Past Crimes (21 page)

T
HE SEATTLE CENTRAL LIBRARY
was a busy place in late afternoon. I stood at the railing watching the crowd below streaming in and out of the doors off Fifth Avenue.

Above me a massive tidal wave of glass loomed. It started at the floor of the lobby and launched upward in a dizzying slope four stories high. The weight of it was oppressive, translucent or not. If it had all been made of concrete, people might have turned and fled back to the street, overwhelmed by claustrophobia.

I looked at my watch—16:45. I’d been waiting and checking out the crowd for two hours, fading back every time a patrol cop walked through the lobby.

Davey walked through the security scanners twenty minutes later, carrying a blue nylon duffel bag. Like most of the tourists, he did a double take at the menacing wall of glass. He wore a couple of layered T-shirts over the same tattered black jeans I’d seen the other night, and no coat.

He looked around and found the escalators I’d told him about—glowing lemon yellow neon—and then saw me standing above at the railing. At least he didn’t wave.

I scanned the crowd again. High-school and college students with laptops, mostly, and a few older folks reading magazines. Almost everyone,
young or old, had on earbuds or headphones. It was a good place for a private conversation.

“You look like shit,” Davey said once he’d joined me at the top.

“Did you get into the house?”

He nodded, so jazzed he was almost bouncing. “I can’t believe that spare key is still there. It was so rusty I was afraid it was going to break off in the lock. Didn’t Dono ever notice the loose brick in the backyard?”

“Focus, Davey. Were the cops watching the place?”

“Oh, yeah. That’s why it took me so long. I had to go in through the back door.” He frowned. “But I got bad news, too. The truck is gone.”

“Gone how?”

“I looked where you told me. An empty space. I even checked the other levels in the garage, to make sure. It’s gone, man.”

The cops had been all over Pioneer Square. Guerin could have had them looking for Dono’s truck as well as for me.

If they had the truck, then they had Formes’s laptop and thumb drives already. I’d lost my wheels—and the Browning—but the silver lining was that SPD might already be trying to break Formes’s encryption. Guerin might be listening to the recording of Dono’s shooting within hours.

Davey handed me the blue duffel bag. I led him away from the balcony and the lounging patrons to a tunnel connecting the third floor with stairs leading up and down. The tunnel and stairs were painted a vibrant scarlet, walls and floor and ceiling. It was like being inside an artery.

I unzipped the duffel and looked in. Dono’s cell phones from his hidden compartment were on top of a pile of the old man’s clothes, along with his large ring of keys. The box of shells for the .32 was wedged against the side, along with my passport and papers.

“I always loved that little squirrel hole of your granddad’s,” Davey said. “So cool.”

“Thanks for this, Davey. You took a big chance.”

Davey fingered one of Dono’s shirts. “I hope these fit. I tried to find the largest stuff he had. So are you going to keep this up?”

“What?”

“The need-to-know crap. Come on, you ask me to put together what looks like an emergency-vacation kit for you. I don’t ask why. And I deliver. At least tell me what kind of shit you stepped in. I know you found a dead body—”

“Two bodies.”

His smile disappeared. “Somebody else? After that woman?”

I told him about the bugs and Julian Formes. And why I couldn’t let the police take me in, because after they were done, they’d hand me off to Captain Unser like a relay baton.

When I finished, Davey was staring at me as if I’d lit my hair on fire. “Fuck. I mean, god
damn
, Van.”

“That’s why I want to keep you out of it. Too much heat.”

“Screw that.”

“What are you so pissed off about?” We were starting to attract curious glances from the people walking through the bloodred passageway. A couple of them were library personnel.

“I’m pissed because while all this is happening, I should have your back.
While
it’s happening, not just when you’re ready to skip town again.”

“I’m not skipping town.”

“I owe you. And fuck you, you owe
me
a chance to make it right.”

“You owe your family to stay out of jail.”

“Ten years, Van. You left and didn’t say a word. At least have the balls to admit you’re mad at me. I deserve that.”

Five minutes with Davey and we were arguing like we were teenagers again. I hefted the duffel. “You already helped with this.”

“And Juliet’s car. It’s a green Honda, parked downstairs, on Level Two. Here.” He handed me the keys. “You can’t go to the hospital to check on Dono anymore, can you?”

“No. But I’ve got that covered.”

“Those security guards you hired?”

“And a neighbor of Dono’s, armed with knitting needles. I’ll let her know how to reach me if anything changes. You, too.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. Davey’s fingers beat a hard-rock rhythm on his
pant leg. His eyes had the happy-maniac look that they used to have when we were teenagers, waiting to boost a car or bust into a business. Ready for the fun.

A class of junior-high-schoolers flowed around us like breaking shore waves around dock pilings, noisy and jostling. I waited until they were down the stairs.

“I’m not holding a grudge, Davey. But I don’t want to have to tell Juliet that her husband and Frances’s dad is dead body number three.”

His face was rigid. “I can take care of myself now.”

“I’ll call you if things get too tight.” I walked away, through the gleaming scarlet tunnel.

He didn’t believe me. I wasn’t even sure why I’d bothered to say it.

L
UCE HAD UNLOCKED THE
loading door to the Morgen for me. I slipped in and through the bar’s back room with its uneven towers of booze, then up the stairs to the second-floor hallway. I was still in the torn and bloodstained jeans and dirty shirt, though I’d ditched the reeking hoodie at the library. She opened her apartment door at the first knock.

“You dressed up,” she said.

Luce wore a silver button-down shirt over black jeans, with black ballet slippers. No jewelry. Light makeup. Her pale hair was brushed straight back from her forehead.

“How long have you lived above the bar?” I said.

“Just another thing that used to belong to Uncle Albie. What is that smell?”

“I should have brought flowers,” I said.

“You know the police came by right after you called me?” she said. “They asked Mike downstairs if you’d been around today. Very casual, he said, like they needed help with a trivia question that was bugging them.”

“What’d Mike tell them?”

“What could he? He didn’t even know that you and I had talked. But
Mike’s not dumb. When I asked him to run the bar on his own tonight, he must have caught a clue.”

“Once I reach Hollis, I’m out of your hair,” I said. “The cops won’t be a problem for you.”

“Don’t be dumb. The police might poke around at the bar, but no one’s going to come up here looking for you. Sit down and stop looming, for God’s sake. I’m going to make coffee.”

I sat, on a fat green velvet sofa. I felt a little of the tension go out of my shoulders. Guerin wanted Boone a lot more than he wanted me. The net would close, and that murdering son of a bitch and whoever might be helping him would go down. After that, I’d take Captain Unser’s shit and keep smiling every minute.

Luce’s place was a one-bedroom, barely larger than a studio. It was stuffed full. Dark green curtains were open to let the evening light stream in through big wood-trimmed windows. She had hung two dozen or more photographs in small silver frames on the main wall, until the volume of glass in the frames made a kind of mirror.

Every shelf in the room was groaning under the weight of books. I looked at the stacks. Lots of nonfiction, lots of literature. Addy Proctor the Librarian would approve.

Luce brought two cups of black coffee back from the kitchen. “I was a wreck after you called,” she said. “I jumped every time I heard a siren. Which is a lot. Have I just gotten used to hearing those the whole day? Or did you do something to get all the cops in the city acting like angry wasps?”

I told her about finding Cristiana Liotti, and about Julian Formes, and the complete clusterfuck that had followed. Luce listened with growing frustration.

“But why are the police after you?” she said. “You didn’t kill anyone.”

“And I think the cops believe that. But they don’t know for sure. I fled the scene at Formes’s place. There was gunfire. They have to take me into custody and get a formal statement.”

“Which you can’t let happen.”

“Not yet. Boone might slip past them. Could I borrow your cell phone?”

I called Addy Proctor. She picked up the phone just as I thought it was finally going to go to voice mail.

“Addy, it’s Van. Are you in a place you can talk?”

“Van, oh, thank goodness. Yes. I’m fine. A little flustered, is all. I thought for sure it would be the hospital about your grandfather. I’m just on my way out of the house to see him now.”

“Before you go, write this down.” I gave her the number of my new burner phone. “That’s where you can reach me now.”

“Does this have something to do with the unmarked police car on our street? Two officers have been sitting right outside in a brown car since early this afternoon, looking up the block toward your house.”

“It might.”

“And may I assume that there’s another two of Seattle’s finest at the hospital?”

“You may. So I need—”

“I’ll call you immediately if there’s any news about your grandfather.”

“Thanks, Addy. How are you holding up?”

“I’d do much better if I didn’t feel like I was being watched. It’s unnerving.”

“Call 911 and tell them there’s a pervert parked outside. They’ll be gone in ten minutes.”

“I might just do that.”

We hung up.

Luce held her coffee mug with two hands, not drinking it.

“This ticks me off,” she said. “If you’d sat back and done nothing, the cops wouldn’t have the first clue as to who had killed those people.”

“Neither of them was innocent,” I said, “but I don’t think they deserved what happened either.”

“You’re putting your whole career at risk. Can’t the police department or the prosecutor’s office or somebody get the army off your back?”

I amused myself for a second, picturing Captain Unser’s reaction if some assistant D.A. tried to tell him what to do.

“Ultimately it’ll be up to a JAG hearing to decide whether I really get busted. But I don’t give a damn about the army right now. I need to see this through.”

“What you need right now is a shower,” she said. “Go. There are fresh towels behind the door.”

The hot water felt like nirvana. Even across the cut and abraded skin on my legs, it was more pleasure than pain. I wanted to stay in it for a week. I got out of the shower and toweled off in the thick steam clouds.

Luce knocked and opened the door. She looked me up and down.

“Just checking if you had everything you need,” she said.

I smiled. “Not everything.”

We kissed once, in the doorway, then again in the hall. I’m not sure which of us directed the other into the bedroom. Her jeans fell to the floor with a whisper, and she kept her lips on mine as my fingers worked the buttons on her shirt. She had to turn away to throw a pile of pillows off the iron-posted bed. Her body was pale and improbably long, an icicle flecked with cinnamon.

She watched my face, her pupils as dark as the centers of whirlpools, while she removed the last of her clothing, proudly, knowing the effect she had. I caught up to her. We met in the middle of the bed. I reached out and found that her body wasn’t ice at all, but the white flame of acetylene.

LATER HER BEDROOM WAS
dark blue, matching the evening sky outside the window. Luce lay across my chest. I felt her lips and teeth resting softly against the heavy pulse in my throat.

“You don’t have any tattoos,” she said. Her breath was still a little fast, and warm against my skin.

“Neither do you, I noticed.”

“I always thought soldiers got blind drunk and wandered into tattoo parlors together. Like team spirit for your unit.”

I looked at her and cocked an eyebrow. She blushed.

“You know what I mean,” she said.

“A lot of guys have ink,” I said.

“You scared of the needle?” She nipped me on the shoulder with her teeth.

I laughed. “Somehow I grew up thinking that getting a picture drawn on your skin was a dumb thing to do. Too identifiable.”

“Albie had one,” Luce said. “An eagle.”

“Well, Dono always said Albie was an idiot.”

She punched me lightly in the ribs. “He did not. Did you know that Albie was the only person who visited Dono every week when your grandfather was in jail? He told me once. It was years before I went to live with him.”

“How was that?” I said. “Living with Albie?”

“He came to my high-school basketball games with a flask,” she said. “But he came.”

“Dono and I would go on road trips. Or out on the water sometimes.” In the half-light, I saw my forearm, brown against the alabaster sleekness of Luce’s back. There was one thin white line that never tanned, just below my elbow.

“Was it fun?”

“The best was when I was about twelve,” I said. “In the San Juan Islands. Dono and I were motoring around on this runabout he’d borrowed from Hollis. Hollis was anchored off Sucia, partying with some girlfriend. Dono took me fishing, mostly to give them some privacy, I think.”

Luce chuckled, low and soft. “I’d love to have heard that conversation.”

I grinned. “We took the boat to the outer islands, just to see what they looked like. When we got close to one, we dropped the lines. Something hit the bait right away.”

“Tell me it was a mermaid.”

“Might as well have been, I was so excited. I brought the tip of the
rod across the bow a bit too close and snagged the fishing line on the bow cleat.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Not a big deal. But without thinking I reached across to free the line, and the tough little bastard of a fish picked that moment to make his run. The line whipped right over my arm and sliced the meat, right here.”

Luce grimaced theatrically and took my arm and kissed it where I was pointing.

“Dono already had his knife out, and he cut the line,” I said, “but by then I was bleeding all over the boat. I remember spots on the tackle boxes, our lunch, and my shoes, and thinking I was in big trouble.”

“Was he mad?”

“No. No, not at all.”

I remembered even more, with the telling of it.

Dono had taken off his T-shirt and slapped the folded cloth over my arm, ordering me to grip down hard. He tried to reach Hollis on the handheld VHF but got no reply, and after a moment’s hard cursing he took the boat into shore.

“Too bumpy out here, boy,” he had said, “for what we have to do.” I hadn’t replied. I might have been in shock, not from real injury but just from the suddenness of it all. The center of the floor was a watery pink stream, with flowers of red blooming around it. Dono’s T-shirt looked tie-dyed.

He beached the runabout on the rock without much regard for its bottom and hauled me and a tackle box out and over to the nearest place to sit down. It was the broken trunk of what had once been a huge madrona tree. The top surface of the trunk was worn smooth by decades of weather, making a broad wooden throne at the very edge of the small island.

Dono had washed a slim fishing hook in salt water and threaded a fifty-pound-test line through it.

“This will hurt,” he said, and it did. My grandfather was no great
shakes at field medicine. Every time he pushed the hook through my skin, it was like he’d stuck me with a tiny branding iron. He had me bite down on a stick. But I held still, watching the dry wood of the tree trunk greedily soak up each red drop.

Dono’s crude stitching held the gash closed, and before very long the blood flow abated. Hollis answered the VHF on the next try, and he and Dono had a low thunderstorm of a conversation.

While we waited for the cruiser to return, Dono sat next to me on the stained throne of wood. He handed me the thermos of coffee, which he’d been using like a huge mug.

“A good day,” Dono had said. And I took a first cautious sip and wheezed a little, and nodded, and he laughed. I’d laughed, too.

“Hollis turned up an hour later,” I said to Luce. “Red in the face and quiet, which isn’t like Hollis at all. I barely noticed. I was so wired after the excitement.”

“Scary,” Luce said.

“Yeah. But after that, Dono and I were closer.”

“Because you’d been brave?”

“Maybe. Or maybe because Dono knew that I trusted him again. He’d only been out of jail a few months. Looking back, I realize we were both taking things day by day. I wasn’t so certain anymore that he would be around.”

“Because he’d left you.”

“He hadn’t wanted to. But he screwed up and got nailed. And I went into foster homes for a year and a half.”

“Tough little guy,” Luce said.

I pressed my lips against her forehead. “But still scared of the needle.”

“You don’t have to get a tattoo on your arm, you know. You could put it anywhere.”

“Like where?” I said. “Here?”

“On you, not me. Oh. Never mind. Keep doing that.”

I kissed her. She kissed back, harder.

WE
WOKE TO
A
cell phone ringing. It had started raining hard, and the trill of the ring melded with the sound of tires outside, hissing over wet pavement. It was the new burner phone. I rolled out of bed and went into the other room to find it.

“Oh, Van.” Addy Proctor. “He’s slipping. Dono. You need to come right away. Hurry,” she said, her voice breaking. “Please hurry.”