by Dick Lilly
“And your Seattle mayor, Mr. McCracken, isn’t it? Don’t you think he should have waited another four years before taking her on? The papers, even the papers here, say she is raising lots more money than he is. Perhaps this is a trial run for him. What do you think, Mr. Barclay?” Unsure what drove Adrian’s interest and because he was still a sometime advisor to the mayor, Carl hemmed and hawed noncommittally when the questions probed toward Sonny McCracken. The evasiveness was unlike him, but the drug dealer wasn’t just making idle conversation, much as he tried to give that impression. Carl figured it was better not to gamble when he didn’t know what the stakes were.
After the strawberries and a goat cheese from a boutique farm in the Napa Valley, Adrian rose, dropping his napkin on his chair. Lunch was over. He walked over and unzipped Carl’s carry-on and took out one of the ten plastic-wrapped bricks of pure crystal methamphetamine. He held it up in both hands and laughed. “Perfect, my friend, perfect.” Backlit by a window, the crystal brick glowed. “Look at that fire in there, Mr. Barclay. We’re staring through the gates of Hell, no?”
Carl made polite parting sounds, shook hands and pulled the bag he got from Adrian, identical to the one he arrived with, into the hall. He knew it contained at least $1 million in cash but he never looked. What good would it do? The muscle appeared and escorted him to the elevator. In less than an hour, he’d be airborne having a couple single malts, another month behind him. That the plane returned to Seattle with a thousand pounds of chemicals for the meth lab carefully packed in the cargo bay, he never knew.
Chapter 3, Vera’s
Tuesday June 10, 7:30 a.m.
“Mr. Falconer?” A woman maybe 40, maybe 45, stood by his table. She looked like she’d been up all night or wasn’t good at makeup, or both.
“I’m one of them. There are eight of us in the phone book.” Tipsters were a part of life like pit bulls you hoped stayed leashed. At best one in 50 had a vein of gold but those were lots better odds than the state lottery so from long experience Falconer made it a habit to listen long enough to sort the private grievances from the potential Pulitzers. He already had one of those from a series back in the 90s exposing private colleges designed more to saddle students with debt than get them through two or four years with usable degrees. With tipsters, most of the time he ended up bummed, voyeur to an obsession better treated by a shrink than the law, not stories for the public. If these were insights into the human core, it was a bleak place. He hated these encounters.
“Mr. Falconer, what I have to tell you, you really, really want to hear.” There was something out-of-date about her. Falconer thought she’d modeled herself on some famous actress from the 50’s, straight black skirt tight along heavy thighs, red hair in a shoulder-length flip, a turquoise satin blouse hanging open on generous, well-supported breasts as she slid into the booth, worldly, sexy, complete with bedroom voice. Everybody’s playing somebody, Falconer thought.
“OK lady. You get the same chance as everybody. Give me the one-minute version: main characters, summary of the plot. Then if I don’t ‘really, really want to hear it,’ you go away and I eat breakfast in peace and read the paper.” He picked up his coffee cup and looked out at the street, deliberately denying her the credibility of eye contact. “Fire away.”
“It’s about the governor,” she began in a breathy whiskey-voiced whisper, the tone of secrets passed, of scandal. “In college she had a baby nobody knows about. She got pregnant and left for a semester and had a baby girl and gave her up for adoption. Now Maureen has a family and no one knows she ever did that and her daughter she gave away doesn’t know her real mom. Isn’t that awful? Now her daughter has her own little boy and he doesn’t know his grandma, but there she is in Olympia, in the governor’s mansion, famous. Doesn’t that just break your heart?”
“No, not really.” Falconer was honestly indifferent. “Who told you all this?”
“No one. I was in college with her. She said it was mono. She went to California, San Diego, to recover, but some of us knew.”
“Lady, you look like you’ve been up all night, but even with those party-hearty bags under your eyes you don’t come within ten years of Maureen Collins’ age. You weren’t in college with her unless they let you in when you were seven. Who sent you? Or maybe I should ask who hired you? And why does he – or she – want me to know this?”
“It’s so sad, isn’t it, Mr. Falconer? But you can find the daughter and write about it and bring them together. Don’t you think people will just love that story?”
“I get that part. But it doesn’t get told until I talk to your boss or boyfriend or whoever it is wants this out, and maybe not then. Whoever sent you is not doing this to gild the governor’s image. Don’t you get that?”
“It’s your call, Falconer,” she said, a staccato, tough-girl voice suddenly replacing the warm, seductive notes of the character she’d played. “San Diego, 1973. You can find it.” Long confident strides, spike heels that matched her blouse clacking on the linoleum and in a few seconds the door slammed behind her.
Falconer waved at Kinsey for more coffee. Vera’s was an old-style lunch counter that hadn’t changed much in 50 years. Since Starbucks they’d gone to a local coffee roaster for beans and learned not to leave the coffee on the hot plate more than an hour and in a bow to trendier menus, there was now a choice of link sausages. Chicken-fennel had been added, red potatoes an option competing with hash browns. The décor was still vibrantly vinyl and Formica, some of it pink. Falconer ordered his usual: two eggs over easy with pork links and the red potatoes.
It was a great story. The family-values Republican governor, just barely elected thanks to the religious conservatives who stayed with her despite her moderate environmental views, revealed to have a long-lost love child. That was the tabloid version. Hell, that was everybody’s version these days, the dailies’ and television’s and all the bloggers’. How much would it hurt? Any bad press would be enough if it drove the values voters away or, feeling betrayed again, they just stay home on election day, Falconer thought. At least it wasn’t an abortion. She gave the child up, just what the right-to-lifers preach. Falconer had no doubt he could find the girl, a woman in her mid-thirties now. But for now he wouldn’t look. The bigger story was who wanted to see the governor out, probably a long list. But how many would dig deep into dirty tricks like this? Had to be somebody who knew her back then, or knew somebody who did, assuming the story was true. Hard to get enough mileage out of it, if it weren’t. Whoever was peddling the information, sooner or later he’d hook a willing reporter. The story was a bomb, once detonated with the campaign already in full swing, likely to deny Maureen Collins a second term.
Still mulling over the story, Falconer paid and left. Outside under a featureless high, white sky, the morning was still cool. He walked down 22nd and turned into Ballard Avenue. Overhead, three float planes in the gold and white livery of Kenmore Air ploughed northward. Just after eight, the first wave of the summer day, taking tourists to Victoria, the San Juan Islands and farther north to fish. At building height, seagulls glided above the street, moving without effort, as though it was always all downhill up there.
At the corner with Vernon Place, Falconer entered the Starlight Hotel, a once rundown, by-the-week joint he’d bought and remodeled, more than doubling its size with an addition filling the lot next door, vacant for 20 years after a fire. He knew plenty of the locals still hated him for building on the lot. It had become an informal neighborhood park and a place for overflow from the Sunday farmers’ market. Hell, they even resented him for changing the old hotel, though it didn’t look much different except for the color. He’d gagged on the mustard stucco and had it painted a faded brick red to fit in with the rest of the historic street. Inside, Falconer used his key to send the elevator to the fourth-floor of the addition, the penthouse that was his home and office.
Chapter 4, Partridge Point
Tuesday June 10, 6 p.m.
“Looks like we found where the Carkeek floater was killed and you are going to love it, Eric, just love it. I guarantee. You ever write this one, it’ll be a great story.” The caller was Bobby Harms, way too enthusiastic about his work. “Want to meet me for a look?”
Favor for favor. “Where?”
“Partridge Point. Whidbey Island. Drive to Fort Ebey State Park, south parking lot, walk to the top of the cliff. You’ll see a couple of us and some Island County Sheriffs on the beach below.” The detective hung up, amused at leaving Falconer to stew over all the possible questions during the two-hour drive.
Falconer passed the turnoff for the Mulkilteo Ferry to avoid the rush hour line. Farther north he drove through LaConner and the Swinomish Indian Reservation and took a couple back roads around Similk Bay to reach the Deception Pass Bridge. From there it was a dozen miles back south to Ebey’s Landing and the state park.
He drove and gnawed on the options. Bobby hadn’t called him to see a gun half buried in the sand behind some driftwood. Probably wasn’t another body, either, since dead a week or more now it would have all the features of a decomposing seal and the same smell. Falconer decided on a boat – a nice, isolated place to kill somebody, and now wrecked on the rough shore. But nothing he could think of explained why it just turned up. Fort Ebey was a busy beach in June. Any size boat beached there right after the killing would have been noticed within hours.
Looking down from the cliff, Falconer decided he’d guessed about right. In the clear water, easy to see from where he stood and about 20 yards from shore there was a good-sized, expensive-looking fish chaser almost upright on the bottom. Working from an Island County patrol boat, three divers were struggling against the current to strap inflatable bladders to the hull so they could raise it. Falconer started down to the beach following a narrow gully, clinging to weeds and tufts of tough grass to keep from slipping in the loose sand and stones. Only partly successful, after picking his way 100 feet down the defile, he slid the last few yards onto the beach in a cascade of small rocks, dirt, sand and a cloud of dust.
Falconer brushed off his pants, emptied sand and pebbles out of his deck shoes. He wasn’t wearing socks. Harms gave him a smug grin that said “Everything I promised,” and launched into his story. “Some beachcombers spotted it this morning when the tide was out. Park ranger called the Coast Guard and they sent a helicopter and two of their fast boats to look for survivors. Island County responded to the scene. The divers got into the cabin about 10 a.m. and that ended the search. Second body in there, mostly clothes on bones, though, and crabs and a lot of fat fish. They say there’s a couple of bullet holes in one bulkhead so it looks like our murder scene.”
“Uh-huh. And since that was a week, maybe ten days ago, how do you figure it just showed up?”
“Drifting around mostly submerged. That’s the divers’ theory. This model has floatation tanks and upside down may have trapped even more air in the bilges.”
“And over a week of summer no boaters and none of the two-dozen float planes going back and forth to the San Juans and Canada every day spot a 30-foot white hull floating just under the surface?”
“Not likely if it was upside down like they think. The anti-fouling paint on the bottom is black. Probably lucky nobody hit it.”
One of the divers sloshed ashore, picking his way between the boulders, and removed his fins. “You’re Falconer. Bobby said you were coming. My wife’s a fan of yours. Apparently I don’t tell enough cop stories at the dinner table. Can’t really, the kids are always there, so she reads your blog.” He pulled off a black, insulating glove and held out his hand. “Randy Serist, SPD dive team. The other guys are Island County.”
“And you agree with Lt. Harms that this thing has been floating around upside down for a week and wasn’t just scuttled last night?”
“Yes, sir. That fits the facts. The dead guy in the fo’c’sle has been under that long. He’s almost gone except for bones. The crabs are finishing him off. Boat must have been aground at some point where they got aboard.”
The fish-chaser was now partly clear of the waves as a compressor on the dive boat inflated the gray rubber bladders lashed to the hull with cargo straps. “Look at that mess,” said Serist. “Antennas, radar, marlin tower, windshield all ripped off. I figure last night’s flood brought it onto the rocks from the north. Upside down everything gets smashed and then the current rolls it. Easy to happen. The bottom is nothing but boulders like these.” He waived toward the water’s edge and the jumble of rocks, giant stones rounded like pebbles, disappearing shadows as the water deepened. “Some of those things are three, four feet in diameter and that’s what the bottom’s like out twenty, thirty yards. Nothing else stays put. Current runs four or five knots at max flood, sometimes more. This would be a class three rapid if it weren’t underwater. Nothing stays put except the boulders. We think the boat hit some big ones and the current rolled it back upright and wedged it in the rocks.”
“How’d they scuttle it?”
“I don’t think they did, Mr. Falconer. They hit something really hard and cracked the left side at the water line. It probably sank slowly and finally rolled over. I think if there was anybody alive, like your perp, they probably had plenty of time to get off if there was a dinghy or a raft. That’s what I’d be looking for.”
The sheriff’s boat pulled the wreck slowly away from the rocks. The hour or so of slack water between tides was over and the current was already sucking at the boulders close to the beach. It was almost nine and the sun dropped, reddening, through skeins of thin cloud between the Olympic Peninsula and Vancouver Island.
“Just one more thing,” said Harms after Secrist left to collect his gear. “The owner of the boat. It’s registered to a guy you know.” The detective paused for effect. “Carl Barclay, the political consultant.”
“Son of a bitch!”
“We’re knocking on his door right now.”
“Fill me in on what he says?”
“You know better than to even ask. Talk to his lawyer. Read the court papers. By the way…”
“What?”
“I owe you two six packs. The I.D. was super high quality but completely phony. Non-existent house in a real subdivision. And you were right. No prints for the big guy on file anywhere, including with our international friends.”
Chapter 5, H Dock, Everett
Tuesday June 10, 9 p.m.
It took about an hour for Carl Barclay to prove the murder boat wasn’t his, but he had to endure the 30-mile ride from Seattle to Everett with three laconic cops, compounded by the indignity of being frisked.
Bobby Harms’ sergeant figured he had two options. Arrest Barclay, take him downtown and check out his story in the morning, or consider him that rarest of birds, a truthful citizen, and drive him up to the marina tonight and check it out.
Barclay, interrupted at his condo near the end of a Mariners’ game that the home team had the rare chance of winning, was playing indignant taxpayer, threatening Marcus Williams, the sergeant, with lawyers, a lawsuit for false arrest, the whole nine yards which in Barclay’s case included enormous influence. He was a friend of the mayor’s, worked on Sonny McCracken’s earlier campaigns, still had access, and his wife’s sister was married to a deputy police chief. Mostly Barclay, red faced, cursed the cops, angry enough to send spittle flying, for not believing that he’d been at the marina Sunday, just two days ago, and spent the afternoon waxing the topsides. Williams, who was black and keenly aware of the consequences of putting a prominent citizen in jail even for a few hours, decided on a deal. The boat was in Everett or it wasn’t. The guy was right or in deep shit. “Alright, Mr. Barclay, grab a jacket, let’s go up to your boathouse and have a look.” Then one of the two uniformed officers frisked him.
“Can’t have an armed civilian sitting in our cop car, can we, sir?”
“Fuck you.”
“Calm down, Carl. Don’t make it worse. These guys are
OK and we know the boat’s there.” Sally Barclay, a tall brunette with the commanding presence of the competitive swimmer she once was, stepped in to defuse her husband.
“Well, fuck them. These guys are fucked. Soon as we leave, call your brother-in-law. Have him call the chief about this crap. By tomorrow morning, this dude’s going to be thankful if he’s still on the force.”
“OK Carl, we’re both pissed. But just go along. Show them the boat and it’s all over, no problem. Don’t worry, while you’re gone I’ll call Ricky and straighten this out.”
“OK, OK. But if it was up to me I’d be suing them for false arrest.”
“We haven’t arrested you yet, Mr. Barclay,” said Williams in a calming baritone he once thought would get him a career in radio. “We’ve asked you to come along voluntarily and show us your boat just to confirm your statements.”
“Yeah, OK. That’s what we’re doing. ‘Confirming my statements.’ Well, they’re going to be confirmed and that’s your problem.”
Soaked up by the cops’ silence, Barclay’s bitching was deflated by the time they were halfway up I-5. In the front seat, Williams worked his Blackberry and made quiet calls, ignoring him. Barclay changed tacks, morphed the outrage into prominent citizen, friend of the mayor, power broker, puffing himself up. “Glad to get this settled, Sgt. Williams. Must be two boats that look alike. I know mine’s not sunk.”