by Elle Gray
Marcus Hughes is a favorite son in Seattle. He played for the Sonics for a time back in the ‘90s before the team moved to Oklahoma City. He is a good friend of my father’s. He’s always maintained his ties here, doing a host of charity work and staying involved with the community. He’d hired me to find the man who murdered his daughter, Stella. That had been a blow to us all.
It turned out that Dr. David Tucker, a prominent surgeon in the area, had a penchant for murdering young women. Five of them in all. And this, on the heels of Alvin Perry’s nightmare rampage across a number of years. We couldn’t save Stella, but we got justice for her.
He shrugs. “Depends on which social circles you run in, I suppose.”
“Pretty sure no respectable social circle would have you.”
“Come on now. I’ve helped take down a pair of really bad guys. I’m in a stable relationship—”
“For the first time in your life,” I interrupt.
“Be that as it may, I’m in a stable relationship, and I’m a productive member of society,” Brody continues. “Any social circle would be lucky to have me.”
“You keep telling yourself that.”
May, our usual server, bustles over to us, a smile on her face. She’s a pretty twenty-something brunette with a petite yet curvy body. She’s only about five-three, but the short black skirt of her faux-habit seems to make her legs seem unnaturally long. I see the eyes of the men in the place following her when she walks past, that subtle swish of her hips adding a little action to her backside that undoubtedly helps with her tips.
“Good to see you boys again,” she chirps, her eyes lingering on mine. “How’ve you been?”
Brody nods. “Doing well, May.”
She flashes him a grin. “How’s your girl?”
“She’s excellent, thanks for asking. She wants to know when you’re going to make an honest man out of this one though,” he replies, a mischievous smirk crossing his lips as he gestures to me.
“I’ve been wondering that myself for a while now,” she replies, a flirtatious grin on her full lips. “It’s not for lack of trying, I assure you.”
May’s got a crush on me and has since we first started frequenting this place. Everybody I’ve ever met here for drinks has tried to get me to ask her out. I really wish they’d stop pushing me. It’s not that I don’t find her attractive. She most definitely is. And she seems sweet. It’s just a matter of me not being in a space where I want to date right now. I really wish people could understand and respect that.
I give her a small smile. “May, believe me when I say, you deserve somebody far better than me, who can give you far more than I’m able to right now,” I tell her for what must be the thousandth time.
A small frown touches her lips, but she quickly recovers. She can’t hide that glimmer of disappointment in her eyes, but then she tips me a wink, and her smile widens.
“What can I say? I love a challenge,” she says. “And believe me, I’m self-aware enough to know what I want and deserve.”
Brody chuckles and gives her a wide smile. I just smile sheepishly and give her a small shrug. But if she’s dissuaded at all, she doesn’t show it.
“What can I get for you, boys?” she asks.
“Bloody Pope for me,” I reply.
“A Methuselah for me,” Brody orders, which is an Old Fashioned with a habanero pepper juice kicker. It sounds entirely disgusting to me, but hey, to each their own.
“Comin’ right up,” May nods, swishing off.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” I tell him after May’s gone and out of earshot. “It makes things awkward for everybody. Especially her.”
“Funny, she didn’t seem awkward to me. Determined maybe, but not awkward.”
“Fine. It makes me feel awkward.”
“That girl is way into you, man. Marcy and I both agree that you should get together with her.”
“Well, when I need you two to set my social calendar, I’ll let you know,” I reply.
“Social calendar? Jesus, how old are you again?” Brody laughs. “Who even says things like ‘social calendar’ anymore outside of a nursing home? The fact that you do is irrefutable proof that you need us to fix you up.”
“I really don’t.”
“Come on, man. May is extremely smart. You know she’s going to grad school part-time? And she’s funny. Though the fact that she’s so into you leads to questions about her judgment and taste,” Brody says. “But she’s great. And last I checked, you didn’t exactly have a whole barrel of suitors headed your way.”
I laugh. “Yeah well, anyway, speaking of your stable relationship, how’s Marcy doing? Haven’t seen her in a bit.”
“She’s busy. Barely has time to see me these days,” Brody tells me. “But she’s good. Really good. Nice deflection and subject change, by the way.”
“And people say you’re an unobservant idiot,” I muse.
Marcy Bryant is about the last person I would have ever figured Brody to end up with. For all of his bluster, he’s a pretty traditional, buttoned-down sort of guy. And Marcy is anything but traditional. She’s got a bunch of tattoos, a couple of facial piercings, and every time I see her, she’s got a strip of hair dyed a different color; blue the last time I saw it. And her personality is just as bold as her looks. The woman has no fear, and when she sinks her teeth into a story, it’s all me or Brody can do to at least convince her to have a backup plan before flying off the handle into a dangerous situation. Brody’s always dated the head cheerleader-homecoming queen type of girl, so to see him gravitate to Marcy as quickly— and tightly— as he did, was more than a little surprising to me.
But they seem to work together. Brody seems genuinely taken with a woman for the first time ever. I’ve known him for most of his life, and he’s spent it hopping from one bed to the next, but Marcy has really captured his heart. I’m glad to see it. He deserves to be happy. She’s too good for him, honestly, and he knows it and thanks his lucky stars every day. They’re really good together. What I like the most is that she won’t put up with his garbage and will never hesitate to give him a good smack when he steps out of line.
We first met Marcy when we were tracking Tucker. She’s an independent investigative journalist— she’s doing exactly the sort of thing Veronica was doing. Marcy is actually the one who made the connection between Tucker’s various victims originally. She gave us our first solid leads to go on.
Marcy is intelligent. Tenacious. Determined. She’s a lot like Veronica in so many ways, and that could be one reason I immediately took to her as well. Not in the same way Brody has, obviously. But she’s a good friend and somebody I’m very fond of. There are very few people I trust in this world, but she’s become one of them in a very short time.
“Her podcast is good,” I tell him. “It’s really good.”
He gives me a tight smile. “She was afraid you’d be upset about it since… you know, it was Veronica’s deal. She didn’t want you to think she was trying to disrespect her or anything.”
I shake my head. “Veronica wasn’t unique in that space. And frankly, I think she would not only like Marcy as much as I do, but she’d encourage her to do what she’s doing. Honestly, if she was... around, I bet she’d be chomping at the bit to collab with her. It would be the crossover of the century.”
Brody chuckles. “Jesus, those two on the same team. Could you imagine?”
“I really could."
After we took down Tucker, and Marcy’s role in it all was revealed, I put her together with my brother George— now the head of our family company, the Archton Media Group— and together, they hammered out a framework for Marcy’s investigative true-crime podcast. With Archton’s network, Marcy’s show is now being heard from coast to coast, and with the numbers George shared with me, people are eating it up.
I’m glad for her. And proud of her as well. With everything she went through, it would have been easy for her to pack it in and go into hid
ing, secluding herself from the world. But she’s made of stronger stuff than that and has redoubled her efforts to seek truth and justice. It’s just another thing she’s got in common with Veronica.
May drops off our drinks a moment later and tips me a wink before she turns and heads off to see to her other tables. The after-work crowd is starting to filter in, and the place is starting to get busy. I raise my glass to Brody, and he clinks his against mine before we take a drink.
“So anyway,” he starts. “Marshall MacMillan. Do tell.”
“Wife was murdered a couple of weeks ago,” I say. “SPD’s calling it a home invasion robbery gone wrong.”
“But I take it that’s not what you’re calling it.”
“I’m not sure what to call it just yet, to be honest. We just took the case yesterday, so I need to start getting some background.”
Brody takes a sip of his drink. “What sort of background are we looking for?”
“Anything dirty. I want to know if she had any enemies. The names of anybody she’s had trouble with at any time,” I explain. “I also want backgrounds done for the family. I think in addition to Sarah, who came with him to the office, he’s got two sons. I’d like to know what they’re about.”
“Fair enough. I’ll dig up everything I can,” he nods. “How’s the old man doing?”
I shrug. “About as well as you’d expect, given the circumstances.”
He nods and takes another swallow of his drink and seems to be contemplating something, a small frown touching his lips.
“I met him a couple of times… Marshall. He was a friend of my dad’s,” he says.
“He rep your dad in court or something?”
He nods. “Yeah, back in the day. They got to be good friends after that.”
“What’s your take on him?”
Brody shrugs. “Didn’t know him very well. As I said, he was a friend of my dad’s, and you know how that goes.”
I chuckle. My dad is like Brody’s in some regards. He’s got two sets of friends; friends who are socially acceptable and were fine to be seen with in public. And then his real friends, the other rich old men who are members down at his club. It’s a small circle of brandy-sipping, cigar-smoking, self-proclaimed masters of the universe. That group of friends, by and large, we’re not allowed to mingle with.
That group consists of men from many different industries rubbing elbows, the one common link binding them all being money. Well, money and being at the top of their respective industry food chains. So it’s not overly surprising to know that Brody’s dad and Marshall had a relationship.
“The handful of times I met him though, he seemed like a decent enough guy,” Brody shrugs. “Pretty devoted to his family.”
“Yeah well, it’s going to take some time for the guy to heal,” I reply quietly.
Brody nods but doesn’t say anything. Perhaps he’s thinking of Veronica and what her death has done to me. Or maybe he’s thinking of something else. I don’t know. Brody finally raises his head, and he looks stricken.
“You don’t think he did it, do you?” he asks. “I mean, I know the spouse is usually the first person they look at.”
“He was out of town at the time,” I reassure him. “SPD ruled him out already.”
He gives me an incredulous look. “And we’re believing the SPD now?”
I chuckle. “Until I have reason not to. I’ll look into his movements, but that’s so simple to verify, I don’t think even they could have screwed it up.”
He blows out a small breath, maybe thinking I didn’t notice. I guess he thinks more highly of Marshall than he lets on. Or maybe, despite all we’ve seen together, he still wants to believe in the inherent goodness of people.
Fortunately, I don’t suffer from that same belief. I assume that everybody is a suspect. At least at the outset. I do my due diligence and take people off that list as a case winds on. But in my eyes, everybody is guilty until proven innocent. I find it makes things a bit more efficient if I view everybody equally.
But for now, I don’t see any reason to put Marshall back onto the suspect list. He was cleared by the SPD, and his pain was too real. Too raw. The grief I saw in his eyes was all too familiar to me, and it tore at my own heart. And I know from personal experience, that sort of thing can’t be faked.
No, somebody killed Mrs. MacMillan, and it wasn’t him. But I am going to find out who did it and bring them in. The only thing I haven’t yet decided is whether or not I’m going to give Marshall five minutes alone with them when I do.
Four
MacMillan Residence; Denny-Blaine Neighborhood, Seattle
I make a full circuit of the house, examining all of the doors and windows, treading ground that’s already been walked by the SPD. I don’t see evidence of any possible points of entry being jimmied. No scrape marks, no splintered wood, no— nothing. It’s something I file away.
“And nobody has been in here since… that night?”
Sarah MacMillan stands near the arched doorway that leads from the foyer into the sitting room I’m currently exploring, watching me closely. She’d agreed to meet me here this morning to let me tour the crime scene.
She shakes her head. “No. My father couldn’t bear to stay here after— what happened.”
I nod in understanding. In the sitting room, tables and chairs have been overturned. Glass from the lamps and other ornamentation litters the ground, some of it crunching beneath my feet. Somebody had cut open the sofa, tearing the fabric and throwing the feathers and batting all over the room.
There are holes in the walls. It looks like somebody took one of the legs from the coffee table and used it for batting practice. This room, along with a few others, has been reduced to wanton rubble. As I’ve made my way through the house, I’ve been making sure to snap a lot of pictures. I’m going to want to take a closer look at things back at the office.
“This is how everything was the night of your mother’s… attack?” I ask, giving myself a pat on the back for being sensitive and using carefully neutral words.
She gives me an incredulous look. “She was murdered. Not attacked. And I’ve been around criminal investigations long enough to know that you preserve a crime scene. Everything is exactly how I found it the night my mother was murdered,” she says.
I incline my head to her to acknowledge her expertise. Sarah MacMillan is obviously somebody who does not enjoy being handled or condescended to. She seems to be the sort of person who likes things to be given to her straight. I respect that a lot since I’m much the same way. No need to be sensitive or pussyfoot around what I really want to say with her.
“Technically, the SPD released the house already, so it’s not an active crime scene.”
She rolls her eyes. “And we both know how efficient and competent the SPD is.”
I make another note of her open hostility toward the SPD. It’s not that I have a great love or loyalty for them— I most certainly do not. But it’s something to consider in the larger scope of things. It might mean something; it might not. It could possibly factor into how thorough of an investigation they conducted. It could also prove to be something more darkly sinister. That’s an avenue of thought I won’t even consider exploring just yet though.
“Has your relationship with the SPD always been so contentious?” I ask.
His grin is sardonic. “Was yours?”
I shrug. “Mostly.”
The smile on her face is small, but it’s the first one that’s contained any sense of warmth or genuineness I’ve seen since I first met her.
“I’m a defense attorney, and I provide a very vigorous defense of my clients. Of course the PD is going to hate me,” she says. “But in their eyes, my worst sin is that I am my father’s daughter.”
“I get it,” I tell her. “Who’s the primary on the case?”
“Detective Price. Kyle Price.”
A look of pure distaste crosses my face before I’m able to get myself
back under control. If Sarah sees it, she’s good enough to refrain from commenting. I know Price. He was a newly minted detective a year or so before I was fired from the SPD and was known in all circles as a bootlicking turd. Price isn’t particularly smart, but he plays the game well and is a protege of Chief Torres, who’s as close to an arch-nemesis as I have in this world. He made my life on the force almost unbearable simply because I wouldn’t bow down and kiss his ring.
I should have made detective long before I got fired, but because I wouldn’t play the game or promise my allegiance to Torres, he made sure I never made it out of a squad car. The SPD is all about politics. And there are definite sides— Torres’ side, and everybody else— engaged in a quiet war of attrition.
It’s a war I’m thankful to no longer be a party to. Most thought me to be on now-Commissioner Gray’s side of the battle lines, but I have always maintained my independence and neutrality. Of course, gun to my head, if I was forced to pick a side, I’d choose Gray every single time. Torres is a moron and is nothing close to the sort of person who should be leading the SPD.
Despite all of my bitching and complaining— and general disdain for the department— the truth is there are still good people filling the ranks. And it’s for them I feel a sense of pity. Under Torres’ leadership, they will never reach their potential, and the department as a whole will continue to labor under a cloud of corruption and politics. When you’re in the SPD, protecting the people comes second. Covering your own back and the backs of those you’re loyal to is job number one.
“Do you know him? Price that is,” Sarah asks.
I nod. “Yeah, I know him.”
“Is he one of the good ones?”
I give her a grim smile. “No. Not at all.”
“Well, it’s a good thing I hired you then,” she says.
“Looks that way.”
I look at a photograph hanging on the wall. It’s of Sarah and her father at her commencement from Stanford. Dressed in her black gown and tam, a cardinal red stole around her shoulders, and purple hood— the regalia of Stanford’s law school— a younger version of Sarah is standing with her father. Her smile is wide and warm, and the light of a very fierce pride shines in Marshall’s eyes. She’s definitely a daddy’s girl, and she is most definitely the apple of his eye.