Fixed in Fear

by T. E. Woods

  “What was your take on her?” Jimmy asked.

  Mort blinked himself back into the moment and realized Jimmy was talking about Rita Willers. “She’s got good instincts. She knows how to control a crime scene and knows when to bring in more resources. I’ve not met any of her officers, but I look forward to working with her.”

  Jimmy smiled the slow grin that got him both in and out of trouble. “Good-looking woman, too, as I recall. Not what you’d expect in a small-town chief.”

  Mort decided to ignore Jimmy’s intimation. He changed the subject. “What’s been going on here?”

  “You mean how we managed without you for a full three hours this morning?” Jimmy took a noisy slurp of coffee. “You’ll be happy to know the streets of Seattle were quiet last night. I think it’s the weather. Folks want to be outside soaking up the last of this good stuff before the October rains start. Even the gangbangers appear to be behaving. Some of the other squads may be catching stuff, but nothing to bother Homicide.”

  Mort was glad to hear it. When he’d requested the assignment to support the Enumclaw police in their investigation of the sweat lodge murders, his own chief made it clear she expected his activities there not to interfere with his responsibilities as chief of homicide here. Mort had performance evaluations, recertification of several detectives, and a budget report due. Five murders out in the county were enough to fill his plate. He needed everyone within the Seattle city limits to delay any lethal activity for at least two weeks.

  “Sounds like a perfect time to catch up on paperwork,” Mort said.

  “I’m betting I can be more creative than that.” Jimmy finished his coffee and tossed the cup in the wastebasket beside Mort’s desk. “Speaking of creative, we got some interesting news from the FBI.”

  Mort pulled the budget folder out of his in-basket. If he could manage to stay awake looking at spreadsheets and line-item requests, he’d be able to give it an hour’s attention before lunch. “What’s that?”

  “The name Edward Dirkin ring a bell?”

  It did, but it took a moment for the details to come together in Mort’s mind. “Minnesota. Mistrial, right? Guy allegedly embezzled big bucks then killed his employer. Went home on bail and disappeared. I got it, right?”

  “You do indeed.”

  “That was, what? Five, six years ago? So what’s up? Feds find him?”

  “Seven years. That’s where the creativity comes in.” Jimmy stood and Bruiser opened his eyes and scrambled to his feet, ready for instruction from his human. “Edward Dirkin’s in custody, but it wasn’t the feds that got him. Report came in late yesterday. Seems old Eddie’s been hiding out all this time in some tiny town in Maine. Some anonymous guy phoned him in to the locals. Guy hung up before the cops could get particulars, but they chased the lead and, sure enough, there was Number Seven on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, standing in his kitchen frying up burgers. I talked to my buddy in Minneapolis last night. He’s heading out to Maine today for a full interview, but I guess Eddie’s spinning a story my buddy says he can’t wait to hear for himself.”

  Mort thought it sounded as good a reason as any to avoid the budget folder. “What’s he saying?”

  Jimmy leaned against the doorjamb. “Get this. According to my buddy, when the local gendarmes showed up at the address the tipster gave, they found Eddie. They had him dead to rights and he didn’t put up any fight. Calm as Sunday morning, my buddy says. But when Eddie’s lawyer shows up on the scene about an hour after Eddie’s hauled in, next thing you know all hell’s breaking loose.”

  “What happened?”

  “Turns out his lawyer informs him that when he tried to access Eddie’s bank accounts to make bail, and, let’s be honest, nail down his own retainer, there’s nothing there but dust. Eddie tells him that’s bullshit and to check another account.”

  “How are you knowing this?” Mort asked.

  Jimmy shrugged. “Apparently they’re not as keen on client privilege in the backwoods of Maine. Eddie and his lawyer are having this chat while the interview room’s still wired. The whole cop shop heard Eddie yelling about something. The particulars were caught on tape. So Eddie tells him to check a third account…then a fourth…and so on. Lawyer does and it’s the same thing. Zero. Nada. Zilch. The man’s been cleaned out. FBI swoops in and discovers all the money got wire-zapped out that afternoon. All in one press of a button.” Jimmy grinned. “And guess where it went?”

  “Swiss bank account?” Mort asked. “Offshore bank where the deer and the dope dealers play?”

  Jimmy pointed to his friend. “You, Mort Grant, are becoming cynical. I can’t say as I blame you. This job would turn Mother Teresa. But this time justice prevailed. FBI has no trouble finding the money. It’s all been transferred into the bank account of the dead guy’s wife. More than nine million dollars. Nobody seems to be able to track how it happened. Apparently they’re running into some sort of techno gizmo hocus-pocus that even the feds can’t track. Who cares, though, right? If some caped crusader wants to make things right for this guy’s widow, I say more power to him.”

  Mort’s breath stopped and his heart raced in the same instant. He forced himself to inhale. Three deep breaths later he was able to feign a calmness he needed Jimmy to hear.

  “That’s quite a story, no doubt about that.” He tapped the budget folder in front of him. “Let me get back to what they pay me to do.”

  Jimmy pushed away from the jamb, his voice a gentle tease. “Don’t get too bored out there in the country. Remember you have people here who love you.” He turned and walked down the hall. Mort waited until the clicking of Bruiser’s toenails faded into the distance before he grabbed his phone. He punched number three on his speed dial, willing his body to settle. He waited until he heard the beep at the end of the announcement telling him to leave a message.

  “Lydia, this is Mort. Call me. Soon.”

  Chapter 8

  “I can probably scare up some coffee.” Rita Willers closed the door and pointed to a setup at the opposite end of her office. Mort thought the table and chairs looked like they might have been sold at a garage sale by someone looking to upgrade their dining room. Or maybe the chief brought them in from her own house. Mort figured Rita Willers as the type who’d rather spend whatever limited budget a small-town police department had on equipment and training for her officers than on dressing up her work space.

  Mort pulled a bottle of water from his jacket pocket and nodded toward his friend. “We carry our own. I probably should have brought one for you. Sorry. My gentleman skills haven’t been dusted off much lately.”

  A muscle twitched in Rita Willers’s jaw as she looked up at Mort. “You can leave them dusty. We’re just a couple of cops here. Have a seat.”

  Mort realized he’d again managed to insult the chief. He stepped back and let Larry choose his spot before settling into the chair next to him, purposefully avoiding the head-of-the-table position. Rita Willers grabbed a pad and pen and took her seat opposite them.

  “Thanks for coming.” Chief Willers directed her smile to Larry. “How would you like to be called? ‘The World-Famous Dr. L. Jackson Clark’ doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue.”

  “It is pretentious, isn’t it? An affectation, I’m afraid, concocted by an insecure young man trying to appear wiser than he was when his first book was published. Please call me Larry.”

  “Larry it is.” She dropped her smile then turned to Mort. “Thanks for coming back today. You have any problems on the drive back down?”

  Mort assured her the drive had been fine, and Chief Willers turned back to Larry.

  “The papers have been all over our grisly murder. Five bodies, dead in a sweat lodge, most of ’em pretty badly burned. I assume you’ve been following the stories.”

  Larry nodded.

  “Detective Grant here tells me we have you to thank for his involvement in our investigation. That right?”

  “Yes. Mort’s b
een my friend for years. As has Carlton Smydon, one of the victims. I asked Mort if he could see what he could do to find whoever it was who killed these people.”

  Mort took the cap off his water and pulled a long drink. He had the impression Chief Willers was purposely excluding him from the conversation. He wasn’t bothered by it. For one thing, he already knew everything Larry had to tell. For another, he understood Willers’s need to maintain leadership in the investigation. He leaned back into his chair and watched the chief in action.

  “I wanted to speak with you personally,” she began. “As I’m sure Detective Grant has told you, your friend received injuries more grievous and more numerous than the other victims. Detective Grant has other ideas, but for the time being I’m operating under the assumption that Carlton Smydon was the target of the attacks. The others were collateral damage. Seven people were delivered to that sweat lodge. Five bodies were found. Detective Grant and I share the assumption that the two missing men are our killers. We may be able to find them faster if we concentrate on your friend.”

  Larry’s nod was as solemn as his voice. “Whatever I have I’m ready to offer.”

  She kept her eyes on Larry for several long moments, tracing his face with as keen a focus as she would bring to any trail she was tracking. Mort hoped his friend wasn’t as uncomfortable as he’d be under Chief Willers’s laser gaze.

  “I like to start at the beginning,” she finally said. “Walk me through your relationship with Carlton.” Mort liked how she used the victim’s first name. “Take your time. I’ll step in with questions if I need clarification. Sound okay?”

  Larry nodded and uncapped his own bottle of water. He took a sip. “Carlton Smydon is my late wife’s uncle. I first met him twenty-six years ago. When I was dating Helen. That’s my wife’s name. Helen Catherine Smydon-Clark.”

  Chief Willers jotted the name on her pad. Mort wondered if she heard the same catch in Larry’s voice he did when Larry spoke his late wife’s name.

  “What was the occasion of your first meeting?” she asked.

  Larry hesitated. Mort imagined that after knowing someone half a lifetime it might take a moment to recall the first encounter. “It was a barbecue at Helen’s father’s house. Helen and I had been dating for several months and she announced it was time for me to meet her family. Her father arranged a salmon bake at his home in Laurelhurst.”

  “That’s a pretty pricey neighborhood,” Willers commented. “What did your wife’s father…do you mind if I call her Helen?”

  Larry’s smile was sad. “I wish you would. I like hearing her name.”

  Chief Willers’s voice was warmer when she continued. Mort appreciated the kindness. “What did Helen’s father do for a living?”

  “Still does.” Larry’s smile disappeared. “Helen’s father is Abraham Smydon.”

  Chief Willers set her pen down. “The guy in the commercials. I’ll bet I see Smydon Fish trucks five times a week. Maybe more.”

  Larry nodded. “That’s him. The fish baron of the Pacific Northwest. Seventy-five years old and still running the business. Helen was his only child.”

  She jotted several lines onto her pad. Mort tried to see what she was writing but couldn’t from where he sat.

  “So Carlton was his brother. Was he in the fish business, too?”

  “Carlton was Abraham’s half brother,” Larry corrected. “Abraham’s mother died when Abraham was ten years old. Cancer as I recall. It’s my understanding that his father, Luther Smydon, remarried less than a year after her death. Carlton was born when Abraham was fifteen. Helen told me Luther’s two sons never had much of a relationship. It wasn’t for lack of effort on Carlton’s part. Maybe it was the difference in their ages, maybe Abraham had difficulty accepting his father’s new wife. For whatever reason there was a distance between the two. I know it was Carlton’s fondest wish to have a close relationship with his brother. But Abraham Smydon can be a difficult man to get close to.”

  “Was there bad blood between the two?” Rita Willers leaned forward. Mort knew she was hunting for a motive.

  Larry shook his head. “No. Nothing like that. I’d call it more a gulf of misunderstanding between them. Carlton was so much like my Helen. Abraham is a different breed entirely.”

  “How were Carlton and Helen alike?” Mort recognized the tactic. Divert the interview subject’s attention away from the crime at hand. Get them talking about something that would allow them to drop any defense they might have. Hope a thread will emerge. Something to tug on. Something that might allow an entire case to be revealed.

  “Carlton was only ten years older than Helen. Abraham was busy building his empire when she was young. He started with one boat he captained himself. Helen’s mother would take her down to the docks when Abraham brought in the day’s catch, but Helen told me she remembered her father as a bustling, loud figure who’d plant one kiss on her head, warn her to stay away from his smelly clothes, then dismiss the two of them so he could return to work. I suppose that was his way of showing his love. Building his business so his kids would want for nothing. Still, Helen describes missing him terribly as a child. Helen and her mother—Olivia was her name—would spend their days at Luther’s home. Helen adored her grandfather, and Carlton and she were raised more as siblings than uncle and niece. They each had a playful streak.”

  Larry leaned back in his chair, lost in memory. The majestic embodiment of a Nobel Prize winner disappeared. In that moment he was simply a man wrapped in a joyful remembrance of the woman he loved. “At least that’s how I’d describe it on my more generous days. Both Helen and Carlton have told me about antics and pranks they pulled on Luther and their mothers that, in another day, might have earned them the business end of a leather belt.”

  His eyes gleamed. “Helen was fearless. I was so drawn to that. She took me out of my small dusty world of books and thoughts and demanded I live in the moment. Carlton was just as adventurous. I remember the first thing he ever said to me. Back at the salmon bake. There I was, walking across Abraham’s vast lawn, on my way down to the lake. Dressed in my only suit. I must have looked ridiculous. I know I was nervous as hell.” He shared his attention between Mort and Chief Willers. “If you think a black man walking across a Laurelhurst lawn would be rare today, imagine what it was like twenty-seven years ago.” He chuckled. “This man comes running up. Of course, he’s dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. He grabs me by the arm and pulls me behind the trunk of a giant cedar tree. Starts warning me that Abraham is furious with me. Says Helen has just announced she’s pregnant and Abraham is all but looking for his gun. Tells me that if I value my hide I’d best turn straight around, get back into my car, and hightail it back to my apartment.”

  Mort remembered this story.

  “So I’m standing there, thunderstruck. I knew nothing about Helen’s being pregnant. Indeed, we’d only made love a handful of times. My head was spinning with fear. I could barely afford to feed myself on my first-year professor’s salary. How was I to support a child? I’d heard stories about Abraham’s devotion to his daughter.” Larry tapped the table in front of him, held Chief Willers in his gaze, and took a side road in his explanation. “Olivia, Helen’s mother, died when Helen was a senior in high school. Tragic death. Ruptured appendix turned septic in a heartbeat. She was alive and hale one day, dead the next. It shook both Abraham and Helen to the core. Helen said the only good thing born of that horror was Abraham’s shift in priorities. He was a multimillionaire by then. But Olivia’s death showed him the cost of his ambition. According to Helen he became a different man. He made a real effort to grow closer to his daughter. The two of them would go down to the docks together. He would take Helen with him as he checked on his fleets up and down the coast from Oregon to Alaska.”

  “What did Helen make of that?” Chief Willers asked.

  Larry considered the question. “I think she was this understandable mixture of grief, resentment, and joy. Helen came to lo
ve her father, I think. Not like she loved her mother or grandfather, that’s certain. And she may never have gotten over his abandonment of her as he grew his business when she was young. But she was proud of him. Proud of the relationship they’d been able to build.” He shook his head and smiled. “And she certainly liked being spoiled in the manner Abraham Smydon, Seafood King of Seattle, could.”

  “So what happened when Abraham found out his daughter was pregnant?”

  Larry slipped back into the enjoyment of the memory. “As I said, I was terrified when Carlton pinned me behind that tree and warned me to disappear. I see Helen running toward us. She throws her arms around me, kisses my neck, and asks me what we should do. I tell her I’m stunned. Why didn’t she tell me first? She steps out of my embrace and tells me not to be angry. She got caught in the moment and just blurted it out. Her father’s furious, she says. Carlton tells her he’s warned me to get out of there. Helen looks at me, fear in her eyes, and tells me perhaps that’s the best idea.” His voice softened. “In that moment all my fear disappeared. I took her hand and told her I wasn’t going anywhere. I pulled her close and looked over her shoulder to Carlton. I thanked him for his concern but assured him we’d be all right. I told Helen I was ready to meet our child’s grandfather.”

  “Wow.” Rita Willers sounded impressed. “Then what happened?”

  Mort watched her face as Larry finished the story. He wanted to see her reaction to how it all ended.

  “Helen stepped out of my embrace and wrapped an arm around her uncle’s waist. Good thing, too. The two of them started laughing so hard I thought they’d fall over. Turns out Helen wasn’t pregnant at all. Her father was down at the lake, grilling salmon and expecting nothing more than an introduction to a man his daughter was dating. Apparently the two of them had thought it would be great fun to test me to see how I’d stand up to the great Abraham Smydon.”