobbing and weaving between dancers, hoping to reach the girl and lose the cops at the same time. She got closer and closer to the stage front and center, where Ellen stood swaying. Lucy kept her back to the cops, and as she drew near she began to dance in time with Ellen. She squeezed in behind her as the song came to an end, and urgently spoke. “Ellen it’s Lucy don’t turn around but I’m right behind you. There’s cops in the room so don’t look at me.” Down low she reached and squeezed Ellen’s hand as the crowd screamed their approval of Shard. Ellen wanted to cry, wanted to turn and hug her, tell her what she’d seen, where she’d been, tell her everything she’d been thinking, but she knew better. She knew about cops. Lucy continued. “Soon as the song starts we’re gonna work our way over to the right, to that door under the red exit sign. When the next song ends, and everybody’s yelling and applauding, we’ll throw open the door and run for it. My friend’s outside in his car. OK?” Ellen bobbed her head—and then turned around. She couldn’t help herself. She took off the glasses to see Lucy better. The song started. At that moment, Larsen spotted Lucy, and then Ellen. “There they are!” he said. “Both of ‘em.” He tried to push towards them, was rebuffed by the crowd.

  “Whoa, Lucy,” Ellen cried, “That cop spotted me.” She grabbed Lucy’s hand and led the way as together they slipped down low and worked their way towards the exit. Took half a minute, they made it, ran outside and spotted Jack Yates’ black car double-parked across the street, facing west. They ran for it.

  Devereaux saw the exit door fly open, and knew. “Let’s go, Johnnie,” he cried. “Out the other way, we’ll never get through this mob.” They ran out of the music room and through the bar and out the door they’d come in. Larsen ran for the car, Devereaux circled the corner of the building in time to see a black sedan screech away, headed west on Pike towards downtown. He got to the corner just as Larsen pulled up to the light. He jumped into the car and they cut left and headed down Pike in pursuit.

  “Hey, slow down, John,” said Devereaux, as Larsen sped down the hill. “What’s the rush? They’re with the lawyer. They’re not going anywhere. They’ve gotta be going to his office. Give you two to one Ripken talks her into turning herself in.”

  “Yeah, yeah. It just pisses me off this kid keeps eluding us, you know?”

  “Well, her life’s been pretty much one non-stop deception, compadre. She’s had a lot of practice.”

  “Yeah, right. But Ripken’s supposed to be cooperating.”

  “She is, in her own way. Least I think so. I bet we show up at Jack Yates’ office in the morning we’ll get what we came for.”

  “I hope you’re right. Time this thing got done, don’t you think?”

  “Hey take it easy, Jack,” Lucy said, as Yates whipped around a corner with tires screeching, nearly spinning out across Boren Avenue. “They’re not even after us.” She checked Ellen out, in the back seat. “So how ya doin’, kid?” Lucy asked.

  “Yeeha,” said Jack, gunning it. “Haven’t had the heat on my tail like that in years.”

  “OK,” Ellen said. “I guess. I don’t know. Hey, Timothy was cool, huh?”

  “Yeah. Sorry we had to run for it.”

  “That’s OK. I snuck in. Didn’t pay.”

  “Cool. Caught a couple of his tunes anyways, huh? So Ellen, this is Jack. Jack Yates. He’s a lawyer.”

  “Hey Ellen,” said Jack. “How ya doin’?”

  “Hi. I mean, nice to meet you, Jack. Thanks for pickin’ us up like that.”

  “My pleasure, Ellen. So, you want to go to my office? I think the feds might be there, so—”

  “Where’s the pack, Ellen? You know, your stuff? Where’ve you been staying?”

  “Around. You know that troll thing under the bridge up by Fremont?”

  “Yeah,” said Jack. “The world-famous Fremont troll.”

  “My stuff’s hidden by the troll.”

  “Should we go there now?” Jack said.

  “We gotta have that DVD,” Lucy said.

  “Let’s do it.” They drove to Fremont. Jack turned his headlights on the troll, and Ellen climbed up into the bridge girders and found her pack. The DVD and the knife were still there. Then Jack had an inspiration: he drove back downtown, to the Four Seasons Olympic Hotel. He had a valet take the car to the garage, and they entered the lobby and went to reception. He booked them a two bedroom suite under the name of Mr. and Mrs. Jack Ripken and their daughter Ellen Ripken. Traveling light, to say the least: one small green backpack between them. They got into the top floor suite, ordered a room service feast and a six a.m. wake-up call, then settled in for the night. After they’d eaten, and gotten caught up, Ellen took a long, hot bubble bath. Then Lucy and Ellen went to sleep, one in each of the two double beds in one room. After Jack made sure the two of them were asleep, he fished a small DVD out of his briefcase, turned on the hotel system and ran Ellen’s tape, making a copy while he watched it. When it was done he made another copy, then called his friend Nora Delfino, who wrote a column for the Seattle Daily Press. Her column covered this and that, political chat and police stories, whatever worked. A classic liberal, a friend of the oppressed, and a women’s rights advocate, she was thrilled to be promised a scoop on the real story behind the story of fugitive teenage murderer Ellen Longford.

  Especially with the way Jack told the story. He had just seen the DVD, and his blood first had run cold, and then hot with rage. Had he been watching the scene in a movie, he told Nora D., he would have applauded when Ellen stuck the knife in her father’s back. Nora D. promised to be at his office at six-thirty in the morning.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  IN THE SYSTEM

  As Ellen drifted up towards consciousness, her initial sense was one of ease: a luxurious bed, sweetly conditioned air, the soft glow of early daylight from tall windows screened with translucent white curtains. She stretched, lolling in a moment of voluptuous abandon, and the bed went on forever beneath her naked body. Hadn’t she slept on the ground the night before? And now this endless sweep of silky sheets, warm, gentle light caressing her eyelids.

  Then the world flooded into her head. She opened her eyes and had a look around. Five minutes till six. Lucy asleep in the next bed. Ellen could easily get up and dress and head out the door, down the hall and elevator and out into the street, and then go away. Go somewhere else. But where? She put her hands on her stomach, and felt the gentle swell. Where was it safe? Where could she go? Not back to sleeping on the ground. Not back to wandering the streets on her own. Besides, the lawyer had her stuff. Jack the beanstalk. He seemed OK. Lucy liked him, so he must be all right. Today would be a horrible day, a day of reckoning. Ellen knew that much. The phone rang. Lucy rolled over, reaching for it. Her eyes opened. There was Ellen.

  “Hey,” Lucy said groggily, picking up the phone to listen to a recorded wake-up call. She hung up. “How’d you sleep? You’re up early.”

  “Fine. I just...you know...”

  “It’s a big day.”

  “Yeah.”

  Lucy sat up. “So you’re sure you want to go through with this? I mean, you could still slip out the door and I’d be asleep, never know what happened.”

  “Yeah, I mean no, I don’t want to...Look, I spent the last couple days out there. It’s like you said before. Where would I go, Lucy?”

  “I don’t know, but now that we’re here, and the whole thing’s about to fall into the hands of the law, I just want you to know: no matter how much you prepare for this, you’re probably gonna feel like you made a big mistake by the end
of today, honey.” Lucy sat up, abruptly wide awake, and serious. ”Really. I think this is going to work out best for you, but—I know why you ran. I would have too. You get caught up in the courts, with cops, and lawyers, and all that machinery of justice, or whatever you want to call it, and it gets really nasty. You feel helpless. And it sucks.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. You know, when I was tryin’ to get some help back before...before I—Hey, if you, you know, you wanted to go with me, we could head up to Canada, maybe find somewhere to...”

  “Whoa, whoa, El. It’s too late for that.” Lucy smiled conspiratorially. “We did have some fun, though, didn’t we, on the run? How ‘bout that getaway from Portland? But I don’t think we’d get too far. You’d really go for it if I would?”

  Their eyes met, and all that they’d been through together passed between them. “It’s the only way I’d do it. With you. But I miss my brothers. Even though they’re gonna probably hate me, I wanna see ‘em. Plus I got this baby to deal with.”

  “Yeah, you sure do.” Lucy looked hard at Ellen’s belly. “Hey, I kind of miss my new sister, too. And my life, such as it may turn out to be. I sure don’t know what to expect any more. Thanks to you, girl.” She smiled, and stood up. “Well, I guess we’d better put on our party clothes and get ready, huh? I’m gonna go wake Jack. You want to take a shower, go ahead.”