Hard Cold Winter (16 page)

I
T WASN’T OSTRANDER WAITING
at the entrance. It was Rudy Rusk, leaning his stout mass against a Cadillac parked in a red zone. He wore the same blue blazer and gray trousers combo as the last time I’d seen him. The blazer needed to be let out. It puckered across his folded arms.

Rusk’s angry face deepened another shade when I approached, smiling ear to ear.

“Rudy. How’s your credit rating?” I said.

He reached behind him without looking to open the rear door. “Get in,” he said, like it was a squad car.

“Yeah,” I said. “Then we can go get milkshakes together. Isn’t taxi service a little below your pay grade?”

Rusk’s neck tensed. He wanted to swing at me. He’d probably enjoyed punching people when he was a cop, under the easy defense of resisting arrest. Retirement wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

I kept the smile in place. “Go ahead.” After a day of getting tricked and lied to and nearly blown up, it would be a whole lot of fun to break a couple of Rudy Rusk’s teeth for him.

He was smart enough not to take the bait. He opened the door a
little wider, maybe hoping he’d get the opportunity to close it on my leg.

“I’ll follow you,” I said. “You remember my truck.”

It might have been my imagination, but I was half sure I heard capillaries popping in Rusk’s neck.

I shadowed his Cadillac to a building on Cherry Street, downtown. Rusk pulled into the valet stand outside. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning, but an attendant in a burgundy waistcoat popped out of the closest door immediately. I opted for the meter across the street.

The entrance to the white stone building was bookended by ornamental columns. Similar columns braced each fifteen-foot window on the first floor. Rusk waited for me in the doorway, at the top of a short flight of steps. A large calligraphic letter
A
was painted on the pebbled glass of the door. As I walked up, the door opened. The man behind it wore a suit coat in the same burgundy color as the valet’s vest.

“Good evening, Mr. Rusk,” the doorman said, and nodded to me. “Sir.”

“What’s the
A
stand for?” I asked him.

“The name of the club, sir. Aerie.”

Of course it was. I could scoff at rich men naming their playhouse after the home of eagles. But my grandfather’s bar had been named for a legend about a wicked woman and the Devil, so I supposed I shouldn’t judge.

I let Rusk lead the way. The club’s lobby was floored in marble and topped with a huge glass chandelier, and a small desk where the doorman sat. There was no other furniture. Each broad wooden door off the lobby was closed.

“Mr. Ostrander is in the lounge,” the doorman said, leading us to the first door on the right. He knocked twice and slid the door open.

If the lobby was severe, the lounge was made to contrast it. Low leather chairs arranged in circles, a tawny wall-to-wall carpet and long bar at the far end. The décor looked early ’60s, either as a retro nod to Seattle’s jet-era boom times, or because it made the members feel young again. Most of the lights were dimmed and the room was cool. Ostrander occupied the brightest corner, near a hissing gas fireplace.

“Thank you for coming at such a difficult time,” he said to me. “Please sit down. Can I offer you something?” He didn’t acknowledge Rusk.

I shook my head no. There were two chairs, one opposite him and one closer to the fire. I’d had more than enough of flames for the night, but I chose that seat anyway. I didn’t want my back to the open room. Rusk eased himself into one of the chairs in the next circle over.

“Let me start by apologizing for what must have seemed some odd behavior the other day,” said Ostrander. He wore another three-piece, this one a glen plaid in muted brown. He looked tired, like gravity was pulling extra hard on his gaunt frame. “Rudy was acting in our interests, you must understand.”

“I must.”

“Beg pardon?”

“You were apologizing for your man,” I prompted.

“Yes. Rudy explained to me what transpired in the Columbia parking garage, after our meeting. He overstepped his authority. I never asked him to search your vehicle, nor implied that he should do so.” It was amazing how Ostrander could make any conversation sound like he was reading from a contract.

I looked at Rusk. “So what did plant the idea in your head?”

Ostrander leaned forward. “You’ve had a terrible night. From the newscast, I understand your home may be destroyed? Thank goodness you and your friend are unharmed.”

I inhaled to speak and Ostrander held up a hand to stop me.

“I’m saying this because things may seem at their lowest,” he said. “But there is opportunity here. Our offer still stands, if you allow Maurice and I to overcome the bad first impression we made.”

I looked around at the lounge. A rosy glow from the dimmed overhead lamps caught facets on cut crystal glasses behind the bar. The bar itself looked like real walnut, and so did the wall paneling.

“Depends on the offer,” I said.

Ostrander smiled his mortician’s smile, the one that mimicked kindness without providing any warmth. “Before we go further, I must
make something clear. I am not officially representing Haymes Development in this conversation. Everything we discuss is strictly hypothetical.”

“Except the money.”

“Excepting that, yes.”

“Go on. If I think I can help you out, we’ll talk price.”

He nodded. “About two weeks ago, one of the sites under HDC suffered a burglary.”

“Water gel explosives,” I said.

Ostrander stared at me for an instant before firing an angry glance at Rusk.

“Rudy didn’t tell me,” I said. “You’re looking for boxes, which you’ve already told me Kend had. HDC is a construction company, among other things. And tonight you called my number less than an hour after someone threw a bomb through my window. The bomb was made from a commercial explosive, very stable, like a building company would use for blasting rock or controlled demolitions.”

Ostrander took a sip from his glass. Scotch neat, from the look of it. His knobby wristbones extended from sleeves closed with cufflinks shaped like Roman coins, with an emperor’s laureled head in profile.

“I misjudged you, Mr. Shaw,” he said.

“It happens.”

He took a breath. “If—and I am only conjecturing here—if a large quantity of such explosive were found to be missing, it could be damaging to the company. Somewhat.”

“Sure. A federal investigation could shovel a whole lot of Somewhat all over your building contracts with local and state governments.”

He shifted in his seat. “Perhaps.”

“I think I read about Maurice being touted as a candidate for governor, too. Tough to call for law and order with your son stealing bombs and killing girlfriends.”

Ostrander looked like his Scotch had suddenly turned to vinegar, but inclined his head at the obvious implications.

“So you want your explosives back,” I said. “Very quietly.”

“We do. We have to.”

I rolled my neck. My muscles were sore. The physiological hangover of a huge rush of adrenaline and endorphins after the explosion. Not to mention falling off the porch onto gravel with Luce and Leo on top of me.

“I’ll take that drink now,” I said, and stood up before Ostrander could tell Rusk to fetch it. At the walnut bar, the bottles were all out in the open, lined up against a frosted mirror on the back wall. With the member fees that the Aerie must charge, it would be considered déclassé to lock up the booze.

I picked the Scotch that was the same color as Ostrander’s. Eighteen-year-old Laphroaig. I carried the bottle and a glass back to the chair, and poured myself a taste.

“Why do you think Kend wanted explosives?” I said.

“We don’t know. At this point, that is immaterial. What matters—”

“—is retrieving it, I get that.” I took a sip. The Laphroaig was like wood smoke and cinnamon scented from afar. “How much did he take?”

Ostrander looked at Rusk.

“All of it,” said Rusk. “Two dozen cases of Tovex. Fifty pounds per. Plus blasting caps.”

I knew what water gel explosive looked like, even before I’d seen the bomb wrapped in duct tape thrown through my window. Fat flexible tubes, like giant bratwurst. The tubes I’d seen were about eighteen inches long. Guess each tube at a kilogram. Two dozen tubes per case. I thought of Elana’s Volvo and its big cargo space with the backseats folded down. Kend would have had to stack the cases all the way to the roof, but they would fit. There had been dents in the carpet from the weight. Over twelve hundred pounds of jellied destruction.

It must have been one hell of a nervous drive for Kend, down and around the Sound to the Peninsula and the cabin. One traffic stop by a curious state trooper and Kend would be in a supermax holding cell before he could take a breath. But it was better odds than boarding the ferry, where police dogs sniffed at every car in the terminal.

“The cases were gone by the time I got to the cabin,” I said. “How do you know Kend had them?”

“Aside from the coincidence of their deaths on the same night,” Ostrander said, “there is some substantiation.”

I made a keep-going gesture.

“Video,” said Rusk. “The alarm and cameras at the storage site were disabled.” He looked at Ostrander. “I’ve been telling you for months to get a better system.”

Ostrander made a sound like a sigh.

Rusk tapped his smartphone. “But one camera for the company across the street caught him in action.”

“It’s nothing that could be held up as evidence,” said Ostrander quickly. “Kend was masked, and only visible in the distance. But to anyone who knew him well, it’s undoubtedly him.”

“Let’s see it,” I said to Rusk.

He got the nod from Ostrander, pulled up the video on his phone, and handed it to me.

The clip was about thirty minutes long. For the first few seconds, it was only grainy color footage, at night, of an empty street with two small buildings across the way. A ten-foot-wide alley separated the buildings. The buildings were inside a large, aggressive-looking fence with barbed wire and signs warning of electric current.

Then a figure walked behind the buildings, from one side of the alley to the other. Perhaps sixty feet from the camera. His head was covered, in a ski mask or balaclava. He loped quickly past, gone in two seconds, dragging a hand truck behind him. Two minutes passed, and then he came slowly back across, pulling the hand truck, which was now loaded with three big and obviously very heavy cases. The cases were unmarked. A minute later he ambled across once again.

I watched as the masked figure repeated the same process, as if the video were looped, seven more times. Rusk got up and fetched himself a vodka. Ostrander watched me watching the show. A few moments after Kend’s last trip with the cases, the street in front of the camera momentarily grew brighter. Headlights, just off to the side of the frame. Then the clip ended.

He’d taken only one minute on each trip to drop the cases off at the
Volvo. Kend was a lean guy. Too lean to load fifty-pound containers into a hatchback that fast.

“He had help,” I said. Rusk nodded.

I handed the phone back to him. “And you thought it was me.” I was at the cabin. I knew Willard, and Willard’s niece was Kend’s woman. A to B to C.

“We did. Until the attack on your home this evening,” said Ostrander.

I had some incentive now, was what he meant. They had been half sure I was crooked before. Now they weren’t certain if I was involved with the theft of the Tovex, but they were willing to bet that I was still dirty enough to steal it back from Willard, if he had it.

Ostrander steepled his skeletal fingers. “After Rudy found the security video, we hoped we could negotiate with Kend. Get him to return the explosives and avoid a felony charge, or worse. But he didn’t answer Maurice’s calls on Saturday.”

“And then he turned up dead. And the Tovex is gone. And you’re caught between the monster and the whirlpool.”

“Scylla and Charybdis. Yes. It’s too late to inform the authorities without repercussions. And we cannot sit by and simply hope the explosives are not used for—for other purposes.”

They couldn’t. Even if they gave half a shit about anybody else being blown up. If the Tovex were used again, after the leveling of my house, the assumption would be that the city had a mad bomber on the loose. Feds would descend like gray-suited raindrops. The explosives would eventually be traced back to HDC, no matter how Ostrander and Rusk tried to cover their tracks.

“I can get your toys back.” I picked up the bottle of Laphroaig.

In my peripheral vision, they shared a look.

“You’re certain?” said Ostrander.

“First, I need a number.”

“Fifty thousand,” Ostrander said.

I stopped pouring the Scotch. There was about a pinky finger’s breadth in the bottom of the glass. “Fifty. For a governorship.” I poured
more. A lot more, until the liquor was the same finger width from the rim of the lowball glass.

“Two hundred,” said Ostrander. “Thousand.”

“Jesus,” said Rusk disgustedly.

“Half now,” I said.

Ostrander waved a finger idly. “That’s absurd.”

“You’re not the one having bombs thrown their way,” I said.

“Yeah, about that. Why the hell is someone trying to kill you?” Rusk said. He was back to risking his blood vessels. “Don’t tell me you’re an innocent fucking bystander in all this.”

Ostrander looked peeved at Rusk’s lack of decorum, but nodded. “You have to share how you’re certain you can recover the cases. Give us some assurance that you can do what you say.”

I took one very nice sip from the very full glass and set it back down. I’d had my fun with Ostrander and Rusk. I stood up from the chair.

“No need for dramatics,” said Ostrander. “Half in advance.”

I walked to the lounge door.

“If this is negotiation, it’s pointless,” he called.

I opened it and walked through.

“What is it you want?” Ostrander said, his voice strained taut as the door closed. I caught the start of another obscenity from Rusk. It startled the doorman.