Island of Thieves

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  Sofia had then spent three hours, off and on, consulting with her lawyer. Rianne’s expertise was civil cases, but she had connections in official circles as well as social ones. Through her sources Rianne was able to glean that Van Shaw had been arrested on suspicion of Linda’s homicide. She had explained to Sofia that an arrest required the police to have at least a modicum of substantive evidence. Shaw’s guilt may not be certain, but it was likely.

  That revelation had prompted more demands from Sofia and more rounds of inquiry for Rianne. While waiting for the outcome, Sofia had reached out to Linda’s daughter, Callie, who was in her second year at Barnard and had been the first person the police had contacted. The girl was so distraught that Sofia couldn’t bear to hang up until she was sure friends were on hand to provide Callie comfort. Then there had to be a conversation with Linda’s exhusband, with whom Linda had remained on good terms. He would be catching the next flight to New York to see Callie; Sofia had offered him the use of a car for the duration. Finally Michael, her husband, had called from London, and Sofia had shared what seemed like a decade’s worth of news from the two days since they had last spoken.

  She wished that Michael were here now. He wouldn’t say much. He rarely had to, to make her feel better.

  By the time she had eliminated everything she could think to do, it was late afternoon. Her mind was no quieter than when the detective had first told her Linda was gone.

  It was absurd. Within a brief span of days, two people she knew were dead by someone’s hand. Sofia couldn’t speak for Nelson Bao’s life, but she was sure that no one could possibly feel such animosity toward Linda as to harm her. Violence was . . . an alien thing in Linda Edgemont’s world.

  Shaw. Sofia felt equally certain that brutality was not new to Shaw. Even setting aside the conspicuous facial scars, you could read savagery in the man. Yet Sofia had liked Shaw initially. In his rough way, he’d seemed candid.

  Now she felt hatred for him. Hate and confusion in equal measure, because no matter what bits of inside information Rianne had been able to glean, no one had admitted a guess as to why Shaw might have killed Linda.

  Sofia stood. Delicate cup in hand, she went to her desk. She would see if Callie or one of Sofia’s mutual friends with Linda had reached out online. If that came up empty, she would work. She sat down and sipped the tea as her laptop came to life.

  She had a message.

  From Linda.

  For a long moment, Sofia simply stared. The message had been sent on a social network that she rarely used, had hardly remembered that she’d installed. Three years ago Linda had sent her a birthday greeting e-card that had required the extension be installed on her laptop. Sofia recalled feeling peevish about having to do so. Another surrender to online data acquisition, just to see some animated flowers. But to be civil, she had clicked her approval and promptly forgotten about it.

  Now the notification appeared in a lavender box at the corner of her screen. The start of the message, like a tease. Linda E: Hello Sofia, I’m so sorry . . .

  The date and time were at the bottom of the little pastel window, in a tiny font. The message had been sent on Thursday. Linda had died on Friday.

  Sofia clicked on the box. The window expanded to fill the screen.

  Hello Sofia,

  I’m so sorry your beautiful estate had to bear witness to such a tragedy. It’s unthinkable.

  Given how terrible this week must be for you, perhaps the time is wrong for a request. But I need to speak with you when you return, as soon as we can manage. Would you be able to make an hour for me early Monday? We could meet at your home if convenient.

  In any event, please reply here, and please don’t send an e-mail or book time on our office network. It’s important that our conversation remain private. My apologies for the unusual circumstances; I will explain all when we see each other again.

  Thank you so much. I pray this strife is quickly resolved and laid to rest.

  Love,

  Linda

  Sofia read the message a second time. Unusual circumstances indeed. In the years they’d known each other, as their office amity had evolved into personal friendship, Sofia could scarcely recall a time Linda had not used the Droma system to communicate with her. Nor she with Linda. Even at the worst of moments—when she’d called Linda after losing her first baby four years ago, before Iva had been born—she’d used her company-provided mobile. Now Linda wanted her to keep their meeting discreet.

  No. Now Linda was dead. Her wishes for privacy—maybe the need for privacy—rendered insignificant.

  Sofia thought about that, looking at the message in its lavender-bordered window.

  Only a handful of people would have visibility to Linda’s work calendar, including meetings she’d designated as private. Sofia’s father, of course. His administrative assistant. And Olen Anders, as chief of staff, and his assistant. It was also reasonable to assume that each would be able to access Linda’s Droma voice mail. Recorded messages might be transcribed or forwarded by staff at the executive’s request.

  Why would Linda want to keep their conversation hidden from Father’s eyes? Or Olen’s?

  Linda had sent the message the day after she’d returned from Briar Bay. Said their meeting was urgent. A possible connection there. Sofia had seen her briefly as Linda had been boarding the flight home. The distress on her friend’s face had been obvious from twenty meters’ distance. Clearly that anguish had continued into the next day.

  Nelson Bao’s death had affected them all. But why Linda in particular? Had she interacted with Nelson more than Sofia had known?

  Sofia opened her own calendar. She could search back through meetings by categories or teams. Or by specific external partners. For transparency that last parameter was available to all senior executives at Droma. Sofia herself had insisted on having those search capabilities implemented by their IT department. As an aid to her oversight of client development, she wanted a record of all partner interactions.

  She searched first for Jiangsu Special Manufacturing, seeing a handful of calls and meetings where Linda had been invited. Her father had dealt with most of the direct conversations with Chen Li. Nelson Bao was not among the meeting participants.

  Sofia then tried searching for Bridgetrust. Those results made her stop and run the query again, just to make sure she hadn’t entered something wrong. Linda had attended a few preliminary meetings with the New York investment company during the past month, as many of them had in the lead-up to the conference on the island.

  Along with one other meeting. One that Linda had created herself. An hour’s conversation, all the way back in February. Weeks before Sofia’s father, Sebastien, had ostensibly brought Bridgetrust to the table for the first time to discuss a partnership.

  Had the February meeting been an initial inquiry from Bridgetrust? If so, Linda Edgemont, Sebastien’s counsel, would not have been a logical starting point.

  There was no conference call or video-chat link listed for the meeting, Sofia noticed. Linda had either met them in person—though no conference room on the High Bridge campus had been booked either—or she had telephoned Bridgetrust directly.

  Edwin Chiarra. That was the name Linda had specified in her notes. Sofia didn’t recognize it. Nor were there any other meetings with Bridgetrust or with Mr. Chiarra after that point, until the team negotiations.

  Sofia would ask her father. Perhaps he knew who Edwin Chiarra was.

  Or, she countered, perhaps she would scrutinize Linda’s activities a little more before raising the question.

  The tea had gone cold. Sofia hardly noticed, sipping minute amounts as she read the message once again.

  Linda had been adamant about secrecy. It might be in her own best interest to honor her friend’s final wishes.

  FORTY

  The next day, twenty minutes before four o’clock in the afternoon, a guard tossed Shaw a pair of white shoelaces and told him to gather his stuff. He
was moving. The guard didn’t elaborate; volunteering more information would imply Shaw had any kind of say in the matter. Many of the Ranger instructors had taken the same tack, usually adding abuse as punctuation.

  A pair of correctional officers flanked him to the elevator and through two checkpoints to the sally port where he’d first arrived. They waited inside of the final steel door, watching through the bulletproof glass of its window until a police cruiser arrived and the rolling gate had closed behind it. A uniformed officer was driving the cruiser. Kanellis was in the passenger seat.

  “Have a good stay?” the detective said as the officer cuffed Shaw. “It’s not over yet. You’ve got a round-trip ticket back here. Or maybe someone will decide to ship your ass directly to Monroe so you can kill time in gen pop.”

  Unless it had been as part of a police-academy tour, Shaw guessed that Kanellis had never been inside a prison. Neither had Shaw. He was happy to remain ignorant.

  “Back here after what?” Shaw said.

  Kanellis drummed his hands on the cruiser’s roof. “San Juan County wants to talk to you. One of their detectives came in this morning to meet with you and your lawyer. Where’d you dig up that guy? He’s boring the shit out of Cole right now at West.”

  West Precinct. On Virginia Street, barely a mile away. Whatever was going to happen, it would happen in the heart of downtown, right at the peak of the afternoon.

  They loaded Shaw into the back of the cop car and drove up 4th Ave. Weekday traffic crawled. The cruiser gained a block and a half at most with every synchronized change of the lights on the northbound street. Shaw scanned the sidewalks, looking for anyone paying attention to their progress. Whoever Chiarra had sent wouldn’t wait until the police car arrived at West, where any number of cops might be on the street outside.

  It might not happen at all. The lawyer might have oversold his mysterious employer’s abilities or readiness to commit major felonies.

  Shaw recollected as much as he could about the roads between the two stations. Decided where he would choose, if he were running the op. Perhaps after the turn onto Virginia. There was a large Westin Hotel a block along. People coming and going. Escape up Westlake, which would flow better than most thoroughfares during the middle of the day. Maybe switch cars near Denny.

  “Guerin won’t be there,” Kanellis said, interrupting Shaw’s thoughts. “In case you were counting on the lieutenant putting in a good word with San Juan. Not that it would matter. Since they decided the Chinese guy was murdered, they’ve been dying to get you in an interview room.”

  They were coming up on Westlake Center mall. The cruiser stopped in line for the light to cross Pine. Next to them office workers filled the tables in the small plaza across from the mall’s entrance. The spindly trees lining the plaza had been wrapped with yellow-white Christmas lights, a touch of yule on a bright summer day.

  A car alarm sounded from far up on the next block. Two blaring notes, howling every second at a volume that would make pedestrians wince and walk quickly in any other direction.

  A second alarm joined the first. Then a third. A bicyclist flew down 4th coming the wrong way on the one-way street, pedaling like he was being chased by Dobermans. He skidded to a stop beside the cruiser.

  “Hey, man.” He pointed and bent his stubbled and sunglassed face over the handlebars. “Lady got hit by a car up there. It’s bad, dude.”

  “Shit,” Kanellis said. The driver flashed the lights and tapped the siren to slowly force the cars in front of him out into the broad intersection with its red and gray bricks arranged in zigzag patterns. Kanellis got out and ran to stop the cross traffic on Pine to give them room.

  Shaw looked hard at the cyclist as the man stood on the pedals, already pulling away. Was he lying? Had Chiarra’s team sacrificed someone for a distraction?

  The driver stopped the cruiser on a diagonal in the center of the intersection. Its lights whirled, reflecting off the store windows and the vehicles surrounding them. Ahead, the block between Pine and Olive Way was a snarl of trapped cars and buses. They could go no farther.

  A sharp crack and a flash of light from beyond the traffic jam caused both Shaw and the cop in the driver’s seat to rear back in surprise. A woman standing at the crosswalk screamed in fright, her cry almost lost in the combined shrieks of the car alarms, echoing off the buildings as if redoubling their panic. Smoke rose in a thick white plume from the next block.

  Shaw had seen that light and heard that sound before. A flashbang. And the smoke was almost certainly pouring from another grenade someone had popped at the same time.

  The cop in the driver’s seat jumped out, locked the doors, and ran after Kanellis, who was sprinting ahead toward the supposed destruction.

  A loud whack on the left rear door made Shaw whip his head around. For an instant he saw nothing. Then the cyclist stood up from where he’d been kneeling by the wheel. The man had dropped his helmet, revealing a sweaty mop of curls. His stubbled face was now concealed by a gaiter mask.

  The door opened. The cyclist reached in to click Shaw’s seat belt open. Shaw didn’t have to be told. He wormed his way sideways and out of the car.

  “Hold still,” said the cyclist from behind him. Shaw looked at the cruiser door. A hole about the diameter of a tennis ball had been cut in the sheet metal. A stiff wire still hung from where it had snagged on something inside the hole. Crude but fast. Punch the hole, reach in with a hook, pop the inner lock mechanism. A technique that took some practice, Shaw knew.

  “Hey,” somebody called from behind them. A horn honked from the tangle of cars.

  A tug on Shaw’s cuffs, a snap, and his hands were free, each wrist with a steel bracelet.

  “Come on,” the cyclist said, dropping his bolt cutters and jogging away at an almost casual pace. Shaw took off after him. The cyclist kept his left hand in a carry pouch slung under his jersey as he ran.

  A muscular black man dressed in running gear launched himself off the opposite curb as they turned onto Pine. For an instant Shaw thought he was a citizen, seeing the escape, playing hero. As good as dead. He looked to the cyclist, ready to grab the man if he went for his gun.

  But the newcomer slowed and angled to run just behind Shaw and the cyclist. He had an unzipped pouch of his own slung across his broad chest. Shaw prayed no one would be idiot enough to try to stop them.

  Two of his attackers from the park, he knew now. The lean guy who’d held the hypodermic and their large leader. The third, the squat bulldog, wouldn’t be far.

  Maybe waiting in a vehicle. Shaw looked for one idling at the curb in the empty lanes off the blocked intersection. Behind them the car alarms continued their jarring symphony, with a rising accompaniment of angry horns from drivers trapped in the jam.

  The cyclist turned and headed directly for the street entrance to Westlake Station. A light-rail terminal that ran beneath the entire block.

  Shaw hesitated. Going underground was about the worst choice they could make, short of trying to run all the way to the waterfront and swim to freedom. The big man in the running gear shoved Shaw in the same direction. “Move.” He flashed the grip of his pistol inside the pouch.

  A fight could quickly become a slaughter, and not only for Shaw. The sidewalks were crowded with pedestrians stopped in midstride by the unexpected chaos at the mall. Shaw followed the cyclist, his burly minder close behind.

  Their group slowed to a rapid walk, down the first escalator and through the department-store concourse to a second. Heading deeper underground.

  Shaw’s minder kept the rear, watching for any pursuit. Anyone near the cruiser and not distracted by the noise a block away would have noticed them escaping. What had other bystanders seen amid the confusion? A group of men jogging unhurriedly. If any of them had noticed that one of the runners was dressed oddly in street clothes, that was Seattle for you.

  A cop would have paid more attention. If they’d been clocked heading belowground, a call would al
ready be going out. Downtown, the police could scramble a dozen cars and twice as many patrol cops to the scene in minutes. They might already be closing the station’s entrances.

  Westlake Station had once served as a thruway for downtown buses. Now it was solely the dominion of light-rail trains. Shaw tried to imagine what the crew’s plan was. Boarding a train would be the equivalent of throwing up their hands and surrendering. The cops would stop the train before it neared the next station, holding them as securely as rats in a glass cage while a SWAT team converged. Did the cyclist know of some utility entrance to the station, one the police might not think to block?

  His minder shoved him on the shoulder again. Taking out his stress. Shaw’s pace hadn’t flagged, even as the group neared the bottom of the final staircase to the lower level.

  The cyclist was talking into a radio. He stopped, and Shaw and the larger man halted after him, clumped together like tourists who had lost their bearings.

  Westlake Station was so large it gave you the impression of being outside on an overcast day, rather than sixty feet below street level. Over five hundred feet of broad, unbroken platform between the tunnels at either end. Because the city stations and tunnels had also served buses until recently, the train tracks were recessed for miles in either direction to create a smooth, flat surface. The platform level of Westlake looked little different from a wide road where highway workers had forgotten to paint lanes between the curbs. A sparse line of commuters waited on the platforms on either side. All of them unaware of the bedlam on the street twenty yards above their heads.

  Shaw saw an eastbound train coming into the opposite platform. Good cover. He could sprint across, make for the exit leading up to . . .