Thicker Than Water (A Leo Waterman Mystery) (16 page)

They were about forty yards out and from the sound of things weren’t going to make it back before the train got here. As if to prove me right, another blast of the whistle heralded the train’s arrival. I could feel it now, feel the weight of its cargo shaking my feet as the freight cars clicked and clanked over the uneven rails. Sounded like somebody shaking a box of tools. The whistle sounded again as the trio of train engines crept into view, blocking any view of Koontz and his little Asian friend walking back this way.

Each and every freight car had been tagged multiple times and in several hues. Gang signs, elaborately flourished signatures, and anatomically infeasible suggestions, all of it rolling by in living color. “Kilroy was here” on a grand scale. The hiphop generation rolling through a neighborhood near you.

A pair of small red lights approaching from the left said the caboose was about to arrive, and that I was about to get hung out to dry, so I sucked it up and made a dash for the truck, hoping to find some cover. The rumble of the train covered the sound of my footsteps as I raced to the side of the derelict dump truck and rolled beneath.

My shoulder hated everything about it. I had to stifle a groan as I scrunched myself toward the rear of the truck and wedged myself between the tires. I took several deep breaths and waited for my shoulder to calm down.

The train clatter was fading as I peeked out from behind the tires. The driver’s side door of the Hummer was hanging open. The logo was an artsy-fartsy monogram. The letters STE all swirled together. ST Emtman Ltd. in block
letters beneath. Below that in smaller letters: Serving B.C. since 1965.

Koontz and Moto were standing there by the open door, listening to whoever was inside the Hummer. Sounded like the mystery driver might be yelling. Koontz said something and apparently the Hummer said something back and then suddenly the meeting was over.

The Hummer’s door slammed. The halogen headlights lit up the yard like Safeco Field as the driver threw it in reverse, wheeled around the front of the Cadillac and roared off around the corner.

The Escalade, on the other hand, took its time leaving. A full minute passed before I heard the sound of tires crunching gravel. I stayed where I was. The minute they rounded the corner, I crawled out from under the truck, dusted myself off as best I could, and started jogging back up the access road.

The Hummer was gone. I arrived at the corner in time to see the Escalade bump out onto First Avenue, turn left, and head back toward downtown.

Without actually wishing it so, I began to run. Who knew? Maybe they’d catch a couple of traffic lights and I could get back on their tail. As leads went, they weren’t much, but they were all I had, so I put my head down and gave it my all.

The exertion set my ear to burning and made the ache in my shoulder nearly unbearable, but I kept running anyway, sidling along like a Dungeness crab, keeping my eyes glued on the knee-deep potholes, trying not to break a hip before I reached the Tahoe.

Imagine my surprise when I looked up to find a pair of uniformed SPD officers pointing guns at me over the top of my car.

“Put your hands on your head,” the nearest cop shouted.

“Hands on your head,” the female officer screamed.

I did as I was told, then tried the line again. “Is there an echo in here?” I asked.

They didn’t think it was funny either.

Marty Gilbert was the second cop through the door. The first introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Broils and sat down across the table from me. Standard issue detective material. Thick salt-and-pepper hair, thicker mustache, wearing his badge around his neck on a silver chain. Detective Broils made a ceremony out of taking out his notebook and pen and rolling up his sleeves before lifting his baby blues and asking, “You know why you’re here?”

“Seems to be National Arrest Leo Week,” I said.

He sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his thick chest. “I heard you think you’re funny.”

“Seems to be the minority opinion.”

“Maybe you ought to travel with a laugh track,” he suggested.

I was working up a snappy reply when Marty let himself into the interview room. He stood with his back resting on the rear wall and his hands behind his back. Everything about him said that he was only there as an observer and that I shouldn’t count on any help from him.

I rattled the pair of handcuffs that connected my right hand to the table. “I’d offer to shake hands, but…” I said to Marty.

He turned his face aside.

Having arranged his pen and notebook and glasses at perfect right angles to one another, Broils put on his serious face. I watched as he slid two fingers down into his shirt pocket and came out with a business card. He threw it on the table, where it landed face up. It was one of mine.

“You want to tell me about this?” he asked.

“Turn the card over,” I said.

He hesitated, looked over his shoulder at Marty, and then flipped the card. The back of the card was clean, so it couldn’t be the one I gave to Rachel Thoms. That one had another number scrawled across the back.

“I gave that one to a woman named Rosemary De Carlo,” I said.

“When was that?” Broils asked.

“Earlier today. Around three thirty or so.”

Broils was jotting notes. He looked up. “So you admit to being there?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Ms. De Carlo was a friend of yours?”

“Nope.”

“So how’d you know her?”

I looked up at Marty, who was making it a point not to meet my gaze. “Marty,” I said. “You’re going to want to pay attention here.”

Marty did his Mount Rushmore impression as I laid it out for Broils. About Koontz and Moto warning me off. About Rosemary De Carlo impersonating Rebecca at the Alderbrook. About how Brett Ward put her up to it. About the late Teddy Healy and getting arrested at the crack of dawn, and then finding Rosemary, and the Shilshole Marine
Yard. About what I learned from Northwest Maritime, and about running into Koontz and his buddy down at the Madison Park condo, and following them to South Seattle. The only things I left out were Rachel Thoms and Brett Ward’s secret porno palace, neither of which I thought they needed to know about.

By the time I’d finished talking, Marty had bumped himself off the wall and walked over to the side of the table. “You’re being straight here, Leo?” he asked me. “’Cause this is no time to be fucking around.”

“Absolutely.”

Broils still wasn’t satisfied. “What condition was Ms. De Carlo in when you left?” he wanted to know.

“Beat up,” I said. “That Healy character slapped her around quite a bit. She had a mouse under one eye and a full-scale shiner in the other. Why? What happened to her?”

“Somebody about beat her to death,” Marty said. “She’s up at Harborview. They don’t think she’s gonna make it.”

“Wasn’t me. All I did was borrow a picture of Brett Ward from her.”

“Neighbors said they heard noises around five o’clock. Where were you?”

I thought about it. “I was talking to a guy over at Fisherman’s Terminal. After that I was at the Eastlake Zoo from whence I went to Tiny Bigs down on Denny. Then I went to Madison Park and, as they say, the rest was history.”

Marty stepped out into the hall. Broils kept at it. Wanted to know what law enforcement agency had picked me up earlier in the day.

“Washington State Patrol,” I said. “Guy named Bradley.”

“And you claim this…” He checked his notes. “…this Koontz character assaulted the building security guard?”

“Knocked him stiff. Left him on the lawn.”

Broils jotted away and then got to his feet, fixed me with what he imagined to be a withering stare, gathered up his belongings, and left the room.

Forty-five minutes passed before the door opened again and a uniformed officer came in, took the cuffs off me, and escorted me down the hall to Marty’s office. Marty was on the phone, so I took a seat. Half a minute of yesses, nos, and thank yous, and he hung up.

“Sorry about that, but it wasn’t my case,” he said. “I told him beating up women wasn’t your style, but he had to find out for himself. That’s how it works around here. Three witnesses and that business card put you at the scene. It had to be done according to protocol.”

I told him I understood. He anticipated my next question.

“We had an assault report from their condo office.”

“How’s the guard?” I asked.

“Broken jaw and a fractured eye orbit,” Marty said.

“That was one punch, man,” I said. “This Koontz character is an animal.”

“I don’t like one goddamn thing about this,” Marty said.

“Join the club.”

“I’ve got a call into Missing Persons. I’ll get them cranking as soon as I can. I put out a find order on both their cars. I’ll have patrol check for their cars over at the condo.”

“What about this ST Emtman Limited? And the Saint David company? Can you find out something about what’s up with them?”

“I’ve got a friend in the Vancouver PD. I’ll make a few calls.”

I started to speak, but he waved me off.

“Go home, Leo. We’ll handle it from here.” He leaned out over the desk. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings or anything, buddy, but you look like shit.”

By the time I pulled into my garage after midnight, I was slumped over the wheel, steering mostly with my chin. I crawled out and fished around under the seat and found Brett Ward’s DVDs and cameras, and stuffed them into my coat pocket.

I live in the downstairs half of the house, and even that portion is about three times as much space as I need. The maid service goes upstairs once in a while to push the dust around and flush the toilets, but I seldom make the ascent myself.

I let myself in the back door, emptied my pockets onto the kitchen table, and stumbled into the bedroom, where I plopped down on the edge of the bed.

I sat staring at the carpet for the longest time, trying to put everything I’d learned into some sort of meaningful order, but it was like reading late at night, where three minutes in you realize you’ve read the same paragraph six times and still don’t have any idea what it’s about. I stood up, dropped my clothes on the floor, and crawled between the sheets.

The second I closed my eyes, I fell back into that haunted house, can’t-quite-get-to-Rebecca dream that I’d had what seemed like a week ago but was only last
night. The difference was that Koontz and Mr. Moto had replaced the maniac hillbillies as the heavies; otherwise the plot was eerily familiar.

I awoke sitting up, sweating like a racehorse. Took me a half a minute to realize I’d been dreaming. The bedside clock read two-fifty-nine, and since there was no way I was going back to sleep anytime soon, I pulled my robe from the hook on the back of the door, and wandered into the kitchen.

After I made coffee, I scrounged around and found a container of milk in the door of the fridge. When I peeked inside, the former milk appeared to be waving back at me, so I rummaged through one of the lower cabinets and came up with a jar of Coffee-mate so old it had originally belonged to my father, and he’d been dead for a couple of decades. Stuff had a half-life of six thousand years.

Most of the way through the coffee, I was trying to work up a reasonable scenario wherein Rebecca could still be out there somewhere, but hard as I tried, I couldn’t put anything feasible together. I told myself not to panic, that I’d figure it out, that I’d find her if I just had a couple more pieces of the puzzle. That’s what I told myself.

I was about to start over when my eyes came to rest on the Flip cameras and the collection of DVDs fanned across the table like a sliced tomato. I wondered once again, what kind of man feels a need to secretly film his lovers. Wondered if somewhere in Brett’s little mind he found leching at the digital images somehow more exciting than the sex acts themselves, as if a life lived in the third person held greater appeal to him than simple reality.

I refreshed my coffee, rounded up the cameras and DVDs, and headed for the study. It used to be my old man’s
office, the inner sanctum from which many a shady deal was hatched, and from which I had been barred right up until the day he died, which probably explains why, even before moving in, I’d had the room razed and renovated. New glass desk in the corner, coupla couches, coupla chairs, and a TV the size of Nova Scotia. If I’d left the office as it was, I’d have seen him sitting there, glowering at me from behind his desk for all eternity. Way I saw it, it was either make it my own, or nail the door shut and forget about it.