Hard Cold Winter (18 page)

L
EO WAS NEAR COLLAPSE
when I finally got to the hospital. The pretty freckled nurse said he hadn’t slept all night, just sat and breathed and got out of bed to pace, when he thought he could get away with it.

I took him to Addy Proctor’s. My phone had been ringing all morning. One of the calls had been from Addy, letting us know that her spare bedroom was made up and ready for Leo or me or whoever needed it, while we figured out what to do next. The second important call had been from the fire department, setting a time to meet an arson inspector at the house later in the day. All of the other calls were from reporters. The information that the fire had started from a bomb had leaked, and the press was ravenous for more information. I deleted their messages.

Stanley padded happily to snuffle at our hands as Leo and I entered Addy’s home. No room in her house was any larger than twelve by twelve, all of them made bright by bleached wood flooring and pea-green flowers stenciled along the top of each wall. I felt too large and clumsy whenever I visited, although the confines didn’t seem to bother Stanley.

Leo nodded mutely as Addy told him where he could find things
he might need. He lay down on the spare bed while she was in midsentence about the washer and dryer.

“You made it,” I said to him. He was already asleep.

Addy and I came out to the living room.

“The doctors gave him clearance to leave?” Addy said. She sounded doubtful.

I nodded. “He just needs rest.”

“Hmph. I suppose you’ll tell me the same about you.”

“I only need the number of a good housekeeper. My place is a mess.”

“Funny.” She sat down on an overstuffed brocade armchair, which half swallowed her. Stanley plopped down to lay his head on her small foot. “All right. You can be all Irish about it. But you’ll pardon me if I show concern when houses begin exploding around people I care about. It scared me. I didn’t like that feeling one bit.”

Even Stanley looked reproachful.

“You’re right,” I said.

We sat for a moment.

“I can’t even recall what it was like, the first time a bomb went off around me,” I said. “It’s been too long. So maybe I’m too much of a wiseass about how it might feel to a civilian.”

“Which you are, technically. And so is Luce.”

“Luce is double-tough.”

“And she acts even tougher. I don’t care. Take her and leave. That, in case you didn’t know, is the civilian response to someone trying to murder you. The sensible response.”

“I have to stay in Seattle.” I told Addy the bare facts on the late T. X. Broch, and Guerin’s insistence that I remain close.

She tapped her foot impatiently. “And when have you ever given a good goddamn what the police asked you to do?”

“When running would make me the prime suspect in a double homicide.”

“Piffle.”

“Piffle?” I laughed.

“Don’t change the subject. You don’t bother about being a suspect.
You just want to feel your hands around the throat of the person who threw that bomb.”

Her description was so on target I could feel my fingers clench a little at the idea.

“You do have a way of putting shit, Addy.”

“My old advice-column expertise. Cutting through horsecrap is half the job.”

“I thought you used to be a librarian.”

“I’ve been working since I was fourteen. I’ve done a lot of things. And you’re being slippery again,” Addy said.

“Okay,” I said. “I want to handle my problem myself. Not just trust the cops to do it.”

“Is that satisfaction worth Luce?”

I knew the answer Addy wanted to hear. I just wasn’t sure if that answer would be the whole truth.

“I’ll talk to her,” I said finally.

“That’s something, at least.”

I said my good-byes and left. I pointed the truck toward downtown, and Luce’s.

Would she leave with me, knowing what it meant? Addy was right. The cops weren’t the real problem. I could have Ephraim Ganz run interference with the law.

The problem was that I didn’t want to go. Luce would recognize that about two seconds after I asked her.

I was on my way up Madison when a call came from Barrett Yorke.

“Van,” she said. “Please.” She spoke as if she was forcing each syllable out of herself.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s Parson,” she said. “He’s in trouble.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s been hiding at a rental house our family owns. Van, he says that he’s sure someone’s following him. Driving past the house. He thinks they want to kill him.”

“Who?”

“I don’t
know
. I’m not even sure if Parson knows.”

“Did he tell you exactly where he was? Over the phone?”

“Yes. God, was that bad?”

Rusk had pressured Barrett earlier. If he shared my suspicions about Parson, the ex-cop probably had her phone tapped.

“He needs to go to the cops, Barrett. Now.”

“I told him that. He won’t do it. He says he won’t be safe, even with police. You should have heard him, Van. He sounded like a little boy. He wanted me to come and get him. But if someone really is trying to kill him . . .”

“Tell me,” I said. She gave me an address in the U District, north of the campus. I found a gap in the traffic and swung the truck through an intersection. An oncoming tanker-trailer hit its brakes and horn simultaneously, even though it had a full two yards left before it would have crushed me.

“Don’t tell him I’m coming,” I said. “I’ll help him. But you call the cops. It’s safer if Parson’s in custody, no matter what he thinks.”

“Why are they doing this?” Barrett asked. I wasn’t sure if she meant the police, or whomever she believed was after Parson, or somebody else.

“Stay close to your phone,” I said, and hung up.

I made it to the University District in ten minutes by pushing the truck to its limit down 23rd over the Montlake Bridge, and hammering through every yellow light and a couple of red ones up the grade toward campus.

The address Barrett had given me was two blocks from the UW’s Greek Row. This close to the frats and sorority houses, the curbs were packed with cars. I left the truck in a random empty driveway.

The house was a bungalow, large for its type but still smaller than most of the houses around it. This neighborhood had scaled up a couple of notches since the last time I’d seen it. If it was a rental property, the Yorkes probably targeted visiting professors and other temporary university staff as tenants. I watched the house for a few moments. Nobody walked past the windows. The front porch was aggressively quaint.
The door was painted a royal blue, with plants in terra-cotta tubs on either side of it, and a small garden hose to water them wound around a gnome. Bright and cheery.

The bungalow’s yard was one big rock garden. Easier to maintain rocks than a lawn. I walked around and cut through the next-door neighbor’s yard and jumped the low fence.

There was a heavy thump, from somewhere inside the house. I froze and listened. The noise didn’t repeat.

No one in the backyard. I climbed up and over the porch railing to look into the window at a dining room and part of a living room space beyond. Still no movement inside.

I tested the back door. It was unlocked. A little unusual, for this part of town. I opened the door so slowly that a tortoise could have gotten out of its way. The hinges ticked ominously but made no creak.

When the door was just wide enough for me to slip inside, a man’s voice spoke upstairs. Indistinct words, and not from a TV set. I closed the door just as slowly as I’d opened it, and as if in response, the voice spoke again. Just loud enough for me to make out the word
Where
.

Then another sound. A whap of impact against flesh, followed by a cry of muffled pain. A creak sounded from the room above me, and the smack of another blow.

Tell us
, I caught this time.

Us.
So whoever was doling out the punishment, there was more than one.

I took Dono’s Smith & Wesson out from under my coat, and stepped cautiously toward the central hallway and the stairs. Looking up, I could see a small landing with three doors leading off it. One left, one right, and one center. A game show.

“Nobody knows you’re here ’cept us,” the man said, easier to hear without a ceiling between us. “This is just for starters, Yorke.”

The first step didn’t squeak under my weight.

I heard Rudy Rusk say, “Did you move it? Where?”

“We didn’t. We didn’t open the boxes.” Parson Yorke said. I barely
recognized his voice, it was lower-pitched and watery. The last two words came out as
tha bosses
.

“Fuck that,” said Rusk. “You made bombs out of it. You threw one at Shaw. Is he working with you? Does he have the Tovex?”

“I didn’t know what was in them—”

“Again,” Rusk said. There was another whapping blow.

“Fuck, he’s out,” said the first voice.

“When he wakes up, use the knife on his eardrum,” said Rusk.

I had taken advantage of their conversation to climb another three steps. They were in the room to the right of the landing. A shadow moved across one doorway and into the next, and I realized that the doors all led to one larger room, across most of the upper floor. There was the
tap-click
sound of a spring knife opening.

Parson Yorke wasn’t my favorite person. But I couldn’t leave him to get his ear swabbed with a switchblade. And I wasn’t going to get a better opening.

I ran up the last steps in two bounds and came fast around the jamb of the right door, my gun leading the way.

The room was a master bedroom suite. Two men flanked Parson. The huge kid was slumped almost sideways in a plush linen chair, facing me. He wasn’t tied to the chair, but I wasn’t sure he would be capable of getting up. There was a lot of blood on his bruised face and triple-XL shirt. It stained the chair’s ivory linen fabric. The men were ready for a corporate meeting, in light blue dress shirts and neckties. I didn’t know the one holding the blade. He had brown feathery hair and there was more blood on his left hand.

“Hey Rude,” I said, keeping my eyes on the man with the knife. I had the S&W pointed at his chest. “Throw it away.”

He hesitated. I tightened my finger on the trigger and he quickly tossed the knife into the corner of the room. He glanced toward the bed, where their suit jackets were draped over the footboard.

“Don’t,” I said, and stepped into the room. It was a big enough space to allow me to stay well out of reach and keep a clear field of fire.

“We’ve got this, Shaw,” said Rusk. “Stand down.”

“You first.”

“We beat you to Fat Boy, here. But you can still turn a profit out of this.”

Parson moaned. One of his eyes was puffed shut and abraded.

“Move away,” I said.

Rusk sneered. “You’re helping him? This fucker tried to blow you up. He destroyed your house.”

“Move.” The knife man took a step back. Rusk stayed put.

“Twenty years minimum, for murder with a firearm,” he said.

I aimed at his groin. “Doesn’t have to be a kill shot.”

There was the sound of footsteps downstairs. I moved sideways to get clear of the doorways.

“Vince,” called the knife man. “Get backup.”

Two guys, their guns within reach by the bed, two doorways, and at least one other player downstairs. And Parson was starting to wake up. Tactically speaking, this situation was going rapidly to shit.

Vince was not the brightest. He came charging up the stairs. I aimed at the top of the center doorway and fired, blowing a large chunk of the wooden frame to toothpicks. Rusk and the knife man hit the floor. My ears buzzed with the sudden blast.

“Stay there, Vince,” I shouted. The noise of the shot had revived Parson. He blinked and mumbled something, trying to press himself upright.

“Rudy?” called Vince from the stairs.

“Backup, goddamnit,” said the knife man, rolling behind a chair. I pressed myself against the wall, where an armoire offered a small amount of cover. Rusk was up on his knees behind the linen chair and aiming a pocket derringer at Parson’s temple.

“Drop the gun,” he said to me.

“Nope.”

The knife man edged toward the suit jackets on the bed and I fired another shot one foot in front of him that smashed a baseball-sized hole in the drywall. He ducked back behind the chair.

“We’re leaving,” said Rusk, “and he’s coming with us.” Parson numbly tried to pull away and Rusk yanked him back by the ear, using Parson’s wide body as a shield.

“He can’t tell you where the Tovex is if he’s dead,” I said.

“I’ll chance it.” Rusk angled his head toward the door. “Go,” he said to his partner. The knife man ran out of the room and down the stairs without any more invitation.

Rusk hauled at Parson, pressing the derringer against the nape of Parson’s neck. “You come with me, or I’ll find your sister and cripple her,” he hissed. “Get the fuck up.”

Parson stood, wavering. Rusk kept his eyes on me. I could shoot him in the face. I was good enough to risk the shot, just past Parson’s cheek. But that was my only option. Any chance to wound Rusk was gone. Maybe I’d have an angle when they made their way down the stairs. Unless Vince and the gang were waiting to blow my head off the second I stepped out of the bedroom.

Rusk was almost out of the door, shuffling sideways with Parson between us. Parson looked at me, with his one sorrowful eye. He nodded.

And threw himself backward.

His huge mass bowled Rusk over and the two men toppled out onto the landing. Over six hundred pounds hit the slim railing and crashed through like it wasn’t there at all. I ran forward as they fell twelve feet to land with a boom that shook plaster dust from the ceiling.

The front door was open. I didn’t see the knife man, or anyone else. I dashed down the stairs, gun pointed. Still no one. A car screeched away from the curb in front of the house.

Parson and Rusk had landed on a slim hall table, completely smashing it and the decorative vase atop it. They were both on the floor, and moving. Rusk crawled dazedly toward the door. I smacked him on the back of his head with the barrel of the S&W. He slumped.